South America is the perfect place to keep secrets.
Its jungles, mountain ranges and river systems
are daunting obstacles for any explorer.
It is a continent that has beguiled adventurers for centuries.
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges -
"Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"
Kipling's poem is especially apt because this is Colombia,
the land of El Dorado.
Home of the legendary kingdom of gold that, in the 16th century,
lured the conquistadors ever deeper into the heart of South America.
I'm Jago Cooper
and, as an archaeologist who specialises in South America,
I've always been fascinated by the secrets and mysteries
buried deep in these awe-inspiring and forbidding landscapes.
The history of this continent
has been dominated by stories of the Inca
and the Spanish conquistadors...
..but in this series,
I'll be exploring an older, forgotten past...
..travelling from the coast to the clouds
in search of ancient civilisations
as significant an impressive as anywhere else on earth.
Here, in what's now Colombia,
lived two of the most extraordinary societies in the New World.
The Muisca and Tairona shared language and beliefs
that underpinned their cultures for 1,000 years,
but it was their exquisite gold artefacts,
infused with intriguing meanings,
which drew European invaders into their remote lands.
In this programme, I'll be discovering
how two extraordinary cultures rose to power,
what the gold that so bedazzled the Spanish conquistadors
really meant to these people,
and how it was that fate and circumstance
would see the Muisca and Tairona take very different paths
into the future.
The beaches of Colombia's Caribbean coast are beautiful -
almost a cliche of a tropical paradise...
..but, for me, its rich past is what makes this place so special.
History flows through Colombia.
For 12,000 years, it was a corridor connecting the Pre-Colombian
populations of Central America, the Caribbean, Amazon and Andes,
and 1,000 years before the Spanish arrived,
the Chibcha-speaking culture from Central America
spread southwards to this land.
Chibcha was a language shared by different communities
scattered across part of Central America and what is now Colombia.
Around 700 AD, two of these communities expanded
into highly organised societies,
skilled in agriculture and gold working.
One of those cultures, the Tairona,
established themselves in the mountains of the Caribbean coast.
Another, the Muisca, settled 500 miles to the south.
They developed independently for centuries,
free from outside interference,
but in 1492, that began to change.
Christopher Columbus discovered the New World for the Spanish,
and, in the years that followed, the Conquistadors' influence spread,
threatening the existence of the continent's indigenous cultures.
In 1537, conquistador Jimenez de Quesada set off in search
of an overland route to the newly discovered Inca homeland of Peru.
With an army of 800 conquistadors,
he struck deep into the heart of Colombia...
with no idea of what he was about to find.
The expedition took more than a year to carve its way through the jungle,
up to the high plains and valleys of the interior.
One of Quesada's men described the journey like this...
"We endured a great many hardships on the journey to the new kingdom.
"As much from having to slash new paths
"through the mountains and hills,
"as from hunger and sickness.
"And we arrived in this kingdom naked, barefoot
"and burdened by the weight of our own weapons,
"all of which had caused the deaths of a great many Spanish."
Three quarters of the Spaniards died on the nightmare journey...
..those that survived found themselves in a new and alien world.
The Muisca were one of the largest indigenous societies
in the whole of South America.
From the mountain tops,
their territory stretched beyond the horizon,
occupying an area larger than Switzerland...
..a land where gold seemed to be everywhere,
but a society unlike anything the Spanish had seen before.
The Muisca weren't ruled by a supreme leader
in the same way as the Inca and Aztec empires.
In the Muisca world, no one person had absolute control.
Instead, the Muisca territory was organised
into two large federations -
one in the north and one here, in the south.
When the conquistadors arrived,
the Muisca population is estimated to have been about
half a million people,
most of whom were living in small villages.
The Spanish chose one of those villages
as the site of their first town,
and that town has grown into Colombia's sprawling capital city -
Bogota.
In the 16th century,
Muisca settlements were spread all across this valley,
but little evidence of them is left here today.
So if I'm really to understand how Muisca society operated,
I need to look outside the city and travel 30 miles to the north,
to one of the few remaining Muisca sites still standing.
One of the big problems with trying to understand
how the Muisca society operated
is the fact that very little remains of their architectural structures.
