54. Possible Relatives in the Americas
Tibito and El Abra sites (Colombia )
by George Weber
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Location of the Tibito site (73o 58' 60" W,
4o 58' 60" N), Location of the El Abra rockshelter (73o 57'
0"W, 5o 1' 0" N) |
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Left: The town of Tocancipa, capital of the area to which the site of Tibito belongs.
Below: the town of Zipaquira, capital of the area to which the site of El Abra belongs.
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Some of the archaeological sites in Colombia: 1. Tequendama (10,000 years before the present) 2. Golindo (8,700 years before the present) 3. Vista Hermosa (3,400 years before the present) 4. Gachaid site (9,800 years before the present) 5. Svevo site (10,000 years before the present)) 6. Tibito site (11,700 years before the present) 7. Chio site (3,000 years before the present) 8. El Abra site (12,000 years before the present) 9. Quebrodura site (3,400 years before the present) 10. Nemocon site (6.800 years before the present) 11. Neuso site (2,300 years before the present) 12. Media Caqueta (9,000 years before present)
Red dots mark other Colombian archaeological sites
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The Tibito site
Excavation work in progress at the Tibito site.
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The Tibito site was first excavated by Gonzalo Correal and associates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is an open air processing site where animals that had been hunted down were rendered. Among the larger species hunted were a type of extinct horse, mastodon as well as deer. It is likely that the people who cut up the results of their succesful hunts also used the rock shelters of El Abra (see below).
The earliest dates at the site are 13,700 years before the present (11,740 C14 years ago). Tibito was roughly contemporary to the much larger rendering site of Taimataima 1000 km to the northeast on the coast of Venezuela. The two sites may have been used by the same or similar people.
The tools found at Tibito are of the Abriense industry, small unifacially retouched flake tools and core tools - without projectile points.
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Above: stone tools found in the oldest levels of the Sabana de Bogota area to which the Tibito anbd E. Abra sites belong. Left: Clusters of bone fragments and stone tools were found distributed in open-air activity areas around a large boulder (visible in the photograph above right
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The Tibito site was first investigated in 1969 and excavated by Gonzalo Correal and associates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is an open air processing site where animals that had been hunted down nearby were rendered. Among the larger species hunted were a type of extinct horse, mastodon as well as deer.
The earliest dates at the site are 13,700 years before the present (11,740 C14 years ago). Tibito was roughly contemporary to the much larger rendering site of Taimataima 1000 km to the northeast on the coast of Venezuela. The two sites could well have been used by the same group.
The tools found at Tibito are of the Abriense industry (i.e. small unifacially retouched flake tools and core tools, without projectile points).
The El Abra sites
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The Valley of El Abra lies between the Susagua, Barandilla and Tibito Rivers, southeast of the town of Zipaquira. The valley contains several rock shelters of which El Abra 2 is best known archaeoelogically. The early hunter-gatherers who passed through and perhaps temorarily lived in the El Abra valley rock shelters were also the most likely people to have rendered the results of their successful hunts at the Tibito site (see above). |
The El Abra shelters were first surveyed and excavated from 1969. They lie near what was the shore of Lake Bogota until that lake drained around 30-40,000 years ago. The forrmer lake bed now forms the 'Sabano de Bogota'.
Humans first appear in the archaeological record of the area during a warm period around 12,400 yearsago when swamps had formed in the area. The human presence continued when the climate turned cold and dry again sometime after 11,000 years ago. Around 10,000 years ago, surge of inventions and material development (including early signs of agriculture in the form of pollen of corn (maize) appear in the record while the climate grew warmer. Occupation or use of the shelter seems to have been continuous over a very long time with the last signs of intensive human use of the shelter around 1,700 years ago. It is not directly provable but is is likely that the introduction of cultivated corn and the desertion of the El Abra rockshelter are connected - the farmers needed to live closer to their fields.
There are many early fireplaces at El Abra 2 that were in later periods replaced by clay-lined firepits.Tools show a slow but steady development over the milennia - few new types were added but the existing types became ever more refined.
It has been caclulated that the people using the shelter must have been very careful with their stone tools: the 3,072 pieces found until the learly 1970s are spread over 7,000 years, so all the visitors to the shelter lost or threw away less than 1 tool every 2 years. Clearly, people are careful with tools that they had to laboriously chip themselves. In later times (after 1,700 years ago) the shelter was used only intermittenly but the number of lost or thrown-away tools increased to more than 5 tools per 2 years.
Excavation work was complicated by the many rockfalls and (as the archaeologist Hurt disapprovingly notes) "intrusive" fireplaces and graves. Unfortunately and rather strangely, we do not hear any more about these graves, their dating and contents.
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The El Abra rockshelters 1-4
Light green: valley bottom, ca. 2,570 m above sea level Dark green: higher areas behind rock faces, more than 2,600 m above sea level |
The El Abra 2 dates and stratigraphy
(more detailed stratigraphies for El Abra 1-4 can be found in van der Hammen T., 1978. "Stratigraphy and Environments of the Upper Quaternary of the El Abra Corridor and Rock Shelters".Palaeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 25:111-162)
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Chert stone tools from A, B, C: end scrapers D: semilunar scraper E: ovoid scraper F, G: side scrapers H, I: triangular scrapers or perforators J: diamond-shaped scraper K, L: spokeshaves M: bifaced core (adapted from
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Among web-sites with further information are:
- http://www.lablaa.org/blaavirtual/antropologia/prehisp/cp10.htm
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Last change 24 May 2007
