Venezuela

Most histories of Venezuela commence in the year 1498, when the navigator Christopher Columbus first laid eyes on the Orinoco River and declared that it must flow directly from Eden, the biblical paradise. Of course, Columbus was the first European to visit South America, but it was hardly a "discov­ery" -native Americans had been living here for some 10,000 years, ever since the great migrations following the last Ice Age.

Dozens of unique cultures inhabited the vast region of mountains, desert, plains and jungle that the invading Spaniards would eventually bring together under the name of "Venezuela". Convinced to his dying day that he had found the Orient, Columbus called these inhabitants "Indians", and the misnomer has stuck (although, in Spanish, native Venezuelans now prefer to be referred to as indígenas, or "indigenous people").

These Indian groups did not build the sort of magnificent civilizations or glittering cities later found in Mexico or Peru. Instead, they lived in semi-nomadic, hunting and gather­ing societies, or small agricultural villages. Although Europeans would dismiss their societies as primitive, the pre-Columbian world was in fact highly complex: each so­ciety had its own language, mythology and cultural traditions, its long history of warfare and survival. Some, like the Caribe Indians, were fierce and warlike, descending on their enemies in canoes and turning their bones into flutes; others, like the Aruaks, were sedentary, spending more time cultivating small fields than fighting.

With no knowledge of writing, these pre-Columbian societies kept no records, and little is known about dozens of ancient cul­tures. Remote groups like the Goajiras around modem-day Maracaibo and the Piaroas in the Amazon managed to survive the murder­ous onslaught of Europeans, but the majority were simply wiped out. Their exotic-sound­ing names, like Mixtecas, Goyones and Taironas, would soon only crop up in the disjointed chronicles of the conquerors. 

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