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154-638: Altiplano in Spanish means "high plain" or "high plateau", the second part is a combination of the departments Cundinamarca and Boyacá . The limits of the Altiplano are not strictly defined. The high plateau is enclosed by the higher mountains of the Eastern Ranges, with the Sumapaz mountains in the south and Chingaza to the east. The Tenza Valley is located to the east of the Altiplano and

308-617: A Spanish-based creole language called Chavacano developed in the southern Philippines. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Spanish. The number of Chavacano-speakers was estimated at 1.2 million in 1996. The local languages of the Philippines also retain significant Spanish influence, with many words derived from Mexican Spanish , owing to the administration of the islands by Spain through New Spain until 1821, until direct governance from Madrid afterwards to 1898. Pleistocene megafauna The Late Pleistocene to

462-505: A cause of the extinctions argue that statistical modelling validates that relatively low-level hunting can have significant effect on megafauna populations due to their slow life cycles, and that hunting can cause top-down forcing trophic cascade events that destabilize ecosystems. The Second-Order Predation Hypothesis says that as humans entered the New World they continued their policy of killing predators, which had been successful in

616-652: A central square where the bohío of the cacique was located. They were called "Salt People" because of their extraction of salt in various locations throughout their territories, mainly in Zipaquirá , Nemocón and Tausa . For the main part self-sufficient in their well-organised economy , the Muisca traded with the European conquistadors valuable products as gold , tumbaga (a copper - silver -gold alloy) and emeralds with their neighbouring indigenous groups . In

770-529: A computer model, the Pleistocene extinction model (PEM), which, using the same assumptions and values for all variables (herbivore population, herbivore recruitment rates, food needed per human, herbivore hunting rates, etc.) other than those for hunting of predators. It compares the overkill hypothesis (predator hunting = 0) with second-order predation (predator hunting varied between 0.01 and 0.05 for different runs). The findings are that second-order predation

924-603: A considerable number of words from Arabic , as well as a minor influence from the Germanic Gothic language through the period of Visigoth rule in Iberia. In addition, many more words were borrowed from Latin through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. The loanwords were taken from both Classical Latin and Renaissance Latin , the form of Latin in use at that time. According to

1078-627: A divide among researches about when and how megafaunal species went extinct. There are at least three hypotheses regarding the extinction of the Australian megafauna : This theory is based on evidence of megafauna surviving until 40,000 years ago, a full 30,000 years after homo sapiens first landed in Australia, and thus that the two groups coexisted for a long time. Evidence of these animals existing at that time come from fossil records and ocean sediment. To begin with, sediment core drilled in

1232-522: A dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants , known in Spanish as the reajuste de las sibilantes , which resulted in the distinctive velar [x] pronunciation of the letter ⟨j⟩ and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental [θ] ("th-sound") for the letter ⟨z⟩ (and for ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ ). See History of Spanish (Modern development of

1386-434: A few thousand years, around the 45,000 years ago, suggesting a rapid extinction event. In addition, fossils found at South Walker Creek, which is the youngest megafauna site in northern Australia, indicate that at least 16 species of megafauna survived there until 40,000 years ago. Furthermore, there is no firm evidence of homo sapiens living at South Walker Creek 40,000 years ago, therefore no human cause can be attributed to

1540-482: A first language by Spaniards and educated Filipinos ( Ilustrados ). Despite a public education system set up by the colonial government, by the end of Spanish rule in 1898, only about 10% of the population had knowledge of Spanish, mostly those of Spanish descent or elite standing. Spanish continued to be official and used in Philippine literature and press during the early years of American administration after

1694-478: A long history in the territory of the current-day United States dating back to the 16th century. In the wake of the 1848 Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty , hundreds of thousands of Spanish speakers became a minoritized community in the United States. The 20th century saw further massive growth of Spanish speakers in areas where they had been hitherto scarce. According to the 2020 census, over 60 million people of

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1848-533: A more continental climate than Pleistocene or modern (post-Pleistocene, interglacial) North America. The animals that became extinct actually should have prospered during the shift from mixed woodland-parkland to prairie, because their primary food source, grass, was increasing rather than decreasing. Although the vegetation did become more spatially specialized, the amount of prairie and grass available increased, which would have been good for horses and for mammoths, and yet they became extinct. This criticism ignores

2002-548: A natural boundary of the Altiplano. Chingaza contains páramo vegetation, as does the most beautiful Ocetá Páramo in the northeast. On the Altiplano the microclimate of the surroundings of Lake Iguaque produces a páramo. Regional geology The Altiplano Cundiboyacense is formed as part of the uplift of the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes since Neogene times. Hydrothermal activity in fractures of

2156-738: A number of rivers and lakes. Spanish language This is an accepted version of this page Spanish ( español ) or Castilian ( castellano ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe . Today, it is a global language with about 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain , and about 600 million when including second language speakers. Spanish

2310-424: A period of cooling. In between these extremes megafaunal extinctions have occurred progressively in such places as North America, South America and Madagascar with no climatic commonality. The only common factor that can be ascertained is the arrival of humans. This phenomenon appears even within regions. The mammal extinction wave in Australia about 50,000 years ago coincides not with known climatic changes, but with

2464-508: A primarily Hassaniya Arabic -speaking territory, Spanish was officially spoken as the language of the colonial administration during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Today, Spanish is present in the partially-recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as its secondary official language, and in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf ( Algeria ), where the Spanish language is still taught as

2618-469: A reliable chronology. North American extinctions (noted as herbivores ( H ) or carnivores ( C )) included: The survivors are in some ways as significant as the losses: bison ( H ), grey wolf ( C ), lynx ( C ), grizzly bear ( C ), American black bear ( C ), deer (e.g. caribou , moose , wapiti (elk) , Odocoileus spp.) ( H ), pronghorn ( H ), white-lipped peccary ( H ), muskox ( H ), bighorn sheep ( H ), and mountain goat ( H );

2772-563: A second language features characteristics involving the variability of the vowel system. While far from its heyday during the Spanish protectorate in Morocco , the Spanish language has some presence in northern Morocco , stemming for example from the availability of certain Spanish-language media. According to a 2012 survey by Morocco's Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (IRES), penetration of Spanish in Morocco reaches 4.6% of

2926-531: A second language, largely by Cuban educators. The number of Spanish speakers is unknown. Spanish is also an official language of the African Union . Spanish was an official language of the Philippines from the beginning of Spanish administration in 1565 to a constitutional change in 1973. During Spanish colonization , it was the language of government, trade, and education, and was spoken as

3080-507: A sufficient mix of food to avoid toxins, they extract enough nutrition from forage to reproduce effectively and the timing of their gestation is not an issue. Of course, this criticism ignores the obvious fact that present-day horses are not competing for resources with ground sloths, mammoths, mastodons, camels, llamas, and bison. Similarly, mammoths survived the Pleistocene Holocene transition on isolated, uninhabited islands in

