The Cosmology and Symbolism gallery houses various Banco de la República Gold Museum masterpieces —admittedly, inside a vault, for safekeeping. But the value of what is kept there lies in the indigenous thought which gave those magnificent objects a meaning, a raison d'être.

We cannot know exactly what societies thousands of years ago thought, and as with indigenous peoples today, there was no doubt much variety in how those societies viewed the world and existence, in their cosmologies. Similarities nevertheless exist in the form and content of the symbolic thought of present-day Amerindian peoples. There are also likenesses between the symbolism of indigenous groups today and the objects their ancestors produced 500 or 2,000 years ago. We invite you to explore other realities, ones that have nothing to do with western thought, yet are no less logical for that, since they respond to different experiences in man's relationship with his environment, and to different life processes.