Pre-Columbian Ecuador
Pre-Columbian Ecuador included numerous indigenous cultures, who thrived for thousands of years before the ascent of the Incan Empire.
Great tracts of Ecuador, including almost all of the Oriente (Amazon rainforest), remain unknown to archaeologists, a fact that adds credence to the possibility of early human habitation.
Scholars have studied the Amazon region recently but the forest is so remote and dense that it takes years for research teams to survey even a small area.
However, once occupied by the Quito hosts of Huayna Capac, the Incas developed an extensive administration and began the colonization of the region.
These human remains and other items can be seen at Museo Los Amantes de Sumpa y Centro Cultural in Santa Elena.
The Cerro Narrío or Chaullabamba culture thrived from 2000 BC to AD 600 in the southern Cañar and Azuay provinces.
[6] Santa Ana (La Florida) is an important archaeological site in the highlands of Ecuador, going back as early as 3,500 BC.
Its ceramics are easily differentiated from the Valdivia as they were painted black or white with red stripes, and figurines were rare and crudely made.
[8] Existing in the late Formative period, the Chorrera culture lived in the Andes and Coastal Regions of Ecuador between 900 and 300 BC.
Among the main towns of this period were the cultures: Jambelí, Guangala, Bahía, Tejar-Daule, La Tolita, Jama Coaque in the coast of Ecuador, in the Sierras the Cerro Narrío Alausí; and in the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle the Tayos.
[citation needed] The figurine of the Bahía culture (300 BC– AD 500), La Chimba is the site of the earliest ceramic northern Andes, north of Quito, and is representative of the Formative Period in its final stage.
Its inhabitants contacted several villages on the coast and the mountains, keeping close proximity to the Cotocollao culture, located on the plateau of Quito and its surrounding valleys.
The Bahia culture occupied the area that stretches from the foothills of the Andes to the Pacific Ocean, and from Bahía de Caráquez, to the south of Manabi.
[citation needed] The La Tolita developed in the coastal region of Southern Colombia and Northern Ecuador between 600 BCE and CE 200.
Artifacts are characterized by gold jewelry, beautiful anthropomorphic masks and figurines that reflect a hierarchical society with complex ceremonies.
The manteños mastered the seas and forged extensive trade routes as far as present-day Chile to the south and western Mexico to the north.
The Inca expansion northward from modern-day Peru during the late 15th century met with fierce resistance by several Ecuadorian tribes, particularly the Cañari, in the region around modern-day Cuenca, who fought along with the Quitu, occupants of the site of the modern capital; the Cara (originally of Manabi) in the Sierra north of Quito.
By 1500 Tupac's son, Huayna Capac, overcame the resistance of these populations and that of the Cara, and thus incorporated most of modern-day Ecuador into Tawantinsuyu, as the Inca empire was known.
In other areas, however, such as agriculture, land tenure, and social organization, Inca rule had a profound effect despite its relatively short duration.
[19] Emperor Huayna Capac became very fond of Quito, making it a secondary capital of Tawantinsuyu and living out his elder years there before his death in about 1527.
Huayna Capac's sudden death from a strange disease, described by one as smallpox,[20] precipitated a bitter power struggle between Huascar, whose mother was Coya (meaning Empress) Mama Rahua Occillo and legitimate heir, and Atahualpa, a son who was born to a Quitu princess, and reputedly his father's "favorite".
The victory remains a source of national pride to Ecuadorians as a rare case when "Ecuador" forcefully bettered a "neighboring country".
They continued by heading southwest to the coast, eventually subjugating the Ecuadorians living near the Gulf of Guayaquil and the Island of Puna to Inca rule.
Naval expedition report,[31] figures are given of two stars in bronze (found at Cuzco, Peru), one having a sixth ray prolonged into a hatchet, which suggests that it must have been a war-club or battle-axe.
In Squire's book on Peru,[32] there is a figure of a six-rayed object in bronze, said to have been one of several, which are designated by the author (apparently following some earlier writer) casse-têtes, and he says that among the fractured skulls that were found "the larger part seemed to have been broken by blows from some such weapons".
The larger of the stars (which are as heavy as a pound and a quarter) no doubt might be used effectively; but the smaller ones, weighing only a few ounces, would not be very formidable; and taking them as a whole they are less adapted either for offensive or defensive purposes than most of the other stone implements.
Francisco Campaña (a half-Indian who joined the latter part of Whymper's journey) had assisted in the examination of graves in Peru, and said these stars in stone were found there placed upon the breasts of corpses; and it seems likely that they were to the Children of the Sun symbols of the luminary that they worshipped.
The examples in the next series (K-O) bear some resemblance to a bill-hook; the top edges are flat; and they are all pierced with holes drilled from the two sides.
Several examples of form I were found, considered by Thomas Ewbank to be a "hollowing-hammer for metal" by making a handle with a pliable wood rod.
That the principal part of these objects and implements in stone are of considerable or of great age is apparent from the fact that they are scarcely mentioned at the time of the Pizarros.
