Indigenous peoples of Peru

The Indigenous peoples of Peru, or Native Peruvians, comprise a large number of ethnic groups who inhabit territory in present-day Peru. Indigenous cultures developed here for thousands of years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. In 2017, 5,500,000 Peruvians identified themselves as indigenous peoples and formed about 24% of the total population of Peru. At the time of the Spanish arrival, the indigenous peoples of the rain forest of the Amazon basin to the east of the Andes were mostly semi-nomadic tribes; they subsisted on hunting, fishing, gathering and slash and burn agriculture. Those peoples living in the Andes and to the west were dominated by the Inca Empire, who had a complex, hierarchical civilization. It developed many cities, building major temples and monuments with techniques of highly skilled stonemasonry. Many of the estimated 2000 nations and tribes present in 1500 died out as a consequence of the expansion and consolidation of the Inca Empire and its successor after 1533, the Spanish empire. In the 21st century, the mixed-race mestizos are the largest component of the Peruvian population. With the arrival of the Spanish, many Natives perished due to Eurasian infectious diseases among the foreigners, to which they had acquired no immunity. All of the Peruvian Indigenous groups, such as the Urarina, and even those who live isolated in the most remote areas of the Amazon rainforest, such as the Matsés, Matis, and Korubo, have changed their ways of life to some extent under the influence of European-Peruvian culture. They have adopted the use of firearms and other manufactured items, and trade goods, although they remain separated from mainstream Peruvian society. Many Indigenous groups work to uphold traditional cultural practices and identities. Andean civilizationsPeriodization of pre-Columbian Peru and Genetic history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas Anthropological and genetic evidence indicates that most of the original population of the Americas descended from migrants from North Asia (Siberia) who entered North America across the Bering Strait in at least three separate waves.

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Aymara people

The Aymara or Aimara (aymara ) people are an indigenous people in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America; about 2.3 million live in northwest Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. Their ancestors lived in the region for many centuries before becoming a subject people of the Inca in the late 15th or early 16th century, and later of the Spanish in the 16th century. With the Spanish American wars of independence (1810–1825), the Aymaras became subjects of the new nations of Bolivia and Peru.

Indigenous peoples of Peru

Peru

Peru (pəˈruː ; Perú peˈɾu; Quechua: Piruw pɪɾʊw; Piruw pɪɾʊw), officially the Republic of Peru (), is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a megadiverse country with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west to the peaks of the Andes mountains extending from the north to the southeast of the country to the tropical Amazon basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon River.