El Morro del Tulcán (lit. Tulcán Hill) is an

Indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology) In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often populari ...

pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

in Popayán, Colombia. The pyramid was constructed in the pre-Columbian period, approximately between ; the period which is now known as "Late Chieftain Societies". On this pyramid a statue dedicated to the

Conquistador Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (; ; ) were Spanish Empire, Spanish and Portuguese Empire, Portuguese colonizers who explored, traded with and colonized parts of the Americas, Africa, Oceania and Asia during the Age of Discovery. Sailing ...

Sebastián de Belalcázar Sebastián Moyano y Cabrera, best known as Sebastián de Belalcázar (; c. 1490 – April 28, 1551) was a Spanish conquistador. Belalcázar, also written as Benalcázar. He is known as the founder of important early virreinal cities in the northw ...

existed from 1937 to 2020.

Archaeological excavations

During archaeological excavations carried out in 1957 by Hernan Cubillos, director of the Ethnological Institute of the University of Cauca, during that time it was determined that the site "was a special formation, whose cover material is made up mainly of lateritic clays". The indigenous people had built this pre-Hispanic pyramid with clay adobes and filled with earth for the celebration of funeral rites. The author indicated that "the structure was manifested occasionally through a detachment of the superficial layer that revealed some species of adobes". The top of the structure was decapitated and the walls that determined it disappeared with the start of several works around the hill, generating in its wake, the destruction of the "pre-Hispanic cuspid shaped top". According to Cubillos, this occurred around 1940 when the municipality celebrated the fourth centenary of foundation of the city of Popayan, "the leveling of the hill was carried out, in order to create a platform to place the equestrian statue of the conquistador

on that site and carry out ornamentation work". The Morro de Tulcán as it is known throughout the world is visited by thousands of people who can see from the platform imposed there the city in population growth but little is known that "the cut part destroyed two walls that determined it, according to the evidence obtained in our excavations were artificial and also made of adobe and filler”. Today, the hill is deforested and superficially covered with “natural grass or kikuyu grass” replacing the natural shrubby vegetation of the time. According to Londoño (2011), the dating of this pre-Hispanic pyramid is still to be determined with more precision, as well as the realization of more archaeological investigations, as that of Cubillos is the only official investigation that has been made. Political events occurred in September 2020 led to the demolition of the Spanish monument, as a result the University of Cauca announced that the archaeological studies in the area would be resumed, as a way of symbolic restitution.

Photographs of Excavations

File:Morro Lamina3A.png, Aspect of the stratification and placement of adobes File:Morro Lamina3B.png, Raising made with adobe on the eastern limit of the structure File:Morro Lamina4A.png, Eastern limit of the construction towards the abutment of the north slope. Alignment of adobes in tizón, scraped area and ditch. In the background the continuation of the structure File:Morro Lamina4B.png, End of the north structure on the east side. Note the dipping of the organic base layer and the carved stone plates File:Morro Lamina5A.png, Detail of the concentration of carved slabs on the east side of the structure File:Morro Lamina5B.png, Detail of the concentration of adobe courses placed with tizon and that form the abutment of the north track

References

External links

Introduction
{{coord, 2, 26, 40, N, 76, 36, 00, W, source:kolossus-frwiki, display=title Pyramids in South America Burial monuments and structures Buildings and structures in Cauca Department Archaeological sites in Colombia