They built with wood, which has since rotted away,
so there simply aren't the houses, temples
and meeting places left to find
that we can study and understand them better.
Except in this place, where the Muisca broke from tradition
and built from stone.
The Spanish named it El Infiernito - Little Hell -
because they believed the rituals practised here
were the work of the devil.
Archaeologist Carl Langebaek has carried out many excavations
around El Infiernito.
Walking through this site, it is a very strange place.
It is indeed a unique place in Muisca culture -
there is no place like this.
There's some indication that in the last years before the Conquest,
the Muisca elite was beginning to relate itself with the sun,
and there are evidences here of an astronomic observatory
that probably had something to do with following the path of the sun.
Standing in the site,
you can't ignore these giant phallic symbols in the landscape -
what do you think the origin and meaning behind those is?
Well, there is a lot of speculation, but I think it is safe to say
that it has something to do with fertility,
which, of course, is also related to the sun,
and it's also related to the activities of the chiefs
and religious specialists.
Carl's investigations indicate that there was a deep connection
between the Muisca and their environment.
And while there was no king ruling over all Muiscan people,
it seems each community did have leaders...
..and the relationship between ordinary people and their chiefs
appears to have been an intriguing one.
Spanish documents clearly point to the fact
that there was no notion of private property.
There was the notion of communal property, yes -
the lands belonged to the community.
I think the chiefs were the guardians of precious objects -
gold, precious stones, food, cotton, things like that -
but I think that there are no good evidences of properties...
in the hands of chiefs.
What do you think that tells us about day-to-day life
of the Muiscans here?
Well, the prestige of the chief was very much related
to the ability of providing good feasts to the community.
When the Spanish arrived, they described this...tradition
among the Muisca to pay taxes to the chiefs,
but when we investigated about what the meaning of paying taxes...
was providing food that, actually, was transformed by the family
and the wives of the chief,
to provide feastings, feasts, to the members of the community.
Carl's excavations have revealed another, unexpected, twist
to the unusual relationship between the people and their leaders.
At his lab, he showed me two skeletons,
unearthed at a Muisca site south of Bogota,
dating from the 1300s to the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s.
Altogether, some 700 skeletons were found,
and genetic analysis of the remains has helped archaeologists understand
how Muisca society operated.
We have focused our analysis on trying to identify differences
between the so-called rich people and the so-called poor people.
People with a lot of stuff in their burials, like sea shells and gold,
and things like that, and other people without offerings.
And what lessons do you think you've started to learn from that?
Well, I think one of the most important lessons is that,
yes, there was social differentiation, of course,
but it was not inherited.
We have carried out genetic studies on the members of the elite,
the members of the community buried with stuff,
and there are no relatives among them, and that's very interesting.
If you are telling me that it's not genetic and not inherited,
how do you think power is earned?
Well, I think every single shred of evidence
points to the fact that power was negotiated.
Powerful people had to convince other people with good arguments,
not just by inheritance or the use of force.
This remarkable research makes the Muisca
seem almost democratic, to modern eyes.
There must have been an incredible sense of community,
but this site also points to a society whose every move
was governed by their relationship with their gods.
Legend tells, that here at the Tequendama Falls,
the Muiscan god, Bochica,
saved the people from drowning during a rainstorm
by splitting apart the mountain and letting the flood waters drain away,
but what Bochica could not prevent
was the Spanish onslaught that was just about to rain down
on the Muiscan people.
What had caught the eyes of Quesada and his men was Muiscan gold.
Everyone, commoner or chief, in every village and town,
seemed to have artefacts crafted from the precious metal.
Rumours quickly spread far beyond the New World
that there was a vast city of gold, somewhere in the mountains.
The legend of El Dorado was born, and, in the years that followed,
waves of treasure-seekers descended on South America
in search of the fabled land.
But El Dorado wasn't a place - it was a person.
The literal translation is The Golden One - a ruler so rich
that it was said he covered himself in gold dust every morning
and washed it off in a sacred lake each night.
One conquistador told the story thus...
"He went about all covered with powdered gold,
"as casually as if it was powdered salt.
"For it seemed to him, that to wear any other finery was less beautiful.