3234-491: A very few show unambiguous evidence of human hunting of any type of prey whatsoever." Eugene S. Hunn suggests that the birthrate in hunter-gatherer societies is generally too low, that too much effort is involved in the bringing down of a large animal by a hunting party, and that in order for hunter-gatherers to have brought about the extinction of megafauna simply by hunting them to death, an extraordinary amount of meat would have had to have been wasted. Proponents of hunting as

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3388-546: Is Mexico . Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance language group , in which the language is also known as Castilian ( castellano ). The group evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of

3542-416: Is cognate to the root word of satisfacer ("to satisfy"), and hecho ("made") is similarly cognate to the root word of satisfecho ("satisfied"). Compare the examples in the following table: Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, as shown in the examples in the following table: In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish underwent

3696-413: Is also one of the most taught foreign languages throughout the world. Spanish is well represented in the humanities and social sciences . Spanish is also the third most used language on the internet by number of users after English and Chinese and the second most used language by number of websites after English. Spanish is used as an official language by many international organizations , including

3850-473: Is clear, therefore, that we are now in an altogether exceptional period of the earth's history. We live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the hugest, and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared; and it is, no doubt, a much better world for us now they have gone. Yet it is surely a marvellous fact, and one that has hardly been sufficiently dwelt upon, this sudden dying out of so many large mammalia, not in one place only but over half

4004-488: Is coincident with increasing aridity. Increasingly arid conditions in southeastern Australia during the late Pleistocene may have stressed megafauna, and contributed to their decline. In Sahul (a former continent composed of Australia and New Guinea ), the sudden and extensive spate of extinctions occurred earlier than in the rest of the world. Most evidence points to a 20,000 year period after human arrival circa 63,000 BCE, but scientific argument continues as to

4158-533: Is common on the Altiplano. The Altiplano Cundiboyacense is surrounded by and contains various Andean unique ecosystems; páramos . 60% of all páramos in the world are situated in Colombia. (Specifically, in the department of Boyacá with the most relative area of páramos). Boyacá is the department where 18.3% of the national total area is located. To the south the Sumapaz Páramo (largest in the world) forms

4312-454: Is estimated that about 486 million people speak Spanish as a native language , making it the second most spoken language by number of native speakers . An additional 75 million speak Spanish as a second or foreign language , making it the fourth most spoken language in the world overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi with a total number of 538 million speakers. Spanish is also

4466-401: Is evidence that anthropogenic fire use had major impacts on the local environments in both Australia and North America. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, when scientists first realized that there had been glacial and interglacial ages, and that they were somehow associated with the prevalence or disappearance of certain animals, they surmised that the termination of

4620-628: Is evidence that the average size of mammalian fauna declined over the course of the Quaternary, a phenomenon that was likely linked to disproportionate hunting of large animals by humans. Extinction through human hunting has been supported by archaeological finds of mammoths with projectile points embedded in their skeletons, by observations of modern naive animals allowing hunters to approach easily and by computer models by Mosimann and Martin, and Whittington and Dyke, and most recently by Alroy. A number of objections have been raised regarding

4774-761: Is heavily influenced by Venezuelan Spanish. In addition to sharing most of its borders with Spanish-speaking countries, the creation of Mercosur in the early 1990s induced a favorable situation for the promotion of Spanish language teaching in Brazil . In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President , making it mandatory for schools to offer Spanish as an alternative foreign language course in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil. In September 2016 this law

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4928-536: Is more consistent with extinction than is overkill (results graph at left). The Pleistocene extinction model is the only test of multiple hypotheses and is the only model to specifically test combination hypotheses by artificially introducing sufficient climate change to cause extinction. When overkill and climate change are combined they balance each other out. Climate change reduces the number of plants, overkill removes animals, therefore fewer plants are eaten. Second-order predation combined with climate change exacerbates

5082-672: Is rare, though megafauna exploitation has been documented at a number of sites. Fishtail points rapidly disappeared after the extinction of the megafauna, and were replaced by other styles more suited to hunting smaller prey. Some authors have proposed the "Broken Zig-Zag" model, where human hunting and climate change causing a reduction in open habitats preferred by megafauna were synergistic factors in megafauna extinction in South America. A scarcity of reliably dated megafaunal bone deposits has made it difficult to construct timelines for megafaunal extinctions in certain areas, leading to

5236-597: Is regarded one of eleven archaeological regions of Colombia. The earliest evidence of human occupation in the region has been found in Pubenza , to the west of the Altiplano, dating to 16,000 years BP . On the Altiplano, the oldest findings are dated at 12,400 ± 160 years in El Abra . Slightly younger occurrences of settlement by hunter-gatherers have been discovered at Tibitó , with an estimated age of 11,740 +/- 110 years BP and Tequendama dated at 10,920 ± 260 years BP. In

5390-844: Is spoken by very small communities in Angola due to Cuban influence from the Cold War and in South Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned for their country's independence. Spanish is also spoken in the integral territories of Spain in Africa, namely the cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the Canary Islands , located in the Atlantic Ocean some 100 km (62 mi) off

5544-813: Is the de facto national language of the country, Spanish is often used in public services and notices at the federal and state levels. Spanish is also used in administration in the state of New Mexico . The language has a strong influence in major metropolitan areas such as those of Los Angeles , Miami , San Antonio , New York , San Francisco , Dallas , Tucson and Phoenix of the Arizona Sun Corridor , as well as more recently, Chicago , Las Vegas , Boston , Denver , Houston , Indianapolis , Philadelphia , Cleveland , Salt Lake City , Atlanta , Nashville , Orlando , Tampa , Raleigh and Baltimore-Washington, D.C. due to 20th- and 21st-century immigration. Although Spanish has no official recognition in

5698-498: Is the official language of 20 countries , as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations . Spanish is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese ; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English , Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani ( Hindi - Urdu ); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The country with the largest population of native speakers

5852-578: Is usually assumed to be derived from castillo ('castle'). In the Middle Ages , the language spoken in Castile was generically referred to as Romance and later also as Lengua vulgar . Later in the period, it gained geographical specification as Romance castellano ( romanz castellano , romanz de Castiella ), lenguaje de Castiella , and ultimately simply as castellano (noun). Different etymologies have been suggested for

6006-604: The cacique of Tundama at the end of 1539. The last zaque Aquiminzaque was decapitated in early 1540, establishing the new rule over the former Muisca Confederation . Present-day, due to the large population and agriculture of the Altiplano, the original vegetation is at risk. Most important city of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense is the Colombian capital Bogotá . Other cities are, from northeast to southwest: The Altiplano Cundiboyacense hosts

