Tibitó is the second-oldest dated
archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology a ...
on the
Altiplano Cundiboyacense
The Altiplano Cundiboyacense () is a high plateau located in the Eastern Cordillera of the Colombian Andes covering parts of the departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá. The altiplano corresponds to the ancient territory of the Muisca. The Alt ...
,
Colombia.
[Caracterización de los sitios arqueológicos Sabana de Bogotá]
- ICANH
The Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History ( es, Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia), ICANH, is a scientific and technical government agency ascribed to the Ministry of Culture in charge of researching, producing and dissemi ...
The
rock shelter is located in the
municipality
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...
Tocancipá,
Cundinamarca,
Colombia, in the northern part of the
Bogotá savanna
The Bogotá savanna is a montane savanna, located in the southwestern part of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in the center of Colombia. The Bogotá savanna has an extent of and an average altitude of . The savanna is situated in the Eastern Ran ...
. At Tibitó, bone and stone tools (knives and scrapers mostly) and carbon have been found. Bones from ''
Haplomastodon'', ''
Cuvieronius'', ''
Cerdocyon
The crab-eating fox (''Cerdocyon thous''), also known as the forest fox, wood fox, bushdog (not to be confused with the bush dog) or maikong, is an extant species of medium-sized canid endemic to the central part of South America since at least ...
'' and
white tailed deer
The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...
from the deepest human trace containing layer of the site is carbon dated to be 11,740 ± 110 years old. The oldest dated sediments are lacustrine clays from an ancient
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...
lake.
Principal research at Tibitó was carried out by Colombian
archaeologist Gonzalo Correal Urrego, who also analysed other early sites
Tequendama
Tequendama is a preceramic and ceramic archaeological site located southeast of Soacha, Cundinamarca, Colombia, a couple of kilometers east of Tequendama Falls. It consists of multiple evidences of late Pleistocene to middle Holocene populat ...
,
Aguazuque
Aguazuque is a pre-Columbian archaeological site located in the western part of the municipality Soacha, close to the municipalities Mosquera and San Antonio del Tequendama in Cundinamarca, Colombia. It exists of evidences of human settlement o ...
and
El Abra.
[Correal Urrego, 1990]
Background
The Altiplano Cundiboyacense, and its southeastern flat portion the
Bogotá savanna
The Bogotá savanna is a montane savanna, located in the southwestern part of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in the center of Colombia. The Bogotá savanna has an extent of and an average altitude of . The savanna is situated in the Eastern Ran ...
, were populated by the first humans in the late Pleistocene, as evidenced by finds in
Pubenza (16,000 years BP), El Abra, Tibitó and others. Until roughly 30,000 years BP, the Bogotá savanna was covered by a large lake;
Lake Humboldt. This glacial lake surrounded by snowy peaks was fed by the glaciers of
Sumapaz
Sumapaz is the 20th locality of Bogotá, capital of Colombia. It is the largest of Bogotá's 20 localities, starting in the north at the edge of the urban frontier with Usme and stretching to the south at the border of Cundinamarca with the depa ...
in the south, based on analysis of debris flow deposits close to
Fusagasugá
Fusagasugá (; ) or Fusa is a town and municipality in the department of Cundinamarca, in central Colombia. It is located in the warm valley between the rivers Cuja and Panches, a central region of the Andes Mountains in South America. The mun ...
, yielding ages between 40,000 and 7000 years BP.
[Hoyos et al., 2015, p.265] The approximately large lake contained an island, presently known as the
Suba Hills
Suba may refer to:
Groups of people
*Suba people (Kenya), a people of Kenya
**Suba language
*Suba people (Tanzania), a people of Tanzania
* Subha (writers), alternatively spelt Suba, Indian writer duo
Individual people
*Suba (musician), Serbian- ...
(''Cerros de Suba''), in
Bogotá. Surrounding the lake, Pleistocene megafauna as ''
Glyptodonts'',
giant sloth
Ground sloths are a diverse group of extinct sloths in the mammalian superorder Xenarthra. The term is used to refer to all extinct sloths because of the large size of the earliest forms discovered, compared to existing tree sloths. The Caribbea ...
s,
mastodons
A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of th ...
and deer foraged. The lake retreated during the last 30,000 years, but remnants still existing today are the
Bogotá River
The Bogotá River is a major river of the Cundinamarca department of Colombia. A right tributary of the Magdalena River, the Bogotá River crosses the region from the northeast to the southwest and passing along the western limits of Bogotá. The ...
and its tributaries,
Lake Herrera and the many
Wetlands of Bogotá. The
timber line around Lake Humboldt, in older texts named ''Lake Bogotá'', has been estimated to have been lower than today.
