In a frenzy of gold-lust, plunderers all but consumed Colombia's most important archaeological find of the century, the stunning Treasure of the Malagana.
In fact, all but 18 of the 140 gold and ceramic relics in an exhibit that opened this week at the Museo de Oro, or Gold Museum, were bought from the gold-diggers or from dealers.Archaeologists found little left in February 1993 when they arrived at the ancient burial site uncovered by sugar cane workers in the fertile Cauca Valley just northeast of Cali.
The Malagana Ranch, which lent its name to the newly discovered culture, was a honeycomb of ditches and mounds swarming with amateur and professional treasure-seekers.
"In photographs and videos taken at the time, the whole world is digging. People are out there with knives, sticks, barbecue tools," said Hector Llanos, an exhibit curator and chairman of National University's anthropology department.
Armed competitors threatened to kill the archaeologists, whose work was ruined by night. The army was called in for security, but it was too late for a thorough scientific assessment.
Most of what is known about the Malagana came from subsequent excavations of nearby settlements and from interviewing professional grave-diggers, known as "guaqueros."
Radiocarbon-dating of relics established that the Malagana culture was in full bloom between 180 B.C. and 70 A.D. How long it lasted or what language group it shared are not known, said Llanos.
He and other students of the Malagana consider the culture's artisanship the most refined of southwestern Colombia's pre-Hispanic cultures. Not since a nearby Quimbaya burial ground was unearthed in the 19th century has such a rich assortment of gold pieces and ceramics been found in a single dig in Colombia.
"The pieces indicate the Malagana were a hierarchical society. The pectoral plates and large masks of gold were for the exclusive use of the chieftains and great males and worn for special ceremonies, while common people wore small, copper pectoral plates," said Clemencia Plazas, director of the Museo de Oro, which is owned and run by Colombia's central bank.
The chieftains' adornments show a deep attachment to nature, and their gold masks and other artifacts evinced their spiritual knowledge as shamans.
Their tombs contained the highest-quality gold, of 24 karats and more, forged into exquisite sun-shaped chest plates with fanged feline faces, necklaces of crustacean forms and finely etched face plates bearing bats, jaguars and serpents.
"We know that the sun was the center and origin of life for this culture and that the shamans depended on it as their source of wisdom and power." said Llanos.
The Malagana were farmers deeply wedded to nature, and standouts in the exhibit are exquisite gold earrings shaped like passion flowers, butterfly chrysalises and swirling mollusk shells.
Excavated vessels also show that Malagana men used nature's indigenous drug, the coca plant, chewing toasted coca leaves mixed with lime ground from snail shells.
The gold work and pottery display a wealth of anthropomorphic figures, and even everyday ceramics are artfully molded into human figures in curious poses.
Many Malagana figures of great value were smuggled out of Colombia and some are beginning to be offered in the auction houses of New York and London.