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. In all, there were probably no more than 20,000 indigenous peoples 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 the advanced cultures.
There are few signs of large organized communities, no monumental stone architecture lying half-buried in the luxurious undergrowth or planned ceremonial centers of comparable significance to those elsewhere in the isthmus. The region was a potpourri of distinct cultures. 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 and Chibchas in the southwest--were seminomadic hunters and fishermen who raised yucca, squash, and tubers, chewed coca, and lived in communal village huts surrounded by fortified palisades. The matriarchal Chibchas had a highly developed slave system and were accomplished goldsmiths. They were also responsible for the fascinating, perfectly spherical granite "balls" of unknown purpose found in large numbers at burial sites in the Río Terraba valley, Caño Island, and the Golfito region. They had no written language.
The largest of Costa Rica's archaeological sites is at Guayabo, on the slopes of Turrialba, 56 km east of San José, where an ancient city is currently being excavated. Dating from perhaps as early as 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1400, Guayabo is thought to have housed as many as 10,000 inhabitants. 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 in the highlands was in fact more advanced than in 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. 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 had originated in southern Mexico before settling in Nicoya early in the 14th century (their name means "Fleeing People"). 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 (much of it now in the Jade Museum in San José). Like the Mayans and Aztecs, too, the militaristic Chorotegas had slaves and a rigid class hierarchy dominated by high priests and nobles.
