The Mapuche are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who share a common social, religious, and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage as Mapudungun speakers. Their homelands once extended from Choapa Valley to the Chiloé Archipelago and later spread eastward to Puelmapu, a land comprising part of the Argentine pampa and Patagonia. Today the collective group makes up over 80% of the indigenous peoples in Chile and about 9% of the total Chilean population. The Mapuche are concentrated in the Araucanía region. Many have migrated from rural areas to the cities of Santiago and Buenos Aires for economic opportunities, more than 92% of the Mapuches are from Chile.
The Changos, also known as Camanchacos or Camanchangos, are an Indigenous people or group of peoples who inhabited a long stretch of the Pacific coast from southern Peru to north-central Chile, including the coast of the Atacama Desert. Although much of the customs and culture of the Chango people have disappeared and in many cases they have been considered extinct, in Chile they are legally recognized as an original indigenous people since 2020, and about 4,725 people self-declare that they belong to this ethnic group.
The Picunche, also referred to as picones by the Spanish, were a Mapudungun-speaking people living to the north of the Mapuches or Araucanians and south of the Choapa River and the Diaguitas. Until the Conquest of Chile the Itata was the natural limit between the Mapuche, located to the south, and Picunche, to the north. During the Inca attempt to conquer Chile the southern Picunche peoples that successfully resisted them were later known as the Promaucaes.
The Elqui River starts in the west Andes and flows into the Pacific Ocean near the Chilean city of La Serena. It is a wine and pisco producing area. Vicuña, the main town of the middle valley, was the home of Nobel Laureate poet Gabriela Mistral.
The Norte Chico region is one of five natural regions of continental Chile, as defined by the government agency CORFO in 1950. Its northern border is formed by the limit with the Far North, to the west lies the Pacific Ocean, to the east the Andes mountains and Argentina, and to the south the Zona Central natural region. Although from a strictly geographic point of view, this natural region corresponds to the Chilean territory between the rivers Copiapó and Aconcagua. Traditionally, the Norte Chico refers to the zone comprising the regions of Atacama and Coquimbo. This region was home to the Diaguita people.
Metallurgy in pre-Columbian America is the extraction, purification and alloying of metals and metal crafting by Indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European contact in the late 15th century. Indigenous Americans had been using native metals from ancient times, with recent finds of gold artifacts in the Andean region dated to 2155–1936 BC, and North American copper finds being dated to approximately 5000 BC. The metal would have been found in nature without the need for smelting, and shaped into the desired form using hot and cold hammering without chemical alteration or alloying. As of 1999, "no one has found evidence that points to the use of melting, smelting and casting in prehistoric eastern North America."
Cacán is an extinct language that was spoken by the Diaguita and Calchaquí tribes in northern Argentina and Chile. It became extinct during the late 17th century or early 18th century. The language was documented by the Jesuit Alonso de Bárcena, but the manuscript is lost. Genetic affiliation of the language remains unclear, and due to the extremely limited number of known words, it has not been possible to conclusively link it to any existing language family.
The Andean civilizations were South American complex societies of many indigenous people. They stretched down the spine of the Andes for 4,000 km from southern Colombia, to Ecuador and Peru, including the deserts of coastal Peru, to north Chile and northwest Argentina. Archaeologists believe that Andean civilizations first developed on the narrow coastal plain of the Pacific Ocean. The Caral or Norte Chico civilization of coastal Peru is the oldest known civilization in the Americas, dating back to 3500 BCE. Andean civilizations are one of at least five civilizations in the world deemed by scholars to be "pristine." The concept of a "pristine" civilization refers to a civilization that has developed independently of external influences and is not a derivative of other civilizations.
Eric Boman was a Swedish Argentine archaeologist.
The Calchaquí or Kalchakí were a tribe of South American Indians of the Diaguita group, now extinct, who formerly occupied northern Argentina. Stone and other remains prove them to have reached a high degree of civilization. Under the leadership of Juan Calchaquí they offered a vigorous resistance to the first Spanish colonists coming from Chile.
The precolonial history of Chile refers to the period from the first human populations in the territory of Chile until the first European exploration of the region, by Spaniard Diego de Almagro in 1535–36.
The Chilean Inca trail is a local and popular term among local tourism initiatives and Chilean anthropologists and archaeologists for the various branches of the Qhapak Ñan in Chile and its associated Inca archaeological sites.
