The most important are the Archaeological Park, three kilometers from the city of San Agustin (alt. 1,730 m avg. temp. 18°C), the Chaquira, on the rocks overlooking the river gorge canyon, and the Alto des Los Idolos, the shaman cemetery, 26 kilometers north of the city.
The Archaeological Park is the site where the greatest number of statues is preserved. It consists of four terraces built in the middle of the jungle, Le Mesitas, burial mounds that covered some tombs and on which the statues stand, created to protect the deceased and not to be seen and admired.
Among these hills, an enigmatic people whose first traces date back to 3000 BC left the largest open-air museum in South America: over 500 statues, carvings, tombs, and sarcophagi located in the middle of the jungle, on deforested terraces, on huge rocks, and on hilltops.
Many of these statues range from one to six meters in height, weigh more than a ton, and represent duality in all its forms: light shadow, sun moon, life death.
We are in the department of Huila, in the southwestern area of Colombia, in a 500 square kilometer archaeological complex centered on the city of San Agustin. Here, between the 5th and 11th centuries AD, a civilization of tribes dedicated to agriculture, hunting, and fishing gave rise to a culture animated by jaguar priests, human sacrifices, and mythical animals, then mysteriously disappeared before the arrival of European colonists. Each tribe was led by shamans whose tombs contained funerary gifts, gold, and ceramics, mostly looted during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The statues were the guardians of the dead, their tombs, and their sarcophagi. They are anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures, but there are also unreal images, such as masks of monsters and hybrid beings.
Farmers, warriors, women with children, and then sacred animals like the jaguar, frog, snake, monkey, and eagle. The secrets of the San Agustin civilization are enclosed in these sculptures. Almost all the statues face east, in honor of the Sun God, are gray and two-dimensional, seem made of cement, but are actually volcanic stone and were once painted yellow, red, black, and white. Most are scattered over the 78 hectares of the San Agustin Archaeological Park, three kilometers from the city.
The ancient people had built villages of huts of which practically nothing remains today on the large meadows surrounding the Mesitas. From Mesitas C, the farthest from the entrance, a descending path surrounded by a tunnel of thick vegetation leads to the most important ceremonial site in the park and perhaps to the most complex sculpture in the entire archaeological circuit: La Fuente de Lavapatas (footwash), where religious ceremonies and ritual baths were held.
Here, on the bed of the Lavapatas stream, figures of snakes, lizards, salamanders, faces, and human shapes have been carved into the rock channeling water into a labyrinth of rivulets and small pools. From La Fuente de Lavapatas, the path climbs through the jungle along the ridge until reaching another very important site in the park: Alto del Lavapatas, the highest point in the area.
A green clearing artfully constructed by the ancient vanished civilization from which one can admire the entire landscape 360 degrees around and where one of the park’s most enigmatic statues is located: the Doble Io (the double self), a representation of an Idol on whose head crouches a semi-human faced monkey protecting several tombs.
Before concluding the park visit, one must walk “The Statue Trail,” a lonely path that leads into the jungle where thirty-five statues collected from all over have been placed on either side. Among these, the most famous are the farmer – depicting a man with two agricultural tools in his hands – and the warrior.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, the tombs and sarcophagi were plundered several times, and besides gold and ceramics, very important human remains were also dispersed, which are crucial for a more in-depth historical investigation into the origins and demise of the mysterious San Agustin civilization. The causes of the disappearance of this “stone people” are unknown. Perhaps the influence of the Inca empire, which extended from Peru to the south of present-day Colombia, was the main cause of this decline.
