SAN AGUSTIN: “AN IMPONENT PLACE LOCATED TO SOUTH-WEST OF COLOMBIA”

In the south-west, between Huila and Cauca departments, the central range is expanded and as result a knot of mountains called Macizo Colombiano, where the three ranges born that’s why lots of rivers emerge to the interior of the mountains and open the space giving life to the nature, some of them goes to the west, others to east, south or north of the country, the most important is Magdalena river that pass through the country, at the beginning of the river was habituated by San Agustín culture that are recognized for the excellent stone work, carving,  painting the rocks according to their day to day, beliefs and religion or digging graves below the earth in order to give another atmosphere to the new travel that started when someone died.

AMAZING STATUES THAT HAVE CAUSE EMOTION FOR EACH ONE TO HAVE SEEN IT.

San Agustín was a culture that for unknown factors disappear before the colonization period, when Spanish colonists arrived to this territory they found another cultures that did not have characteristics similar to the work of San Agustín people, the only aspect about the origins of them was that in this region was a step where other cultures passed and interchange information or things that was called “Trueque” and they received a lot of knowledge of the cultures that passed there.

HOW WERE THE GRAVES IN SAN AGUSTIN CULTURE?

In San Agustín culture as other cultures the death was an important aspect because they thought that death is the beginning of a new life, the graves also were made according to social or economic status of the dead man. These are the most important aspects that make a typical San Agustín grave:

1.       Statues represented the divinities in special the god that protected the dead and his family.

2.       A corridor as the picture with two lines of monolithic columns (configured each one for only one rock) over each pair of columns was a slab as roof and the columns looks as humans.

3.       

The sarcophagus was according to the economical position of the dead man since de digging to the sarcophagus made by rock carved with facial features of the person that have a rest.

4.       Other sarcophagus where others family members, or slaves were buried alive and doped.

5.       The graves were adorned with ceramic and normal jewelry, few gold crafts were found in the graves.

  

AMAZING STATUES

In general, the San Agustín statues represented solar and moon divinities that always have between their hands and object symbolizing an offering gave by a member of the community related to the activity that the divinity protected.
Moon divinities had a female costume and sometimes have a bowl of water that means the rich and fertility of the earth, sometimes these statues are represented pregnant.

Chamanes (kind of native wizard) always use strong facial features or masks represented the power that was supposed they had.
Others are anthropologic statues (human forms) that hold in their shoulders a character that means the soul, the other me, as protector being,
Human statues represented the real life of each one of the persons and animal statues as protectors of the culture and environment.

  Is beautiful the integration the art with the environment, reflected in the art on the falls of he region the name of this monument is “Fuente de lavapatas” it has lots of pools connected among them and are carved figures of frogs, snakes and other animals. The most important is the rocks were caved in the same place that we found nowadays.