Archaeological Colombia: geography and biodiversity

Biodiversity and geographical location of Colombia were special scenery in the millenary process of America’s peopling: In southern Colombia, San Agustín archaeological zone, for example, is a crossing of important ways: it is the lowest depression of the oriental Andean mountain chain, forming a natural path to the Amazonian northwest; placed at 1,800 meters high, to only one or two days walking there are high plateaus or tropical regions that offer the resources of diverse levels of altitude and thermal floors. Near San Agustín, several ways open in the mountains to communicate by the heights of the Guaviare river to the Orinoco’s prairies and the Amazonian jungle; other ways lead to the Cauca river’s valley and to the Pacific coast, other destinies are opened by the high hills towards the Ecuadorian mountain chains, and by the Magdalena river’s valley that spreads to the north it is reached the Caribbean sea, plenty of sun, blue horizon and lukewarm water.

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After more than twenty years of research Austrian archaeologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff stated (1978) that it is possible to suppose that during the years 5,000 to 3,000 before present, the low lands of northwest south America in what are known today as Colombia, Ecuador, and the high Amazon, were the region’s most developed of the continent, a stage preceded by a wide phase of development that the professor named the stage of "Tropical Jungle" (2). Formerly (1973), in the center of Colombia at El Abra region near the Salto de Tequendama, Colombian archaeologist Gonzalo Correal had found human artifacts, bones of horses and remains of Pleistocene mega fauna as elephants, mastodons and other mammals of great size dated from 12.460 years B.P. (3)

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Those archaeological findings and the last ones in Toca da Esperanza and in Pedra Furada northeastern Brazil regions, where burners, cave paintings and human remains have been discovered, dated up to 60,000 years B.P., indicate that early history of America and therefore Colombian history has to be rewritten. Probably the peopling of South America did not begin between 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, coming from Asia through the Bering strait as academia traditionally has considered.

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