Parque arqueológico de San Agustín
( San Agustín Archaeological Park )





























The San Agustín Archaeological Park (Spanish: Parque Arqueológico de San Agustín) is a large archaeological area located near the town of San Agustín in Huila Department in Colombia. The park contains the largest collection of religious monuments and megalithic sculptures in Latin America and is considered the world's largest necropolis. Belonging to San Agustin culture, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. The dates of the statues are uncertain, but they are believed to have been carved between 5–400 AD. The origin of the carvers remains a mystery, as the site is largely unexcavated.
The statues were first described by a Spanish monk, Fray Juan de Santa Gertrudis (1724–1799), who visited the countries of Colombia (then part of the New Kingdom of Granada), Ecuador and Peru in 1756–57 as a missionary. He passed through San Agustín in mid-1756, and wrote about the statues in his four-volume work Maravillas de la naturaleza (English: Wonders of Nature).[1][2]