This statue is from Southern Columbia between 1-500CE. It is “imbued with a solemn peace, impressive for their ability to irradiate the mystery of the sacred.” The sign says so.
This funny monkey was sculpted by a Chavin sculpture between 1000 and 400 BCE.
This is a sculpture of a young noble women from the Veracruz culture (300-900 CE).
This funky pedestal is Mayan from between 300 and 900 CE.
There was also a sculpture of a man wearing a monkey skin from about 300-900 CE. You can see that it is a skin at the edges around the mouth and eyes.
You can also see the monkey’s hands with his poking out underneath.
This is a quipu, the Inca’s only form of written language. This one has 586 cords organized into 8 sections of 10 sets, and is probably some kind of census data.
The pattern of knots and twisting had meaning to the author and recipient. Very few people in the empire were literate, probably only top officials.
We still don’t know how to translate it.
The museum also had some smaller ones.
These strange carved stone geometric shapes date back to 11000 to 6500 BCE, just after people arrived in America. No one knows what they were used for.
These mummies were people from the Chinchorro people. They started mummifying people in 6000 BCE, 2000 years before the Egyptians.
