As explained by Arhuaco elder Mamo Camilo Izquierdo, “In creation there are energies of all kinds; good, bad, neutral. Energetic power is to bring order.” Rulers and religious leaders (caciques) are responsible for managing interactions and relationships with the earth that sustains life, other people, plant and animal communities, weather phenomena, and supernatural beings. As such, the cacique sits at the very center of the universe, an axis of the Earth who maintains the balance of energies. 
  

In the Early Quimbaya period, artists of the Middle Cauca Valley represented the human body in a sculptural and realistic manner. In later periods, representations moved towards more abstract bodies and figurative vessels. The semi-closed, slanted eyes of these figures are notable, and metal adornments were clearly of great importance and prevalence. 
  

Between 400 BCE and 500 CE, one of the earliest major cultures of Colombia emerged among the swampy mangroves that cover five hundred kilometers of Pacific coastline along southern Colombia and northern Ecuador. Now referred to as Tumaco-La Tolita, their ceramics are remarkable for the realism of expression, including old age and illness. Perhaps more remarkably, they are the only culture in the ancient world to isolate and work platinum. 
  

Tolima stylized breast plates are among the most iconic artworks of ancient Colombia. However, we know very little about what they might represent and how they were used. They display a four-legged being with a human-like face, and many have a long, bifurcated tail and a pair of protrusions on the head—elements that are both reminiscent of insects or crustaceans. These figures depict hybrid beings that could represent spiritual processes of transformation.
  

The offering was a central practice of daily rituals and collective ceremonies for Indigenous Colombians. Ceramic, jewelry, stone, shell, wood, cotton, emeralds, corn, tobacco, coca, and blood were elemental in the complex of rituals related to both individual and collective needs. 
  

Between the eighth and sixteenth centuries, the altiplano (high plain) around what is present-day Bogota was the home of a decentralized and linguistically diverse group of people we now collectively call the Muisca. Muisca caciques (rulers) presided over a wide variety of valuable materials—including textiles, metals, precious stones, tobacco, coca, and beeswax—and officiated at collective offering rituals.

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia encompasses a unique ecosystem as the world’s tallest coastal mountain range. During earlier periods (Nahuange), people concentrated in the coastal bays, where they fished, farmed, extracted salt, and produced tumbaga (gold-copper alloy) adornments and figures. From 900 CE, in the Tairona period, these groups settled higher on the rugged mountain slopes, constructing large urban centers (see photos below), water systems, and stone pathways.

The cold, high mountains on the present-day border between Colombia and Ecuador were inhabited by groups of farmers, herders, and hunters from the fifth century CE. They took advantage of the variety of different climates at different altitudes to grow a multitude of products, in addition trading with Pacific coastal and Amazonian communities for shells, gold, feathers, and more. 
  

"The Caribbean lowlands are an area of marshes, estuaries and grasslands susceptible to seasonal flooding. Between around 200 BCE and 1000 CE, the Zenúes successfully lived here by constructing half a million hectares (almost two thousand square miles) of ditch-and-raised-field systems, which are still visible today (see photo).
  

"In the Calima region in the Western Cordillera, traces of dwellings, cemeteries, roads, and fields with raised ridges and drainage canals testify to a continuous occupation from 1500 BCE through the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, changes in the archeology of the region, as well as its ceramic and metalworking styles, allows us to distinguish three distinct periods.