6160-583: The Americas , Madagascar and New Zealand without the earliest humans. The overkill hypothesis, a variant of the hunting hypothesis, was proposed in 1966 by Paul S. Martin, Professor of Geosciences Emeritus at the Desert Laboratory of the University of Arizona . Circumstantially, the close correlation in time between the appearance of humans in an area and extinction there provides weight for this scenario. Radiocarbon dating has supported

6314-653: The Bogotá Formation of the southern Altiplano. The biodiversity and former tranquility of the isolated ecosystem changed during the Pliocene, when the Panama Block emerged from the seas and formed a transferable connection with formerly isolated North America. This Great American Biotic Interchange led to a drastic rearrangement of South American fauna. Migrating species from North America replaced many formerly successful South American animals, among which

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6468-721: The Mediterranean Sea until 4,000 to 7,000 years ago, as well as on Wrangel Island in the Siberian Arctic. Additionally, large mammals should have been able to migrate, permanently or seasonally, if they found the temperature too extreme, the breeding season too short, or the rainfall too sparse or unpredictable. Seasons vary geographically. By migrating away from the equator , herbivores could have found areas with growing seasons more favorable for finding food and breeding successfully. Modern-day African elephants migrate during periods of drought to places where there

6622-604: The Ocetá Páramo and Chicamocha Canyon are situated to the northeast. The Altiplano is subdivided into three major valleys, from northeast to southwest: The average temperature on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense is 14 °C (57 °F), ranging from 0 °C (32 °F) to 24 °C (75 °F). The driest months of the year are from December to March, while rain is more common in April, May, September, October and November. From June to August strong winds are present. Hail

6776-617: The Paja Formation of Villa de Leyva . During the Late Eocene-Early Oligocene (35-30 Mya) epochs, South America became detached from its longest connected former member of Pangea ; Antarctica . The isolation of the South American paleocontinent led to a large biodiversity of New World species. The dominating group of top predators and scavengers for decades of millions of years on the continent were

6930-556: The Panche , eternal enemies of the Muisca in the southwest. In the Battle of Tocarema, the allied forces claimed victory over the bellicose western neighbours. In late 1538, other conquest undertakings resulted in more founded settlements in the heart of the Andes. Two other expeditions that were taking place at the same time; of De Belalcázar from the south and Federmann from the east, reached

7084-568: The Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005. Spanish has historically had a significant presence on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba , Bonaire and Curaçao ( ABC Islands ) throughout the centuries and in present times. The majority of the populations of each island (especially Aruba) speaking Spanish at varying although often high degrees of fluency. The local language Papiamentu (Papiamento on Aruba)

7238-584: The Spanish conquest , to the Muisca Confederation . The Muisca were the inhabitants of the central Andean highlands of Colombia before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors . They were organised in a loose confederation of different rulers ; the zipa of Bacatá , with his headquarters in Funza , the zaque of Hunza , the iraca of the sacred City of the Sun Sugamuxi ,

7392-508: The Spanish–American War but was eventually replaced by English as the primary language of administration and education by the 1920s. Nevertheless, despite a significant decrease in influence and speakers, Spanish remained an official language of the Philippines upon independence in 1946, alongside English and Filipino , a standardized version of Tagalog . Spanish was briefly removed from official status in 1973 but reimplemented under

7546-514: The Tenza Valley , to the east of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense where the majority of the Muisca lived, they extracted emeralds in Chivor and Somondoco . The economy of the Muisca was rooted in their agriculture with main products maize , yuca , potatoes and various other cultivations elaborated on elevated fields (in their language called tá ). Agriculture had started around 3000 BCE on

7700-526: The Tundama of Tundama , and several independent caciques . The leaders of the Confederation at the time of conquest were zipa Tisquesusa , zaque Quemuenchatocha , iraca Sugamuxi and Tundama in the northernmost portion of their territories. The Muisca were organised in small communities of circular enclosures ( ca in their language Muysccubbun ; literally "language of the people"), with

7854-820: The United Nations , European Union , Organization of American States , Union of South American Nations , Community of Latin American and Caribbean States , African Union , among others. In Spain and some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only español but also castellano (Castilian), the language from the Kingdom of Castile , contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician , Basque , Asturian , Catalan/Valencian , Aragonese , Occitan and other minor languages. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses

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8008-458: The Wisconsin ice sheet could have placed enough thermal stress on cold-adapted mammals to cause them to die. Their heavy fur, which helps conserve body heat in the glacial cold, might have prevented the dumping of excess heat, causing the mammals to die of heat exhaustion. Large mammals, with their reduced surface area-to-volume ratio , would have fared worse than small mammals. A study covering

8162-447: The regime shift of previously established faunal relationships and habitats as a consequence. The timing and severity of the extinctions varied by region and are thought to have been driven by varying combinations of human and climatic factors. Human impact on megafauna populations is thought to have been driven by hunting ("overkill"), as well as possibly environmental alteration. The relative importance of human vs climatic factors in

8316-582: The straight-tusked elephant and the narrow-nosed rhinoceros generally going extinct earlier than cold adapted species like the woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros . Climate change has been considered a probable major factor in the extinctions, possibly in combination with human hunting. Extinctions in North America were concentrated at the end of the Late Pleistocene, around 13,800–11,400 years Before Present, which were coincident with

8470-521: The terror birds . Fossils of terror birds have been found throughout South America, with a major collection from current Argentina , where the biggest terror bird, Kelenken , roamed the paleopampas in the early Miocene. The forming Andes created a hilly landscape in the regions bordering the former sea inlet from the proto-Caribbean. Other land animals in the Tertiary were the xenungulate Etayoa bacatensis , evidence for which has been found in 1987 in

8624-404: The 2021–2022 school year alone. The local business process outsourcing industry has also helped boost the language's economic prospects. Today, while the actual number of proficient Spanish speakers is around 400,000, or under 0.5% of the population, a new generation of Spanish speakers in the Philippines has likewise emerged, though speaker estimates vary widely. Aside from standard Spanish,

8778-595: The 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara , and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City . For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language . Spanish is the primary language in 20 countries worldwide. As of 2023, it

8932-514: The Altiplano Cundiboyacense, among others in Bojacá , Bogotá , Chía , Usme , Cogua , Cota , Facatativá , Nemocón , Madrid , Mosquera , Sáchica , Sibaté , Soacha , Subachoque , Suesca , Sutatausa , Tenjo , Tocancipá , Zipacón , Zipaquirá . The ages between 3000 and 1000 years before present corresponds to the Herrera Period , and the era between 1000 BP and 1537, the year of

9086-400: The Altiplano. The agriculture of the Muisca was performed on small-scale cropfields, part of more extensive lands, and in a rather egalitarian manner; the higher social classes did not have access to more agricultural products than the lower class Muisca people. Their main difference was in the construction of their houses and access to meat. The predominant agricultural product of the Muisca