As an archaeological culture, the Mapuche people of southern Chile and Argentina have a long history which dates back to 600–500 BC. The Mapuche society underwent great transformations after Spanish contact in the mid–16th century. These changes included the adoption of Old World crops and animals and the onset of a rich Spanish–Mapuche trade in La Frontera and Valdivia. Despite these contacts Mapuche were never completely subjugated by the Spanish Empire. Between the 18th and 19th century Mapuche culture and people spread eastwards into the Pampas and the Patagonian plains. This vast new territory allowed Mapuche groups to control a substantial part of the salt and cattle trade in the Southern Cone.
Ricardo Eduardo Latcham Cartwright was an English-Chilean archaeologist, ethnologist, folklore scholar and teacher.
Inca rule in Chile was brief, it lasted from the 1470s to the 1530s when the Inca Empire was absorbed by Spain. The main settlements of the Inca Empire in Chile lay along the Aconcagua, Mapocho and Maipo rivers. Quillota in Aconcagua Valley was likely the Incas' foremost settlement. The bulk of the people conquered by the Incas in Central Chile were Diaguitas and part of the Promaucae. Incas appear to have distinguished between a "province of Chile" and a "province of Copayapo" neighboring it to the north. In Aconcagua Valley the Incas settled people from the areas of Arequipa and possibly also the Lake Titicaca.
Las Ánimas complex is an archaeological culture of northern Chile considered to be the immediate precursor to the Diaguita culture. The culture developed in the Chilean region of Norte Chico between 800 and 1000 CE. Prior to Las Ánimas complex, an archaeological culture known as El Molle complex existed in Norte Chico from 300 to 700 CE.
During most of Chile's history, from 1500 to the present, mining has been an important economic activity. 16th century mining was oriented towards the exploitation of gold placer deposits using encomienda labour. After a period of decline in the 17th century, mining resurged in the 18th and early 19th century, this time concentrating chiefly on silver. In the 1870s silver mining declined sharply. Chile took over the highly lucrative saltpetre mining districts of Peru and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific (1879–83). In the first half of the 20th century copper mining overshadowed the declining saltpetre mining.
The origin of the Mapuche has been a matter of research for over a century. The genetics of the Mapuche do not show overly clear affinities with any other known indigenous group in the Americas, and the same goes for linguistics, where the Mapuche language is considered a language isolate. Archaeological evidence shows Mapuche culture has existed in Chile at least since 600 to 500 BC. Mapuches are late arrivals in their southernmost and easternmost (Pampas) areas of settlement, yet Mapuche history in the north towards Atacama Desert may be older than historic settlement suggest. The Mapuche has received significant influence from Pre-Incan (Tiwanaku?), Incan and Spanish peoples, but deep origins of the Mapuche predates these contacts. Contact and conflict with the Spanish Empire are thought by scholars such as Tom Dillehay and José Bengoa to have had a profound impact on the shaping of the Mapuche ethnicity.
The Tomatas are an extinct indigenous people that inhabited the valley of Tarija at the time of the Spanish founding of Tarija in 1574. The tomatas appear to have originated in the area of Copiapó in the Chilean Norte Chico as attested in the designation "tomatas copiapoes" found in early Spanish manuscripts. This group was likely uprooted from their homelands in Chile as part of the population transfers of the Inca Empire. Based on archaeological remains, the Elqui Valley, about 240 km south of Copiapó Valley, has also been proposed as a possible origin. Conquistador Luis de Fuentes, moved this group again by a much shorter distance than the Incas did and resettled the Tomatas near his new city Tarija. The Tomatas appear to have given placenames from their old lands to their new area of settlement thus explaining the existence of "Chilean" placenames such as Loa, Calama, and Erqui (Elqui) in Bolivia.
El Molle culture was a South American archaeological culture from in the Transverse Valleys of Norte Chico known chiefly for its ceramics. The culture existed from 300 to 700 CE and was later replaced in Chile by Las Ánimas culture that developed between 800 and 1000 CE. This last culture then gave way to the historical Diaguita culture encountered by the Spanish in the 16th century. El Molle culture coexisted for a significant time with La Animas culture. It is possible that Las Ánimas culture learned copper metallurgy from El Molle.
Chile 
Argentina 
