Map of South America

South America is the world’s fourth largest continent and home to more than 450 million people. The present-day population of South America is primarily derived from four broad groups: Indigenous Americans, who were the pre-Columbian inhabitants; Iberians (Spanish and Portuguese who conquered and dominated the continent until the beginning of the 19th century); enslaved people taken from Africa by the colonizers during the transatlantic slave trade; and, finally, postindependence immigrants from overseas, especially from Italy...