9240-562: The Americas were virtually simultaneous, spanning only 3000 years at most. Overall, during the Late Pleistocene about 65% of all megafaunal species worldwide became extinct, rising to 72% in North America, 83% in South America and 88% in Australia, with all mammals over 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb) becoming extinct in Australia and the Americas, and around 80% globally. Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia experienced more moderate extinctions than other regions. The Late Pleistocene saw

9394-526: The Bogotá savanna and planned new conquest expeditions executed in the second half of 1537 and first months of 1538. On August 6, 1538, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada founded Bogotá as the capital of the New Kingdom of Granada , named after his home region of Granada , Spain. That same month, on August 20, the zipa who succeeded his brother Tisquesusa upon his death; Sagipa , allied with the Spanish to fight

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9548-654: The Equatoguinean education system and is the primary language used in government and business. Whereas it is not the mother tongue of virtually any of its speakers, the vast majority of the population is proficient in Spanish. The Instituto Cervantes estimates that 87.7% of the population is fluent in Spanish. The proportion of proficient Spanish speakers in Equatorial Guinea exceeds the proportion of proficient speakers in other West and Central African nations of their respective colonial languages. Spanish

9702-577: The Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Proto-Basque , Iberian , Lusitanian , Celtiberian and Gallaecian . The first documents to show traces of what is today regarded as the precursor of modern Spanish are from the 9th century. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era , the most important influences on the Spanish lexicon came from neighboring Romance languages — Mozarabic ( Andalusi Romance ), Navarro-Aragonese , Leonese , Catalan/Valencian , Portuguese , Galician , Occitan , and later, French and Italian . Spanish also borrowed

9856-405: The Indian Ocean off the SW coast of Australia indicate the existence of a fungus called Sporormiella, which survived off the dung of plant-eating mammals. The abundance of these spores in the sediment prior to 45,000 years ago indicates that many large mammals existed in the southwest Australian landscape until that point. The sediment data also indicates that the megafauna population collapsed within

10010-412: The Indian subcontinent is uncertain due to a lack of reliable dating. Similar issues have been reported for Chinese sites, though there is no evidence for any of the megafaunal taxa having survived into the Holocene in that region. Extinctions in Southeast Asia and South China have been proposed to be the result of environmental shift from open to closed forested habitats. The Palearctic realm spans

10164-458: The North American Great Lakes region, the population declines of mastodons and mammoths have been found to correlate with climatic fluctuations during the Younger Dryas rather than human activity. In the Argentine Pampas, the flooding of vast swathes of the once much larger Pampas grasslands may have played a role in the extinctions of its megafaunal assemblages. Critics object that since there were multiple glacial advances and withdrawals in

10318-424: The Old Spanish sibilants) for details. The Gramática de la lengua castellana , written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija , was the first grammar written for a modern European language. According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I , she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire. In his introduction to

10472-457: The Old World but because they were more efficient and because the fauna, both herbivores and carnivores, were more naive, they killed off enough carnivores to upset the ecological balance of the continent, causing overpopulation , environmental exhaustion, and environmental collapse. The hypothesis accounts for changes in animal, plant, and human populations. The scenario is as follows: The second-order predation hypothesis has been supported by

10626-410: The Pleistocene ice age might be an explanation for the extinctions. The most obvious change associated with the termination of an ice age is the increase in temperature. Between 15,000 BP and 10,000 BP, a 6 °C increase in global mean annual temperatures occurred. This was generally thought to be the cause of the extinctions. According to this hypothesis, a temperature increase sufficient to melt

10780-480: The Pleistocene extinction model. Also, the control of population sizes by predators is not fully supported by observations of modern ecosystems. The hypothesis further assumes decreases in vegetation due to climate change, but deglaciation doubled the habitable area of North America. Any vegetational changes that did occur failed to cause almost any extinctions of small vertebrates, and they are more narrowly distributed on average, which detractors cite as evidence against

10934-667: The Pleistocene populations particularly vulnerable to changes in their environment. Studies propose that the annual mean temperature of the current interglacial that we have seen for the last 10,000 years is no higher than that of previous interglacials, yet most of the same large mammals survived similar temperature increases. In addition, numerous species such as mammoths on Wrangel Island and St. Paul Island survived in human-free refugia despite changes in climate. This would not be expected if climate change were responsible (unless their maritime climates offered some protection against climate change not afforded to coastal populations on

11088-589: The Royal Spanish Academy) states that, although the Royal Spanish Academy prefers to use the term español in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms— español and castellano —are regarded as synonymous and equally valid. The term castellano is related to Castile ( Castilla or archaically Castiella ), the kingdom where the language was originally spoken. The name Castile , in turn,

11242-452: The State. ... The other Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities... The Royal Spanish Academy ( Real Academia Española ), on the other hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. However, from 1713 to 1923, it called the language castellano . The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (a language guide published by

11396-502: The U.S. population were of Hispanic or Hispanic American by origin. In turn, 41.8 million people in the United States aged five or older speak Spanish at home, or about 13% of the population. Spanish predominates in the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico , where it is also an official language along with English. Spanish is by far the most common second language in the country, with over 50 million total speakers if non-native or second-language speakers are included. While English

11550-457: The administration of Ferdinand Marcos two months later. It remained an official language until the ratification of the present constitution in 1987, in which it was re-designated as a voluntary and optional auxiliary language. Additionally, the constitution, in its Article XIV, stipulates that the Government shall provide the people of the Philippines with a Spanish-language translation of

11704-407: The arrival of humans on different continents or islands. This was compared against climate reconstructions for the last 90,000 years. The researchers found correlations of human spread and species extinction indicating that the human impact was the main cause of the extinction, while climate change exacerbated the frequency of extinctions. The study, however, found an apparently low extinction rate in

11858-481: The arrival of humans. In addition, large mammal species like the giant kangaroo Protemnodon appear to have succumbed sooner on the Australian mainland than on Tasmania, which was colonised by humans a few thousand years later. A study published in 2015 supported the hypothesis further by running several thousand scenarios that correlated the time windows in which each species is known to have become extinct with

12012-601: The beginning of the Holocene saw the extinction of the majority of the world's megafauna (typically defined as animal species having body masses over 44 kilograms (97 lb)), which resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity across the globe. The extinctions during the Late Pleistocene are differentiated from previous extinctions by its extreme size bias towards large animals (with small animals being largely unaffected), and widespread absence of ecological succession to replace these extinct megafaunal species, and

12166-508: The biggest lake of Colombia; present-day Lake Tota . Lake Tota is the remnant of a Pleistocene glacial lake higher up the Altiplano to the east. Lake Humboldt is thought to have existed until around 30,000 years ago with as modern remaining water bodies Lake Herrera , wetlands of Bogotá and the Bogotá River . Lake Humboldt had an irregular shoreline with an island in the centre; the present-day Suba Hills . The Altiplano Cundiboyacense

