Northwestern South America comprises a diverse tropical environment, ranging in elevation from sea level at the shores of the Caribbean and Pacific oceans to the summits of the Andean mountains, several thousand meters above sea level. For our purposes, the eastern limits of Northwestern South America are defined by the Cordillera Oriental, and the
Handbook of South American Archaeology, edited by Helaine Silverman and William H. Isbell.
Springer, New York, 2008
Southern boundary by the lower mountainous region that lies between Peru and Ecuador. Lower Central America is included as far north as central Panama. It would be desirable to include northwestern Venezuela, especially the area around Lake Maracaibo, but at present the archaeological record from that region is not sufficiently detailed to allow generalizations about the processes that led to sedentism.
Although the whole of Northwestern South America lies within the tropics, differences in elevation and precipitation create an array of climatic zones and habitats. In the mountainous areas steep, deep valleys comprise multiple environmental zones ranging from warm tropical conditions in the very bottoms of the valleys to temperate climates in the higher habitable regions. Along the Pacific shores, the dry savanna landscape of southern Ecuador grades into the perennially humid, hot tropical forests of the Choco-Darien, the wettest place in the Western Hemisphere. From there eastward along the Caribbean coast rainfall diminishes gradually, with dense tropical rainforest changing gradually into seasonally dry forests and savannas. The shorelines along the Pacific and Caribbean are complicated by numerous inlets, lagoons and estuaries, which present rich and varied fishing resources. In Colombia, the Magdalena and Cauca rivers have carved long broad valleys that divide the Andes into three mountain chains. In Ecuador, the Andean massif narrows, and the highlands consist of a series of mountain basins extending south to the Peruvian border.
World History
