San Agustin archeological park
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How it came to be
San Agustín Archaeological Park lies in the upper Magdalena valley in Huila, in the southwestern Andes of Colombia. Chiefdom societies developed in the region from about 1000 BC, and in the Regional Classic period (AD 1–900) earthen mounds up to about 30 m across were raised over the stone tombs of elite individuals. Guardian statues carved from tuff and volcanic rock stood over the burials, some more than 4 m tall.
The first written account of the statues came from the Spanish friar Juan de Santa Gertrudis, who passed through San Agustín in mid-1756 and described them in his four-volume Maravillas de la naturaleza. In 1913 the German ethnologist Konrad Theodor Preuss excavated in the area.
The park covers 116 ha in three separate areas in the municipalities of San Agustín and Isnos. It includes the Fuente de Lavapatas, a religious monument carved into the rock bed of a stream, as well as Alto de los Ídolos and Alto de las Piedras. It was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1995.
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