Had a short flight from Bogota to Pitalito on Satena, the airlines changed the flight schedule a couple of times, so if you are planning to go to San Augustín make sure you double and triple check the flight times with the airlines. I was met by a different Jorge, who is my new guide. He is a fascinating individual; he studied yoga in Rishikesh at Swami Sivananda’s Ashram, worked in radio and tv production in Mexico, spent a couple of years in Sweden as a student, and has studied with a 108 year old Amazonian shaman. His next project is to make a video documentary about the creation myths of the shaman’s tribe. He has already made a short introductory video to San Augustin that is available on youtube. Our new driver is Luis Alfredo, whose family came from France.
When they picked me up at the airport, a friend of Jorge’s was there and she came with us to San Augustín as the airport is in Pitalito, about 45 minutes from San Augustín. She is a local artist, whose family has a coffee plantation here, but she married a Frenchman, and now lives in Montpelier. She is home for the winter, where she hopes to paint in her atelier. She very kindly invited us in for coffee, which gave me a first look at a local finca. Her traditional house was filled with works from local artists and a fairly large pottery collection made up of ancient items that had been found in the immediate vicinity. The coffee was good and the grounds and view beautiful. It was a delightful introduction to the region.
I came here to visit the UNESCO world heritage archeological sites and was immediately brought to El Tablon and La Chaquira. El Tablon had a few megalithic standing figures, some with remnants of paint still on them. The paint comes from blue berries, reddish blossoms, orange bark and different kinds of minerals. One of the figures was holding a baby with three small rectangular blocks on the top and to the sides of its head; they could be a headdress, but no one knows for sure. Another had the shape of an eagle’s face with a live snake in its beak wrapped around the bottom and sides of the figure. The human element was in the feet/hands and round earth stomach.
La Chaquira’s broken stones have a few figures engraved on them, only some of which are distinctly visible. The camera picks up more detail than the naked eye does. One of the more visible figures may well be a female deity/spirit. The setting for the stones is spectacular with a fabulous view over the deep canyon cut by the Magdalena River. A few waterfalls were visible from the look out point, down a moderately steep path from the entrance to the site. The entrance is down some fairly rough dirt roads that were being used by a whole horde of mountain bikers. Cycling and mountain biking are very popular in Columbia and whole avenues are closed off in Bogota on Sunday mornings just for bicycles. Columbia is also reputed to be the country with the most roads for cycling.
The next stop was to La Pelota, which has two figures facing the La Pelota mound. Some believe this is a natural hill, others, however, think it is also a tomb as the megaliths were found in tomb areas that were buried in rounded hills/mounds. Almost all of the uncovered figures were at least two meters underground. They estimate that only about 25 % of the tombs have been excavated. Excavation per se is no longer permitted to keep the sites and artifacts intact, but archeological work via radar detection is still being undertaken. Just down the hill behind La Pelota are the three figures comprising El Purutal, one of which still shows distinct coloration.
While we were going through the various archeological sites, which lie in a secondary rainforest, Jorge bought three different kinds of passion fruits for me to sample. The first, granadilla, was quite sweet and delicious; the second, cholupa, milder and a bit tangy but very refreshing; and the third, golupa, sour, but also refreshing. The little café next to La Pelota is run by a woman who grows a phenomenal number of orchids along with other flowering plants. For its size, Columbia is supposed to have the greatest diversity of hummingbirds, butterflies, and orchids in the world. The plant life here is amazing. During the first part of the trip in Boyacá province more Alpine-like and high desert vegetation predominated as we were mostly between 2600-3300m in altitude. San Augustin is about 1,700m with the surrounding archeological sites around 1,800-1,900. The difference in vegetation is noticeable. Banana, rubber plants, coffee plantations, and, of course, orchids are in abundance.
The Upper Magdalena River Culture tombs and megaliths were constructed mostly during their classical period from the 1st to 9th C CE. There are a few from the foundation period from ca. 1000 - 600 BCE, and there is evidence of human activity in the region from about 3,300 BCE. Over 600 statues and 40 burial grounds have been found in the officially recognized Alto Magdalena region. While the San Augustín Archeological Park is huge, only about a third of the statues are within its boundaries. The majority of the tombs are built in differing layers, probably for people from the same family, or were re-used over time. Slabs most often form the cover for the stone sarcophagi. They are often reminiscent of European dolmen. Some of the tombs have a canal leading from them, and most have a tunnel-like structure in front of the burial chamber. The tunnel is assumed to be the passage from death to the afterlife. Those with the canal are supposed to be tombs of women. The megaliths appear to be the guardians of the deceased and are placed either directly in front of the tunnel or two on either side. Those with male looking guardians are supposed to house female bodies/spirits and those with female guardians are supposed to have male bodies/spirits. No skeletons have been found in the tombs as the climate is not conducive to preservation, but a number of artifacts, some of which are gold, have been found, and looting was a problem prior to the government controls.
