The enigma of Saint Augustine
The most important archaeological site in Colombian territory is the southern part of the department of Huila, located in the south of the country.
In this area, Brother Juan de Santa Gertrudris discovered, in 1757, several tombs adorned with carefully crafted statues, some several meters high.
Subsequently, the settlers founded a village nearby, which was called San Agustín, in honor of the saint.
Very little is known about this ancient culture, mistakenly called “Augustinian”, since unfortunately the tombs were looted during the 19th and 20th centuries.
To get to the place you must, first of all, arrive in Neiva, the hot capital of Huila. Then there is a three-hour bus trip to Pitalito, a dusty town located half an hour away from San Agustín.
In San Agustín, a typical Colombian town with low white houses and red balconies, one can stay in modest hotels and taste the typical river fish, the “mojarra.”
The visit takes place in two days.
The first day you visit the archaeological park, where you can admire the tombs and statues, some of which are up to three meters high.
On the other hand, you can admire the so-called “lavapatas fountain”, a rock carefully carved in a torrent. The objective of these sculptures and these petroglyphs (or cave paintings) seems to be related to the sacredness of the place, which was used as a huge cemetery.
During the afternoons, there is often an excursion on horseback, essential since the places to be visited are too far from each other to walk.
Other statues are admired, some of various colors. On the other hand, you reach a panoramic place where you can see other petroglyphs as well as spectacular distant waterfalls.
On the second day, an excursion is made in a country vehicle in which some shortcuts of exotic beauty can be admired, such as the famous “strait”, where the Magdalena River flows between two narrow rock walls. Then we visit other statues and other funerary remains, among which is the tallest statue that this ancient culture left us, which is more or less five meters.
When did this culture develop?
Why did it become extinct?
According to the results obtained with the carbon-14 method, this ancient people mentioned already inhabited the region in the 3rd millennium BC.
What was its origin?
There are several theories about this. Some suggest that this town derived from the Olmecs of Mexico, since the statues in the San Agustín area recall the Mexican statues of the Olmec culture.
Others, observing the statues, and in particular the Negroid noses represented in them, sustain that the people in question derive from some Melanesian islands in the Pacific Ocean or directly from Africa.
Unfortunately, very few human remains remained, since the “guaqueros”, that is, the peasants who searched for gold, destroyed them during the preceding centuries without understanding their archaeological importance.
However, one of these “guaqueros”, called Libardo Sotelo Meneses, preserved many ancient pieces in his private museum, among which is a complete skeleton and other human remains, which, however, were not studied in depth. If the Negroid characteristics of these remains had been approved, the “Melanesian” theory could gain importance.
The study of the tombs, which are often covered constructions but not underground, shows that in this ancient town there were class differences. In general, the tombs of the “nobles” or clan leaders were better decorated and frequently covered either by a sarcophagus or by a statue representing the “totem.” The tombs of the clan chiefs were, in addition, located on earthen mounds, either for a mystical reason, such as bringing them closer to the sun, or for a more practical reason, such as preserving them from possible floods. These mounds are nothing more than “protopyramids” and in them we can already see the embryo of a more complex civilization.
The plebs, on the other hand, were buried in tombs of lesser value and no statue was placed at the entrance to them.
This ancient people was probably divided into clans.
The statues, some anthropomorphic but with feline images, others with representations of eagles or snakes, represented an animal considered sacred by the clan, which was often identified with it, and from which they believed it derived, considering it a semi-deity.
Other statues represented scenes of human sacrifice, since some children can be seen holding the left hand of the sculptures while in the right hand stones were taken that were used to sacrifice them, probably to the Sun, considered the Absolute Divinity.
Studying the statues of Saint Augustine, it is noted that this town must have had relations with the Amazonian tribes, since in some of them masks similar to those used in the Amazon were sculpted and the male genital organ was represented held vertically with a rope, as observed in some jungle towns.
The symbolic animals used as totems are: the frog, which symbolizes rain and fertility, the snake, which means life and death in most pre-Columbian cultures, rodents, as an example of fertility, and the jaguar and the eagle, symbols of strength and majesty.
This ancient people, who had not reached the age of metals but were stuck in the stone age, were nevertheless able to cultivate corn, lived in circular wooden huts and made fantastic sculptural creations.
The “dolmen” or megaliths, of volcanic origin, were worked with hard stones found near rivers. In addition, these people worked gold, one of the most ductile metals, whose creations can be admired in the Gold Museum in Bogotá.
Why did this culture become extinct?
When Sebastián de Belalcazar from Extremadura arrived in the upper Magdalena Valley in 1536, this ancient culture had already been extinct for more or less three centuries.
Probably the influence of the Inca empire, which extended from Peru to the south of present-day Colombia, was the predominant cause of this decline.
Did these ancient people know writing?
It doesn't seem like it, but some “evolved” petroglyphs, today jealously guarded in the indigenous territory of the Yanacona, perhaps indicate that the path to reach the pictograms was not too far away.
Currently, the Colombian government has fenced off the entire archaeological zone, which is guarded to defend against looting by the “guaqueros.”
It is hoped that in the near future the necessary funds will be found to study this mysterious ancient culture in more depth.
YURI LEVERATTO
