Erin & Regan's South American Adventure

Hola,

We were up early the next morning for our ride to San Agustin.  It was much quicker in the jeep with the tour guide than it would have been in a bus, plus he took us to a good place for breakfast and then to a decent hostal in San Agustin (run by someone he knew, of course).

That afternoon we took a tour of the main site, near town (with a guide he recommended, of course).  Our guide was excellent, so full of information it is difficult to recall even a small part of it.  All the sites in the area contain burial tombs, like Tierradentra, but this time they are combined with stone statues and other stone carvings.  Each successive culture built on what was left behind by the previous one.

A typical sort of stone statue, note the belt-like clothing, this identifies the statue as female (on male statues the genitalia is visible).  Note also the asiatic eyes but the wide almost african nose.  There are several details like these which appear to link these statues to many of the ancient cultures on the planet which suggests the carvers knew of these distant places somehow.

The entrance to a tomb.  These three statues are guardians of the  tomb.  Notice that the figures to either side have both a human figure and a snake-like one.  The lower figure is a carving of a person and the upper figure is what they want to be re-incarnated as.

 

The figure is anthropomorphic, meaning part man part animal.  In this case the triangular head is that or a big cat, like a puma perhaps.

 

There is a river nearby and at this river was found the following "mating frogs" statue, they point the way to carvings in the river itself.

 

The river carvings show faces, animals, and people (and some anthropomorphic figures also)

       

At the top of a hill were found more statues and tombs.  Note again the statues which contain two figures, the person and the creature they wanted to be reincarnated as.

 

This large flat carving covered the entrace to a tomb, it is anthropomorphic showing a human head on an animals body (crocodile, I think).

 

This one resembles the head of a monkey.

This one shows a bird eating a snake.  The guide suggested this was linked to Quetzalcoatl the god of the Aztec/Toltec peoples.

This stone coffin is just that, the guide suggested a person was placed inside it before burial for mourners to visit and pay their respects.

This somewhat greusome looking statue actually depicts the birth of a child.  It shows a mother and the midwife with the child.

There is then a lovely walk through the forest to see many more such statues, here is Erin being terribly disrespectful to this statue which appears to have sticks up it`s nose.

A selection of statues.

 

This one continues the mating animal theme which we saw throughout, this time it`s monkeys.

This culture was also fixated on penises, these are apparently represent penises, one with foreskin, one without.

 

In addition to statues it appears these people had rather detailed knowledge of a person internal organs.  One statue had the inner structure of a human heart carved on it.  Another the internal reproductive organs of a woman.  The guide suggested that they could perform surgery on these organs, I think it´s more likely that they just cut up dead people.

One stautue had been defaced by someone carving their own name into it... that wasn´t really very clever now was it.  Needless to say they were caught.

There was also evidence that these people practiced the elongation of the head technique which we first saw in Peru.  They would break the skull and bind it into an elongated shape.  They believe this would give a person more intelligence, it´s not known whether it worked but it is known that the person did not live long after such an operation.