"And to put on ornaments or arms made of gold, worked by hammering,
"stamping or by other means, was a common and vulgar thing."
If El Dorado was a person, did he exist?
In the heart of Bogota's bustling streets,
one place offers a clue to the origins of this most enduring myths.
So we're just going to the Gold Museum,
which, over the years, has built up the largest collection
of pre-Colombian gold artefacts in the country.
Bogota's gold museum is packed with fantastic treasures,
but perhaps the most incredible of all
is the magnificent golden raft of the Muisca.
Archaeologist Juan Pablo Quintero explained
that it appears to capture a moment in an ancient waterborne ceremony -
the very embodiment of the El Dorado legend.
Who do you think that character is in the centre of the raft?
It is probably the chief, a representation of a chief.
It's well dressed, you can see the ornaments,
it's bigger than the other characters -
it's a high-ranking character, so, probably, it was the chief.
The chief stands in the middle of the raft,
surrounded by 12 smaller characters,
all of them are adorned in gold ornaments and feathers.
Some carry musical instruments or wear jaguar masks.
The smaller ones on the edge of the raft appear to be rowers.
So if we start to think about the El Dorado myth,
this myth of a man dressed in gold,
do you think this raft proves that to be correct?
It does not prove it directly.
I mean, that's not direct evidence
or archaeological evidence of the myth,
but it is very suggestive that it's a raft
and it represents an important ritual.
So you cannot think anything else but El Dorado myth.
But other, less literal, interpretations of the myth
are held by the descendants of the Muisca.
They keep ancient traditions alive at Laguna Guatavita,
a sacred lake in the heart of Muisca territory, northeast of Bogota.
Watching over the lake today, and waiting to greet me,
is one of those descendants, Enrique Gonzalez.
To welcome me to the lake,
Enrique performed a greeting by blowing on a conch shell.
Shells like this come from the coast more than 500 miles away
and were highly prized by the ancient Muisca.
As the sound of the conch reverberated around the lake,
I asked Enrique what the golden raft meant to him.
Para usted, piensa que esto estuvo una cosa que ha pasado aca?
HE SPEAKS IN SPANISH
Evidence supports Enrique's explanation,
Spanish chroniclers described ceremonies taking place here,
and small amounts of gold have been discovered in the area.
Like many myths, El Dorado may contain a kernel of truth.
It supports the suggestion that the Muiscan people, unlike the Spanish,
valued gold in spiritual rather than monetary terms.
HE SPEAKS IN SPANISH
It was great talking to Enrique.
He gives a real sense of connection between the ceremonies,
which were carried out here at the lake, and the people of the Muisca.
In a way, the way he talks about the Muisca of the modern day
and the connection they feel for the ancient Muisca,
it provides a sense of identity that is completely connected to place,
and it makes you feel like this place is special.
Whatever the truth about El Dorado,
archaeologists have discovered another dimension to the role
that gold played in the culture.
When the Muisca raft was found in a cave south of Bogota, in the 1970s,
it was inside a pot containing small, flat, gold figurines,
known as Tunjos.
Many of these objects are displayed behind glass at the Gold Museum,
but Juan Pablo has arranged for the vaults to be opened
so I can take a closer look...
..and it's immediately obvious that each of them
represents a different character.
I really like that level of detail
you can see on each particular artefact,
and each of them is very individual in how they are made.
How do you think the different elements that you see
is representative of different people?
You can see, like, the chiefs, you can see the priest...
Here, this one have, if you see,
it has a head in their hand...
so that's telling you that's a warrior.
There are other noticeable differences in the Tunjos.
You see the difference between that colour and that colour.
Here you can see there is more gold,
but in this more brown one is because it has a lot of copper,
more than this one, and that is not by chance,
they decided to do that way.
Mixing gold with copper in different proportions,
Muisca goldsmiths could vary the colour of the finished Tunjo,
and, unusually for gold artefacts, the Tunjos have flaws,
spurs of excess metal and unpolished surfaces.
What were these Tunjos for
and what was their real value to Muisca society?
If the Muiscans had valued Tunjos as ornaments or jewellery,
you would expect them to have a fine finish
and you might also expect to find them buried with their owners
as grave goods.
