Pre-Colombian Gold. Gold has been found in Northeastern Colombia dating back thousands of years to the years 1 to 1000 A.D. from the Tairona Culture, Early Zenu Culture and the Muisica Culture. The important gold mining center of Buriticá, in the mountains of Colombia's northern Antioquia Province, exploits rich alluvial deposits and vein gold. Gold objects and raw gold are traded for food, salt, emeralds, and other items with peoples in the north, east, and south.

550 A.D. Full-time goldsmiths in Colombia's Sinú River area produce impressive ornaments for the chiefs of their Greater Zenú territory. Typical forms are large, hammered, crescent-shaped breast shields with repoussé decoration, and heavy cast staff finials worked in three-dimensional shapes of local fauna, particularly birds.

600 A.D. Near Filandia in the middle Cauca Valley, important individuals are buried with lavish grave goods (now considered to be Quimbaya in style). Among them are magnificent hollow-cast gold flasks known as poporos. The bottles—some shaped as male and female nudes—contain powdered lime made from calcined seashells. The lime is added to coca leaves when chewed during rituals.

700 A.D. The people in the Tierradentro region of the upper Magdalena River bury their dead in impressive underground rooms cut into the living rock. Accessible by steep spiral staircases, also rock cut, the rooms are circular or oval in plan and up to twenty-one feet below the ground; the most elaborate have niches and square pillars as central supports. The walls are painted with geometric designs in black, white, red, and yellow.

Museo del Oro, Bogotá, Colombia.
The museum's centerpiece is the Muisca Raft, a brick-sized solid gold figure of a chieftain aboard the raft.
That treasure was discovered by chance in 1969.

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