page_title: Muisca art
section_title: Rock art
hierarchical_section_title: Muisca art / Muisca art / Rock art
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Chía (the Moon) rising over the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, Bogotá, Colombia
context_page_description: The Muisca established one of the four grand civilisations of the pre-Columbian Americas on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in present-day central Colombia. Their various forms of art have been described in detail and include pottery, textiles, body art, hieroglyphs and rock art. While their architecture was modest compared to the Inca, Aztec and Maya civilisations, the Muisca are best known for their skilled goldworking. The Museo del Oro in the Colombian capital Bogotá houses the biggest collection of golden objects in the world, from various Colombian cultures including the Muisca.
  The first art in the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes goes back several millennia. Although this predates the Muisca civilisation, whose onset is commonly set at 800 AD, nevertheless, some of these styles persevered through the ages.
  During the preceramic era, the people of the highlands produced petrographs and petroglyphs representing their deities, the abundant flora and fauna of the area, abstract motives and anthropomorphic or anthropo-zoomorphic elements.
context_section_description: Many examples of rock art by the Muisca have been discovered on the Altiplano. The first rock art has been discovered by conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada during the Spanish conquest of the Muisca. The rock art consists of petroglyphs (carvings) and petrographs (drawings). The petrographs were made using the index finger. Pioneer in the study of the rock art has been Miguel Triana. Later contributions have been done by Diego Martínez, Eliécer Silva Celis and others. It is theorised that the rock art has been made under the influence of ayahuasca (yahé).
  The rock art of Soacha-Sibaté, in the southwest of the Bogotá savanna, has been studied in detail between 1970 and 2006, after initial studies by Triana. In these petrographs certain motives have been described; triangular heads are pictographs of human figures where the heads are painted in a triangular shape. They are applied using red colours and demonstrate various sizes. Similar motives are noted in Mongua, Tenjo and Tibacuy. In most cases of the rock art on the Altiplano, the body extremities, such as hands, are shown in simple shapes. In some cases however, the hands are elaborated with much more detail using spirals, concentric circles and more strokes, identified as complex hands. Apart from Sibaté, these shapes are encountered also in Saboyá and Tibaná in Boyacá. A third class of petrographs has been named radial representations. This motive shows the main figures with concentric square or circular lines drawn around them. The concentric circular drawings have been interpreted as representing the main deities of the Muisca religion; Chía (the Moon) and Sué, her husband the Sun. Rhomboidal motives are found in Sibaté, but their exact purpose has not yet been concluded. Both in Soacha and in Sibaté a fifth type of petrographs has been identified; winged figures. These motives resemble the birds that are described in tunjos and ceramics of the Altiplano.
  The same scholar has performed detailed analysis of the rock art in Facatativá; the Piedras del Tunjo Archaeological Park. The many petrographs in this location are painted using red, yellow, ochre, blue, black and white colours. The motives show a possible tobacco plant, commonly used by the Muisca, zig-zag patterns, anthropomorphic figures, concentric lines similar to those in Soacha and Sáchica, zoomorphic motives and anthropo-zoomorphic composites in the shape of frogs.
  Research in the 1960s by Eliécer Silva Celis on the rock art of Sáchica showed phytomorphic designs, masked human figures, singular and concentric rings, triangulated heads, and faces where the eyes and noses were drawn, but the mouths absent. The majority of the petrographs found here are abstract figures. The colours red, black and white dominate the rock paintings in Sáchica. The black has been analysed also at El Infiernito and is though to refer to a pre-Muisca origin. Radial structures drawn on the heads of the anthropomorphic petrographs are interpreted as feathers. Feathers were precious objects for the Muisca and used by the xeques and caciques during the El Dorado ritual in Lake Guatavita.
  Hand imprints, similar to the famous Cueva de las Manos in Argentina, yet less pronounced and in quantity, have been discovered on rock faces in Soacha and Motavita.
caption: Chía, the Moon goddess, was one of the most important deities for the Muisca and represented as circles in their rock art
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