Archaeologists studying Muisca gold face a common problem...
..most of the gold was acquired from looters,
in the years when selling to the Gold Museum was legal.
As a result,
much of the archaeological context has been lost,
but the looters' stories are consistent.
The Tunjos weren't found in tombs but in rivers and lakes,
on mountain tops and in caves.
The land north of Bogota is riddled with caves -
just the sort of place where Tunjos were found.
I met archaeologist Roberto Lleras Perez,
an expert on Muisca gold-working and belief systems.
Thinking about metal within Muisca society,
what were the Muiscan using gold for?
Well, gold was all-important for Muisca,
especially for votive offerings.
They were thrown into lakes, inside caves,
like the one in which we are now,
or placed in fields, sanctuaries, temples,
the foundations of houses -
wherever it was important to place an object
that would restore equilibrium in cosmos.
Try and explain Muiscan cosmology to me, then.
Well, try to imagine the world as composed of opposite principles -
opposite and complementary.
So, first of all, you have man and woman,
then you have day and night, then you have up and down.
So if you understand the world in this sense,
you understand also that there is an equilibrium.
Now, the point here is to understand that this is made by the gods,
but you, as a man, you can intervene in this equilibrium.
So if there is any sort of alterations,
say, for example, that you have three years in a row
where there is no rain, you can intervene there.
How do you do that?
With votive offerings, because this is the way to restore this principle
that has been lost or diminished in the earth,
and then you have the equilibrium and the conditions for life again.
So it seems the Tunjos' actual purpose
was as a shining gift to the gods to redress the balance of nature.
Do you think Muisca metalworking is unique,
in the way that it's created in South America?
No other society, as far as I know,
dedicated over 50% of their production for votive offerings.
I think it's quite unique.
It's incredible that, with Muiscan metals,
the entire lifetime of one object can be just days,
cos it's created for a particular purpose,
to go straight into the ground.
It seems to be a waste of time,
but then if you think that this were so important for society,
much more important than having a beautiful woman
wearing these objects,
then you understand why so much trouble had to be assumed
in order to produce these objects.
To the Muisca, gold appears not to have had any intrinsic value,
and if its value was purely spiritual,
it seems likely that every aspect of its creation -
its shape, colour and what it represented -
would have been part of a sacred process.
How it was made was therefore critically important.
Today, the secrets of that ancient craftsmanship
have been preserved in a highly unlikely setting.
Goldsmith Omar Hurtado doesn't so much take his work home with him
as live with it.
In his apartment, in central Bogota,
he has mastered the art of Muisca metalworking.
It appears that the real skill is not in manipulating gold
but in knowing how to mould beeswax -
a process known as the lost-wax technique.
Omar starts to shape the wax into a flat figurine.
Muisca Tunjos were 2D representations of the human form.
I asked Omar why the Muisca made flat Tunjos.
Was it easier than making a 3D figure?
The flat Tunjos were made more complex
by adding on the intricate details of face, arms, legs
and bodily ornaments with wire-like threads of wax.
Omar told me something really interesting -
these coloured waxes are industrial and represent different properties,
different malleabilities that the wax has.
To make one of these pieces, you need different types of wax
with different types of malleability,
and the Muisca used a whole range of different bees
with different properties in their wax.
Omar's just using this one, which is industrial,
because he doesn't have time to go out on Sunday
and collect bees from all over Colombia,
but it's a really interesting fact
that the Muisca were cultivating different types of bees
specifically for this process.
Once the beeswax figurine is completed,
Omar bends it over and adds a network of little tubes.
The Tunjo will then be packed in clay
and placed in an oven to evaporate the wax,
leaving a mould into which the molten metal can be poured.
The network of tubes ensures that the metal travels
into every intricate detail of the figure.
Meter en el horno. Perfecto. Ponemos?
So our lovely little wax creation is now inside this piece of clay,
which is going to go in the oven,
and the wax will evaporate, leaving the mould.
Once the wax has gone, molten metal can be poured into the empty mould.
The Muisca could control the colour of the final piece
by varying the relative quantities of copper and gold in the alloy.
