La cognoscibilidad del pasado pre-europeo. Problemas y propuestas

Abstract

How can we achieve knowledge of the past of peoples who lived in South America before the arrival of the Europeans? Did they possess notions of historical consciousness in spite of the absence of written sources or are we confined to myths based on present memories or inventions of a past guided by political interests? This paper aims at answers for these questions by discussing little known contributions from the beginning of scientific work in the Americas (Uhle) and modern approaches in areas traditionally considered as devoid of historical spaces (Amazon). These approaches are based on the acceptance of early historicity that can be obtained by applying interdisciplinary, international, and comparative studies within scientific guidelines instead of politics. This is exemplified by the presentation of the experiences from two international symposia Pontificia Universidad Católica. These experiences resulted in the necessity of sustained discussions on empirical and theoretical advances towards the acceptance of a complex and dynamic pre-European past that seem to represent this past better than nationalisms which are used to «exotize» essentially unaltered pasts in order to legitimize the presence of modern national states.

Keywords

• comprehensibility
• Pre-European past
• South America
• Pre-European history
• interdisciplinary approaches
• comparative perspectives