Tayrona

Tayrona was the Chibchan language of the Arhuacan subgroup spoken by the Tairona chiefdoms of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. It is almost unattested, surviving in little more than a single recorded word, but its lineage continues in the Arhuacan tongues of their descendants.

Tairona society took shape in the tenth and eleventh centuries as a network of farming towns on stone terraces linked by paved roads. The greatest, Teyuna, later called Ciudad Perdida, was founded around 800 on the Buritaca River, with 169 terraces cut into the mountainside. Tairona began as the name of a valley chiefdom; its cognate in Ijka means sons of the jaguar.

The first Spaniards were tolerated, but after 1600 warfare drove much of the population high into the Sierra Nevada. Their descendants kept the related Kogi, Damana and Kankuamo speeches alive while Tayrona dissolved into them.