Indigenous people of Ecuador
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 3.4 million 7% of Ecuador's population. |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Mainly: Sierra (Andean highlands) and Oriente (Eastern) | |
| Languages | |
| Kichwa, Spanish, Achuar-Shiwiar, Cha'palaachi, Cofán, Tsachila, Cuaiquer, Secoya, Shuar, Siona, Tetete, Waorani | |
| Religion | |
| Traditional religion, Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Indigenous peoples in Peru, Indigenous peoples in Colombia, Indigenous peoples in Bolivia |
Indigenous peoples in Ecuador, or Native Ecuadorians, are the groups of people who were present in what became Ecuador when Europeans arrived. The term also includes their descendants from the time of the Spanish conquest to the present. Their history, which encompasses the last 11,000 years, reaches into the present; 7 percent of Ecuador's population is of indigenous heritage, while another 72 percent is of mixed indigenous and European heritage. Afro-Ecuadorian, people of Spanish descent, and others make up the remaining 20 percent.
There are different theories about how the Americas became populated. The prevailing theory, the Land Bridge Theory, holds that the first inhabitants of Americas migrated from Asia across the Beringia. According to this theory, the first inhabitants of South America arrived from North America via the Panamanian isthmus.
Other theories hold that the first humans to reside in the Americas came across the Pacific Ocean from Oceania or across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe.
While archaeologists have proposed different temporal models at different times, the schematic currently in use divides prehistoric Ecuador into five major time periods: Lithic, Archaic, Formative, Regional Development, and Integration. These time periods are determined by the cultural development of groups being studied, and are not directly linked to specific dates, e.g. through carbon dating.
The Lithic period encompasses the earliest stages of development, beginning with the culture that migrated into the American continents and continuing until the Late or Early Holocene. The people of this culture are known as Paleo-Indians, and the end of their era is marked by the extinction of the megafauna they hunted.
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