It does not tell us the human story of how that change happened.

The Herrera Period And What It Left Behind

The Herrera ceramic complex is one of the defining cultural horizons of the Bogotá Altiplano, and understanding it is essential to appreciating the full significance of the 2025 genetic findings.

Herrera ceramics are distinctive: handmade pottery with specific decorative conventions, shapes, and firing techniques that archaeologists have used to identify sites associated with this cultural tradition across a broad area of the northern Andes and adjacent lowlands.

The Herrera period on the Altiplano spans roughly 2,800 to 1,200 years before present, a period during which the plateau underwent significant transformations.