What is "tequendama"

Tequendama may refer to:

• Tequendama, archaeological site in Cundinamarca, one of the oldest in Colombia
• Tequendama Falls, a waterfall close to this site
• Tequendama Falls Museum, the museum at the waterfall
• Tequendama Province, a province of the department of Cundinamarca
• San Antonio del Tequendama, a municipality in the Tequendama Province
• Hotel Tequendama, a hotel in the Colombian capital Bogotá

Tequendama is a preceramic and ceramic archaeological site located southeast of Soacha, Cundinamarca, Colombia, a couple of kilometers east of Tequendama Falls. It consists of multiple evidences of late Pleistocene to middle Holocene population of the Bogotá savanna, the high plateau in the Colombian Andes. Tequendama was inhabited from around 11,000 years BP, and continuing into the prehistorical, Herrera and Muisca periods, making it the oldest site of Colombia, together with El Abra, located north of Zipaquirá. Younger evidences also from the Herrera Period have been found close to the site of Tequendama in Soacha, at the construction site of a new electrical plant. They are dated at around 900 BCE to 900 AD.

The most important researchers who since 1969 contributed on the knowledge about Tequendama were Dutch geologist and palynologist Thomas van der Hammen and archaeologist and anthropologist Gonzalo Correal Urrego.