[Zonneveld, 1968, p.205]
During the latest Pleistocene and early Holocene, the first humans arrived on the
Andean
The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S l ...
high plateau at above sea level. They settled in caves and rock shelters in various locations on the Altiplano and had a
hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The main ingredient of the early diet existing until
colonial times
The ''Colonial Times'' was a newspaper in what is now the Australian state of Tasmania. It was established as the ''Colonial Times, and Tasmanian Advertiser'' in 1825 in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land
Van Diemen's Land was the colon ...
was
white tailed deer
The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...
(''Odocoileus virginianus''). Fishing in the many lakes that existed in those times was another source of food for the people.
Description
Radiocarbon dating of a deeper lacustrine clay in the sequence of Tibitó revealed the site was in a lake environment around 52,000 years BP.
[Vogel & Lerman, 1969, p.358] Pleistocene lakes also existed in the
Ubaté-Chiquinquirá Valley to the northwest and in the valley of
Soatá, in the lower altitude northeasternmost part of the
Muisca Confederation.
[Villarroel et al., 2001, p.79] The paleoclimate changed over the course of the latest Pleistocene and the Upper Pleniglacial was relatively humid, eroding earlier lagunal clays. The latest stage of the Pleniglacial was characterised by a cold and dry climate. In the valleys, hunter-gatherers lived. The original topography was covered in the
Guantivá interstadial and
El Abra stadial by humic sediments.
[Scott & Meyers, 1994, p.390]
At Tibitó remains of the extinct
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...
megafauna ''
Cuvieronius'', ''
Haplomastodon'' and ''
Equus amerhippus
''Amerhippus'' is an extinct South America, South American horse of uncertain taxonomic identity. It is sometimes classified as a subgenus of the genus ''Equus (genus), Equus'', containing several extinct species of horses that lived in South Ame ...
'' and extant
white tailed deer
The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...
and
crab-eating fox have been found set in a circle. The bones were burnt and unburnt and mixed with stone artifacts and limestone chunks. The most important finds of ''Cuvieronius'' come from the Eastern Cordillera, with main sites Tibitó and
Mosquera
Mosquera is a Spanish surname (first name) originally from Galicia (Spain). The family crest states (Spanish) Gallego. It derives from the mansion of the family's founder, Ramiro de Mosquera. In the fifth century, it was already linked to ''Moscos ...
.
[Prado et al., 2003, p.353] 156 unifacial stone artifacts, of which 41% knives,
[ pieces of carbon and bone tools have been found and analysed by Gonzalo Correal Urrego.][Dillehay, 1999, p.208][Correal Urrego, 1990, p.74] Ninetynine percent of the finds were from local origin.[Gnecco & Aceituno, 2004, p.155] The bones, showing a relative higher abundance of ''Haplomastodon'' than ''Cuvieronius'' and the extinct American horse,[Correal Urrego, 1990, p.76] have been carbon dated to be 11,740 ± 110 years old. This was confirmed by palynological analysis, that also indicated a páramo climate at the time.[Correal Urrego, 1990, p.77] This makes the site slightly younger than the oldest; El Abra, dated at 12,400 ± 160 years BP.[
In the vicinity of Tibitó, rock art has been discovered.][
]
See also
*List of Muisca and pre-Muisca sites
This is a list of Muisca and pre-Muisca archaeological sites; sites on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, where archaeological evidence has been discovered of the Muisca and their ancestors of the Herrera, preceramic and prehistorical periods.
Ove ...
*Aguazuque
Aguazuque is a pre-Columbian archaeological site located in the western part of the municipality Soacha, close to the municipalities Mosquera and San Antonio del Tequendama in Cundinamarca, Colombia. It exists of evidences of human settlement o ...
, Tequendama
Tequendama is a preceramic and ceramic archaeological site located southeast of Soacha, Cundinamarca, Colombia, a couple of kilometers east of Tequendama Falls. It consists of multiple evidences of late Pleistocene to middle Holocene populat ...
, Checua
Checua is a Andean preceramic, preceramic open area List of Muisca and pre-Muisca sites, archaeological site in Nemocón, Cundinamarca Department, Cundinamarca, Colombia. The site is located north of the town centre.Gómez Mejía, 2012, p.146 At ...
* El Abra, Gonzalo Correal Urrego
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Tibito
Prehistory of Colombia
Former populated places in Colombia
Pre-Clovis archaeological sites in the Americas
Muisca and pre-Muisca sites
Altiplano Cundiboyacense
Andean preceramic
Pleistocene Colombia
Pleistocene paleontological sites of South America
Tourist attractions in Cundinamarca Department
Archaeological sites in Colombia