Bogotá began as a Muisca village renamed
Spanish expeditions reached Colombia in 1499. In August 1538 Jiménez de Quesada founded Santa Fe de Bogotá on the Muisca site of Bacatá. Independence crystallised after Bolívar’s 1819 Boyacá campaign and the short-lived Gran Colombia federation.
Hunter-gatherers lived near today’s Bogotá at El Abra and Tequendama from about 12,000 years BP, trading into the Magdalena valley. Paleoindian finds at Pubenza and El Totumo date about 18,000–8000 BCE; San Jacinto yielded some of the Americas’ oldest pottery (5000–4000 BCE). Rock art along Serranía de la Lindosa stretches nearly eight miles; dating and animal identifications remain contested. Between 5000 and 1000 BCE, groups shifted to farming and pottery. From the first millennium BCE, Muisca, Quimbaya, Tairona and others mastered mining and metalwork under cacique hierarchies. The Muisca Confederation on the Cundiboyacense high plateau ranked among South America’s most developed political systems after the Incas, trading gold, emeralds, salt, and cotton.
Alonso de Ojeda’s 1499 voyage opened European contact. Santa Marta (1525) and Cartagena (1 June 1533, under Pedro de Heredia) anchored the Caribbean coast. Three inland thrusts—Quesada, Belalcázar, and Federmann—converged on Muisca gold country; Quesada’s Bogotá rose in 1538. A Royal Audiencia in 1549 made the city capital of New Granada. The Viceroyalty of New Granada, created in 1717, removed, then restored in 1739, governed lands now covering Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama from Santa Fé de Bogotá beside Lima and Mexico City as a top Spanish administrative hub.
Bolívar crossed the Andes and won Boyacá on 7 August 1819. That year’s Congress of Angostura founded Gran Colombia with Bolívar as president and Francisco de Paula Santander as vice president. The federation dissolved in 1830 into the Republic of New Granada. Later constitutional experiments renamed the state the Granadine Confederation in 1858 and a federal union in 1863 before adopting today’s republican title in 1886. The 1863 constitution abolished the death penalty and promised broad civil rights. Conservative centralisers traced to Bolívar; Liberals to Santander’s decentralising, church-skeptical line. Panama seceded in 1903. Civilian elections usually prevailed, though the military seized power in 1830, 1854, and 1953–1957.
Source: History of Colombia
