El viaje

There is a lot to cover here. Lets start with the nice people we met. Siggi, his wife Helga, Grid and her son Johann.

Siggi is an old Friend of Bernd and both of them convinced us to spend the next day with them venturing around. Siggi has been staying here for a month or so and he seemed quite knowledgeable , so we gladly accepted their offer.

And we did extremely well do to so! Siggi was quite particular about going to the first site at a certain time.He was armed by a Sony Alpha also and the way it goes between camera men on the road, you gotta first eye eachother up and down a little to find out if you can use your weapon.

So the day for our little new formed group started by going to La Chaquira.

And as we came down here i immediately realized why the time was so important. No1, we had perfect light, but no2: you only get to „understand“ La Chaquira when you go here in the morning since the statue is facing the sun and that is one of the main reasons it was placed there, overlooking the magdalena valley, with its front facing the sun, rasing its arms towards it. Spending protection and fertility ? There is a lot of room for interpretation with all of these figures but the astrological implications by the way these satues are placed cannot be argued away since mooncicles and change of seasons for example are extremely important for people who live of the land.

Siggi nailed the timing. We were also extremely lucky because it was raining the entire week before and we had the first day of sun to get a look at probably one of the most important pre-colombian cultural remains in history of this country.

( and in the perfect light and all alone. Thank you Siggi !!!)

She is overlooking and or protecting the valley.

The valley is littered with massive waterfalls and is one of the more fertile and beautiful places you get to see on this planet.

La Chaquira is also carved from the other side so throughout the day it is constantly facing the sun.

We were all super excited but this was only the beginning of an insane day.

I cannot finish the post now since we are about to hop on a bus to a valley where we will not have internet but i will update the post once back online. But i will leave you the foreword of a book from a guy who has been studying these statues for 30 years.

Long before the old-world invasion of America, the Pueblo Escultor inhabited the headwaters of the
southern Colombia, from several centuries before our current era until some seven or eight centuries after. They were the creators of hundreds of monolithic stone statues, forming the greatest library or stone images in Americas history, many or which may still be seen near their original sites today. All are representative, all portray strange, fantastic figures, each one is unique, each one evocative and suggestive. The creators of these sculptures placed them all within the earth (buried them, in modern, occidental terms in sacred underground
centers. (tombs), from which they were eventually sacked by modern tomb scavengers, who left them as they now are dispersed above ground.

Today we understand that these vast „burials“ actually constituted „pagamentos“ or „payments“ compacts made with the Pachamama, with the earth and with the guiding powers, affirming that humankind will gratefully appreciate nature’s bounty and will correspondingly steward and protect the water, the land and all the natural world that sustains us. The inhabitants of the other world resourced by the ancient sculptors in the revealing of their cosmology and their sacred practices are represented by the subterranean figures portrayed in the many Pueblo Escultor monolithic sculptures.

After La Chaquira we headed to the Parque Arqueológico de San Agustín. Here you find the largest collection of these sculptures. Our group had organized a guide for the tour through the park. Jorge , is a charming yoga instructor who used to have a farm right next to the park. There is little people who are more fascinated by these sculptures and few people with wilder theories about their messages and meanings.

Before we get into it, a quick disclaimer. Since there is so little that is actually know about this culture, there is lots and lots and more room for interpretation here. I am fascinated by the whole thing so i think the best and most digestive way to start to get an idea of the multiple levels of meanings and messages going on here, is to talk about symbolism.

A good place for that is the chakana.

The chakana or Inca Cross is one of the oldest symbols in the Andes.

The chakana is a stepped cross made up of an equal-armed cross indicating the cardinal points of the compass and a superimposed square.

The square is suggested to represent the other two levels of existence. The three levels of existence are Hana Pacha (the upper world inhabited by the superior gods), Kay Pacha, (the world of our everyday existence) and Ukhu or Urin Pacha (the underworld inhabited by spirits of the dead, the ancestors, their overlords and various deities having close contact to the earth plane). The hole through the centre of the cross is the axis by means of which the shaman transits the cosmic vault to the other levels.

The realms are not solely spatial, but were simultaneously spatial and temporal .Although the universe was considered a unified system within Incan cosmology, the division between the worlds was part of the dualism prominent in Incan beliefs, known as Yanantin. This dualism found that everything which existed had both features of any feature (both hot and cold, positive and negative, dark and light etc)

I will come back to the dualism but lets focus on the 3 levels of existence to let me make my point. First of all lets remember that these statues are not Incan. The chakana is omnipresent throughout the Andes.

But why am i talking about it so much?

So a lot of the symbolism in the sculptures here is connected to the different planes of existence, and often, for example here it is connected to life represented by the form of the ovary organ. You can clearly see the the shape of the fallopian tube.

