Argentina

Indigenous peoples inhabited the territory now comprising Argentina for thousands of years before European contact, developing diverse cultures adapted to the country's extreme geographic range, from northern Andean highland communities to Patagonian hunter-gatherer groups in the far south. The Cueva de las Manos in central Patagonia preserves rock art, including hundreds of stenciled hand paintings, dating back up to 13,000 years, among the oldest and most significant such sites in the Americas.

Diverse Indigenous Societies

Northern Argentina's Indigenous communities, including groups influenced by the nearby Inca Empire, developed agricultural terracing and settled communities, while Patagonia's more nomadic hunter-gatherer groups adapted to the region's harsh, windswept environment over millennia.

• The Cueva de las Manos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contains an estimated 800-plus hand stencils alongside depictions of hunting scenes and animals, created by successive generations over thousands of years.
• Northwestern Argentina's Quebrada de Humahuaca, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, preserves evidence of over 10,000 years of human cultural development along this significant Andean trade route.
• The Inca Empire's southern expansion reached into northwestern Argentina before Spanish conquest, leaving archaeological evidence of Incan administrative and religious sites.
• This deep, geographically diverse Indigenous heritage established cultural foundations that, while significantly disrupted by subsequent colonization, remain recognized through UNESCO heritage sites and ongoing archaeological research today.

This extraordinarily long and geographically varied Indigenous history, spanning from ancient cave art to sophisticated Andean agricultural societies, established Argentina's deep cultural foundation well before the Spanish colonial period that would dramatically reshape the region.