Paraguay is a landlocked country at the heart of South America, divided by the Paraguay River into two very different lands: the green, well-watered Eastern Region of hills, forests and farmland, home to most of its people, and the dry plains and thorn forests of the Chaco to the west. The Paraná River, harnessed by the Itaipú and Yacyretá dams, forms much of its border with Brazil and Argentina. Hunter-gatherers reached these river basins by roughly 11,000 years ago; around 2,000 years ago speakers of Tupi-Guarani languages spread south through the forests, and Guaraní farmers living in village communities, or tekoha, grew manioc and maize and drank yerba mate, while Guaycuruan peoples such as the Payaguá and the Mbayá and the ancestors of the Ayoreo, Nivaclé and Enxet lived in the Chaco.

Around 1524 the Portuguese castaway Aleixo Garcia led Guaraní warriors across the Chaco to raid the frontier of the Andean empire, and in 1537 Spaniards searching for a route to the silver of Peru founded Asunción. After Buenos Aires was abandoned in 1541 it became the capital of the Río de la Plata: Domingo Martínez de Irala's alliances with the Guaraní, often coercive, created a mestizo, Guaraní-speaking society, and expeditions from this "mother of cities" founded Santa Fe, Corrientes and the second Buenos Aires. Paraguay became a separate province in 1617. Jesuit reductions gathered tens of thousands of Guaraní into mission towns whose militias defeated the slave-raiding bandeirantes at Mbororé in 1641, while the settlers of Asunción rose in the Comunero revolt of 1721–1735. After the Jesuits were expelled in 1767–1768 Paraguay became an intendancy of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, and in 1811, having defeated an army sent from Buenos Aires under Manuel Belgrano, Paraguayan officers deposed the Spanish governor on 14–15 May.

José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia ruled the isolated republic as Supreme and then Perpetual Dictator until 1840. Carlos Antonio López opened and modernised the country with a railway, an ironworks and the fortress of Humaitá, but his son Francisco Solano López led it into the Paraguayan War of 1864–1870 against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, which ended with his death at Cerro Corá and cost Paraguay territory and a large share of its people, by estimates that vary widely. Occupied and indebted, the country sold its public lands; the Colorado and Liberal parties, both founded in 1887, alternated in power amid frequent revolts, and Mennonites settled the Chaco. Paraguay won the Chaco War against Bolivia in 1932–1935, but the February Revolution, Morínigo's dictatorship and the civil war of 1947 left the Colorado Party in power, and from 1954 Alfredo Stroessner ruled for 35 years, building Itaipú with Brazil while persecuting his opponents. Since the coup of 1989 Paraguay has lived under the democratic Constitution of 1992, which made Guaraní an official language alongside Spanish; Fernando Lugo's election in 2008 ended 61 years of Colorado rule before his impeachment in 2012, and Santiago Peña of the Colorado Party has been president since August 2023.

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