Pre-Columbian History of Costa Rica - Societal Classification

Societal Classification

When the Europeans arrived, Costa Rica was not a unified land but was inhabited by diverse peoples independent from each other, and whose respective cultures had many different levels of complexity and development. The traditional view that divides this territory between the Chorotegas, Huetars and Bruncas has been abandoned, since these names in fact only identified a small part of the nations that existed in Costa Rican proper at the time. In light of recent studies, it has become much more appropriate to identify two major principal areas:

• The Intermediate Area (or Isthmo-Colombian Area), with Caribbean and South American influences
• The Mesoamerican Area, a great cultural expanse that extends from Chiapas and the Yucatán Peninsula in present-day Mexico to the Nicoya Peninsula as well as its eponymous gulf

There is no strict boundary, either cultural or political, between the Intermediate and Mesoamerican Areas, because there would've been frequent contact and transcultural exchange between both groups of people, over all the confluent areas. Even so, notable culture differences existed between them. Some peoples in the Mesoamerican Area, for example, were organized into societies that appear more complex than those of their contemporaries in the Intermediate Area, having legal institutions which, from a Western point of view, may have been more developed. On the other hand, in both regions it appears the prevalent system of law was exclusively or almost exclusively consuetudinary, based on custom rather than the rule of law. It is possible, however, that the indigenous Nicoyans preserved their legal codes by means of some writing system similar to those of other Mesoamerican cultures.

Part of what we know about these societies is from reports and letters written by the Spanish conquistadors and missionaries, people whose training and mentality were borne of cultural norms very different from those of the indigenous societies, and whose view of them at times was distorted through prejudice, personal interest or mere ignorance. Such documents are not very numerous, and on occasion are superficial, fragmentary or very general; and talk about a very small number of the indigenous groups that existed.