Venezuela is a country in South America that makes up much of the northern coast of the continent,

bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to

the north, Columbia to the west, and Guyana to the east. It's about the size of Texas, which is a very

large state. It's also about four times as large as the United Kingdom, three times larger than

Germany, and about one-fourth the size of India. Going back a ways in history,

archaeologists have found evidence of tool-making humans in the region that we currently call

Venezuela, as far back as around 15,000 to 9,000 BP, BP meaning before-present, which is a common time

measurement system used in radiocarbon dating.

That means the people living in this region back when these tools were made

would have coexisted with elephant-sized sloths called megatheriums, tank-like proto-armadillos,

called glypidots, and a sort of rhino, sort of hippo-like mammal that is believed to have been hunted to extinction by early humans, called the toxidon.

Tribal structures are believed to have been established in this region from around 9,000 to 7,000 BP until 1,000 BP,

which was a period defined by the development of sophisticated agricultural methods

and complex societal structures, which allowed them to build pre-planned villages,

technologically advanced, for the time anyway, irrigation and terracing methods,

and reliable methods of water capture and storage that made good use of the local landscape

and weather patterns.

The population in this region is estimated to have grown to a stable 1 million people leading

up to the end of this period, which was ended by the locals conquest by Spanish conquistadors

in the 16th century AD. That description, I should mention, does not do justice to the incredible

art, culture, history, and belief systems that evolved in this region before the Spanish arrived.

Part of the reason we often gloss over this period in this part of the world is that the history

...