Quipile is a municipality and town of Colombia in the Tequendama Province of the

department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

of Cundinamarca. The municipality borders

Bituima Bituima is a municipality and town of Colombia in the department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative div ...

and

Vianí Vianí is a municipality and town of Colombia in the department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative divi ...

in the north, Jerusalén and

Anapoima Anapoima () is a Colombian municipality in the department of Cundinamarca located from Bogotá. History The first inhabitants of the region were the Anapoymas Indians of the Panche nation. Between Tocaima and Tena there existed only small indig ...

in the south,

Anolaima Anolaima () is a municipality and township of Colombia in the department of Cundinamarca. It is located in the providence of Tequendama at West from Bogotá in between the cities of Facatativá and La Mesa. Anolaima is known as the Fruit Capit ...

Cachipay Cachipay is a municipality and town of Colombia in the Tequendama Province, part of the department of Cundinamarca. Cachipay borders Quipile in the west, Zipacón in the east, Anolaima in the north and La Mesa in the south. The urban centre is ...

and La Mesa in the east and San Juan de Rioseco and Pulí in the west. The urban centre is located at an altitude of at a distance of from the capital

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city of Colombia, and one of the largest ...

.Official website Quipile
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Etymology

The name Quipile comes from the

Cariban language The Cariban languages are a family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken in small pocke ...

of the Panche and means "strong and superior place". It is derived from Quipili, the name of the ''

cacique A ''cacique'' (Latin American ; ; feminine form: ''cacica'') was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, the indigenous inhabitants at European contact of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The term is a ...

'' of the Panche.

History

In the time before the

Spanish conquest of the Muisca The Spanish conquest of the Muisca took place from 1537 to 1540. The Muisca were the inhabitants of the central Andean highlands of Colombia before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. They were organised in a loose confederation of diff ...

, Quipile was inhabited by the

Panche The following purported languages of South America are listed as unclassified in Campbell (2012), Loukotka (1968), ''Ethnologue'', and ''Glottolog''. Nearly all are extinct. It is likely that many of them were not actually distinct languages, only ...

who were submitted to the Spanish rule of the

New Kingdom of Granada The New Kingdom of Granada ( es, Nuevo Reino de Granada), or Kingdom of the New Granada, was the name given to a group of 16th-century Spanish colonial provinces in northern South America governed by the president of the Royal Audience of Santa ...

in the

Battle of Tocarema The Battle of Tocarema (Spanish: ''Batalla de Tocarema'') was a battle fought between an alliance of the troops of Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and ''zipa'' of the Muisca Sagipa of the southern Muisca Confederation and the indi ...

which took place on August 20, 1538. The date and name of the founder is unknown but traditionally set at November 12, 1825 by José María Lozano.

Economy

Quipile is an agrarian community with main products

coffee Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world. Seeds of ...

, sugarcane and

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry (botany), berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa (genus), Musa''. In some countries, Cooking banana, bananas used for ...

s cultivated.

Paleontology

In 1956 fossil remains of ''

Megatherium ''Megatherium'' ( ; from Greek () 'great' + () 'beast') is an extinct genus of ground sloths endemic to South America that lived from the Early Pliocene through the end of the Pleistocene. It is best known for the elephant-sized type species ...

'' and ''

Mastodon 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 ...

'';

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 ...

megafauna dated at 460,000 years BP, were discovered within the boundaries of Quipile.

References

{{Municipalities cundinamarca department Municipalities of Cundinamarca Department Populated places established in 1825