Footprint Expeditions in South America

Approximately 70,000 years ago, human beings from Asia began to migrate to Alaska over a land bridge at the Bering Strait. They crossed North America and circa 20,000 years ago began to settle on the land. The first evidence of human settlements was found in South America. Around 5000 BCE the people began to develop agriculture and towns. Caral is one of the most ancient cities of the Americas (possibly of the world) located north of Lima and holds architecture that is contemporaneous with the pyramids of Ancient Egypt.

Along 6500 BCE these towns developed into major civilizations. Some of these Pre-Columbian cultures include: Moche (100 BC – 700 AD, along the northern coast of Peru); Tiahuanaco (100 BC – 1200 AD, Bolivia); the Cañaris (in south central Ecuador), Paracas and Nazca (400 BC – 800 AD, Peru); Wari Empire (600 – 1200, Central and northern Peru); Chimu Empire (1300 – 1470, Peruvian northern coast); Chachapoyas; and the Aymaran kingdoms (1000 – 1450, Bolivia and southern Peru), and finally the Inca Empire (1200 – 1432).

The Inca civilization was settled in the valley of Cuzco, known as the navel of World. The empire was divided in four areas know as Tawantin Suyu, or the “land of the four regions" in Quechua. The Inca civilization was able to develop substantially advanced means of architecture, engineering, and agriculture. They also built the longest road system in the world known today as the Inca trails, the most famous of which leads directly to the Lost City of the Incas. Cities were built with precise, unmatched stonework, and were constructed over many levels of mountain terrain. Currently, it is possible to tour and observe the greatness of many of these buildings.

South America was discovered by the western world in 1492 by Christopher Columbus and was named in 1507 by cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann after Amerigo Vespucci, the first man to suggest that that the new territory was actually a new continent.

Spaniards conquered and ruled most of the continent for more than three centuries with Lima being the seat of their power throughout South America. The natural resources in this region were consistently exploited by the conquistadors, first from Spain and later Portugal. These competing colonial nations claimed the resources and land as their own, dividing the territory into colonies.

European infectious diseases (smallpox, influenza, measles, and typhus)—to which the native populations had no immune resistance—and systems of forced labor, such as the haciendas and mining industries, decimated the native population under Spanish control. At the end of the colony there were only one million native individuals alive, compared to the 12 million Andean people that were living in the region when colonization first began to occur.

In several parts of the continent African slaves were introduced to make up for the lack of indigenous labor, first in the silver mines in Potosi and later on the plantations of Brazil and hacienda labor along the coasts of Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.

In the early 19th century all countries that were ruled prior by Spain in South America obtained their independence. In the Portuguese colony of Brazil, Dom Pedro I (also known as Pedro IV), son of the Portuguese King Dom João VI, proclaimed the country's independence in 1822 and became Brazil's first Emperor. This act was peacefully accepted by the crown in Portugal.

Throughout the 19th and most of the 20th century, most countries were ruled by rural landowners, known as caudillos. There were long period of dictatorship, periods of instability, corruption, and poverty. Then later, a wave of democratization swept throughout the continent and is still present in much of South America today.