page_title: Epítome de la conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada
section_title: From Funza to Hunza
hierarchical_section_title: Epítome de la conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada / Contents / From Funza to Hunza
caption_attribution_description: English: Beryl (Var.: Emerald), Calcite, Pyrite Locality: Chivor Mine, Chivor, Guavió-Guatéque Mining District, Boyacá Department, Colombia (Locality at mindat.org) A GORGEOUS and SUPERB emerald thumbnail from the Irv Brown Thumbnail Collection. This aesthetic specimen from the CHIVOR MINE features two gemmy and lustrous, rabbit ears-like emerald crystals set on calcite matrix with a lustrous pyritohedron in front as a nice accent. 1.5 x 1.2 x 1.2 cm Deutsch: Beryll (Var.: Smaragd), Calcit, Pyrit Fundort: Chivor Mine, Chivor, Distrikt Guavió-Guatéque Mining, Boyacá, Kolumbien (Fundort bei mindat.org)
context_page_description: Epítome de la conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada is a document of uncertain authorship, possibly written by Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada between 1548 and 1559. The book was not published until 1889 by anthropologist Marcos Jiménez de la Espada in his work Juan de Castellanos y su Historia del Nuevo Reino de Granada.
  Epítome narrates about the Spanish conquest of the Muisca, from the start from Santa Marta in April 1536 to the leave of main conquistador Jiménez de Quesada in April 1539 from Bogotá, arriving to Spain, about "The Salt People" encountered in the conquest expedition in the heart of the Colombian Andes, their society, rules, religion, handling of the dead, warfare and neighbouring "cannibalistic" Panche.
  The text has been studied by various authors over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, mainly by Juan Friede and modern scholars and various theories about authorship and temporal setting have been proposed. The document is held by the National Historical Archive in Madrid, Spain.
context_section_description: Jiménez de Quesada left Bogotá and went to Coçontá (Chocontá), that he called Valle del Spiritusancto. From there he went to Turmequé in a valley he named Valle de la Trompeta, the first of the Tunja lands. From Turmequé he send his men to discover the emerald mines and after that leaving for another valley, of San Juan, in Muysccubun called Tenesucha and from there to the valley of Somondoco where he spoke to the cacique Sumindoco, who governed the mines or quarries of emeralds and was subject to the gran cacique of Tunja. Many emeralds were extracted. He decided to continue to search for the cacique of Tunja, who was at war with the Christians. The document describes the lands of Tunja as richer than those of Bogotá, although those were already rich, but gold and precious emeralds are more abundant in Tunja. In total 1800 emeralds, large and small were found and De Quesada had never seen so many and precious ones in his life. The rich resources of Peru are described in relation to the mines of Tunja, where the emeralds were more numerous than in Peru. Epítome describes the process of extracting the emeralds with wooden sticks from the veins in the rocks. From the emerald mines of Tunja, he returned to Bogotá.
caption: The route to Somondoco led the conquistadors for the first time into the rich emerald terrains of the Muisca
  sample from Chivor mine
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