You cut this and have a part of the chackana.

You cut it differently and there is a crocodile jaw.

And we are just talking about one of the symbols or forms that we can discover in this statue here.

Think i am crazy ? Have a look at the statue!

It gets better. The backside of it.

We, of course, all see a heart here. It took archeologists three years to figure this one out. Turns out it actually represents a crocodile skin,

cut in the middle and folded to the sides.

Look at it again. Bonkers!

It takes a level of imagination and awareness of detail that most of us are not capable of. I also love the way that everything is inspired by nature. Obviously, since this is what they were surrounded by. Let me give you another nice example of the ovary symbol.

Which you might also find , three steps down the road when you tale the time to see a common fern unfolding. This one i found 4 meters away from the statue.

Talk about the holy trinity, triangles or the chakana. But now i am just treasing your and my mind(s)..

Another nice example is the symbol for female fertility and women in general which i saw in the museo del oro.

Totally random right?

All things are connected. You just need to open your eyes a little. Nowhere can you learn this better by looking at these statues. It really is mindblowing.

Lets talk about mathematics. Pure logic, no room for interpretation on an intermediate level. So Symmetry we can all grasp and have an eye for.

But how to achieve perfect symmetry in the jungle 3 or 5 thousand years ago , that complies with our modern rules of mathematics to the dot, someone still has to explain to me in a comprehensible way. Its fucking nuts.

There is more to come but i need a quick coffee and clear my head.

The representation of characters with fierce animal traits is common in the statues: beings with claws, round and almond-shaped eyes and above all,prominent and sharp canines.

These features usually appear in statues of beings that combine human and animal attributes.

Varicus interpretatiors suggest that these originate from feline simian or saurian features. It is also argued that these representations relate to the importance of these animals in many native American mythologies, particularly those associated with myths of the origin of social groups,
clans or persons, or those that relate to individuals who possess supernatural powers and ancestral knowledge.This here is quite clearly a shaman.

Another one .

And just quickly about the grave mounts, using radiocarbon testing, numerous studies have confirmed that some 2,000 years ago, during the Regional Classic Period, funerary
centres with large tombs were built in which important people, with
great spiritual or political power, would be buried. These tombs were composed of slabs, statues and stone
sarcophagi, constructions that were later covered with earth to form artificial mounds up to four meters in height. In some cases more than one tomb would be placed inside a mound, which could house the remains of several people.
This way of burying the dead was characteristic of the vast
territory of upper Magdalena.

And here we come to , at least for me, the most interesting part of it all. The Doble Yos.

What are we being told here? Preuss, a german ethnologist, came up with the term „Das zweite Ich“ or
„Second I“ to describe them, which
became, in spanish translation, „Doble Yo“ or „Double I“ .He seemed to be suggesting something like a totemic animal or tribal incarnation, and at the same time a personal überbeing, a psychological superstratum.

There are similarities to the Olmec stone sculptures where humans wear above their heads great masks as second or supernatural faces of their own.

To hide behind a mask or animal skin is not new to us. I like he idea of expressing your „other side“ . To me i does not necessarily has to be an überbeing or a supernatural face. More in the Incan direction of dualism where everything is composed of positive and negative, black and white, ying yang, call it what you will.

I feel most people are not in touch with that other side of them and would better stop wearing masks, if they even realize that they are wearing them anymore. Whichever the case may be, the problem is obviously also an older one. In this case here i was quite surprised since the mask looks rather „modern“

The last thing i will mention is the Lavapatas Fountain.It is a very impressive complex of canals, pools, and engravings representing humans, reptiles and amphibian creatures that cover the
surface of a natural riverbed.

These species might have had a special meaning, probably associated to water. Some researchers consider that the Lavapatas Fountain was used for ritual purposes.

With all these hidden figures and meanings i started seeing things. I am not sure if this was made intentionally but to me this is clearly a skull. Its so obvious ,it cannot be a coincidence.

However, after around 5 hours of tour and countless stories our heads were spinning. And i feel a little bit like it now since there is , potentially, 20 sides you can write about any of these statues. I barely just scratched the surface here.

Shout outs to our gang ,who we spend the day with.

And Siggi deserves a special mention , not because we will end up best friends anytime soon but the man has an exceptional eye for all natural things

and he certainly knows how to use his weapon.

I loved the fact that he took a lot of pictures of trees or plants and things other to the statues.

And this gives me a perfect excuse to mention the orchids in the archeological park. Sometimes Siggi and i were in a doble jo frenzy as Lu showed me after.

But there were some beauties.

I have a lot more stories about these statues and i also got the book of David Dellenback , who i think is probably one of the leading researchers. I am happy to talk about these endlessly over good dinner !

Lets end with my favorite one of them all.