Muisca agriculture
To diversify their diet, they traded mantles, gold, emeralds and salt for fruits, vegetables, coca, yopo and cotton cultivated in lower altitude warmer terrains populated by their neighbours, the Muzo, Panche, Guane, Guayupe, Lache, Sutagao and U'wa.
Trade of products grown farther away happened with the Calima, Pijao and Caribbean coastal communities around the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
Important scholars who have contributed to the knowledge about the Muisca agriculture have been Pedro Simón, Marianne Cardale de Schrimpff, Carl Henrik Langebaek and Sylvia Broadbent.
The central highlands of the Colombian Andes show evidence of population since 12,400 years BP at various archaeological sites such as El Abra, Tequendama and Tibitó.
[1] Around this time, archaeological evidence shows the previous hunter-gatherer-based people left their rock shelters and started to live on the open plains of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, especially the southern part, the Bogotá savanna.
The predominant agricultural product of the Muisca was maize and they had numerous words in their language, Muysccubun, for the plant, kernels and processing of it.
[11] The cacicazgos were self-sufficient in their agricultural products and surpluses of maize (abitago) were traded for more tropical climate fruits such as pineapples, avocados and Ipomea batatas.
[40] Examples are the former capital of the southern Muisca; Bacatá (after which Bogotá is named), Chitaraque, Chivatá, Cucaita, Guayatá, Soatá, Socotá, Tota, Machetá, Manta, Quetame and Tabio, among others.
