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Groups of humans with different cultures and different ways
of life exploited the diverse climates and the varied and abundant
resources found in the mountains of the mid-Cauca region for
thousands of years. The earliest settlers, ten thousand years
ago, were hunters and gatherers. Later, for around two thousand
years leading up to the Conquest - in the Early Quimbaya and
Late Quimbaya periods - the region was inhabited by farmers,
gold and salt miners, and craftsmen skilled in pottery and goldwork.
Between 500 B.C. and 600 A.D., the earliest goldworking societies
engaged in agriculture, hunting, fishing, and gathering wild fruit.
They built their homes in scattered fashion on natural plains
or on hillside terraces. They extracted gold from river sands
and salt from saltwater deposits, and used them as barter. Their
goldsmiths were specialists who produced objects that were notable
for the way they had mastered both techniques and aesthetics,
and in those objects they portrayed aspects of the social organisation
and symbolic thought of their communities.
Goldwork and pottery objects of this period both have features
like smooth, shiny surfaces, sober style, and realistic, sculpture-like
shapes inspired by fruits and female figures. Goldwork representations
of humans portray features like nudity, rounded outlines, stout
trunk, triangular face, prominent cheekbones, half-closed almond-shaped
eyes, the use of ornaments and ligatures, and hanging plates.
These figures were symbols of cultural identity for these groups.
The ritual ornaments and objects used by leaders transmitted messages
about their rank, social position and thought. In the mid-Cauca
valley and the mountains of Antioquia, the costumes of these leading
figures included few objects, almost all of them small. Commonly
found are nose and ear rings cast using the lost wax method in
a gold and copper alloy known as tumbaga. The wear and tear on
many of these ornaments is notorious, and is a sign that they
were used frequently. Only helmets and crowns were large, visible
emblems.
The poporos in which the lime was kept that was used with coca
leaves were symbols of fertility because of their colour and shine,
and the fact that they were shaped like women, marrows, pumpkins
and gourds. Leaders used them in ceremonies where they sought
reproduction in nature and the wellbeing of society, where they
themselves appeared essential to ensuring that life would go on.
A number of urns for the ashes of the dead, which have been found
in simple well tombs, represented marrows and pregnant women,
as if they were wombs where life was reborn after death. One funerary
urn is in the shape of a guan.
A further outstanding object in the Gold Museum's collection
is a poporo which represents a high-ranking woman adorned with
face paint, helmet and nose ring. Her meditative expression
and solemn posture, holding bars with birds, makes her look
as if she is taking part in a ritual.
This masterpiece, together with two helmets, a crown adorned with
imitation feathers and two containers in the shape of an elongated
gourd with lid, which were probably used for keeping and carrying
coca leaves in, were part of the regalia that several leaders
were buried with in a tomb in the town of Puerto Nare, in Antioquia's
mid-Magdalena region.
Goldsmiths of the Early Quimbaya period also made realistic
and stylised figures of various different animals. Those most
frequently represented were snails and insects in a state of
metamorphosis, such as butterfly pupas, which could have had
meanings connected with the cycles of nature and of society.
A pendant in the form of a quadruped with the head of a bird,
from Antioquia, contained carbon which the Gold Museum was able
to date as from 240 B.C. A further zoomorphous pendant, with
two stylised animals, was dated as from 190 A.D.
Major changes occurred in the societies that inhabited the mid-Cauca
region from 800 A.D. onwards. The population increased, as did
agricultural and textile production, and also the number of
pottery objects and gold ornaments that were made. Beliefs,
objects and symbols were transformed: primary burials in well
tombs with chamber became common.
Body changes and certain postures communicated people's characteristics,
such as their social group and rank. In figures of humans that
were buried with the dead to accompany them and protect them,
potters reproduced the body paint, which was applied with pottery
stamps and rollers, the white bead ligatures which deformed
arms and legs, and skull deformations.
Goldwork ornaments during the Late Quimbaya period often had simple
geometric shapes and schematic decoration. Some, like the nose
rings in the form of a hoop and made of twisted wire, were commonly
used. Ornaments were inserted in the wings of the nose, under
the mouth, and on other parts of the face.
Late Quimbaya period societies preferred to live in temperate
zones, both in scattered houses and in villages. They lived
from farming, hunting, fishing and gathering. They planted maize,
beans and sweet potatoes on the mountain slopes, with trenches
to control avalanches and erosion. They extracted gold and salt,
spun and wove, and worked clay and metals, part of all production
being set aside for bartering with neighbouring and distant
groups.
Numerous objects have been preserved, and today these give
us an idea of the daily lives of those communities. In hunting
and war they used lances and darts made from palm wood. They
hunted deer (Mazama), tapirs (Tapirus), peccaries
(Tayassu pecari), opossums (Didelphis), armadillos
(Dasypus), rabbits (Sylvilagus) and other animals.
Pottery spindle whorls were used for spinning cotton. The whorl,
which was fitted to the bottom of a wooden rod, kept up the
necessary rotary movement for twisting the thread and rolling
it around the spindle. These spinning instruments are so common
that we can imagine that textiles themselves were just as common.
A cotton ribbon with hanging metal plates is preserved at the
Museum, and has been dated as from 850 A.D. Pottery production
varied in the mid-Cauca region. In the south, they made objects
in many different shapes, some of them decorated with black
paint on a red or cream background, or a combination of these
latter two colours. Groups living in the northern part of the
mid-Cauca region, meanwhile, made brown or grey pottery with
diamond shapes and adorned with incisions and applied figures,
also orange-coloured vessels decorated with white paint.
Producing copper objects was an important activity. Goldsmiths
used this metal to make breastplates, bracelets, necklaces and
rattles.
Around 1540, Europeans found a large, diverse population living
in the mid-Cauca region. However, the wars of the Conquest brought
chaos, and this population was largely wiped out. The Spanish
conquistadors told in the chronicles of chieftains in this region
who lived in big houses surrounded by palisades, in which they
kept images and the desiccated bodies of their enemies, and
performed cannibalism rituals. They also told how the chieftains
dressed and wore ornaments which made them look like animals,
that they used ornaments of metal and feathers, painted their
faces and bodies, wore a long loincloth like a tail and animal
skins on their backs, and had long nails like claws.
In view of the different customs, languages and politics, the
Europeans classified the indigenous groups into "provinces",
which they called Caramanta, Zopía, Quincha, Irra, Anserma,
Quindo, and others. Several of these geographical names are still
to be found in the region today.
On the goldwork breastplates can be seen embossed figures of
a jaguar-man, frog-man and lizard-man, and these probably represented
the chieftains with their ritual animal attire.
Quimbaya
and the Gold Museum Exhibition
Helmets,
Nose Rings and Lime Containers. Symbols of Power in the mid-Cauca
Region and Antioquia in the Early Period.
Lizard-Men
and Feline-Lords. The Power of Transformation in the mid-Cauca
Region in the Late Period.
Womb-Urn
Burials. A Circular Vision of Life and Death.
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