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Otavalos
The Otavalos are an indigenous people native to the Andean mountains of Imbabura Province in northern Ecuador. The Otavalos also inhabit the city of Otavalo in that province. Commerce and handcrafts are among the principal economic activities of the Otavalos, who enjoy a higher standard of living than most indigenous groups in Ecuador and many mestizos of their area. The Otavalo live in the high, cool altitudes of the Andes. The city of Otavalo is located at an elevation of . History Prior to the incorporation of the Otavalo people into the Inca Empire in the late 15th or early 16th century, the region north of Quito near the border of present-day Colombia, an area long by the same width, consisted of several small-scale chiefdoms including the Otavalo, Caranqui, Cayambe, and Cochasquí. These chiefdoms appear to have been similar in artistic techniques, subsistence, settlement patterns, and language, probably all speaking Barbacoan languages. The four chiefdoms collectiv ...
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Kichwa
Kichwa (, , also Spanish ) is a Quechuan language that includes all Quechua varieties of Ecuador and Colombia (''Inga''), as well as extensions into Peru. It has an estimated half million speakers. The most widely spoken dialects are Chimborazo, Imbabura and Cañar Highland Quechua, with most of the speakers. Kichwa belongs to the Northern Quechua group of Quechua II, according to linguist Alfredo Torero. Overview Kichwa syntax has undergone some grammatical simplification compared to Southern Quechua, perhaps because of partial creolization with the pre-Inca languages of Ecuador. A standardized language, with a unified orthography (, ), has been developed. It is similar to Chimborazo but lacks some of the phonological peculiarities of that dialect. The earliest grammatical description of Kichwa was written in the 17th century by Jesuit priest Hernando de Alcocer. First efforts for language standardization and bilingual education According to linguist Arturo Muyulema, the f ...
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Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuela to the east and northeast, Brazil to the southeast, Ecuador and Peru to the south and southwest, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and Panama to the northwest. Colombia is divided into 32 departments and the Capital District of Bogotá, the country's largest city. It covers an area of 1,141,748 square kilometers (440,831 sq mi), and has a population of 52 million. Colombia's cultural heritage—including language, religion, cuisine, and art—reflects its history as a Spanish colony, fusing cultural elements brought by immigration from Europe and the Middle East, with those brought by enslaved Africans, as well as with those of the various Amerindian civilizations that predate colonization. Spanish is th ...
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Guinea Pig
The guinea pig or domestic guinea pig (''Cavia porcellus''), also known as the cavy or domestic cavy (), is a species of rodent belonging to the genus ''Cavia'' in the family Caviidae. Breeders tend to use the word ''cavy'' to describe the animal, while in scientific and laboratory contexts, it is far more commonly referred to by the common name ''guinea pig''. Despite their common name, guinea pigs are not native to Guinea, nor are they closely related biologically to pigs, and the origin of the name is still unclear. They originated in the Andes of South America. Studies based on biochemistry and hybridization suggest they are domesticated animals that do not exist naturally in the wild, descendants of a closely related cavy species such as '' C. tschudii''. They were originally domesticated as livestock for a source of meat, and are still consumed in some parts of the world. In Western society, the guinea pig has enjoyed widespread popularity as a pet since its introducti ...
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Coca
Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. Coca is known worldwide for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. The plant is grown as a cash crop in the Argentine Northwest, Bolivia, Alto Rio Negro Territory in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru, even in areas where its cultivation is unlawful. There are some reports that the plant is being cultivated in the south of Mexico, by using seeds imported from South America, as an alternative to smuggling its recreational product cocaine. It also plays a role in many traditional Amazonian and Andean cultures as well as the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia. The cocaine alkaloid content of dry ''Erythroxylum coca'' var. ''coca'' leaves was measured ranging from 0.23% to 0.96%. Coca-Cola used coca leaf extract in its products from 1885 until about 1903, when it began using decocainized leaf extract. Extraction of cocaine from coca requires several sol ...
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Potato
The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern United States to southern Chile. The potato was originally believed to have been domesticated by Native Americans independently in multiple locations,University of Wisconsin-Madison, ''Finding rewrites the evolutionary history of the origin of potatoes'' (2005/ref> but later genetic studies traced a single origin, in the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia. Potatoes were domesticated there approximately 7,000–10,000 years ago, from a species in the ''Solanum brevicaule'' complex. Lay summary: In the Andes region of South America, where the species is indigenous, some close relatives of the potato are cultivated. Potatoes were introduced to Europe from the Americas by the Spanish in the second half of the 16 ...
