Ranking number 6 on Bloomberg’s list of ‘new’ Seven World Wonders is San Agustin in Colombia. The San Agustin Archeological Park has the largest group of religious monuments and megalithic sculptures in South America and was announced a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.
At San Agustin and sourced from @RahulKohli13 on Twitter.
San Agustin, Alto des los Idolos, and Alto de Las Piedras are the three properties that comprise the archaeological park totalling 116 hectares.
Fuente de Lavapatas is the largest complex of pre-Colombian megalithic funerary monuments and statuary that is carved in the stone bed of a stream.
Fuente de Lavapatas photographed by @Lantropoloca on Twitter.
There are 600 known statues and about 40 monumental burial mounds scattered around the Alto Magdalena region. The statues all vary in style depending on the period in which they were built, but the mystery of who exactly built them is still unknown.
Statues found at San Agustin, Colombia photographed by @Arawakriqueno on Twitter.
Anthropologists and archaeologists have dated these statues back to 3300 BC, and have uncovered that they may have been abandoned around 1350 AD. Most of the burial sites were looted for gold after they were first rediscovered in the 18th and 19th-centuries.
Located closer to a small town called Isnos, Alto de Las Piedras and Alto de Los Idolos are important stops for anyone with an interest in ancient South American cultures. The statues at these two sites are newer and have a lot more detail to them when compared to those on the main archaeological park.
The tombs have a funerary architecture of stone corridors, columns, and large impressive statues depicting supernatural beings.
Stay tuned for the final part in our series on Bloomberg’s new Seven World Wonders no 7: Sigiriiya, Sri Lanka
Source: UNESCO
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