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The Populations That Came Before Checua

The 2025 study begins its time series at approximately 6,000 years before present — but the Altiplano’s human history begins much earlier.

Understanding the pre-Checua occupation of the plateau helps contextualize the significance of the Checua lineage’s position in the Altiplano’s longer demographic record.

The oldest dated archaeological site on the Bogotá Altiplano is generally considered to be Tibitó, located near Tocancipá in Cundinamarca, where human activity has been documented to approximately 11,850 years before present.

The material evidence from Tibitó includes stone tools found in association with the bones of extinct Pleistocene animals — mastodons, a giant species of horse, and giant ground sloths — indicating that the earliest inhabitants of the plateau were hunting the megafauna that was still present in the Andes at the end of the last Ice Age.