CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN ECUADOR 
By EMILIO ESTRADA 
Museo "Victor Emilio Estrada" Guayaquil, Ecuador 
and 
CLIFFORD EVANS 
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 
The coast of Ecuador has emerged in the last decade as one of the 
most exciting regions in the New World for those who concern 
themselves with prehistoric cultural development. Hindsight makes it 
obvious that this should be the case. Perched astride the Equator, 
where ocean currents meet, Ecuador is in a unique geographical posi- 
tion. Straying voyagers from north, south, or west would be almost 
inevitably cast upon her shores. The coastal landscape, ranging from 
the rolling hills of Esmeraldas and northern Manabi, through the fer- 
tile and flat plain of the Guayas Basin to the coastal mangrove 
swamps of El Oro (fig. 7), affords a variety of possibilities for hu- 
man exploitation. The excessively wet and swampy Pacific border of 
Colombia and the Peruvian coastal deserts seem almost inhospitable 
by comparison. 
Although low hills separate the Guayas Basin from the coast and 
cover portions of south Esmeraldas and Manabi, they do not consti- 
tute barriers to travel and communication. Nor are there any rivers 
large enough to impede movement. The major natural obstacle is the 
Andean chain, whose precipitous slopes rise with remarkable abrupt- 
ness, transforming the environment to which men must adapt to sur- 
vive. A similar distinction, only slightly less abrupt, exists between 
the highlands and the low, humid forests of the Oriente, which merge 
into the greater Amazon Basin. This natural division, in which the 
differences between highland and lowland environments were prob- 
ably more significant than the mountain barricade itself, is reflected 
in the cultural development. At all times, the highland regions are 
more closely related to each other than to the coast, although diffusion 
of ceramic styles and other traits and occasional trade pottery indi- 
cates that some communication did exist between highlands and low- 
lands. Although it is dangerous to generalize in the absence of data, 
present knowledge of the archeology of Ecuador suggests that the 
coast played a more significant role than the highlands in initiating 
and diffusing cultural elements from early prehistoric times onward. 
77 
