section_path: South America/Arawaks and Caribs
section_name: Arawaks and Caribs
paragraph_text: Arawaks and Caribs
  
  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 plano – convex 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 are some of the sites that have yielded archeological material from these times. These groups co-existed with megafauna like megatherium, glyptodonts, and toxodonts.
  
  It is not known how many people lived in Venezuela before the Spanish Conquest; it may have been around a million people, in addition to today's peoples included groups such as the Arawaks, Caribs, and Timoto-cuicas. The number was much reduced after the Conquest, mainly through the spread of new diseases from Europe. There were two main north–south axes of the pre-Columbian population, producing maize in the west and manioc in the east. Large parts of the Llanos plains were cultivated through a combination of slash-and-burn and permanent settled agriculture basically maize and tobacco. The indigenous peoples of Venezuela had already encountered crude oils 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.
  
  In the 16th century when Spanish colonization began in Venezuelan territory, the population of several indigenous peoples such as the Mariches (descendants of the Caribes) declined.