Editing Pre-Columbian era (section)

===Arawaks and Caribs===
[[Archeologist]]s have discovered evidence of the earliest known inhabitants of the Venezuelan area in the form of [[leaf]]-shaped [[Lithic flake|flake]] [[tool]]s, together with [[Cutting|chopping]] and [[Plane (tool)|plano]]&ndash;[[wikt:convex|convex]] [[scraper (archaeology)|scraping]] implements exposed on the high riverine terraces of the [[Pedregal River]] in western [[Venezuela]].<ref name="Kipfer_2000_91">
{{Cite book|last=Kipfer|first=Barbara Ann|year=2000
|title=Encyclopedic Dictionary of archaeology
|publisher=Kluwer Academic/Plenum
|location=New York|isbn=0-306-46158-7|page=91
}}</ref> [[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.<ref name="Kipfer_2000_172">
Kipfer 2000, p. 172.
</ref>

[[Taima-Taima]], yellow Muaco, and El Jobo in Falcón are some of the sites that have yielded archeological material from these times.<ref>Silverman, Helaine; Isbell, William (Eds.) (2008): Handbook of South American Archaeology 1st ed. 2008. Corr. 2nd printing, XXVI, 1192, {{ISBN|978-0-387-74906-8}}. pp.  430,  433–434</ref> These groups co-existed with megafauna like [[megatherium]], [[Glyptodontidae|glyptodonts]], and [[toxodon]]ts.

[[File:palafito.jpg|left|thumb|190px|A [[palafito]] like the ones seen by [[Amerigo Vespucci]]]]It is not known how many people lived in Venezuela before the [[Spanish colonization of the Americas|Spanish Conquest]]; it may have been around a million people,<ref name=Wunder/> in addition to today's peoples included groups such as the [[Arawak]]s, [[Kalina people|Caribs]], and [[Timoto-cuicas]]. The number was much reduced after the Conquest, mainly through the spread of new diseases from Europe.<ref name=Wunder>Wunder, Sven (2003), ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=n2nQ0A8BmCYC&pg=PA130 Oil wealth and the fate of the forest: a comparative study of eight tropical countries]'', [[Routledge]]. p. 130.</ref> There were two main north–south axes of the pre-Columbian population, producing [[maize]] in the west and [[manioc]] in the east.<ref name=Wunder/> Large parts of the [[Llanos]] plains were cultivated through a combination of [[slash-and-burn]] and permanent settled agriculture basically maize and tobacco.<ref name=Wunder/> The indigenous peoples of Venezuela had already encountered crude [[oil]]s and asphalts that seeped up through the ground to the surface. Known to the locals as ''mene'', the thick, black liquid was primarily used for medicinal purposes, as an illumination source, and for the caulking of canoes.<ref>{{cite book | title=Chronology of Venezuelan Oil | year=1969 | publisher=Purnell and Sons | author=Anibal Martinez}}</ref>

In the 16th century when [[Spanish colonization of the Americas|Spanish colonization]] began in Venezuelan territory, the population of several [[Indigenous people of the Americas|indigenous peoples]] such as the [[Mariches]] (descendants of the [[Kalina people|Caribes]]) declined.