Society and religion
Mu Iscar people live scattered in the valleys of the Andean Plateau in eastern modern Colombia. Important annual ceremonies related to religious, agricultural and ruling elites help unite these different communities. As we know, such a ceremony involves a large number of participants, including singing, burning incense and playing music with speakers, drums, bells, bells and Tao Di (spherical ceramic flute). These communities are also linked by trade, and even skilled craftsmen, especially goldsmiths, move between the cities of Mu Iscar.
Mu Iscar people take the heads of trophies from their defeated enemies, and sometimes they sacrifice their captives.
Mu Iscar was founded by Pochika, a legend from the East, who taught morality, law and craft and was ruled by a sheik assisted by spiritual leaders. Mu Iscar people control and defend their territory with sticks, spears, bows and arrows and spears. Soldiers also have protective helmets, armored breastplates and shields. Mu Iscar people took the heads of trophies from their defeated enemies, and they sometimes sacrificed prisoners to appease their gods. However, the war is highly ritualized and may be small-scale. For example, there is ample evidence that commodities such as gold, shells, feathers, hides, tobacco, salt, coca leaves and other foods are traded with neighboring Colombian cultures, such as Tolima and Kimbaya. Valuables were originally reserved for the elite of Mu Iscar, as were hunting and meat.
Mu Iscar people worship the sun and have special reverence for sacred objects and places, such as specific rocks, caves, rivers and lakes. In these places, they will leave offerings (tunjos) because they are considered as the gateway to other worlds. The most important Mu iscar gods are Zu E, the sun god, and Chey, the moon goddess. We also know Chibchacum, the patron of metal workers and businessmen. The most common type of ghosts and gods is the typical food tunjo, which is placed in the holy land and presents snakes and flat images of men, women and animals with gold alloy. Social elites can also be buried in these places with religious significance, first dried, then wrapped in layers of exquisite textiles, and finally put in graves to sit on their office chairs, a small stool or a tianga, surrounded by precious things they have enjoyed all their lives.
el dorado
Today's Mu Iscar people are famous for the legend of Huang Jinguo or the "gilded man". The Muska ceremony held in Lake Guadavita was actually just one of them, including a ruler covered with gold powder, and then he was rowed on a raft to the center of the lake, where he jumped into the water to clean and renew the ceremony. During the ceremony, Mu Iscar's subjects also threw precious objects into the lake, including not only gold but also jade.
After listening to this story, the Spanish let their imagination and desire for gold transcend the boundaries of reality, and soon a legend of a magnificent city built with gold appeared. Naturally, because it didn't exist from the beginning, the city has never been discovered. Despite several costly attempts over the centuries, even the lake stubbornly refused to reveal its secrets.
Musk art
The characters in Mu Iscar's artistic works are often transformative. For example, a person with bird elements may represent the shaman illusion caused by eating coca leaves or yopo (broken seeds). Bats, cats, snakes, crocodiles and amphibians are also popular themes. Mu Iscar people did not limit their artistic output to gold, but also created exquisite textiles made of wool or cotton, which can also be colored.
Typical Muisca designs include spirals and other geometric interlocking forms. It also produces ceramics (including clay sculptures) and carved semi-precious stones. Mu iscar women are not only capable weavers, but also good at weaving baskets and feathers. Most of the examples were found in tombs, so they escaped the greed of European invaders and later grave robbers in the early16th century.
For Mu Iscar people, gold is the first choice, because of its luster and transformation characteristics, and its connection with the sun. It is not as a currency, but as a art media. Gold is mined from bare veins and then leached from mountain rivers. Gold and its alloy tumbaga (gold mixed with copper and trace silver) are used to make tunjos, such as figures and masks, poporos with lime spoons, and exquisite jewelry-usually chest ornaments, earrings and nose nails. Muisca goldsmiths used various techniques in their work, such as lost wax casting, exhaustion of gold plating to produce two-color finishes, regrinding, welding, granulating and filigree. Gold can also be hammered into thin slices with an oval stone hammer or a metal hammer on a circular stone anvil or stone carving mold.
Perhaps one of the best works of Mu Iscar, which is also the strong evidence of the ceremony of El dorado, is a golden alloy raft with standing figures on it, one of which is bigger and wearing a headdress, and is undoubtedly a "gilded man". It was found in a cave near Bogota. This is a tunjo. The length of this work is 10 x 20, and the height of the main drawing is 10cm. Now it is preserved in the Oro Museum in Bogota, Colombia, along with many of the best surviving works by Mu Iscar.