12320-684: The classic hispanus or hispanicus took the suffix -one from Vulgar Latin , as happened with other words such as bretón (Breton) or sajón (Saxon). Like the other Romance languages , the Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin , which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War , beginning in 210 BC. Several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages )—some distantly related to Latin as Indo-European languages , and some that are not related at all—were previously spoken in

12474-597: The conclusion: "The inability of climate to predict the observed population decline of megafauna, especially during the past 75,000 years, implies that human impact became the main driver of megafauna dynamics around this date." Although Africa was one of the least affected regions, the region still suffered extinctions, particularly around the Late Pleistocene-Holocene transition. These extinctions were likely predominantly climatically driven by changes to grassland habitats. The timing of extinctions on

12628-529: The conquistadors arrived at the northern edge of the Bogotá savanna in Suesca . continued to Lenguazaque that was founded the next day, En route towards the domain of zipa Tisquesusa , the Spanish founded Cajicá and Chía . In April 1537 they arrived at Funza , where Tisquesusa was beaten by the Spanish. This formed the onset for further expeditions, starting a month later towards the eastern Tenza Valley and

12782-500: The consonant written b (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic b and v . Typical of Spanish (as also of neighboring Gascon extending as far north as the Gironde estuary , and found in a small area of Calabria ), attributed by some scholars to a Basque substratum was the mutation of Latin initial f into h- whenever it

12936-402: The continents, with around 83% of its megafauna going extinct. These extinctions postdate the arrival of modern humans in South America around 15,000 years ago. Both human and climatic factors have been attributed as factors in the extinctions by various authors. Although some megafauna has been historically suggested to have survived into the early Holocene based on radiocarbon dates this may be

13090-404: The country's constitution. In recent years changing attitudes among non-Spanish speaking Filipinos have helped spur a revival of the language, and starting in 2009 Spanish was reintroduced as part of the basic education curriculum in a number of public high schools, becoming the largest foreign language program offered by the public school system, with over 7,000 students studying the language in

13244-472: The deepest astonishment, on the changed state of [South America]. Formerly it must have swarmed with great monsters, like the southern parts of Africa, but now we find only the tapir, guanaco, armadillo, capybara; mere pigmies compared to antecedents races... Since their loss, no very great physical changes can have taken place in the nature of the Country. What then has exterminated so many living creatures? It

13398-475: The direct evidence for this includes: fossils of some megafauna found in conjunction with human remains, embedded arrows and tool cut marks found in megafaunal bones, and European cave paintings that depict such hunting. Biogeographical evidence is also suggestive: the areas of the world where humans evolved currently have more of their Pleistocene megafaunal diversity (the elephants and rhinos of Asia and Africa ) compared to other areas such as Australia ,

13552-478: The earliest ages of human population prehistoric animals as the Cuvieronius , Haplomastodon and Equus amerhippus were living on the Altiplano. Later dated excavations have revealed a transition from a hunter-gatherer society living in rock shelters to open area settlements with Checua and Aguazuque as examples. Various burial sites at Checua have been dated between 8200 and 7800 years BP. During

13706-1025: The earliest phases, the first humans lived together with Pleistocene now extinct mastodons , as the fossil remains of Haplomastodon waringi , Neochoerus and Odocoileus in Soatá indicate. The main part of the diet of the people was formed by white-tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus ). Other mammals included little red brocket ( Mazama rufina ), guinea pigs ( Cavia porcellus ), nine-banded armadillo ( Dasypus novemcinctus ), white-lipped peccary ( Tayassu pecari ), crab-eating fox ( Dusicyon thous ), spectacled bear ( Tremarctos ornatus ), ocelot ( Felis pardalis ), puma ( Felis concolor ), lowland paca ( Agouti paca ), Agouti taczamawskii , Dasyprocta , ring-tailed coati ( Nasua nasua ), western mountain coati ( Nasuella olivacea ), common opossum ( Didelphis marsupialis ) and collared anteater ( Tamandua tetradactyla ). Various archaeological sites with petroglyphs or pictographs have been discovered on

13860-511: The effect of climate change. (results graph at right). The second-order predation hypothesis is further supported by the observation above that there was a massive increase in bison populations. However, this hypothesis has been criticised on the grounds that the multispecies model produces a mass extinction through indirect competition between herbivore species: small species with high reproductive rates subsidize predation on large species with low reproductive rates. All prey species are lumped in

14014-620: The entirety of the European continent and stretches into northern Asia , through the Caucasus and central Asia to northern China , Siberia and Beringia . Extinctions were more severe in Northern Eurasia than in Africa or South and Southeast Asia. These extinctions were staggered over tens of thousands of years, spanning from around 50,000 years Before Present (BP) to around 10,000 years BP, with temperate adapted species like

14168-462: The evolutionary history of many of the megafauna, it is rather implausible that only after the last glacial maximum would there be such extinctions. Proponents of climate change as the extinction event's cause like David J. Meltzer suggest that the last deglaciation may have been markedly different from previous ones. Also, one study suggests that the Pleistocene megafaunal composition may have differed markedly from that of earlier interglacials, making

14322-482: The exact date range. In the rest of the Pacific (other Australasian islands such as New Caledonia, and Oceania ) although in some respects far later, endemic fauna also usually perished quickly upon the arrival of humans in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. The megafaunal extinctions were already recognized as a distinct phenomenon by some scientists in the 19th century: It is impossible to reflect without

14476-401: The extinction are automatically to be preferred by default, however, any more than weaknesses in climate change arguments can be taken as supporting overkill. Some form of a combination of both factors could be plausible, and overkill would be a lot easier to achieve large-scale extinction with an already stressed population due to climate change. South America suffered among the worst losses of

14630-453: The extinction of 90% of megafauna species. Several studies provide evidence that climate change caused megafaunal extinction during the Pleistocene in Australia. One group of researchers analyzed fossilized teeth found at Cuddie Springs in southeastern Australia. By analyzing oxygen isotopes , they measured aridity, and by analyzing carbon isotopes and dental microwear texture analysis, they assessed megafaunal diets and vegetation. During

14784-403: The extinction of many mammals weighing more than 40 kilograms (88 lb), including around 80% of mammals over 1 tonne. The proportion of megafauna extinctions is progressively larger the further the human migratory distance from Africa, with the highest extinction rates in Australia, and North and South America. The increased extent of extinction mirrors the migration pattern of modern humans:

14938-420: The extinction of these megafauna. However, there is evidence of major environmental deterioration of South Water Creek 40,000 years ago, which may have caused the extinct event. These changes include increased fire, reduction in grasslands, and the loss of fresh water. The same environmental deterioration is seen across Australia at the time, further strengthening the climate change argument. Australia's climate at

15092-501: The extinctions has been the subject of long-running controversy. Major extinctions occurred in Australia-New Guinea ( Sahul ) beginning approximately 50,000 years ago and in the Americas about 13,000 years ago, coinciding in time with the early human migrations into these regions. Extinctions in northern Eurasia were staggered over tens of thousands of years between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, while extinctions in

