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©Image of inyucho on Wikimedia Commons

The Necropolis of Tierradentro, a living museum between mountains and valley

The National Archaeological Park of Tierradentro is an archaeological reserve located in the Department of Cauca, in the heart of the Central Cordillera of the Colombian Andes. The place is recognized worldwide today because it contains impressive funerary structures, underground, carved in rock, decorated and of great architectural complexity; better known as hypogea. The park's monuments bear witness to the social complexity and cultural richness of a pre-Hispanic society in the northern Andean region.

This region, baptized by the Spanish conquerors since the 16th century, has been mentioned by various travellers, chroniclers and researchers since the time of the conquest, although its methodical classification and documentation through excavation work would not lead until the 1930s. twentieth century.

In the investigations, it was determined that this extensive network of tombs was used between 600 AD and 900 AD. The most important archaeological sites in the park are called Alto del Aguacate, Alto de San Andrés and Alto del Duende.

The most outstanding element are the underground mass graves. These constructions reach a depth of up to nine meters, and are made up of a descent shaft with stairs that serve as access to the burial chamber, which is decorated on its walls and columns by a series of geometric, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic designs, some in relief, others painted with red and black colors on white.

The chambers, in their structure, reproduce the interior of houses, where objects such as metals, grinding hands, necklaces and ceramic vessels have been found. These funerary structures are located mostly on the tops of hills, flattened for this purpose, or on the edges of mountains, always close to the dwelling places.

The Tierradentro Archaeological Park occupies a very prominent place in Colombian archaeology, currently being an important destination thanks to the monumental character of the relics that are preserved there.

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©Image by CarlosE Duarte from Wikimedia Commons

Alto del Aguacate, one of the most important sites in Tierradentro.

The archaeological monuments are located in a mountainous knot of abrupt topography that is extremely uneven, and were carved out of the living rock. The stone statues found are also of great importance. They are carved in stone of volcanic origin and represent standing human figures, with their upper limbs placed on their chest. Male and female figures can be recognized with various adornments, as well as feline and amphibian representations.

It is believed that the society that developed these imposing structures had cultural characteristics similar to that of San Agustín, another important Colombian archaeological site.

Such characteristics can be observed in aspects of ceramics, statuary and goldsmithing. Currently, the Paez indigenous populations that inhabit the region claim their continuity with respect to the societies that built the hypogea in past times.

The archaeological site was declared in 1995 as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO for being an important reservoir of pre-Columbian culture. The park facilities have an archaeological and an ethnographic museum, where traces of human groups are exhibited, particularly farmers, who transformed part of the complex geography to settle in the region more than 1000 years ago, transforming the edges of the mountains and building their funerary structures in the highest areas of the territory.

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