Ecuadorians ( es, ecuatorianos) are people identified with the
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
n country of
Ecuador
Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...
. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Ecuadorians, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''Ecuadorian''.
Numerous indigenous cultures inhabited what is now Ecuadorian territory for several millennia before the expansion of the
Inca Empire
The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, (Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The admin ...
in the fifteenth century. The
Las Vegas culture
"Las Vegas culture" is the name given to many Archaic settlements which flourished between 8000 BCE and 4600 BCE.(10,000 to 6,600 BP) near the coast of present-day Ecuador. The name comes from the location of the most prominent settlement, Site ...
of coastal Ecuador is one of the oldest cultures in the Americas. The
Valdivia culture is another well-known early Ecuadorian culture.
Spaniards
Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance peoples, Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of National and regional identity in Spain, national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex Hist ...
arrived in the sixteenth century, as did
sub-Saharan Africans
Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the African co ...
who were enslaved and transported across the Atlantic by Spaniards and other Europeans. The modern Ecuadorian population is principally descended from these three ancestral groups.
As of 2010, 77.4% of the population identified as "