I love it that in an anonymous apartment block in Bogota,
there's a guy wielding his acetylene torch, ready to burn the place down.
Research suggests that the Muisca used fires rather than blowtorches!
But it also tells us that those in charge of making these Tunjos
were far more than just simple craftsmen.
It's possible that the Tunjos were actually being made
by the priests themselves -
that Muisca priests were masters of both ritual knowledge
and practical skill.
Un poco caliente!
So there's our little piece.
The wax has all melted away and also it's still flexed right round,
and these tubes of metal,
which have been used to pour in the metal into the mould,
we'll have to cut those off
and then we'll bend him back out and finish him off.
HE SPEAKS SPANISH
Seeing this process up close, you can see why the Muisca pieces
had these rough edges
and these little bits of metal still stuck on the sides -
the remnants of those tubes of metal coming down to fill the cast.
Gold's malleability made it the ideal material
for creating a wide variety of small but intricate objects.
Offerings to the gods were frequent,
and so vast amounts of gold must have been needed.
Given the importance of gold,
the Spanish expected to find mines throughout Muiscan territory,
but it doesn't occur naturally here.
All Muiscan gold had to be brought in from elsewhere.
So how did they acquire so much of it?
In Villa de Leyva's market,
people from the surrounding area come to buy food and other produce.
500 hundred years ago, the scene would have been similar...
with the difference that the Muisca didn't use money.
Spanish chronicles describe a thriving barter system.
Trade was crucial for Muiscan society.
It gave them the chance to get the produce they needed,
of gold and cotton from the lowlands,
and bring it up here to the highlands,
where they could work it into secondary products
that they could sell on.
The Muisca economy was geared towards transforming raw materials,
brought in from outside, into finished products.
Cotton was used to make blankets
that could then be traded in gold-producing regions,
beyond Muisca territory, for the precious metal...
..but there was one commodity that the Muisca did have in abundance...
a precious mineral so valuable
that it could be exchanged directly for gold.
In the hills north of Bogota are the mines of Nemocon,
where deep below the ground lie rich deposits
of one of the Muisca's greatest assets.
Not precious gems or coal but a mineral vital for life itself...
salt.
Deep underground and far from the coast
isn't where I would expect to find salt,
but 100 million years ago, an ancient sea existed here.
When the waters evaporated, they left behind vast plains of salt.
Tectonic activity later raised these mountains,
and the salt flats were folded into the rocks,
trapping huge pockets of the mineral beneath the earth.
Y entonces, tienes esta evidencia de la tipo de mina
que esta...estaban haciendo la Muisca?
Si, o sea, literalmente, encima de la mina...
My guide Edwin explained that in modern times,
miners bored deep into the mountains
in search of the salt, but the Muisca didn't need to dig.
Rain would fall through hills of salt, like this one,
and they would collect the salt water from the streams
at the bottom of the hill,
pour the water into big clay jars
and heat them up to evaporate off the water.
Gradually, these clay pots would fill with salts,
and they'd smash them and be left with a salt cake.
Salt cake production became a major industry for the Muisca,
giving them the economic power to amass the gold that they needed...
..but the Muisca's great strength would also expose them to danger.
It was salt cakes being traded up and down the Magdalena River,
and the sort of production,
the industrial production that it showed,
that drew the conquistadors up into the Muisca heartlands.
A Spanish chronicler recorded the moment
when conquistador Jimenez de Quesada decided to change course.
"Seeing the excellent nature of the land,
"and how the Indians always brought us salt...
"which they packed into large blocks,
"Jimenez decided to try to seek its source."
The salt trail led the Spanish directly to the Muisca.
With a fragmented structure of chiefdoms
in the northern and southern confederations,
the Muisca were unable to mount serious resistance
to the conquistadors.
In a little over a year,
the whole of Muisca territory was under Spanish control.
Violence and Old World diseases took their toll,
and the population crashed.
The Muisca were a people with a completely different value system
to their Spanish conquerors.
A people in tune with their environment
and the world around them,
communities held together by rituals and celebrations,
and a society for whom the real value of gold
was in what it could achieve by being offered to the gods.