15246-698: The extinctions. It has been shown that vegetation changed from mixed woodland - parkland to separate prairie and woodland. This may have affected the kinds of food available. Shorter growing seasons may have caused the extinction of large herbivores and the dwarfing of many others. In this case, as observed, bison and other large ruminants would have fared better than horses, elephants and other monogastrics , because ruminants are able to extract more nutrition from limited quantities of high- fiber food and better able to deal with anti-herbivory toxins. So, in general, when vegetation becomes more specialized, herbivores with less diet flexibility may be less able to find

15400-683: The following table: Spanish is marked by palatalization of the Latin double consonants ( geminates ) nn and ll (thus Latin annum > Spanish año , and Latin anellum > Spanish anillo ). The consonant written u or v in Latin and pronounced [w] in Classical Latin had probably " fortified " to a bilabial fricative /β/ in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) it merged with

15554-466: The former British colony of Belize (known until 1973 as British Honduras ) where English is the sole official language, according to the 2022 census, 54% of the total population are able to speak the language. Due to its proximity to Spanish-speaking countries and small existing native Spanish speaking minority, Trinidad and Tobago has implemented Spanish language teaching into its education system. The Trinidadian and Tobagonian government launched

15708-617: The forming Andean chain left its trace in the form of the many emeralds found in the western and eastern parts of the Altiplano. From the Early Cretaceous until the Eocene, the region of the present-day Altiplano was dominated by a marine environment, as part of the long inland sea of northern South America. In these warm tropical seas a fauna of ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs developed, with important finds ( Kronosaurus boyacensis ( El Fósil ), Muiscasaurus , with four nostrils) in

15862-671: The fossil record of mainland Asia. A 2020 study published in Science Advances found that human population size and/or specific human activities, not climate change, caused rapidly rising global mammal extinction rates during the past 126,000 years. Around 96% of all mammalian extinctions over this time period are attributable to human impacts. According to Tobias Andermann, lead author of the study, "these extinctions did not happen continuously and at constant pace. Instead, bursts of extinctions are detected across different continents at times when humans first reached them. More recently,

16016-469: The further away from Africa, the more recently humans inhabited the area, the less time those environments (including its megafauna) had to become accustomed to humans (and vice versa). There are two main hypotheses to explain this extinction: There are some inconsistencies between the current available data and the prehistoric overkill hypothesis. For instance, there are ambiguities around the timing of Australian megafauna extinctions. Evidence supporting

16170-604: The grammar, dated 18 August 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire." From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Spanish-discovered America and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization of America . Miguel de Cervantes , author of Don Quixote , is such a well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called la lengua de Cervantes ("the language of Cervantes"). In

16324-442: The hunting hypothesis. Notable among them is the sparsity of evidence of human hunting of megafauna. There is no archeological evidence that in North America megafauna other than mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres and bison were hunted, despite the fact that, for example, camels and horses are very frequently reported in fossil history. Overkill proponents, however, say this is due to the fast extinction process in North America and

16478-441: The hypothesis. In southeastern Australia, the scarcity of water during the interval in which humans arrived in Australia suggests that human competition with megafauna for precious water sources may have played a role in the extinction of the latter. One consequence of the colonisation by humans of lands previously uninhabited by them may have been the introduction of new fire regimes because of extensive fire use by humans. There

16632-470: The increased abundance and broad geographic extent of Pleistocene bison at the end of the Pleistocene, which would have increased competition for these resources in a manner not seen in any earlier interglacials. Although horses became extinct in the New World, they were successfully reintroduced by the Spanish in the 16th century—into a modern post-Pleistocene, interglacial climate. Today there are feral horses still living in those same environments. They find

16786-409: The individuals extinctions tended to occur during times of environmental change and did not correlate particularly well with human migrations. In Australia, some studies have suggested that extinctions of megafauna began before the peopling of the continent, favouring climate change as the driver. In Beringia, megafauna may have gone extinct because of particularly intense paludification and because

16940-474: The interplay of climate change , competition between species , unstable population dynamics , and hunting as well as competition by humans. The original debates as to whether human arrival times or climate change constituted the primary cause of megafaunal extinctions necessarily were based on paleontological evidence coupled with geological dating techniques. Recently, genetic analyses of surviving megafaunal populations have contributed new evidence, leading to

17094-450: The isolated and uninhabited Commander Islands for thousands of years after they had vanished from the continental shores of the north Pacific. The later disappearance of these island species correlates with the later colonization of these islands by humans. Still, there are some arguments that species responded differently to environmental changes, and no one factor by itself explains the large variety of extinctions. The causes may involve

17248-421: The issue of the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions, concluding that the extinctons were at least in part the result of human agency in combination with other factors. Discussion of the topic became more widespread during the 20th century, particularly following the proposal of the "overkill hypothesis" by Paul Schultz Martin during the 1960s. By the end of the 20th century, two "camps" of researchers had emerged on

17402-614: The land connection between Eurasia and North America flooded before the Cordilleran Ice Sheet retreated far enough to reopen the corridor between Beringia and the remainder of North America. Woolly mammoths became extirpated from Beringia because of climatic factors, although human activity also played a synergistic role in their decline. In North America, a Radiocarbon-dated Event-Count (REC) modelling study found that megafaunal declines in North America correlated with climatic changes instead of human population expansion. In

17556-452: The land surface of the globe. We cannot but believe that there must have been some physical cause for this great change; and it must have been a cause capable of acting almost simultaneously over large portions of the earth's surface, and one which, as far as the Tertiary period at least is concerned, was of an exceptional character. Several decades later in his 1911 book The World of Life (published 2 years before his death), Wallace revisited

17710-500: The language happened in Toledo , a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile , in the 13th century. Spanish colonialism in the early modern period spurred the introduction of the language to overseas locations, most notably to the Americas. As a Romance language, Spanish is a descendant of Latin. Around 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is Latin in origin, including Latin borrowings from Ancient Greek. Alongside English and French , it

17864-549: The language's hegemony in an intensely centralising Spanish state were established from the 18th century onward. Other European territories in which it is also widely spoken include Gibraltar and Andorra . Spanish is also spoken by immigrant communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom , France , Italy , and Germany . Spanish is an official language of the European Union . Today,

18018-482: The list of survivors also include species which were extirpated during the Quaternary extinction event, but recolonised at least part of their ranges during the mid-Holocene from South American relict populations, such as the cougar ( C ), jaguar ( C ), giant anteater ( C ), collared peccary ( H ), ocelot ( C ) and jaguarundi ( C ). All save the pronghorns and giant anteaters were descended from Asian ancestors that had evolved with human predators. Pronghorns are

