Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
HISTORY
Bolivia's first inhabitants were descendants of the nomadic hunting groups that mi-
grated into the Americas from Asia during the last Ice Age (20,000 to 40,000 years
ago). Having crossed the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska, when a bridge
of land and ice linked the two continents, successive generations gradually migrated
throughout the Americas, reaching the Andes at least 20,000 years ago, where they lived
in semi-nomadic tribes, hunting prehistoric animals like mastodons and giant sloths.
At the end of the Ice Age (around 10,000 years ago) these species became extinct. During
the same period, humans began the long, slow transition to an
agricultural society
. By about
2500 BC, agriculture and herding had become the main form of subsistence in the highlands
andalongthePacific coast,thoughintheforestedlowlandsasemi-nomadic lifestyle combin-
ing hunting and fishing with limited cultivation remained the norm. As population density in-
creased and agricultural techniques developed, social organizations grew more complex and
governments and ceremonial religious centres began to emerge. By about 1800 BC,
pottery
was in widespread use, and primitive metal smelting developed soon after.
Tiwanaku
The first major civilization to develop on the Bolivian Altiplano was the
Tiwanaku
(or Ti-
ahuanaco) culture, centred on the city of the same name, which was located on the southern
shores of Lago Titicaca. First founded around 1200 BC, by 100 BC Tiwanaku had become an
important religious and urban centre with distinct classes of peasants, priests, warriors, artis-
ans and aristocrats.
From around 700 AD Tiwanaku's influence dominated an area comprising much of modern
Bolivia, southern Peru, northeast Argentina and northern Chile. At its height, Tiwanaku city
was a sophisticated
urban ceremonial complex
with a population of over fifty thousand, ly-
ing at the centre of a vast empire of colonies and religious centres. Some time after 1000 AD,
however, the Tiwanaku empire dramatically collapsed, its population dispersed and its great
cities were abandoned. The reasons for this remain unclear: possible explanations include a
cataclysmic earthquake or foreign invasion, though the most likely is
climate change
- from
about 1000 AD, the region suffered a long-term decline in rainfall, suggesting that a pro-
longed drought may have wiped out the intensive agriculture on which Tiwanaku depended.
The Aymara
The Tiwanaku empire was succeeded by numerous much smaller regional states. The Alti-
plano around the shores of Lago Titicaca fell under the control of the
Aymara
, who prob-
ably migrated to the region from the highlands to the east sometime after the empire's col-
lapse. Aymara territory was subdivided into at least seven militaristic kingdoms, of which
