Editing Costa Rica (section)

=== Pre-Columbian period ===
{{Main|Pre-Columbian history of Costa Rica}}
Historians have classified the [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Indigenous people]] of Costa Rica as belonging to the [[Intermediate Area]], where the peripheries of the [[Mesoamerican]] and [[Andean]] native cultures overlapped. More recently, [[Pre-Columbian era|pre-Columbian]] Costa Rica has also been described as part of the [[Isthmo-Colombian Area]].

Stone tools, the oldest evidence of human occupation in Costa Rica, are associated with the arrival of various groups of [[hunter-gatherer]]s about 10,000 to 7,000 years [[Before Common Era|BCE]] in the [[Turrialba (district)|Turrialba Valley]]. The presence of [[Clovis culture]] type spearheads and arrows from [[South America]] opens the possibility that, in this area, two different cultures coexisted.<ref name=precolumbian1>{{cite book |last1=Botey Sobrado |first1=Ana María |title=Costa Rica: estado, economía, sociedad y cultura desde las sociedades autóctonas hasta 1914 |date=2002 |publisher=Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica |edition=2a |language=es |pages=30–31 |oclc=51817062}}</ref>

Agriculture became evident in the populations that lived in Costa Rica about 5,000 years ago. They mainly grew [[tubers]] and roots. For the first and second millennia BCE there were already settled farming communities. These were small and scattered, although the timing of the transition from [[hunter-gatherer|hunting]] and gathering to agriculture as the main livelihood in the territory is still unknown.<ref name=precolumbian2>{{harvnb|Botey Sobrado|2002| p=32|sp=yes}}</ref>

The earliest use of [[pottery]] appears around 2,000 to 3,000 BCE. Shards of pots, cylindrical vases, platters, gourds, and other vases decorated with grooves, prints, and some modeled after animals have been found.<ref name=precolumban3>{{harvnb|Botey Sobrado|2002| pp=32–33|sp=sí}}</ref>

The influence of Indigenous peoples on modern Costa Rican culture has been relatively small compared to other nations since the country lacked a strong native civilization to begin with.{{clarify|date=October 2024}}{{citation needed|date=October 2024}} Most of the native population was absorbed into the Spanish-speaking [[Spanish colonization of the Americas|colonial society]] through inter-marriage,{{citation needed|date=October 2024}} except for some small remnants, the most significant of which are the [[Bribri people|Bribri]] and [[Boruca people|Boruca]] tribes who still inhabit the mountains of the [[Cordillera de Talamanca]], in the southeastern part of Costa Rica, near the frontier with [[Panama]].