18172-411: The low probability of animals with signs of butchery to be preserved. The majority of North American taxa have too sparse a fossil record to accurately assess the frequency of human hunting of them. A study by Surovell and Grund concluded "archaeological sites dating to the time of the coexistence of humans and extinct fauna are rare. Those that preserve bone are considerably more rare, and of those, only

18326-421: The magnitude of human driven extinctions has picked up the pace again, this time on a global scale." On a related note, the population declines of still extant megafauna during the Pleistocene have also been shown to correlate with human expansion rather than climate change. The extinction's extreme bias towards larger animals further supports a relationship with human activity rather than climate change. There

18480-523: The mainland). Under normal ecological assumptions island populations should be more vulnerable to extinction due to climate change because of small populations and an inability to migrate to more favorable climes. Critics have also identified a number of problems with the continentality hypotheses. Megaherbivores have prospered at other times of continental climate. For example, megaherbivores thrived in Pleistocene Siberia , which had and has

18634-694: The majority of the Spanish speakers live in Hispanic America . Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either de facto or de jure —of Argentina , Bolivia (co-official with 36 indigenous languages), Chile , Colombia , Costa Rica , Cuba , Dominican Republic , Ecuador , El Salvador , Guatemala , Honduras , Mexico (co-official with 63 indigenous languages), Nicaragua , Panama , Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní ), Peru (co-official with Quechua , Aymara , and "the other indigenous languages"), Puerto Rico (co-official with English), Uruguay , and Venezuela . Spanish language has

18788-765: The megafaunal extinctions and that Africa's trans-equatorial position allowed rangeland to continue to exist between the deserts and the central forests, therefore fewer megafauna species became extinct there. Evidence in Southeast Asia, in contrast to Europe, Australia, and the Americas, suggests that climate change and an increasing sea level were significant factors in the extinction of several herbivorous species. Alterations in vegetation growth and new access routes for early humans and mammals to previously isolated, localized ecosystems were detrimental to select groups of fauna. Some evidence from Europe also suggests climatic changes were responsible for extinctions there, as

18942-495: The middle Pleistocene, southeastern Australia was dominated by browsers, including fauna that consumed C4 plants . By the late Pleistocene, the C4 plant dietary component had decreased considerably. This shift may have been caused by increasingly arid conditions, which may have caused dietary restrictions. Other isotopic analyses of eggshells and wombat teeth also point to a decline of C4 vegetation after 45 Ka. This decline in C4 vegetation

19096-551: The mix of vegetation they need to sustain life and reproduce, within a given area. Increased continentality resulted in reduced and less predictable rainfall limiting the availability of plants necessary for energy and nutrition. It has been suggested that this change in rainfall restricted the amount of time favorable for reproduction. This could disproportionately harm large animals, since they have longer, more inflexible mating periods, and so may have produced young at unfavorable seasons (i.e., when sufficient food, water, or shelter

19250-770: The newly founded capital and the three leaders embarked in May 1539 on a ship on the Magdalena River that took them to Cartagena and from there back to Spain. Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada had installed his younger brother Hernán as new governor of Bogotá and the latter organised new conquest campaigns in search of El Dorado during the second half of 1539 and 1540. His captain Gonzalo Suárez Rendón founded Tunja on August 6, 1539, and captain Baltasar Maldonado , who had served under De Belalcázar, defeated

19404-691: The northern territories of zaque Quemuenchatocha . On August 20, 1537, the zaque was submitted in his bohío in Hunza . The Spanish continued their journey northeastward into the Iraca Valley , where the iraca Sugamuxi fell to the Spanish troops and the Sun Temple was accidentally burned by two soldiers of the army of De Quesada in early September. Meanwhile, other soldiers from the conquest expedition went south and conquered Pasca and other settlements. The Spanish leader returned with his men to

19558-734: The northwest of the African mainland. The Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands traces its origins back to the Castilian conquest in the 15th century , and, in addition to a resemblance to Western Andalusian speech patterns, it also features strong influence from the Spanish varieties spoken in the Americas, which in turn have also been influenced historically by Canarian Spanish. The Spanish spoken in North Africa by native bilingual speakers of Arabic or Berber who also speak Spanish as

19712-435: The northwest of the Altiplano was covered with a lake, of which the current Lake Fúquene is a retreating remainder. To the extreme northeast, in Soatá , another Pleistocene lake was present. The largest paleolake in the latest Pleistocene was Lake Humboldt or Lake Bogotá covering the Bogotá savanna . The lake, some 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 sq mi) in size, at that time would have been seventy times larger than

19866-435: The often flooded highlands and a system of irrigation and drainage was developed. They cultivated their crops in rows of mounds. A delegation of more than 900 men left the tropical city of Santa Marta in April 1536 and went on a harsh expedition through the heartlands of Colombia in search of El Dorado and the civilisation that produced all that precious gold. The leader of the first and main expedition under Spanish flag

20020-601: The onset of the Younger Dryas cooling period, as well as the emergence of the hunter-gatherer Clovis culture . The relative importance of human and climactic factors in the North American extinctions has been the subject of significant controversy. Extinctions totalled around 35 genera. The radiocarbon record for North America south of the Alaska-Yukon region has been described as "inadequate" to construct

20174-650: The past 56,000 years indicates that rapid warming events with temperature changes of up to 16 °C (29 °F) had an important impact on the extinction of megafauna. Ancient DNA and radiocarbon data indicates that local genetic populations were replaced by others within the same species or by others within the same genus. Survival of populations was dependent on the existence of refugia and long distance dispersals, which may have been disrupted by human hunters. Other scientists have proposed that increasingly extreme weather—hotter summers and colder winters—referred to as " continentality ", or related changes in rainfall caused

20328-534: The plausibility of this correlation being reflective of causation. The megafaunal extinctions covered a vast period of time and highly variable climatic situations. The earliest extinctions in Australia were complete approximately 50,000 BP, well before the Last Glacial Maximum and before rises in temperature. The most recent extinction in New Zealand was complete no earlier than 500 BP and during

20482-533: The population. Many northern Moroccans have rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, with Spanish being particularly significant in areas adjacent to Ceuta and Melilla. Spanish also has a presence in the education system of the country (through either selected education centers implementing Spain's education system, primarily located in the North, or the availability of Spanish as foreign language subject in secondary education). In Western Sahara , formerly Spanish Sahara ,

20636-477: The prehistoric overkill hypothesis includes the persistence of megafauna on some islands for millennia past the disappearance of their continental cousins. For instance, ground sloths survived on the Antilles long after North and South American ground sloths were extinct, woolly mammoths died out on remote Wrangel Island 6,000 years after their extinction on the mainland, while Steller's sea cows persisted off

20790-502: The reproductive effort when circumstances once more favored offspring survival. A study looking at the environmental conditions across Europe, Siberia and the Americas from 25,000 to 10,000 YBP found that prolonged warming events leading to deglaciation and maximum rainfall occurred just prior to the transformation of the rangelands that supported megaherbivores into widespread wetlands that supported herbivore-resistant plants. The study proposes that moisture-driven environmental change led to

