El Salvador is the smallest and most densely settled country of the Central American mainland, a land of volcanoes, lakes and a long Pacific coast. Its history begins with Palaeoindian hunters and the ceremonial centres of Chalchuapa and Quelepa, continues through the Classic Maya of Tazumal and San Andrés, the catastrophic Ilopango eruption of about 431 and the buried village of Joya de Cerén, and reaches the Nahua-speaking Pipil, whose lordship of Cuzcatlan lay west of the Lempa river when Pedro de Alvarado invaded in 1524.

Under Spain the province of San Salvador, first an alcaldía mayor and from 1785 an intendancy of the Kingdom of Guatemala, lived on cacao and then indigo, and was shaken by earthquakes and eruptions. The cry of 1811, independence in 1821, resistance to annexation by Mexico and the State of El Salvador in the Federal Republic of Central America, the cause of Francisco Morazán, led to a sovereign republic in 1841. Coffee replaced indigo from the 1860s, the communal lands were abolished in 1881–1882, and a small oligarchy, later the Meléndez–Quiñónez family, governed until the Depression.

The coup of December 1931 and the massacre of 1932 opened five decades of military rule, the Football War of 1969 and the electoral frauds of 1972 and 1977. After the murder of Archbishop Óscar Romero in 1980 a twelve-year civil war between the armed forces and the FMLN ended with the Chapultepec Peace Accords of 1992. Since then the country has lived through ARENA and FMLN governments, dollarisation in 2001, gang violence, and the presidency of Nayib Bukele, with his state of exception, the legal tender of Bitcoin and the constitutional changes of 2025. Explore the ten ages below through selected events from the timeline.