How long have Native Americans lived in Panama?
The American continent was the last to be colonized by human beings no more than 20,000 and
no less than 15,000 years ago (calibrated dates are used). All lines of evidence lead to Northeast
Asia as the ancestral homeland and point of departure for the first colonizers, whose descendants
had reached southern South America by 14,500 years ago. The hypothesis that there was a single
initial migration is becoming increasingly robust. If there were multiple migration events these
would have represented a genetically uniform population originating in the same area.
Geneticists are increasingly accepting the idea that all the surviving Native American groups in
Central and South America descend from the small population that participated in the initial
movements, which most likely took a Pacific coastal route towards the south. They appear to
have progressed fast. Tom Dillehay’s ground-breaking excavation at Monte Verde, in the south
of Chile, uncovered a 14,500-year old settlement of huts made of wood and animal skins whose
occupants hunted mastodon (Cuvieronius) and an extinct camel-like species (Paleolama),
gathered wild potatoes, and used seaweeds obtained from the distant coast for food and
medicines. They had been in the area long enough to develop a life style well adapted to local
landscapes and resources.
If some human groups were established in southern Chile by 14,500 years ago, where is the
evidence for their passage through Panama? It is extremely tenuous consisting of two fragments
of possible stone projectile points of the “Jobo” variety, which was used at Monte Verde and
Venezuelan sites, such as the Taima-Taima megafauna kill-site. Both the Panamanian examples
were found on the surface. Their contemporaneity with the two South American sites is based on
technical and stylistic similarities alone. Other lines of evidence give credence to the very low
“visibility” of humans at this time in Panama -- at least in regions that have been explored in
some detail. Dolores Piperno and her colleagues did not detect a human presence in the
sediments of Lake La Yeguada (Veraguas, 650 m) between 18,000 and 13,200 years ago. At the
latter date human forest clearance and burning began in earnest, probably perpetrated by
“Clovis” peoples whom we mention again below. Although the Cueva de los Vampiros (Coclé)
was available as a camp site 18,000 years ago, it was apparently not visited by humans until at
least 13,200 years ago.
Archaeologists offer two explanations for the extreme rarity of sites like Monte Verde and
Taima-Taima. If the initial human migration along the Pacific side of the isthmus indeed hugged
the coast, camps would have been drowned by rising sea levels triggered by global deglaciation.
It is also likely that, at this time, the climate, terrestrial landscape and coastal habitats of Pacific
Panama were far from optimal for groups of hunters and gatherers. Vegetation history models
indicate it probably rained 30% less that today. Estuaries and mangroves as extensive as the ones
exist today doubtfully existed 14,500 years ago. One of the purported fragments of a “Jobo”
point was gathered on the eroded shore of Lake Alajuela in the Caribbean basin of the Chagres
River. One can only speculate that the narrowness and low relief of the central portion of the
isthmus, in addition to the presence there of areas with little arboreal vegetation, stimulated the
dispersal of some immigrants towards the Caribbean whence they continued moving until they
found especially favorable habitats in northern Venezuela Venezuela.
Between about 13,500 and 13,000 years ago, evidence for a human presence on the isthmus
becomes suddenly more definitive and ubiquitous. In several areas, stone tools used by hunters
and gatherers known as “Paleoindians” are found. These tools differ in important aspects from
those employed by the occupants of Taima-Taima and Monte Verde. The most “iconic” artifact
is a stone projectile point labeled “fluted” because one or two channel-like flakes were detached
from the base making it easier to lash the point with cord or sinews to a wooden lance that
customarily used a fore-shaft made -- in North America at least -- of pieces of proboscidean
tusks. Wood or bone spear-throwers or “atlatls” increased the thrust and penetrating power of
“Clovis” spears. Many specialists propose that this new technological tradition, whose first
manifestation ca. 13,200 years ago is known as “Clovis”, developed initially in the United States
whence it moved rapidly southwards as far as northern Venezuela. The widespread “Clovis” tool
kit of spears, spear-throwers, skin and wood scrapers, knives and perforators undoubtedly
improved humans’ ability to kill, butcher and skin large animals.