The main Park has a number of different sections, each with its own kind of figures, although there are features that seem to be common among them. Those with faces often have jaguar teeth, some deeply indented outside the lips and others that look like they lie on the lips. Apparently, some anthropologists have decided that the deeply incised ones outside are the male figures and the others the female. It is difficult to distinguish gender otherwise as there are only occasionally gender identifiers present. Women and men were considered equal and there is evidence of women rulers. Some of the clans may also have been matriarchal. As in El Tablon, La Pelota, and El Purutal, the figures in the Park often have jaguar, caiman, snake, and eagle features. Here they are more notably guardians of the tombs than at many of the other sites, where tombs without megalithic figures have been found. Many of the uncovered tombs have smaller figures, often those looking slightly inwards with the main larger image in the middle. It is not known whether this is to represent the deceased or whether this is a more powerful spirit for the, probably, very powerful person. Some of the figures hold babies, and one theory is that on one side of the Park the figures are dedicated to death, while on the other they are dedicated to life. The people who carved these amazing works of sacred art believed that life and death are part of a continuing cycle. Death is not anything to be feared, but a part of life and after death one will be reborn. The Lavapatas summit area, which is among the oldest, was radiocarbon dated at 3,300 BCE. The Lavapatas Fountain may well have been a birthing area. There are over thirty figures carved in the stones, many of which are hardly visible with the naked eye, but a few come out more clearly with the camera. There is a section with a seating area and places for feet where the water gently flows around the person seated. A shaman is carved in the stone with his rattle, perhaps easing the birth process or welcoming the newborn, who arrives via a water birth. There is a canal from this area that would take the blood and mucus away from the general water sources. The people who lived, worked, prayed, and died in this culture had a knowledge of hydraulics, geology, the Golden Ratio, and Fibonacci Sequence. All of the megaliths are based on the Fibonacci system. Many also include symbols that relate to the Southern Cross, which is visible for at least half a year from this location. This entire area was once part of the Amazonian rainforest, but when the Spanish arrived and agriculture took off in a major way, the forests receded to make way for pasture and plantations. Care is now taken to make sure that the areas where the megaliths have been uncovered are protected and tomb robbers severely punished.
In addition to the archeological sites immediately near San Augustín there are a few that are near and across the Magdalena Strait, a magnificent area where the river narrows around a bend. The Magdalena River flows all the way to the Caribbean, and it is suspected that when the Upper Magdalena Culture peoples left the area by 900 CE, for still unknown reasons, they followed the river north. The hats on the some of the megaliths, for example, are reminiscent of those worn by the indigenous people in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of the Caribbean.. There are also feathered headdresses depicted that relate to the Amazonian tribes, so it is believed they came to the Alto Magdalena region from the southern or eastern rainforests. The Alto Magdalena region is on the Columbian massif and the starting point for the split into the three Andean cordilleras: the Eastern, which includes Bogota and Boyacá province, the Central, which starts just over the Magdalena strait, and the Western nearer the Pacific. People moving up from the lower elevation rainforests would have found fertile ground for agriculture as the long dormant volcano had left tufa and good soil after its explosion probably 100,000 years ago. The coffee now grown in this region has won international awards. Across the Strait, in Isnos, sugar cane appears to be the main crop, although coffee plantations are spreading out across the mountain slopes here too. Producing brown sugar from the sugar cane is quite a laborious process, so at least some farmers are opting to change crops. In the midst of these lush plantations are more archeological sites, including that of Obando, with its small museum and three tombs, the earliest from about the 9th C BCE and the latest from the classical period, probably before the 7th C CE. The museum has two large murals depicting the genesis story of the ancient people, and how they came to the region as well as what happened when the Spanish arrived. It illustrates the story of what happened in a neighboring village, Timaná, in 1539. The people were supposed to give the Spaniards their most valued possession, which for the people was salt, not gold. When the indigenous leader, Timanco, presented their treasure to the head Conquistador, Pedro de Añasco, the Spaniard became furious and in front of the local people burned Timanco alive. His mother, Cacica Gaitana, tried to avenge her son’s death by gathering and leading an army of over 10,000 indigenous warriors to combat the Spanish. In the end,Gaitana won out and de Añasco was captured, tortured, beheaded, and quartered. His head was then carried around the other villages to show what native power looked like. The Conquistadors weren't able to take over any lands south of Timanco in what is today Columbian territory.
Alto de los Idolos and Alto de las Piedras are both relatively small sites in comparison to the larger Archeological Park, but they house different kinds of megaliths and tombs than the main one. In Alto de los Idolos there is a very large statue of a woman floating above the ground. It could represent a good spirit protecting the deceased as there are fewer individual tomb guardians here. In Alto de las Piedras there is a strange looking caiman cover on one of the tombs and some barely visible petroglyphs.
The megaliths and tombs are fascinating, not just for their visual imagery, but also for the mysteries that they hide. The Upper Magdalena River Culture peoples did not leave a written script and while the megaliths are filled with symbols, it is anybody’s guess as to what they really mean. The locations of the various sites are stunning, most often on hills/mountains overlooking lush valleys. All kinds of different birds sing, cicadas chirp, and the wind gently rustles through trees filled with colorful blossoms. The diversity of plant life is simply amazing.
In addition to visiting the archeological sites, Jorge took me to a coffee plantation to see how they produce their coffee and to a sugar cane production site, which was fascinating. We also stopped at an overlook for the Bordone Waterfall, which is reputed to be the third tallest in South America after Angel Falls in Venezuela and Iguazu in Brazil/Argentina/Paraguay. It’s impressive!
San Augustín town was in the midst of getting ready for Christmas with lit banners, trees and candy canes all across town. A couple of years ago the town had the world's largest nativity scene as all the townspeople dressed up as Israelites. Christmas is taken very seriously here. The town is walkable and safe. This is a wonderful destination for those who are interested in archeology, as well as those who would just like to spend some time away from major cities in a peaceful natural environment.
I want to thank Jorge for sharing his knowledge, not just about the sites but also about how to improve my videos, and Luis Alfredo for handling the rough roads so well. It is now back to Bogota for the night, before going on to other archeological sites in San Jose del Guaviare in the much lower elevation Orinoco Basin.
