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The Muisca (also called Chibcha) are an indigenous people and culture of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, Colombia, that formed the Muisca Confederation before the Spanish conquest. The people spoke Muysccubun, a language of the Chibchan language family, also called Muysca and Mosca. They were encountered by conquistadors dispatched by the Spanish Empire in 1537 at the time of the conquest. Subgroupings of the Muisca were mostly identified by their allegiances to three great rulers: the hoa, centered in Hunza, ruling a territory roughly covering modern southern and northeastern Boyacá and southern Santander; the psihipqua, centered in Muyquytá and encompassing most of modern Cundinamarca, the western Llanos; and the iraca, religious ruler of Suamox and modern northeastern Boyacá and southwestern Santander. The territory of the Muisca spanned an area of around from the north of Boyacá to the Sumapaz Páramo and from the summits to the western portion of the Eastern Ranges. Their territory bordered the lands of the Panche in the west, the Muzo in the northwest, the Guane in the north, the Lache in the northeast, the Achagua in the east, and the Sutagao in the south. At the time of the Spaniard invasion, the area had a large population, although the precise number of inhabitants is not known. Estimates vary from 500,000 to over 3 million inhabitants. Their economy was based on agriculture, salt mining, trading, metalworking, and manufacturing. Due to Spanish colonization, the population of the Muisca has drastically decreased and assimilated into the general population. The descendants of the Muisca are often found in rural municipalities including Cota, Chía, Tenjo, Suba, Engativá, Tocancipá, Gachancipá, and Ubaté. A census by the Ministry of Interior Affairs in 2005 reports a total of 14,051 Muisca people in Colombia. Important contributors to the knowledge about the Muisca have been their main conquistador, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada; Spanish poet, soldier, and priest Juan de Castellanos (16th century); bishop Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita and Franciscan Pedro Simón (17th century); and Javier Ocampo López and Gonzalo Correal Urrego (recent).

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Boyacá Department

Boyacá (boʝaˈka) is one of the thirty-two departments of Colombia, and the remnant of Boyacá State, one of the original nine states of the "United States of Colombia". Boyacá is centrally located within Colombia, almost entirely within the mountains of the Eastern Cordillera to the border with Venezuela, although the western end of the department extends to the Magdalena River at the town of Puerto Boyacá. Boyacá borders to the north with the Department of Santander, to the northeast with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Norte de Santander, to the east with the departments of Arauca and Casanare.

Bogotá

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The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas who have occupied parts of the Western Hemisphere since prior to arrival of European settlers in the 15th century. Indigenous cultures vary by language, culture, social practices, and geography. Some Indigenous peoples in the Americas have historically been hunter-gatherers, while others traditionally practice agriculture and aquaculture.

Development and application of UV-visible and mid-IR differential absorption spectroscopy techniques for pollutant trace gas monitoring

Rodrigo Jimenez Pizarro

Spatial representativeness is an important quality criterion in trace gas monitoring, especially if measurements are intended for regulatory and model validation purposes. Open-path absorption spectroscopy techniques meet the representativeness requirement ...

EPFL2004