Archaeologists have traced 15,000 years of history on the high plains and mountain slopes and in the Andean valleys of the Eastern Range. For ten thousand years, groups of humans engaged in hunting and gathering. Then, around 5,000 years ago, they gradually changed their subsistence methods, replacing them by agriculture and pottery. From 600 A.D. onwards, the region was inhabited by successive waves of people belonging to the Chibcha-speaking family, who came from Central America. When Europeans arrived in 1536, they found Guanes, Laches, Chitareros and other groups living in areas adjacent to the Muiscas. These groups were all very similar, because of their common origin and the fact that they spoke Chibcha languages. Although their ways of life were not identical, they used and bartered similar objects, which expressed the views they shared of the world, such as bird-man breastplates and pitchers or jugs.

The individual traditions of each people and the fact that various manufacturing techniques were used resulted in a range of ornaments and offering objects being made of gold, copper, and alloys of these. Three metallurgical styles have been identified, which were used by different people and related to certain geographical areas.

Farmers, artisans, traders and other ordinary people wore small, simple ornaments. Political and religious leaders on the cold, high plains wore ornaments with openwork decoration and hanging plates. Most of the costumes worn by chieftains on the western slopes of the range consisted of large laminar objects.

By around 1500, the economy was based on agriculture, salt and emerald mining, and the production of coca leaves, pottery and goldwork. These products were bartered, or were stockpiled by the chieftains so that the people could have something to live on in times of crisis.

Farming communities calculated sowing and harvesting times by observing the movements of the stars. Stone columns and blocks were lined up in the region, and these acted as observatories for their astronomers.

Goldsmiths cast identical objects in gold and copper, using stone matrices which enabled series of wax models to be made.

Cotton and sisal were spun using spindles that were driven by engraved stone whorls, and the resulting thread was used for making blankets, caps, diadems, bags and nets. These were woven and decorated with paint. Large quantities of fine quality and coarse, big and small, simple, painted blankets were woven on wooden looms. These were so valuable that they were used as gifts for chieftains and for wrapping the mummified bodies of important deceased persons in.

Notable in the showcase is the rich funerary regalia of a leading dignitary who was buried in Sogamoso, a Muisca pilgrimage site that was famous for its temple of the sun. The ornaments that chieftains wore conferred on them religious knowledge and the authority to get their people to obey them. According to documents in colonial archives of 1574, when chieftains ordered their people to do something, "….. they sent their criers to call them and sent their ear rings and blankets and hats as a sign".

Chibcha life was imbued with religious precepts which established regulations so that society and nature could live in harmony with each other. The priests, who were called 'jeques', presided over rituals, cured the sick, and restored balance in the universe by means of offerings and sacrifices.

People, birds and feline figures were represented on trays that were used for inhaling 'yopo'. The priests used this hallucinatory substance so they could enter alternative states of awareness, during which they communicated with sundry mythical beings.

Thousands of votive figures were made of gold, copper, tumbaga, wood, stone and clay. The different features of these were perhaps controlled, so that objects could be obtained whose meanings were related to the purpose of the particular offering that was made in lakes, caves and fields where crops were grown. These votive figures are a miniature world of their own, one that is inhabited by men, women, asexual beings and scenes, plus a whole host of animals and everyday objects. Most votive figures were offered up in groups. The priests placed the objects inside pottery containers of differing shapes: human, animal, phallic or hut.

One particular event in Muisca religious life was also captured in small offering figures. In the so-called "Sacrificio de la Gavia", a sacred child who had been brought from the Eastern Plains, where the sun rises, was tied to the upper part of a high post and killed with darts; his blood was then collected up in vessels and considered to be sacred.

The bodies of important dignitaries were preserved and placed in deep caves, wrapped in various layers of blankets, nets and skins. This custom persisted during the colonial era, but in secret, thereby enabling its practitioners to evade religious persecution. Carbon 14 dating has in fact shown that this mummy and accompanying anthropomorphous votive figures are from 1800 A.D., almost at the end of the colonial era.

Muisca and the Gold Museum Exhibition

Chieftains, Priests, Captains and Criers

Religious Life and Offerings

Eldorado Raft

The Three Goldwork Styles