A permanent affluent of outside settlers during the 19th and 20th centuries searching for gold, absorbed the native population from whom there are archeological evidences dated about 9 thousand years ago that belong to the cultures of the Yamesíes, Guamocoes and Tahamíes.

There are two competing hypotheses for the name of this city: The position of Amalfi between the last edges of the Andes to its north and the slopes to the Caribbean region, made it a human corridor of ancient migrations.

[4] Although those peoples are considered today extinct, their descendants survived in the mestizo population of the region, as well as ancient traditions, names, believes and myths like the Jaguar cult, the petroglyphs, words and other elements that are object of current anthropological and archaeological studies.

In 1580 the Spaniard conqueror of Antioquia, Don Gaspar de Rodas, made an excursion to the region following the Porce and Nechi rivers, but he did not make Spanish foundations.

In 1838 Reverend Father José Santamaría y Zola, a Spaniard Catholic priest from Málaga, Spain that was living in Copacabana, led an expedition of families that were looking for new opportunities around the mine golds.

A Swedish migrant into the region, engineer and geographer, Carlos Segismundo de Greiff (1793-1870), made his contribution with the design of the streets of the new town with professor Antonio Aguilar, a master plan that is preserved and admired for its symmetric distribution on the Riachón Valley.