Tibitó

Tibitó is the second-oldest dated archaeological site on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, Colombia. The rock shelter is located in the municipality Tocancipá, Cundinamarca, Colombia, in the northern part of the Bogotá savanna. At Tibitó, bone and stone tools (knives and scrapers mostly) and carbon have been found. Bones from Haplomastodon, Cuvieronius, Cerdocyon and white tailed deer from the deepest human trace containing layer of the site is carbon dated to be 11,740 ± 110 years old. The oldest dated sediments are lacustrine clays from an ancient Pleistocene lake. Principal research at Tibitó was carried out by Colombian archaeologist Gonzalo Correal Urrego, who also analysed other early sites Tequendama, Aguazuque and El Abra. Muisca Confederation#Prehistory The Altiplano Cundiboyacense, and its southeastern flat portion the Bogotá savanna, were populated by the first humans in the late Pleistocene, as evidenced by finds in Pubenza (16,000 years BP), El Abra, Tibitó and others. Until roughly 30,000 years BP, the Bogotá savanna was covered by a large lake; Lake Humboldt. This glacial lake surrounded by snowy peaks was fed by the glaciers of Sumapaz in the south, based on analysis of debris flow deposits close to Fusagasugá, yielding ages between 40,000 and 7000 years BP. The approximately large lake contained an island, presently known as the Suba Hills (Cerros de Suba), in Bogotá. Surrounding the lake, Pleistocene megafauna as Glyptodonts, giant sloths, mastodons and deer foraged. The lake retreated during the last 30,000 years, but remnants still existing today are the Bogotá River and its tributaries, Lake Herrera and the many Wetlands of Bogotá. The timber line around Lake Humboldt, in older texts named Lake Bogotá, has been estimated to have been lower than today. During the latest Pleistocene and early Holocene, the first humans arrived on the Andean high plateau at above sea level. They settled in caves and rock shelters in various locations on the Altiplano and had a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.