"Golden Chief" Tomb Treasure Yields Clues to Unnamed Civilization

National Geographic News ^ | December 21, 2011 | James Owen

[SunkenCiv]

"Spectacular find" includes gold, jewels, and a small army of likely sacrifices.

Newfound tombs in Central America are yielding thousand-year-old gold, gems, and even hints of murder by pufferfish. But the real treasure is the excavation's clues to the unnamed civilization of the so-called golden chiefs of Panama, archaeologists say.

"It's really a very spectacular find. ... probably the most significant" for this culture since the 1930s, when the nearby Sitio Conte site, also in central Panama, yielded a wealth of gold artifacts, anthropologist John Hoopes said.

Until now, Sitio Conte provided the only major evidence of the golden-chiefs culture, which can be traced from about A.D. 250 to the 16th century, when Spanish conquerors arrived on the scene.

Dating to between A.D. 700 and 1000, the new artifacts were excavated about two miles (three kilometers) from Sitio Conte, at a site called El Caño.

Striking Gold, Second Time Around

El Caño's field of stone monoliths and sculptures had drawn treasure seekers in the early 20th century, but as luck would have it, they dug up only artifact-poor graves of common people.

A few years ago, after having worked at Sitio Conte -- also marked by ancient monoliths -- archaeologist Julia Mayo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute decided to reinvestigate El Caño.

Mayo's ground surveys, beginning in 2005, traced the circular outline of a series of burials, about 260 feet (80 meters) wide.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, here’s the link to that other topic:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2824115/posts