Indigenous Argentina (~11,000 BCE - 1516 AD)

The original Argentines came southward as the last ice age wound down, between 10 and 20 thousand years ago. They were hunter-gatherers, pursuing wild llamas and vicuñas with bows and stone-headed arrows. Eventually these people spread out thinly across Argentina and Chile, adapting in unique ways to varied environments. The Diaguita of the Argentine northwest developed an early form of agriculture, harvesting corn, beans, and peppers with primitive digging sticks. The Querandí hunted rheas and guanacos with the boleadora (bola), made of three stones strapped together and hurled at the legs of running prey. Two coastal tribes in the far south, the Yaghanes and Alacaluf, developed a lifestyle based primarily on seal hunting.

Most groups of the flatlands and the south remained hunter-gatherers, some until the 20th century. The fertile Pampas region wasn't tillable by the digging stick and was left unexploited until the colonial era. The people of the northwest, however, continued to improve their agricultural system, using terraced plots and complex irrigation systems. They learned pottery and metalworking, and kept domesticated llamas for meat and wool. Over time they organized into larger, semi-urban settlements.

Then the Incas came. Early in the 15th century, Inca empire was at its peak, and the people of northwest Argentina fell under its dominion. Quechua, language of the Incas, became the official language of the realm. Children were sacrificed on mountaintops in the Inca custom. Yet the people of Argentina were highly mobile and decentralized, making them difficult to control, and in many ways they continued on with business as usual. The vast majority of them probably never learned Quechua. And though the natives were certainly influenced by the Incas, the Incas were affected in return, incorporating the local worship of Pachamama, or mother earth goddess, into their own religious doctrine.

European Contact and Settlement