Argentina stretches almost 3,700 kilometres from the high Puna and the forests of the Chaco to the Pampas, the deserts of Patagonia and the islands of Tierra del Fuego. For more than thirteen thousand years its lands belonged to many peoples, from the hunters who stencilled their hands in the Cueva de las Manos to the farmers of the Andean northwest, which the Inca joined to their empire in the fifteenth century.

Spain founded its cities from the 1550s and for two centuries governed the region as a remote frontier of Peru, until Buenos Aires became the capital of a viceroyalty in 1776. The May Revolution of 1810 and the declaration of independence in 1816 were followed by decades of civil war between Buenos Aires and the provinces.

The Constitution of 1853, railways and millions of immigrants made Argentina one of the richest countries in the world by 1910. In the twentieth century Radicals, Perón and a long series of military coups competed for power, ending in the dictatorship of 1976–1983 and the Falklands (Malvinas) War. Democracy, restored in 1983, has survived hyperinflation, the collapse of 2001 and repeated debt crises.

Explore the ten ages below through selected events from the timeline.