Lost City
Introduction
Lost City, also known as Teyuna or Buritaca-200,[1] is one of the main archaeological sites in Colombia.[3] It was an ancient Tayrona indigenous town built around the century AD. It is part of one of the more than 250 ancient towns of the four indigenous groups found on the north and southwest faces of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, department of Magdalena, jurisdiction of Santa Marta "Santa Marta (Colombia)"), in northern Colombia.[2][4].
History
Ciudad Perdida was built around the year 700, by the indigenous people named Tayrona according to the Spanish, and the Teyuna people by the four local Tayrona indigenous communities.[2][5] The city was abandoned in the year 1650.
In 1976, an expedition led by Gilberto Cadavid and Luisa Fernanda Herrera and made up of 3 archaeologists, an architect and guided by the guaquero Franky Rey, "the grandfather", who is credited with the discovery of the Lost City, the same one who notified the local authorities and the national government of Colombia of the discovery and in the company of other guaqueros from Baquianos in the area and after almost 12 days of crossing they arrived at the very heart of the archaeological site, where they collected sufficient evidence and took it to the capital of the country so that the then president Alfonso López Michelsen approved the budget for the recovery of the so-called Buritaca 200. When the technical team sent by the national government began its field work at the archaeological site, they encountered two key factors that made their work difficult; one of them was the state of destruction caused by the guaqueros to the site, which made it impossible to identify the different archaeological buildings that made up the place for its subsequent reconstruction and the difficult and arduous climatic conditions of the place, which sickened part of the technical team and it was then when the guaqueros led by Franky Rey began to be a fundamental part of the reconstruction works of Ciudad Perdida, since being native to the area they had natural immunity to pests and difficult conditions. climatic conditions of the place, in addition to having been the same guaqueros who destroyed the place to access the buried treasures and therefore were the only ones who knew the original shape of the different terraces, stone rings, paths and stairs that make up the archaeological site. In 2005 it was opened to tourists.