Manteño civilization

The term was coined by Ecuadorian archeologist Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, to describe pre-Hispanic settlement near the town of Manta and engulfed in part by the more recent settlement.[2] It was soon after this that the term Manteño was greatly widened in scope to include several distinct sub-groups: northern Manteño (Manteño del Norte, Sillas, or Manabita), southern Manteño (Huancavilca) and Punáe. Some archaeologists and historians reject this split, however, and apply the term Huancavilca – a term of Incan origin, from the time of the first colonisation – to all three groups. Little work has distinguished such groupings.[3] One historian, however, Cieza de León, has claimed that residents in coastal towns north of Salango used a type of facial tattoo distinguishable from those to their south. Other proposed divisions have included coastal and inland areas, based on types of burial and subsistence.[2]

The Manteño chiefdoms – under the broad definition – extended over coastal parts of the Manabí, Santa Elena and Guayas provinces, including La Plata Island. The Bahía de Caráquez and Chone River mark its northern boundary, and the Guayas basin its southern boundary.[1]

The town of Picoazá was the site of a Manteño chiefdom, according to early colonial sources.[4] In addition, major sites have been found at the Cerro de Hojas and Cerro Jaboncillo, the Cerro de Paco, Cerro las Negras, Cerro los Santo, Bellavista, Agua Blanca, Loma de los Cangrejitos, López Viejo, Los Frailes, Montecristi, Olón, Salango and La Libertad.[1]

Many (if not all) were split into four major settlements, with the chief of the principal settlement overlord.[4] Caamaño believed that the Manteños operated like a trading ring rather than a kingdom or empire, and drew parallels to the Hanseatic League.[5] Manteño settlements typically contain large quantities of characteristic pottery and large stone foundations.[6]

The civilization primarily grew fruits and vegetables, such as maize, peanuts, tomatoes, and squash. The civilizations built their houses out of straw or palm leaves,[7] and also used houses made of a type of bamboo native to the region, using river rocks as a foundation. The culture was also specialized in diving for Spondylus, a food that was said to be of the gods. They also used its purple and orange shell as a type of currency; this shell was traded throughout the region as far north as Mexico. The Spondylus is unique to the warm waters of coastal Ecuador. The Manteños were such a unique culture that the Inca never conquered them and let the Manteños buy their way with the food and shell of the gods that they only knew how to find due to this specialization of diving. (current archaeology grad student on current Manteño dig site in Manabí, Ecuador).

Based on comparative lexical evidence, along with supporting archaeological evidence, Jolkesky (2017) proposes that the language families of the putative Oto-Manguean stock have originated in Southern Colombia, and migrated to the Southern Coast of Mexico during the first millennium BCE. In Mexico, they then played a pivotal role in the formation of the Western Mexico shaft tomb tradition. Jolkesky also proposes that that speakers of proto-Barbacoans may have been influenced by Oto-Manguean speakers, and that an Oto-Manguean substratum is present in languages such as Coconucan.[8]

• List of pre-Columbian cultures