Natalia Sánchez Steiner, Independent Scholar and Chemical Engineer
The monthly meeting of the Pre-Columbian Society at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Remote attendance via Zoom (here).
Abstract
“This talk outlines the cosmological relations found in the Muisca myth of Bachue, a traditional narrative which originated in the sacred lake of Iguaque, located in Colombia (Northern Andes). An interdisciplinary approach was applied, considering archaeological, historical, ethnographic, astronomic, social, and climatic perspectives. It is suggested that Muiscas could have possibly seen in the night sky a huge and curved animal whose back was the Milky Way’s bulge. It is proposed that from El Infiernito archaeological site during the solstices between 700 AD to 1000 AD, when allegedly the Bachue myth originated, there were celestial and landscape alignments involving the Sun, the Milky Way and the Pleiades. The Muisca serpent-adorned cups could be interpreted as a representation of a cosmogonic/cosmological model, as concepts such as origin, opposition, duality, water and death, all present in the myth, were materialised in these unique ceramic pieces.”