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The guinea pig was first domesticated as early as 5000 BC for food by tribes in the Andean region of South America the present-day southern part of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia,[16] some thousands of years after the domestication of the South American camelids.[17] Statues dating from circa 500 BC to 500 AD that depict guinea pigs have been unearthed in archaeological digs in Peru and Ecuador.[18] The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped animals and often depicted the guinea pig in their art.[19] From about 1200 AD to the Spanish conquest in 1532, selective breeding resulted in many varieties of domestic guinea pigs, which form the basis for some of the modern domestic breeds.[20] They continue to be a food source in the region; many households in the Andean highlands raise the animal, which subsists on the family`s vegetable scraps.[21] Folklore traditions involving guinea pigs are numerous; they are exchanged as gifts, used in customary social and religious ceremonies, and frequently referenced in spoken metaphors.[22] They also play a role in traditional healing rituals by folk doctors, or curanderos, who use the animals to diagnose diseases such as jaundice, rheumatism, arthritis, and typhus.[23] They are rubbed against the bodies of the sick, and are seen as a supernatural medium.[24] Black guinea pigs are considered especially useful for diagnoses.[25]