Following seven weeks in Columbia with almost zero information on how indigenous peoples lived, our thirst to learn was high!

This museum houses the largest collection of South and Central American gold artifacts in the world, with over 55,000 pieces. Not just a bling palace, this museum provides a comprehensive history of the evolution of the use of gold, copper, platinum, and silver, plus pottery dating back to 4,000 B.C.  And the source of this technology was the Bogota plateau, here in Colombia.

Comparing technologies between Native American civilizations in the Southwestern United States to those in South America was personally fascinating. First created in at least 4,000 B.C., pottery in Columbia evolved almost 5,000 years before pottery in the areas now labled the Southwest, USA (A.D. 750 and A.D. 800).

A very basic knowledge of metallurgy was in place by around 1,000 B.C., mostly consisted of melting ores, heating and cooling them to temper the metal, and hammering the metals into the desired shape. Other metals such as copper, platinum, and silver. were incorporated with gold to produce more desireable properties, such as durability, flexability, shininess, etc.