Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
HISTORY
Though the Republic of Panama is only over a century old, humans have lived on the
isthmus for thousands of years. Its location as a slender bridge between two vast land
masses has been as crucial to its development as its eventual link between two expanses
of ocean.
Pre-Columbian society
Panama's scarce archeological remains give little clue to the societies that inhabited the re-
gion, in part because many early excavations were poorly executed and finds were damaged
or looted. Lacking the huge structures and sophisticated carvings that epitomize the Mayan,
Aztec and Toltec civilizations of Mesoamerica, the trading societies of Central America have
always taken an historical back seat. Yet central Panama boasts the earliest traces of
pottery-
making
in the Americas with ceramics from Monagrillo, in the northern Azuero Peninsula,
carbon dated to 2500-1200 BC. A nearby fishing village in Sarigua is considered to be the
isthmus'
oldest settlement
, from around 11,000 BC.
The most sophisticated societies inhabited central Panama, with the richest archeological
finds in the
necropolis
of Sitio Conté, outside Penonomé. Excavations by American academ-
ics in the 1930s opened up around a hundred
tombs
to reveal thousands of intricate
gold
pieces of jewellery
alongside sophisticated
polychrome ceramics
and other artefacts dating
back to the first century, most of which were shipped off to the States.
Just down the road at El Caño, near Natá, lies a
ceremonial site
believed to have become
a cemetery dating from 500 to 1200 AD, though its original function and significance is left
to conjecture, not helped by the fact that a US adventurer decapitated the heads of over a
hundred basalt
standing stones
. In the Western Highlands, outside Volcán, another import-
ant site indicates the existence of what has been termed the
Barriles culture
, at its apogee
around 500 to 800 AD, whose curious
stone statues
of a figure wearing a conical hat carry-
ing another on its shoulders are on display at the anthropological museum in Panama City.
A large
ceremonial grinding stone
, or
metate
, adorned with human heads - also in the mu-
seum - has led to speculation about human sacrifice. Sprinkled round Sitio Barriles and else-
where in western and central Panama on moss-covered boulders are numerous
petroglyphs
;
the largest example is La Piedra Pintada outside El Valle.
Arrival of the Spanish
The first European credited with setting foot on the isthmus was the Spanish aristocratic not-
ary
Rodrigo Galván de Bastidas
, who in 1501 made a low-key arrival, trading his way
peacefully up the Caribbean coast as far as present-day Colón. In contrast,
Christopher
Columbus
(Cristóbal Colón), who arrived a year later on his fourth and final voyage to the
