Indigenous peoples in Venezuela
Indigenous peoples of Venezuela
Indigenous people in Venezuela are Native peoples who live in Venezuela. Also called Amerindians or Native Venezuelans, they form about 2% of the population of Venezuela, and many Venezuelans have some Indigenous ancestry. Indigenous people are concentrated in the southern Amazon rainforest state of Amazonas, where they make up nearly 50% of the population, and in the Andes of the western state of Zulia.
At least 30 Indigenous ethnic groups live in Venezuela, including the Wayuu (413,000), Warao people (49,000), Kali'na (34,000), Pemon (30,000), Anu͂ (21,000), Huottüja (19,000), Ya̧nomamö (16,000), Yaruro (7,000), Ye'kuana (6,000), and Motilone Barí (3,000).
About 200,000 Wayuu people who live in Zulia between Lake Maracaibo and the Colombian border. Another 100,000 or so Indigenous people live in the sparsely populated southeastern states of Amazonas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro.
History
Evidence of human settlement in Venezuela date back at least to 13,000 BCE, and Archaic pre-ceramic cultures prevailed until about 200 BCE. Archeologists have discovered evidence of the earliest known inhabitants of the Venezuelan area in the form of leaf-shaped flake tools, together with chopping and scraping implements exposed on the high riverine terraces of the Pedregal River in western Venezuela.
Late Pleistocene hunting artifacts, including spear tips, come from a similar site in northwestern Venezuela known as El Jobo. According to radiocarbon dating, these date from 13,000 to 7000 BCE.
Taima-Taima, yellow Muaco and El Jobo in Falcón State are some of the sites that have yielded archeological material from these times. These groups co-existed with megafauna like megatherium, glyptodonts and toxodonts.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3525435. The Library of Congress control number is sh85065616. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Indigenous peoples in Venezuela” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.