But the Muisca were so completely overrun by the invaders
that contemporary echoes of their past are hard to find -
unless you know where to look.
Buena! Buena! Buena, companiero!
THEY CHEER
This is Tejo.
It's actually the national sport of Colombia
and one of the few pieces of Muiscan identity
that has survived into modern Colombia.
The idea is to get this piece of iron within this circular ring.
But even this game is dominated by a Spanish influence.
The Spanish decided to liven it up by putting some gunpowder here,
which you've got to try and hit and explode.
Today, in a country with around 85 different ethnic groups,
Muiscan blood and culture survive only as faint echoes.
We lost this one, but I'll think we'll start another game.
The Muisca had fallen, but they were not alone.
Further north, along the Magdalena River,
lived another connected culture -
the Tairona.
Their future would be very different.
I'm making my way towards the mountains
of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, along the Caribbean coast,
to find out how and why.
Rivers are the life blood of trade,
allowing goods to flow freely between the coast and the interior.
For the Muisca, the Magdalena had been the source
of much of their gold,
but some of that precious metal was also traded north to the Tairona.
The Tairona shared gold-working skills
and a language with the Muisca,
but they lived in a very different environment.
Did they also share the same beliefs?
This is the land of the Tairona.
From here, on the Caribbean coast,
the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rises up to 5,700 metres -
the highest coastal range in the world.
High up in those mountains are scattered
the lost cities of the Tairona.
Archaeology in this sort of terrain,
where everything is covered by a thick carpet of vegetation,
is enormously difficult.
New discoveries are rare,
but in the 1970s, a flood of Tairona gold and other artefacts
started to appear on the black market -
the first clues that looters were working on a new Tairona site.
When archaeologists reached the location, high in the mountains,
they were amazed.
It was the largest and most impressive Tairona site
ever discovered.
It was given the name Ciudad Perdida - the Lost City.
Getting to Ciudad Perdida on foot is a three-day hike
through these dense-forested mountains.
Today, I'm hitching a lift with the Colombian army,
and it's giving me a wonderful perspective on the Lost City.
From the air, I can really appreciate the size
and remoteness of this site.
So many of the South American sites are in straight lines,
but this site clings to the mountainside,
using the contours of the hills.
I can see the terraces covered in vegetation -
it only leaves to the imagination how big this site must be.
To put Cuidad Perdida in perspective,
archaeologists have estimated that it is ten times larger
than the famous Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru.
Even though most of it is hidden by thick vegetation,
it's still breathtaking -
when you consider the effort that was needed
to build a city in this terrain.
Archaeologists have only just begun to scratch the surface,
but they are finding some really exciting evidence
of what this place was once like.
Santiago Giraldo is leading the excavations.
What dates does this site have do you think?
Well, the earliest date that we have here is a 650 AD date,
and that's what I found during my research.
Those dates really resonate with me,
this idea that we're getting lots of cultures rising up,
these Chibcha-speaking cultures,
and it's a very similar time period to when the Muisca rise up.
The time when these periods are rising up maps out quite well,
say, with the classic period of Mesoamerica.
The Maya collapse around 900 to 1,000 AD,
but these guys just keep on going.
It's thought that Cuidad Perdida was occupied for almost 1,000 years,
existing in parallel with Muisca society.
But while very little remains of Muisca architecture,
here the Tairona structures have lasted remarkably well,
leaving clear evidence of how they were constructed.
So here we have a classic Tairona wall.
The stone shows up really nicely.
You get this real nice-faced edge coming down. Looks really good.
And this stuff goes on for miles? Yeah.
Looking at the steepness of these mountain slopes,
how do you think that the Tairona coped with that,
with their architecture?
So, really, what's at a premium here, for these societies,
is flat areas, and what they were doing with all the terracing
was actually creating flat, liveable space.
Now, one of the main difficulties is that these people used no mortar,
so what they did was a combination of masonry and rammed earth,
and that's what makes them incredibly stable,
and also the fact that they overlapped one terrace to the other,
so you create step-like platforms.
And that's what really creates stability
in an area such as this one,
because you've got over 4,000 millimetres of rainfall,
and that means that a terrace can be washed away
if it's not really stable.
