Valdivia culture

The Valdivia culture is one of the oldest settled cultures in the Americas. It began around 3500 BC and lasted until about 1500 BC. This culture lived along the coast of the Santa Elena peninsula in Santa Elena Province in Ecuador. The Valdivia culture started about one thousand years after the Las Vegas culture.

Culture

Remains of the Valdivia culture were found in 1956 on the western coast of Ecuador by an Ecuadorian scientist. American scientists joined the studies in the early 1960s.

The Valdivia people lived in villages with houses arranged in a circle or oval around a central open space. They were mostly fishermen but also farmed and sometimes hunted deer. They grew crops like corn, beans, squash, cassava, chili peppers, and cotton. The cotton was used to make clothing.

Their pottery started out simple but became very beautiful and large over time. A special piece is called the "Venus" of Valdivia, a small clay figure of a woman. Each figure is unique, and the different styles might show specific people. Some Valdivia artifacts can be seen at a university in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Influences on Valdivia culture

The Valdivia culture was thought to be the oldest pottery-making culture along the coast of South America. It started between 3000 and 2700 BC. In the 1960s, some researchers noticed similarities between Valdivia pottery and the pottery from the ancient Jōmon culture of Japan. They wondered if Japanese fishermen might have been shipwrecked off Ecuador and brought their pottery traditions. But others thought this was unlikely because the journey would have been very long and difficult.

Later discoveries showed that the pottery styles at Valdivia developed over time, not from outside influence. Some think pottery knowledge might have come from people in northern Colombia. Crops like maize might have come from areas closer to Mesoamerica. New research helps us understand Valdivia as a culture focused on river settlements and connected through trade with areas as far as Mexico today.