Colombia, given that it is a Central American, Caribbean and Andean country at one and the same time, has always been a focal point of the two Americas, and it was strategic to the settlement of the entire southern part of the continent. Archaeologists agree that the first inhabitants of South America necessarily had to pass through the isthmus of Panama and Colombia's Darien region. But that region is one of dense jungle today, with marshy areas that are difficult to cross. How were those ancient communities able to get through those virtually impenetrable jungles?

As we saw with Beringia, climatic conditions in the Ice Age produced sufficient changes with the passing of time to allow groups of humans to cross the isthmus. As sea levels fell, so wide coastal plains formed on both the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts of Colombia and Panama. Since rainfall levels likewise fell, the jungles shrank and mastodons roamed on the vast prairies and grasslands that formed - and behind them came the hunters.

But man does not live on mastodons alone. Human beings have a great capacity to adapt to differing environments - plain, jungle, coast, mountain, desert - and some of them exploit different biomes at the same time. But it is impossible to be a community of hunters and gatherers for centuries and then to change from one day to the next to living off the jungle or the sea. All knowledge is different, all dangers are new, and all the possibilities of the new environment are unknown. It can take years to adapt from living on the coast to living in the jungle, while moving along the coasts from one bay to the next involves less effort. It is feasible that various groups that had adapted to different environments could have been the pioneers who brought their different customs and cultures to what is today Colombia. Biomes predominated in North America that were more like those found in the highlands of Mesoamerica, and this doubtless made it easier for the people who lived there to expand, but there were no tropical climates there like those in the lowlands of Panama and in our Caribbean region. Groups that found adjacent environments which were suitable for their way of life were able to move to these without problems, and when they encountered changes, they had to adapt gradually.

Once these groups had crossed the isthmus, they encountered a whole patchwork of different environments: vast coastal areas covered with mangrove swamps, estuaries, dry grasslands and wet forests; extensive, high mountain chains where temperature and vegetation change with altitude; deep valleys, great rivers, and immense inhabited areas of wooded grassland which contrast markedly with dense jungles and deserts. The nomadic communities that were accustomed to different environments therefore began to move in different directions.

Man's first marks on the continent

America at the end of the Ice Age

Stones tell their own story

Colombia: Gateway to South America

A splendid dinner 8,000 years ago