Working in harmony with the landscape,
the Tairona created a thriving city.
It's extraordinary that salt, cotton and gold from the lowlands
were traded up here, around 1,000 metres above sea level.
These stone terraces provided stable foundations
for large, wooden structures
that must have been at the centre of communal life in the city.
These platforms look fantastic - the size of them, the monumentality.
Do you think this a particularly special part of the site?
Oh, absolutely. We've got the main feasting gathering area over there,
and excavation work that I did in 2006,
what we found was that most of the trash that was being deposited
was drinking cups, serving jars and big trays.
That pretty much spells out feasts and feasting, for the most part.
Then you've got adjacent structures that probably served as kitchens.
What do you think the role of that feasting was here?
Do you think it's display or chiefly status?
As in most human societies,
the politics of commensality are exceedingly important.
They are extremely, extremely important just for creating allies.
There's work feasts, there's...
When you've got a new trading partner coming in,
of course, you want to impress him.
Ritual feasts strengthened social relationships
within the Chibcha-speaking community and beyond.
During the 16th century, we found evidence that chiefs here
were actually trading gold objects for wine
with French and English pirates that were bringing in wine.
So feasting definitely played a hugely important role
in these societies.
A variety of different produce was grown at different elevations,
but these bountiful slopes were steep and thick with vegetation.
Moving large quantities any distance
must have been a real challenge.
To see how they did it, I'm heading back down to the coast.
As with the Muisca, the secret of Tairona success
came from their mastery of their environment.
Centuries-old routes once connected all Tairona settlements.
This network of pathways, hundreds of miles long, allowed people
to transport goods back and forth between the coast and the mountains.
The path I'm following leads to Pueblito,
a Tairona settlement first inhabited almost 1,500 years ago.
I've come to meet anthropologist Lorena Aja Eslava, who has been
investigating the significance of the paths and what they can tell us.
THEY SPEAK IN SPANISH
But the paths weren't simply an indication
of population size and mobility -
they were designed to, literally, support Tairona society.
THEY SPEAK IN SPANISH
So, like the Muisca, the Tairona were perfectly in tune
with their environment, knowing how to use its resources
without damaging the world around them.
Evidence that this was a spiritual connection
is preserved in one of the rocks near the centre of the town,
where priests gathered to predict the future.
These pools for divination were used by the Tairona.
They would drop a bead inside the water
and watch how the bubbles came up.
That would help them with complex decisions they were due to make.
Archaeologists believe that many of those decisions
would be connected to the Tairona's worship of the natural world.
Just as there is evidence of sun worship among the Muisca,
so too was the sun revered by the Tairona.
All objects that captured
or reflected the light of the sun were valued -
shimmering water, shiny stones, snow-capped mountains
and the glinting colours of the forest.
One material in particular didn't just reflect light,
it was the same colour as the sun as well - gold.
Just like the Muisca,
whose gold gave rise to the legend of El Dorado,
the Tairona held the precious metal in high esteem.
Under the guidance of archaeologist Juanita Saenz Samper,
museum curators are cleaning Tairona artefacts.
What's immediately striking about these objects
is that they have been burnished and polished smooth -
quite unlike the rough-edged artefacts made by the Muisca.
Looking at these pieces of Tairona metal,
what are the similarities and differences
between Muisca and Tairona metalwork?
Well, there are a lot of differences.
You know, because the Muisca people didn't polish their pieces,
and these Tairona people were so great polishing and finishing
every single detail, because they just used it for another thing.
The Muisca Tunjos were not used for wearing on you,
and these kind of...objects were used to wear...
were used to say, "Hey, I'm the boss!"
Muiscan goldsmiths made offerings to the gods.
Tairona gold also had spiritual value,
because it reflected the sun that gave life,
but rather than make unique pieces, like the Muisca,
the Tairona craftsmen perfected symbols
that were reproduced time and time again.
What were the important symbols of the Tairona culture? Well, birds.
Birds with open wings, which are these ones
and also the bat man.
The bat man is a very important symbolic icon in Tairona iconography.
Creatures, like the bat man - half human, half animal -
are common in Tairona art.
