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Otavalos
The Otavalos are an indigenous people native to the Andean mountains of Imbabura Province in northern Ecuador. The Otavalos also inhabit the city of Otavalo in that province. Commerce and handcrafts are among the principal economic activities of the Otavalos, who enjoy a higher standard of living than most indigenous groups in Ecuador and many mestizos of their area. The Otavalo live in the high, cool altitudes of the Andes. The city of Otavalo is located at an elevation of . History Prior to the incorporation of the Otavalo people into the Inca Empire in the late 15th or early 16th century, the region north of Quito near the border of present-day Colombia, an area long by the same width, consisted of several small-scale chiefdoms including the Otavalo, Caranqui, Cayambe, and Cochasquí. These chiefdoms appear to have been similar in artistic techniques, subsistence, settlement patterns, and language, probably all speaking Barbacoan languages. The four chiefdoms colle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kichwa
Kichwa (, , also Spanish ) is a Quechuan language that includes all Quechua varieties of Ecuador and Colombia ('' Inga''), as well as extensions into Peru. It has an estimated half million speakers. Classification Kichwa belongs to the Northern Quechua group of Quechua II, according to linguist Alfredo Torero. History The earliest grammatical description of Kichwa was written in the 17th century by Jesuit priest Hernando de Alcocer. First efforts for language standardization and bilingual education A standardized language, with a unified orthography (, ), has been developed. It is similar to Chimborazo but lacks some of the phonological peculiarities of that dialect. According to linguist Arturo Muyulema, the first steps to teach Kichwa in public schools dates to the 1940s, when Dolores Cacuango founded several indigenous schools in Cayambe. Later, indigenous organizations initiated self-governed schools to provide education in Kichwa in the 1970s and 1980s (Muyulema ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuela to the east and northeast, Brazil to the southeast, Peru and Ecuador to the south and southwest, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and Panama to the northwest. Colombia is divided into 32 Departments of Colombia, departments. The Capital District of Bogotá is also the List of cities in Colombia by population, country's largest city hosting the main financial and cultural hub. Other major urban areas include Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Colombia, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Cúcuta, Ibagué, Villavicencio and Bucaramanga. It covers an area of 1,141,748 square kilometers (440,831 sq mi) and has a population of around 52 million. Its rich cultural heritage—including language, religion, cuisine, and art—reflects its history as a co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guinea Pig
The guinea pig or domestic guinea pig (''Cavia porcellus''), also known as the cavy or domestic cavy ( ), is a species of rodent belonging to the genus ''Cavia'', family Caviidae. Animal fancy, Breeders tend to use the name "cavy" for the animal, but "guinea pig" is more commonly used in scientific and laboratory contexts. Despite their name, guinea pigs are not native to Guinea (region), Guinea, nor are they closely related to suidae, pigs. Instead, they originated in the Andes region of South America, where wild guinea pigs can still be found today. Studies based on biochemistry and DNA Hybrid (biology), hybridization suggest they are domestication, domesticated animals that do not exist naturally in the wild, but are descendants of a closely related cavy species such as ''Montane guinea pig, C. tschudii''. Originally, they were domesticated as livestock (source of meat) in the Andean region and are still consumed in some parts of the world. In Western society, the guin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coca
Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. Coca is known worldwide for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. Coca leaves contain cocaine which acts as a mild stimulant when chewed or consumed as tea, with slower absorption than purified cocaine and no evidence of addiction or withdrawal symptoms from natural use. The coca plant is a shrub-like bush with curved branches, oval leaves featuring distinct curved lines, small yellowish-white flowers that develop into red berries. Genomic analysis reveals that coca, a culturally and economically important plant, was domesticated two or three separate times from the wild species ''Erythroxylum gracilipes'' by different South American groups during the Holocene. Chewing coca in South America began at least 8,000 years ago, as evidenced by coca leaves and calcite found in house floors in Peru’s Nanchoc Valley, suggesting early communal use alongside the rise of farming. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Potato
