Photo of the Week

Last week's photos were of a beautiful Guayacan tree at El Caño Archeological Park in the province of Coclé in Panama's interior. I mentioned that I had other photos I took at El Caño while visiting in March 2003. Here are a few. The top one is an excavation pit which is covered by a very large bohio. This excavation is of an old burial mound. The photo below shows a close up of a full skeleton and a group of bones. According to our guide (pictured above in the pit) some indians were allowed to decompose and then their bones were grouped as you see next to the entire skeleton.

     Background: El Caño Archeological Park is and interesting place and is located in the community of El Caño, District of Natá, 117 kilometers from Panama City. This is perhaps the most abundant concentration of Pre-Columbian remains discovered by archeologists to date in America.
     The discovery of the area dates back to the year 1924, when a North American collector of Pre-Columbian pieces found hundreds of blocks of stones and columns carved with anthropomorphous images at the site. From the location of the artifacts that were found, the place was called "The Temple of the Thousand Idols" or "Sites of the Temple".
     During the 20's, more than 500 specimens of lithic ceramic fragments and whole megaliths were found. Most of the archeological material found is housed at the Reina Torres De Araus Anthropologic Museum.

Below is a photo showing just some of the stones and columns mentioned above. There are many more with interesting carvings.

If you are visiting Panama, I highly recommend that you put this on your list of places to visit!