It feels like another illustration of the close connection
between the human and natural worlds.
So it seems that the link between gold and nature
was just as important to the Tairona as it was to the Muisca,
but Tairona craftsmanship wasn't just restricted to gold.
At the University of Magdalena, in Santa Marta,
archaeologist Angelica Nunez
is working on a collection of remarkable ceramic objects.
THEY SPEAK IN SPANISH
Thousands of different pieces of pottery have been collected here.
They provide an invaluable insight into Tairona life and beliefs...
and some of the symbols I saw in the gold artefacts are here too.
THEY SPEAK IN SPANISH
As ever, the connection with the natural world is very evident,
but there's a particular piece of pottery that captured my attention.
THEY SPEAK IN SPANISH
Angelica's understanding of Tairona beliefs
isn't based on the artefacts alone.
She's been working closely with indigenous people
who could be the last remaining link with the Tairona.
I'm heading back into the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta to visit them.
The Kogi, an indigenous community of around 12,000 people,
live in small mountain villages not far from the Tairona sites
of Pueblito and Cuidad Perdida.
Living separately from contemporary society,
they've preserved their traditional way of life
and they guard their independence fiercely.
So it's a huge privilege
to be invited into their village for the day.
Most Kogi still speak a language derived from Chibcha,
the tongue of the Tairona and the Muisca.
My guide, Jacinto, is one of the very few who also speaks Spanish.
I asked him if he felt that his people
were connected to the Tairona.
THEY SPEAK IN SPANISH
Jacinto invited me to help in the building of a new house
for the Mamas, the Kogi spiritual leaders.
There's a deep cultural connection here with the environment,
one that seems to echo the philosophy of the Tairona.
I can easily imagine these houses sitting on the round stone terraces
at Pueblito or Cuidad Perdida.
One of the ceremonies that will be carried out in this house
is the initiation ceremony when a boy turns into a man.
At that point, they will be given a gourd and coca leaves,
and, as you'll see, the men here all chew coca.
This is an essential part of Kogi life.
It's impossible to know
whether the Tairona had the same rite of passage,
but coca-chewing is recurs again and again in their pottery.
The connections are clear to see.
When Kogi men meet, they exchange coca leaves.
They're repeatedly extracting lime from a gourd, known as a poporo,
and wiping it across the wad of coca leaves in their mouths,
to release the active ingredients.
Cocaine is derived from the coca plant, but raw coca leaves
don't have the same powerful narcotic effect.
Kogi men chew it as a mild stimulant
that helps them to communicate with their ancestors.
These traditions, passed from generation to generation,
continue the Kogis' deep spiritual connection with their environment.
Everything that goes into the construction of these houses
has to come from a seed.
This is because they see themselves as seeds of the Sierra -
that humans need to be nurtured and grown, just like plants.
So in these houses we start to see a connection
between how they are constructed
and the Kogi idea that people and environment are one.
The Kogi assert a sense of their own history and beliefs
that is inseparable from the land -
the same land that sustained the Tairona.
SPEAKS CHIBCHA
Today, Kogi culture is alive, in part,
because of the protection offered by the mountains,
the same mountains that protected the Tairona nearly 500 years ago.
Unlike the Muisca,
the Tairona were never completely overrun by the Spanish.
The geography of their homeland made it difficult
for the conquistadors to penetrate far, but Spanish colonisation
of the valleys stifled trade between the villages and the mountains,
and wave upon wave of Old World disease decimated the population.
Eventually, all that remained of the Tairona were dwindling communities
scattered in the mountains.
They, and the Muisca, seemed to vanish...
..but they didn't -
from Bogota to the Sierra Nevada,
I have witnessed the legacy of these cultures.
It's still living in the remains of their architecture,
in their artefacts, rich with meaning,
in the gold that connected the Tairona and the Muisca
to their spiritual beliefs.
The Spanish, lured by the myth of El Dorado, plundered the gold,
but they couldn't destroy the beliefs shared by the two cultures -
beliefs that live on with the Kogi today -
an unshakable faith in community
and the value of their environment above all else...even gold.
For me, these are the treasures Kipling wrote of,
hidden behind the ranges.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd