PRE-COLUMBIAN ERA
When Spanish explorers arrived in what is now Costa Rica at the dawn of the 16th century, they found the region populated by several poorly organized, autonomous tribes living relatively prosperously, if wanton at war, in a land of lush abundance. In all, there were probably no more than 200,000 indigenous people on 18 September 1502, when Columbus put ashore near current-day Puerto Limón. Although human habitation can be traced back at least 10,000 years, the region had remained a sparsely populated backwater separating the two areas of high civilization: Mesoamerica and the Andes. High mountains and swampy lowlands had impeded the migration of advanced cultures. Though these tribes were advanced in ceramics, metalwork, and weaving, there are few signs of large complex communities, little monumental stone architecture lying half-buried in the luxurious undergrowth, and no planned ceremonial centers of comparable significance to those located elsewhere in the isthmus.
The region was a potpourri of distinct cultures divided into chiefdoms. In the east along the Caribbean seaboard and along the southern Pacific shores, the peoples shared distinctly South American cultural traits. These groups--the Caribs on the Caribbean and the Borucas, Chibchas, and Diquis in the southwest--were semi-nomadic hunters and fishermen who raised yucca, squash, pejibaye (bright orange palm fruits), and tubers supplemented by crustaceans, shrimp, lobster, and game; chewed coca; and lived in communal village huts surrounded by fortified palisades. The matriarchal Chibchas and Diquis had a highly developed slave system and were accomplished goldsmiths. Amulets, awls, tweezers for plucking out facial hair, beads and baubles, pendants and religious icons decorated in fantastical animist imagery were among the many items of gold expertly worked through the "lost wax" technique. These people were famed for their simple clothwork, which was traded throughout the country. They were also responsible for the perfectly spherical granite balls (bolas) of unknown purpose found in large numbers at burial sites in the Río Terraba valley, Caño Island, and the Golfito region. Some are the size of grapefruit. Others weigh 16 tons. One and all are as round as the moon. Like other indigenous groups, the people had no written language, and their names are of Spanish origin--bestowed by colonists, often reflecting the names of tribal chiefs.
The most interesting archaeological finds throughout the nation relate to pottery and metalworking. The art of gold working was practiced throughout Costa Rica for perhaps one thousand years before the Spanish conquest, and was more advanced in the central highlands than the rest of the isthmus. The tribes here were the Corobicís, who lived in small bands in the highland valleys, and the Nahuatl, who had recently arrived from Mexico at the time that Columbus stepped ashore. The largest and most significant of Costa Rica's archaeological sites found to date is here, at Guayabo, on the slopes of Turrialba, 56 km east of San José, where an ancient city is being excavated. Dating from perhaps as early as 1000 b.c. to a.d. 1400, Guayabo is thought to have housed as many as 1,000 inhabitants. Rudimentary by the standards of ancient cities elsewhere in the isthmus, it is nonetheless impressive, with wide cobblestone walkways and stone-lined pools and water cisterns fed by aqueducts.
Perhaps more important (little architectural study has been completed) was the Nicoya Peninsula in northwest Costa Rica. In late prehistoric times, trade in pottery from the Nicoya Peninsula brought this area into the Mesoamerican cultural sphere, and a culture developed among the Chorotegas--the most numerous of the region's indigenous groups--that in many ways resembled the more advanced cultures farther north. In fact, the Chorotegas were heavily influenced by the Olmec culture, and may have even originated in southern Mexico before settling in Nicoya early in the 14th century (their name means "Fleeing People"). The most advanced of the region's cultures, they developed towns with central plazas, brought with them an accomplished agricultural system based on beans, corns, squash, and gourds, had a calendar, wrote books on deerskin parchment, and produced highly developed ceramics and stylized jade figures depicting animals, humanlike effigies, and men and women with oversized genitals, often making the most of their sexual apparati. Like the Olmecs, they filed their teeth; like the Mayans and Aztecs, the militaristic Chorotegas kept slaves and maintained a rigid class hierarchy dominated by high priests and nobles. Human sacrifice was part of the cultural mainstay. Littleis known of their spiritual belief system, though the potency and ubiquity of phallic imagery hints at a fertility-rite religion.
Alas, the pre-Columbian cultures were quickly choked by the stern hand of gold-thirsty colonial rule--and condemned, too, that Jehovah might triumph over local idols.
