Boruca Church – Brunca – Costa Rica – Photo by Dagmar Reinhard
It is noteworthy that both ticos and the foreign community know very little about the indigenous population of our country.
Did you know that the first settlers arrived here between 10,000 and 7,000 years before the Christian era?
They led a nomadic life, harvesting and hunting. At that time the territory where is now Costa Rica was inhabited by a megafauna, so huge mammals that humans just reached to the knees. Climate change led to the extinction of the megafauna and the people began to settle in villages and engage in agriculture. So more than 4,000 years ago, there were some scattered farming communities across the country.
The basic organization was the village and the union of several villages was a chiefdom that controlled the redistribution of goods and trade. The original settlers had commercial ties with the current Panama, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico and exchanged – at that time money didn´t exist – salt, cacao, quetzal feathers and a dye made from the murex snail.[singlepic id=449 w=320 h=240 float=right]
Before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1502, there were at least 14 chiefdoms with a total population of 400,000 people. Colon, impressed by the gold ornaments of indigenous women, characterized his discovery as a land with a long coastline and rich in gold and baptized it with the name of Costa Rica.
Today, there are still indigenous communities with linguistic and cultural differences between the various groups. It constitutes only 1% of the total population of Costa Rica (60,000) but most of them live in the south, in our vicinity. Should we not know a little more about this unknown neighbor, know about their past and their plans for the future?
Ballena Tales will reveal their unknown history and give them the attention they deserve.
