page_title: Tequendama
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Tequendama / Background
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Karte des Río Bogotá mit dessen Einzugsgebiet English: Map of Bogotá River and its drainage basin Español: Mapa del río Bogotá y su cuenca
context_page_description: Tequendama is a preceramic and ceramic archaeological site located southeast of Soacha, Cundinamarca, Colombia, a couple of kilometers east of Tequendama Falls. It consists of multiple evidences of late Pleistocene to middle Holocene population of the Bogotá savanna, the high plateau in the Colombian Andes. Tequendama was inhabited from around 11,000 years BP, and continuing into the prehistorical, Herrera and Muisca periods, making it the oldest site of Colombia, together with El Abra, located north of Zipaquirá. Younger evidences also from the Herrera Period have been found close to the site of Tequendama in Soacha, at the construction site of a new electrical plant. They are dated at around 900 BCE to 900 AD.
  The most important researchers who since 1969 contributed on the knowledge about Tequendama were Dutch geologist and palynologist Thomas van der Hammen and archaeologist and anthropologist Gonzalo Correal Urrego.
context_section_description: During the time before the Spanish conquest of the Muisca, the central highlands of the Colombian Andes (Altiplano Cundiboyacense) were populated first by prehistorical indigenous groups, then by people from the Herrera Period, and finally by the Muisca.
  Various sites of ancient population have been uncovered during the second half of the 20th and early 21st century, such as Tibitó, Aguazuque, Checua, El Abra and Tequendama.
caption: Map of the Bogotá River, Tequendama is situated on the right bank between Soacha and Tequendama Falls
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