The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern United States to southern Chile. Genetic studies show that the cultivated potato has a single origin, in the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia. Potatoes were domesticated there about 7,000–10,000 years ago from a species in the '' S. brevicaule'' complex. Many varieties of the potato are cultivated in the Andes region of South America, where the species is indigenous. The Spanish introduced potatoes to Europe in the second half of the 16th century from the Americas. They are a staple food in many parts of the world and an integral part of much of the world's food supply. Following millennia of selective breeding, there are now over 5 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maize
Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native Americans planted it alongside beans and squashes in the Three Sisters polyculture. The leafy stalk of the plant gives rise to male inflorescences or tassels which produce pollen, and female inflorescences called ears. The ears yield grain, known as kernels or seeds. In modern commercial varieties, these are usually yellow or white; other varieties can be of many colors. Maize relies on humans for its propagation. Since the Columbian exchange, it has become a staple food in many parts of the world, with the total production of maize surpassing that of wheat and rice. Much maize is used for animal feed, whether as grain or as the whole plant, which can either be baled or made into the more palatable silage. Sugar-rich varieties called sw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waru Waru
Waru Waru is an Aymara term for the agricultural technique developed by pre-Hispanic people in the Andes region of South America from Ecuador to Bolivia; this regional agricultural technique is also referred to as ''camellones'' in Spanish. Functionally similar agricultural techniques have been developed in other parts of the world, all of which fall under the broad category of raised field agriculture. This type of altiplano field agriculture consists of parallel canals alternated by raised planting beds, which would be strategically located on floodplains or near a water source so that the fields could be properly irrigated. These flooded fields were composed of soil that was rich in nutrients due to the presence of aquatic plants and other organic materials. Through the process of mounding up this soil to create planting beds, natural, recyclable fertilizer was made available in a region where nitrogen-rich soils were rare. By trapping solar radiation during the day, this r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quitu Culture
The Quitu or Quillaco were Pre-Columbian indigenous peoples in Ecuador who founded Quito, which is the capital of present-day Ecuador."Quito." ''All Ecuador and More.'' 2009 (retrieved 3 May 2011) This people ruled the territory from 2000 BCE and persisted through the period known as the Regional Integration Period. They were overtaken by the invasion of the . The Spanish invaded and conquered the center in 1534. The Quitu occupied an area dominated by mountains, settling largely in the valleys. About 800 CE, they created three-level, 20-meter deep tombs as part of funerary centers on the plateau. The bodies were accompanied by highly refined grave goods of textiles, shells and metals, as well as drink and food for the afterlife. These ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cara Culture
The Cara or Caranqui culture flourished in coastal Ecuador, in what is now Manabí Province, in the first millennium CE. History In the 10th century AD, they followed the Esmeraldas River up to the high Andean valley of Caranqui. They were often at war with the neighboring Cayambi people. The Caranqui and their allies were defeated in battle along with the Quitu, the Cañari, the Palta, and the other ethnic groups of the region by an army of Túpac Inca, the son of Pachacuti. They led a revolt against Huayna Capac along with the Cayambi. After the capture of their capital, they fled to a lake. The battle that followed was so brutal that the lake was renamed Yahuarcocha (blood lake). Huayna Cápac temporarily consolidated the region. In 1534 the Caranqui culture were conquered by the Spanish. They became extinct as a tribe chiefly from exposure to new European infectious diseases, which took a heavy toll in fatalities. In addition, the Spanish conquerors married Cara women. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbacoan Languages
Barbacoan (also Barbakóan, Barbacoano, Barbacoana) is a language family spoken in Colombia and Ecuador. Genealogical relations The Barbacoan languages may be related to the Páez language. Barbacoan is often connected with the Paezan languages (including Páez); however, Curnow (1998) shows how much of this proposal is based on misinterpretation of an old document of Douay (1888). (See: Paezan languages.) Other more speculative larger groupings involving Barbacoan include the Macro-Paesan "cluster", the Macro-Chibchan stock, and the Chibchan-Paezan stock. Language contact Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Atakame, Cholon-Hibito, Kechua, Mochika, Paez, Tukano, Umbra, and Chibchan (especially between Guaymí and Southern Barbacoan branches) language families due to contact. Languages Barbacoan consists of 6 languages: * Barbacoan ** Northern *** Awan (also known as Awa or Pasto) **** Awa Pit (also known as Cuaiquer, Coaiquer, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
