At the entrance of the Museum, the visitors will find the panel Colombia a country of diversity, as a prelude to the content of the first room in a safety vault: Gold and copper cultures in the pre-Hispanic times of Colombia.

This room holds a representative sample of the cultures in the different archaeological and metal crafts communities in Colombia, followed by Zenú metal crafting. One of the showcases in this room has 125 melted filigree earrings, a distinctive technique of this community.

Around 1500 B.C., societies existed in America whose socioeconomic organisation led to the rise of specialists, such as goldsmiths. American metallurgy had its origins in Peru, but it gradually spread over a wide area which included much of south western Colombia. In the Andes, the impulse for metallurgical innovation came from religious thought and the elite who held power. Metals were used to materialise the ideology that governed everyday life.

Pacific Coast - Tumaco

Between 700 B.C. and 350 A.D. on the plains and in the mangrove swamps along the Pacific coast in southern Colombia, communities of fishermen, sailors, farmers and goldsmiths from the Tumaco - La Tolita culture made hammered ornaments in gold and platinum. It is from this region that the oldest metal objects found so far in Colombia have come, dating from 500 B.C.

Nariño High Plains - Nariño

Societies of farmers, lama shepherds and merchants lived from 400 to 1600 A.D. on the high plains and in the valleys of the Andes in Nariño province and northern Ecuador. Two groups of ornaments typify their goldwork: one consists of hammered, embossed objects made of fine gold with geometric designs; the other, hammered objects made of copper and gold-copper alloys (tumbaga) and copper and silver alloys, the aim having been to achieve different surface textures and colours.

Calima Region

The valleys of the Calima and Dagua rivers in the Western Cordillera were inhabited from around 1500 B.C. It was at this time that the Ilama-period potters expressed their beliefs in pottery; later, during the Yotoco period, between 200 B.C. and 1200 A.D., they produced numerous hammered and embossed ornaments in fine gold, which adorned their leaders, even after death. In floodable parts of the River Cauca valley, like the Malagana site, between 400 B.C. and 600 A.D. the most important leaders also wore gold ornaments as symbols of their power and their mythical and religious beliefs.

Magdalena Valley - Tolima

The hot mid-Magdalena valley and the slopes of the cordilleras in Tolima and northern Huila are regions where rivers with gold-bearing sands abound. From the earliest years of the Christian era to around 1000 A.D., the inhabitants were notable for their use of ornaments shaped like insects and fantastic animals, cast in fine gold, and for their schematic breastplates, which conjure up images of man transformed into a bat and feline figure.

Mid-Cauca Valley - Quimbaya. Early Period

The mountainous mid-Cauca valley region was inhabited by agricultural, mining and goldworking societies. For more than a thousand years, between 500 B.C. and 600 A.D., Early Period goldsmiths expressed their technical mastery in the realistic, sculpture-like shapes and smooth, shiny surfaces of objects which they generally made of gold and copper alloys, using the lost wax method.

Mid-Cauca Valley - Quimbaya. Late Period

The population of the mid-Cauca region grew from 800 A.D. onwards and spread southwards and westwards, and their beliefs and symbols changed. Around 1540, the Europeans found a large population whose gold ornaments were in simple, geometric shapes with schematic decoration, the designs embossed on sheets of gold or tumbaga.

Cauca Goldwork

In the area around Popayán in Cauca province, in the Central Cordillera, gold objects were made after 900 A.D. which reflect a complex, symbolic thought, where the bird-man figure predominates in ornaments cast using the lost wax method and whose surfaces were then gilded.

Upper Magdalena - San Agustín

The mountainous areas near the source of the River Magdalena in the San Agustín region were home, between 100 and 1000 A.D., to peoples who expressed their social differences in the ways they buried their dead and made funerary shrines that were protected by statues carved out of stone. Although the use of gold ornaments was not as common as elsewhere, they worked extremely pure gold to create smooth hammered objects, and occasionally embossed ones, with animal motifs.

Upper Magdalena - Tierradentro

The area in the north of Cauca province was called Tierradentro because of its rugged, mountainous terrain. Societies lived there between 150 B.C. and 900 A.D. who buried their leaders with sumptuous hammered and embossed gold ornaments. Tierradentro is notable for its underground funerary chambers, called hypogeums, which were excavated inside the high mountains into shapes which recalled the homes of the living. In these funerary chambers they placed pottery urns containing the exhumed bones of one or more individuals.

The Eastern Cordillera, the Muiscas and their Neighbours

The high plains, slopes and valleys of the Eastern Cordillera were gradually settled by Chibcha-speaking peoples from 600 A.D. onwards. The various groups found there in 1536 included Muiscas, Guanes, Laches and Chitareros. Their goldwork is notable for religious offerings made of gold, copper, and copper-gold alloys.

Urabá and Chocó

The peoples living along the coast and rivers and in the foothills surrounding the Gulf of Urabá enjoyed many trading routes and resources. Around 300 A.D., these farming and goldworking societies used gold and tumbaga to represent people and wildlife, which were symbols of their thought. Central American groups learned of metallurgy from their neighbours in Urabá. Meanwhile, communities living in Chocó, on the Pacific coast, exploited alluvial deposits of gold and worked metals in a similar way to how the goldsmiths of the Panama isthmus did.

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Nahuange Period

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in northern Colombia, was inhabited by farmers and artisans who worked stone and metal. Between 100 A.D. and 900 A.D., during the Nahuange period, societies who had settled on the coast were notable for their use of hammered ornaments in copper and gold alloys, with highly-polished surfaces and reddish tones.

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Tairona Period

After 900 A.D., the population of the Sierra Nevada increased and spread towards the mountain slopes. These Chibcha-speaking societies, who survived until the Spanish conquest, built the foundations of their cities from stone slabs and linked them together by paved pathways, which are still there today. Their political and religious leaders wore elaborate figures made of copper and gold alloys; cast using the lost wax method.

The goldwork of Colombia's Caribbean plains is part of the history of central and northern Colombia and the Central American isthmus. The different groups who lived in this area exchanged knowledge and objects for centuries, and they thus produced objects with common shapes and using common technology. As each people developed new adaptations to the environment, new technologies and types of social organisation, so their metallurgy became different and more typical. This is how the characteristic goldwork of Zenú society gradually came into being.

Schematised human figures were made from the Yucatán peninsula right down as far as southern Colombia. In the Zenú region, these ornaments were initially made from high-quality gold.

Pendants in the form of a bird with spread wings were common in Costa Rica, Panama, Urabá (Antioquia), the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and the Zenú region. Breastplates and pendants with diverging spirals were worn in parts of Panama, the Zenú region and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, although each region had its own particular alloys or sizes.

The animals with raised tail that were depicted in Urabá included animal figures that were a mammal-bird hybrid, whereas on the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Plains, feline figures and great anteaters were produced.

The gold weave, water and the land

Zenú people lived on a network of rivers and marshes that were interwoven with artificial channels, which drained off floodwater. They imagined their universe as a weave, a fabric on which living beings rested, like the metal 'weave' of thousands of earrings that depict men and animals. The manufacturing and decorative technique that typified Zenú goldwork was cast filigree, which imitated a metal weave.