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Maize
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The leafy stalk of the plant produces pollen inflorescences (or "tassels") and separate ovuliferous inflorescences called ears that when fertilized yield kernels or seeds, which are fruits. The term ''maize'' is preferred in formal, scientific, and international usage as a common name because it refers specifically to this one grain, unlike ''corn'', which has a complex variety of meanings that vary by context and geographic region. Maize has become a staple food in many parts of the world, with the total production of maize surpassing that of wheat or rice. In addition to being consumed directly by humans (often in the form of masa), maize is also used for corn ethanol, animal feed and other maize products, such as corn starch and ...
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Waru Waru
Waru Waru is an Aymara term for the agricultural technique developed by pre-Hispanic people in the Andes region of South America from Ecuador to Bolivia; this regional agricultural technique is also referred to as ''camellones'' in Spanish. Functionally similar agricultural techniques have been developed in other parts of the world, all of which fall under the broad category of raised field agriculture. This type of altiplano field agriculture consists of parallel canals alternated by raised planting beds, which would be strategically located on floodplains or near a water source so that the fields could be properly irrigated. These flooded fields were composed of soil that was rich in nutrients due to the presence of aquatic plants and other organic materials. Through the process of mounding up this soil to create planting beds, natural, recyclable fertilizer was made available in a region where nitrogen-rich soils were rare. By trapping solar radiation during the day, this rai ...
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Quitu Culture
The Quitu were Pre-Columbian indigenous peoples in Ecuador who founded Quito, which is the capital of present-day Ecuador."Quito."
''All Ecuador and More.'' 2009 (retrieved 3 May 2011)
This people ruled the territory from 2000 BCE and persisted through the period known as the Regional Integration Period. They were overtaken by the invasion of the . The Spanish invaded and conquered the center in 1534. The Quitu occupied an area dominated by mountains, settling largely in the valleys. About 800 CE, they created three-level, 20-meter deep tombs as part of funerary centers on the plateau. The bodies were accompanied by highly refined grave goods of textiles, shells and metals, as well as drink and food for the afterlife. These tombs were dis ...
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Cara Culture
The Cara culture flourished in coastal Ecuador, in what is now Manabí Province, in the first millennium CE. History In the 10th century CE, they followed the Esmeraldas River up to the high Andean valley now developed as the city San Francisco de Quito. They defeated the local Quitu tribe and set up a kingdom. The combined Quitu-Cara culture was also known as the Shyris or Scyris civilization, or the Caranqui civilization, which thrived from 800 CE to the 1470s. For more than four centuries under the kings, called ''shyris'', of the Cara, the Kingdom of Quito dominated much of highlands of modern Ecuador. The Cara and their allies were narrowly defeated in the epic battles of Tiocajas and Tixán in 1462, by an army of 250,000 led by Túpac Inca, the son of the Emperor of the Inca. After several decades of consolidation, the Kingdom of Quito became integrated into the Incan Empire. In 1534 the Quitu-Cara culture were conquered by the Spanish. They became extinct as a tribe chi ...
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Cara People
The Cara culture flourished in coastal Ecuador, in what is now Manabí Province, in the first millennium CE. History In the 10th century CE, they followed the Esmeraldas River up to the high Andean valley now developed as the city San Francisco de Quito. They defeated the local Quitu tribe and set up a kingdom. The combined Quitu-Cara culture was also known as the Shyris or Scyris civilization, or the Caranqui civilization, which thrived from 800 CE to the 1470s. For more than four centuries under the kings, called ''shyris'', of the Cara, the Kingdom of Quito dominated much of highlands of modern Ecuador. The Cara and their allies were narrowly defeated in the epic battles of Tiocajas and Tixán in 1462, by an army of 250,000 led by Túpac Inca, the son of the Emperor of the Inca. After several decades of consolidation, the Kingdom of Quito became integrated into the Incan Empire. In 1534 the Quitu-Cara culture were conquered by the Spanish. They became extinct as a tribe chie ...
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Barbacoan Languages
Barbacoan (also Barbakóan, Barbacoano, Barbacoana) is a language family spoken in Colombia and Ecuador. Genealogical relations The Barbacoan languages may be related to the Páez language. Barbacoan is often connected with the Paezan languages (including Páez); however, Curnow (1998) shows how much of this proposal is based on misinterpretation of an old document of Douay (1888). (See: Paezan languages.) Other more speculative larger groupings involving Barbacoan include the Macro-Paesan "cluster", the Macro-Chibchan stock, and the Chibchan-Paezan stock. Language contact Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Atakame, Cholon-Hibito, Kechua, Mochika, Paez, Tukano, Umbra, and Chibchan (especially between Guaymí and Southern Barbacoan branches) language families due to contact. Languages Barbacoan consists of 6 languages: *Northern :* Awan (also known as Awa or Pasto) ::* Awa Pit (also known as Cuaiquer, Coaiquer, Kwaiker, Awá, Awa, Tele ...
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