“Clovis” deposits that are buried and thus appropriate for radiocarbon dating have so far eluded
archaeologists in Costa Rica and Panama. Even so, the similarities among some “Clovis” sites in
the southern U.S. and others located in Pacific Panama and Costa Rica (Turrialba, central
Caribbean) are so striking that it is logical to assume that they were broadly coeval reflecting a
rapid movement of the tradition from North to South. Two workshops where stone tools of the
“Clovis” tradition were made have been studied in Panama. La Mula-Oeste, in the Sarigua saltflat (Herrera), is the most informative. According to Tony Ranere’s technological study, making
fluted points was the primary activity here. Knappers took advantage of local outcrops of veins
of milky agate. Not only the projectile points, but also a spurred end-scraper, perforators, burins
and blades all bear the hallmarks of the Clovis tradition. The “Clovis” tools could not be located
in an intact soil. It is intriguing, nonetheless, that that in the sixties, Don Crusoe -- then
researcher at Florida State University -- picked up a charcoal sample from a hearth in the Sarigua
albina, It returned a date of about 13,200 years. Since this locality’s geographical coordinates
were never divulged, it is not possible to determine how close it was to the La Mula-Oeste
workshop. This date, however, is consonant with the hypothesis proposed by Tony Ranere and
Georges Pearson that, from a technological point of view, both La Mula-Oeste and Sitio Nieto
represent the beginnings of the “Clovis” tradition.
The only Panamanian site, at which fluted points and other Paleoindian artifacts have been found
in buried deposits, is the Cueva de los Vampiros, Coclé. These materials lay on top of a soil rich
in organic matter that was interpreted by Georges Pearson as the first evidence for human
occupation in this site, about 13,500 years ago. They are stratified underneath another 14C date
of 11,200 years – a very broad temporal range that impedes the accurate contextualization of the
artifacts. Two fragments of fluted points were recovered. One belongs to the “Fish-Tail” variety,
widely distributed from southern Mexico to Patagonia. The other point could be a late “Clovis”
example, which broke. Other tools typical of the Paleoindian era were also found: a scraper with
a lateral spur, end-scrapers on blades, and small “thumb-nail” scrapers. Pearson proposed that
Cueva de los Vampiros was used sporadically by Paleoindians as a camp site where tools were
curated and animal skins and perhaps wooden artifacts were prepared. The stone tool assemblage
infers these activities. However, bones were not recovered in these strata. This is a depressing
fact since it has not yet been confirmed whether the species of large extinct animals that were
exploited by Paleoindians in South America, such as mastodons, giant ground sloths and giant
turtles, were also hunted by Panamanian Paleoindians.
To sum up, it is likely that the first humans arrived on the isthmus about 15,000 years ago. They
may have been so few that they hardly left any evidence. They may also have frequented mostly
the Pacific coastal lowlands in areas now flooded by the post-glacial sea. The “visibility” of
archaeological sites in Panama improves greatly 13,500-13,000 years ago when hunter-gatherers
of the “Clovis” tradition were established in the central Pacific and central Caribbean. It is
generally supposed they came to Panama from the north. From this moment on, humans lived
continuously in some areas of Panamá. The Cueva de los Vampiros and other rock-shelters in
Veraguas, Chiriquí and Coclé continued to act as dwellings for thousands of years after the
demise of the Paleoindian technology at ca. 11,500 years when modern climatic conditions were
setting in. Following the initial human colonization of the Lake La Yeguada basin 13,200 years
ago, forest clearance and the spread of second growth vegetation continued and intensified. The
native peoples of the isthmus altered their lifestyles in the face of post-glacial environmental
change. Plant cultivation and intensive tree product harvesting gradually became primary
subsistence endeavors. By 8000-6000 years ago the appearance of non-isthmian cultivated plants
such as maize, manioc and squash, acted in tandem with increasing coastal resource use and ever
larger populations to foster slash-and-burn agriculture and the spread of native communities
across the isthmus. The numerous Native American groups that the Spanish encountered and
decimated a little more than 500 years ago were in large part the descendants of the first human
groups that arrived on the isthmus between 15,2000 and 12,500 years ago.
New evidence about the genetic history of the native populations of America appears regularly in
specialized scientific literature. The Italian geneticists Ugo Perego and Alessandro Achilli, in
conjunction with the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory, sampled about 1500 Panamanians with a
view to tracing the genetic contribution of Native Americans, Africans, Asiatics and Europeans.
Contrary to what most Panamanians believe, the genetic heritage of the modern population is
overwhelmingly Native American, at least on the maternal side. According to analyses of
mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited maternally, about 80% of the modern Panamanian
population descends from a Native American woman. Fifty percent of Panamanians belong to a
single mitochondrial haplogroup (A2) whose antiquity is estimated to be more than 10,000 years.
Genetic evidence also shows that the majority of present-day Native American peoples of
Panama are likely to descend from earlier populations who have resided in or near Panama for
12,500 years, and perhaps 15,000 o even 17,000 years. These results are broadly compatible with
the archaeological and paleoecological data we have summarized, and receive considerable
support from historical linguistic studies.