20944-622: The result of dating errors due to contamination. The extinctions are coincident with the end of the Antarctic Cold Reversal (a cooling period earlier and less severe than the Northern Hemisphere Younger Dryas) and the emergence of Fishtail projectile points , which became widespread across South America. Fishtail projectile points are thought to have been used in big game hunting, though direct evidence of exploitation of extinct megafauna by humans

21098-403: The second-fastest land mammal (after the cheetah ), which may have helped them elude hunters. More difficult to explain in the context of overkill is the survival of bison, since these animals first appeared in North America less than 240,000 years ago and so were geographically removed from human predators for a sizeable period of time. Because ancient bison evolved into living bison, there

21252-571: The south, starting in the previously founded Kingdom of Quito in what is now Ecuador . The conquest of the Muisca on the Altiplano started in March 1537, when the greatly reduced troops of De Quesada entered Muisca territories in Chipatá , the first settlement they founded on March 8. The expedition went further inland and up the slopes of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense into later Boyacá and Cundinamarca . The towns of Moniquirá (Boyacá) and Guachetá and Lenguazaque (Cundinamarca) were founded before

21406-415: The term castellano to define the official language of the whole of Spain, in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. "the other Spanish languages "). Article III reads as follows: El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. ... Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas... Castilian is the official Spanish language of

21560-537: The term español (Spanish). According to the Royal Spanish Academy, español derives from the Occitan word espaignol and that, in turn, derives from the Vulgar Latin * hispaniolus ('of Hispania'). Hispania was the Roman name for the entire Iberian Peninsula . There are other hypotheses apart from the one suggested by the Royal Spanish Academy. Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal suggested that

21714-409: The terror birds. The Late Pleistocene of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense has been analysed in detail through various methods based on fossils found on the Altiplano. Pleistocene megafauna inhabited the glacial highlands of the eastern Andean chain. The climate in the glacials and stadials led to the formation of various prehistoric lakes in the valleys of the Altiplano. The Ubaté-Chiquinquirá Valley in

21868-444: The theories of Ramón Menéndez Pidal , local sociolects of Vulgar Latin evolved into Spanish, in the north of Iberia, in an area centered in the city of Burgos , and this dialect was later brought to the city of Toledo , where the written standard of Spanish was first developed, in the 13th century. In this formative stage, Spanish developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese , and, according to some authors,

22022-768: The third most used language on the Internet , after English and Chinese. Spanish is the official language of Spain . Upon the emergence of the Castilian Crown as the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the Middle Ages, the Romance vernacular associated with this polity became increasingly used in instances of prestige and influence, and the distinction between "Castilian" and "Spanish" started to become blurred. Hard policies imposing

22176-424: The time could best be described as an overall drying of the landscape due to lower precipitation, resulting in less fresh water availability and more drought conditions. Overall, this led to changes in vegetation, increased fires, overall reduction in grasslands, and a greater competition for already scarce fresh water. These environmental changes proved to be too much for the Australian megafauna to cope with, causing

22330-479: The topic, one supporting climate change, the other supporting human hunting as the primary cause of the extinctions. The hunting hypothesis suggests that humans hunted megaherbivores to extinction, which in turn caused the extinction of carnivores and scavengers which had preyed upon those animals. This hypothesis holds Pleistocene humans responsible for the megafaunal extinction. One variant, known as blitzkrieg , portrays this process as relatively quick. Some of

22484-539: The wave of extinctions in North America is the paleo-American culture associated with the Clovis people ( q.v. ), who were thought to use spear throwers to kill large animals. The chief criticism of the "prehistoric overkill hypothesis" has been that the human population at the time was too small and/or not sufficiently widespread geographically to have been capable of such ecologically significant impacts. This criticism does not mean that climate change scenarios explaining

22638-447: Was Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada , with his brother Hernán second in command. Several other soldiers were participating in the journey, who would later become encomenderos and take part in the conquest of other parts of Colombia. Other contemporaneous expeditions into the unknown interior of the Andes, all searching for the mythical land of gold, were starting from later Venezuela , led by Bavarian and other German conquistadors and from

22792-588: Was maize and they had numerous words in their language , Muysccubun for the plant, kernels and processing of it. Evidence for maize cultivation predates the Muisca; already in the Herrera Period maize cultivation has been identified based on pollen analysis. The cacicazgos were self-sufficient in their agricultural products and surpluses of maize ( abitago ) were traded for more tropical climate fruits such as pineapples , avocados and Ipomea batatas . The Muisca used terraces for their agriculture on

22946-634: Was developed in the cities of Toledo , in the 13th to 16th centuries, and Madrid , from the 1570s. The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages , including lenition of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin vīta > Spanish vida ). The diphthongization of Latin stressed short e and o —which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in

23100-622: Was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages ). This distinctive dialect spread to southern Spain with the advance of the Reconquista , and meanwhile gathered a sizable lexical influence from the Arabic of Al-Andalus , much of it indirectly, through the Romance Mozarabic dialects (some 4,000 Arabic -derived words, make up around 8% of the language today). The written standard for this new language

23254-713: Was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. The h- , still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects, it is still aspirated in some words. Because of borrowings from Latin and neighboring Romance languages, there are many f -/ h - doublets in modern Spanish: Fernando and Hernando (both Spanish for "Ferdinand"), ferrero and herrero (both Spanish for "smith"), fierro and hierro (both Spanish for "iron"), and fondo and hondo (both words pertaining to depth in Spanish, though fondo means "bottom", while hondo means "deep"); additionally, hacer ("to make")

23408-672: Was no continent-wide extinction of bison at the end of the Pleistocene (although the genus was regionally extirpated in many areas). The survival of bison into the Holocene and recent times is therefore inconsistent with the overkill scenario. By the end of the Pleistocene, when humans first entered North America, these large animals had been geographically separated from intensive human hunting for more than 200,000 years. Given this enormous span of geologic time, bison would almost certainly have been very nearly as naive as native North American large mammals. The culture that has been connected with

23562-462: Was revoked by Michel Temer after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff . In many border towns and villages along Paraguay and Uruguay, a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken. Equatorial Guinea is the only Spanish-speaking country located entirely in Africa, with the language introduced during the Spanish colonial period . Enshrined in the constitution as an official language (alongside French and Portuguese), Spanish features prominently in

23716-496: Was unavailable because of shifts in the growing season). In contrast, small mammals, with their shorter life cycles , shorter reproductive cycles , and shorter gestation periods, could have adjusted to the increased unpredictability of the climate, both as individuals and as species which allowed them to synchronize their reproductive efforts with conditions favorable for offspring survival. If so, smaller mammals would have lost fewer offspring and would have been better able to repeat

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