Trips to Colombia

TRIPS TO COLOMBIA: TIERRADENTRO

The name of this region, tax from the time of Spanish Conquista, reflects the geographic characteristics of a territory nailed between high mountains of the Central Mountain range. Tierradentro, located in the department of the Cauca, is the reflection of the existence of pre-Columbian cultures that left huge manifestations of funeral architecture.

Its maximum artistic expression is represented in the known underground tombs like hipogeos, some excavated to more than seven meters under earth and decorated in its interior with paintings of geometric forms in red and black on target, and with reliefs of anthropomorphous figures.

The archaeological zone, at the moment lived to a large extent by Paeces natives, includes/understands the area that surrounds to the population of San Andres de Pisimbalá, and the most representative hipogeos are in the Hill of Segovia, the Stop of the Genie, the Plank, the Stop of San Andres and the Hill of the Avocado. There it will be able to also visit a museum that conserve found ballot boxes of ceramics inside the tombs, as well as devices and utensils that illustrate the cultural surroundings of the indigenous community Paez.

The archaeological region of Tierradentro received east name of the Spanish soldiers to the control of Sebastián de Belalcázar, that at the beginning of century XVI found obstacles in the conquering penetration, due to the mountainous and broken conformation of the land, to their deep and mighty rivers, and to the opposition of the Indians paeces.

Located in the Colombian Central Mountain range, it includes a surface of 1,900 kilometers square. The nucleus of the archaeological vestiges includes the present municipalities of Inzá and Belalcázar, especially, the environs of San Andres de Pisimbalá, where they are main necrópolis and where the present Archaeological Park was delimited, registered in the List of the World-wide Patrimony of the Humanity of UNESCO in 1995.

The Spanish priest fray Juan of Santa Gertrudis, founder and doctrinero of indigenous towns, who visited the region in 1756, was first in writing on the presence of indigenous tombs in the zone in his book Wonders of the Nature.

The belief in a world where the existence extends, is one of the most important subjects of the human thought. The culture of Tierradentro was not other people's to this question and it left a very important legacy us in his archaeological vestiges.

In the funeral rites of this culture two phases are had shortage. The primary burial, that included the construction of a grave - some were small cylindrical pits where as soon as flexionado- fitted the body, within which were placed some objects of their property and foods for the passage to the new existence.

The second part of the ritual was fulfilled when the bones, already desencarnados, were transferred to new graves of majors dimensions - hipogeos-, that were used for the collective burial of a human group, differentiated socially. The walls and the ceiling were covered of white earth, on which parallel lines were painted, square and concentric rhombuses in colors red and black. According to some hypotheses in certain pre-Columbian towns, the red one meant the blood and the life; the black, the death and the dark; and the target, the light and the birth.

This type of decoration explains to occur cyclical of death and renovation. Predominant the air line in the design of this internal decoration is interrupted by some human figures of great proportions with the arms in stop, or by concentric circles like solar representations, medialunas and small lizards.

In some of these hipogeos the red black decoration and indicates the elements of union between beams and columns, and the design of the concentric rhombuses is equal to the result of the entretejido one of vegetal fibers used in the indigenous constructions, which makes think that it is the representation of the house while still alive that had these inhabitants of Tierradentro.