Tayrona

The Tayrona were a network of chiefdoms in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, on the Caribbean coast of what is now Colombia by the tenth and eleventh centuries. Their towns stood on stone terraces linked by paved roads, and Ciudad Perdida, founded about 800 on the Buritaca River, may have held several thousand people. They farmed maize and cassava and cast gold in tumbaga, an alloy of gold, silver and copper.

The name seems to come from Tairo, a chiefdom on the northern slope, which the Spaniards extended to the whole region. Early contacts were tolerated, but conflict grew, and by about 1600 some of the people withdrew to the higher mountains.