Trips to Colombia

TRIPS TO COLOMBIA: SAN AGUSTÍN

One of the most important and monumental archaeological sites of Colombia is San Agustín, one old population located in spurs of the Colombian Bulk to the south of the department of the Huila, in a mountainous region, hill mixture and deep guns and equidistant of several strategically important points in any tourist itinerary: Popayán in the Cauca, Neiva in the Huila, Florence in the Caquetá, I graze in Nariño and the zone of Tierradentro, another Archaeological center in the department of the Cauca of extraordinary importance.

This region was inhabited between centuries I a.c and X d.c by several Augustinian indigenous cultures known to practice different cults, in particular undertakers, and left for the posterity numerous archaeological pieces like statues, monolithic statures of stone, coffins and petroglyphs with human and animal representations. They were agricultural towns, with an economy sustained in the culture of the maize, and the yucca, harvesting of fruits, fish and hunting.

The greater concentration of statues is 3 kilometers of the urban helmet, in the Archaeological Park San Agustín conformed by the Forest of the Statues, the complex known like Small tables, B, C and D, the Source of Lavapatas and the Stop of Lavapatas. The other archaeological sites are dispersed in an area of 500 kilometers squared between the municipalities of San Agustín and San jOse de Isno.

They stand out the Stop of the Idols, the Plank, the Chaquira, the Ball, Obando, the Soap, the Stop of Stones, the Stop of the Guacas, the Mortiño, Quebradillas, Quinchana, the Shutdown, Naranjos and Lavaderos.

At San Agustín it is arrived by highway from Bogota Santa Fe (at 529 kilometers), or by air to Neiva and to cross 227 kilometers by earth or can take a flight (not to regulate) to Pitalito that is only 30 Kilometers.
Patrimony of the Humanity

The historical monument concept includes/understands not only the work of architecture but also the rural or urban atmosphere in which is in particular the evidence of a civilization, an important development or an historical event.

In accordance with these principles, the Archaeological Park of San Agustín, builds of a town of sculptors del that do not know with certainty their origins nor their reasons for dispersion, was registered in the List of the World-wide Patrimony of the Humanity by UNESCO in 1995.

Diverse theories exist on their beginnings; it has been spoken even of Mayan influences, olmecas and of Teotihuacán, that arrived at the Colombian Bulk at very early times.

One also asserts that it was the first center from where the cultures of the south and the north were radiated. The certain thing is that they had to remain in this zone during several centuries, because of another way the different stylistic stages in their sculptural work would not be explained, which, according to the tests realized with Carbon 14, date from the century I SAW a. C. until most recent of century XII d. C.

Several investigators suppose that the town of San Agustín, pressed by militant invaders, dispersed by the rivers and ways of the east towards the Amazonia and the Orinoco; in their flight, the vestiges remained hidden in the forest and the tropical forest. To the arrival of the Spaniards, the inhabitants of the region had forgotten the tradition and probably they did not know the origins of these stones.

The art of San Agustín, in a process of 2,000 years, expresses and contains common meaning and symbolisms to several indigenous colectivities of America. Although the aspect of greater importance in San Agustín is its sculptural work, are not due to forget the funeral constructions, the artificial knolls, the portable altars or tombs in the form of dolmen. It is important to emphasize the Small tables, the source of Lavapatas consecrated to the deities of the water, necrópolis of the Stop of the Idols, the Stop of Stones, Quichana and the Vegón.