As mencioned yesterday, we are on the road in Guayabal de Siquima. Its nice because we haven't travelled in a good while and this trip has reminded me of the magic of visiting new places.
We met Ricardo checking into our hotel, called Santa Martha, and immediately it seemed like a long lost friend. He began to share with us some of the arquelogical finds he has made since coming to this town five years ago. You want to see something really cool?, he said.
Ricardo and his girlfriend like to create rubbings of petroglyphs they have found, this is 'rock art', also called 'arte rupestre'. This is a legacy of the amazing and intricate local culture that was destroyed, forgotten and in some cases ignored over the last 500 years. The evidence is startling.
Everyone has heard about the Inca and the Aztec, but in this area there were neither empire, instead a federation of tribes called the Panches.
This spiral is almost certainly a lunar calendar, but Ricardo has some contacts that want toto do an astrological study to confirm the positioning and exactly how the calendar is marked by the sun and theI moon.
this guy keeps looking at me all throughout the process.
The mountain (triangle) can represent ascendance, the inverted mountain/triangle has other interpretations, its not always clear which way it up with the rubbings.
The images keep coming, some seeming to be geometric, others animals or people.
Its a valid question to ask - what sort of importance these images had to the people who lived here, in a time we moderns generally consider to be barbaric.
Are some of them maps? If so where do they lead?
To this town the Spanish came to a meeting, offering to teach the brutes the way of the Lord. A monk's account has the result of this first meeting, with over 400 panche locals in attendance, as well as a Muisca translator, as 2 weddings and 1 baptism, that is - 5 total 'converts'. Any missionary today would tell you that thats ais great first day, but the monk recounts that the Spanish decided to kill them all and hope for better results in the next village.
The images keep coming, and I can't help but think - who were these people?
One thing is certain - they had a story to tell us.
