El Infiernito

The site holds 109 standing stones in two parallel rows, 54 in the north row and 55 in the south, set up by the Muisca and used, on the reading generally accepted, to track the sun through the year by the shadows the columns cast - the alignments correspond to solstices and equinoxes, marking the agricultural calendar. A separate group of about twenty carved cylindrical monoliths stands nearby, phallic in form, associated with fertility rites. The Spanish name means little hell, given by the Spanish, who took the site for a place of devil worship and wanted it avoided; the Muisca name is not recorded. The setting is dry open valley with the hills behind, and the site is fenced with a short interpretive path.

History

The Spanish called the place infiernito, little hell, because they took it for a diabolical site of pagan worship. The army geographer Joaquín Acosta made the first description in 1847, reporting 25 stone columns half-buried in the Monquirá Valley, and Alexander von Humboldt thought the site could be used to anticipate the solstices and equinoxes from the stones' alignment with the sun and moon. The first formal excavations, led by the anthropologist Eliécer Silva Celis in 1981, made it an archaeological park; they uncovered 109 monoliths of pink sandstone, 54 in the north row and 55 in the south, burial mounds heavily robbed, and found that the central column of about five metres described by Acosta was gone (Wikipedia, El Infiernito).

The main sights

• 109 standing stones - in two rows of 54 and 55, aligned to the sun.
• Carved cylindrical monoliths - about twenty, linked to fertility rites.
• A name given by the disapproving Spanish - the Muisca one is lost.
• Open dry valley - with the hills behind.

When to go

Year round; solstice dates draw local interest. An hour.

What to expect

The stones are modest in size - this is a subtle site, not a monumental one. There is little shade. Interpretation is limited and in Spanish. The access road is unpaved.

Nearby

Villa de Leyva is east; the fossil museum is between.

Key facts