Tequendama

Tequendama
Tequendama is located in Colombia
Tequendama
Location within Colombia
LocationSoacha, Cundinamarca
RegionAltiplano Cundiboyacense,
 Colombia
Coordinates4°32′06.42″N 74°16′32.47″W / 4.5351167°N 74.2756861°W / 4.5351167; -74.2756861
Altitude2,570 m (8,432 ft)
TypeCave, rock shelter
Part ofPre-Muisca sites
History
AbandonedColonial period (>1537)
PeriodsPrehistory-Herrera-Muisca
CulturesHerrera-Muisca
Site notes
ArchaeologistsHammen, Correal[1]
Public accessYes
Tequendama and other prehistoric sites on the Bogotá savanna
The Bogotá River, close to Tequendama

Tequendama is a preceramic and ceramic archaeological site located southeast of Soacha, Cundinamarca, Colombia, a couple of kilometers east of Tequendama Falls. It consists of multiple evidences of late Pleistocene to middle Holocene population of the Bogotá savanna, the high plateau in the Colombian Andes. Tequendama was inhabited from around 11,000 years BP, and continuing into the prehistorical, Herrera and Muisca periods, making it the oldest site of Colombia, together with El Abra, located north of Zipaquirá.[2][3] Younger evidences also from the Herrera Period have been found close to the site of Tequendama in Soacha, at the construction site of a new electrical plant. They are dated at around 900 BCE to 900 AD.[4][5]

The most important researchers who since 1969 contributed on the knowledge about Tequendama were Dutch geologist and palynologist Thomas van der Hammen and archaeologist and anthropologist Gonzalo Correal Urrego.[1]