ABSTRACT
The great civilizations of South America, specifically the Inca Empire—which ran from Bolivia and northern Chile, through Ecuador and Peru, to present-day Colombia—were hardly the first important civilizations to inhabit the South American continent. One of the earliest Peruvian highland civilizations, Chavin, existed at an altitude of about 3,000 meters in the eastern Andes and flourished from 1000 to 300 B.C.E. By the fifteenth century, Tawantinsuyu, or the Inca state, came to dominate much of western South America. People belonging to the Arawak linguistic family occupied the eastern plains of Colombia, extending into Venezuela. Carib-speaking peoples lived on the northern coast of South America. Thus, a vast matrix of indigenous civilizations existed throughout South America at the time of the Spanish conquest. The Native Americans produced, traded, lived in complex societies, and left behind impressive architectural monuments and hand-crafted evidence, all of which points to the development of important civilizations in South America prior to 1500.
