Short answers, pulled from the story.
South America includes twelve sovereign countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela. It also has two dependent territories, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and one internal territory, French Guiana.
South America has an area of 17,840,000 square kilometers, or 6,890,000 square miles. It ranks fourth in area after Asia, Africa, and North America, and fifth in population after Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America.
Among the oldest evidence of human presence is the Monte Verde II site in Chile, dated to around 14,500 years ago. People are thought to have crossed the Bering Land Bridge at least 15,000 years ago, then migrated south through North America and the Isthmus of Panama.
The Inca civilization dominated the Andes region from 1438 to 1533, holding its capital at the great city of Cusco. Known as Tawantinsuyu in Quechua, it reached nearly a hundred linguistic or ethnic communities, some nine to fourteen million people, connected by a 25,000 kilometer road system.
In 1494, Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, agreeing with papal support that land outside Europe should be an exclusive duopoly between them. It drew a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, giving land to the west to Spain and land to the east to Portugal.
Chile was the first South American country to abolish slavery, in 1823, followed by Uruguay, Bolivia, Guyana, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Suriname, and Paraguay over the following decades. Brazil was the last in 1888, also the last country in the Western world to do so.