PRE-COLOMBIAN by Mike Stout

It is always good to know a bit about the history of an area when visiting or purchasing property there.  Although you won’t find any pyramids in Costa Rica, it is nevertheless rich in Pre-Colombian history.  The indigenous tribes here built with wood so any obvious signs of their villages have vanished long ago but these simple people had prospered for thousands of years in various parts of the country.  Mysterious stone spheres are the largest of the Pre-Colombian artifacts found in Costa Rica.  They have been found in many different sizes but the largest of which where unearthed in the southern region near the Panama border.  No one knows exactly where the stone came from or how it was made into such perfect spheres, or for what reason.  Many beautifully crafted and painted clay objects have been unearthed like dolls, ornaments, religious items, vessels, bowls, and musical instruments throughout the country.  Surprisingly enough, these cultures had knowledge of mold making for gold and many examples can be seen in the Gold Museum in San Jose.  Gold is what Christopher Columbus was hoping to find when he landed in Punta Uvita, Limon, on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica in 1502 and found it immediately in the form of small ornaments, hammered gold chest plates and bells that would be hung by the hundreds in the trees by the natives.  Columbus assumed that upon further exploration he would find much more than he actually did, giving the name to this new land, Rich Coast, or, Costa Rica in Spanish..  Gold was valued and worked by the natives, however the most precious material used in their art was jade and it was traded even with the Mayans and Aztecs who came seeking the famous blue jade that was carved into ornate figures and polished to perfection.  To this day, no one has ever found the source or mine from where this jade originated.  The most impressive items are on display in the Jade Museum in San Jose but thousands of worked pieces of jade, jadeite, and quartz are in museum storage bins, private collections or still lye buried in tombs or in ceremonial pits where items were placed as gifts to the earth for a good harvest.  Stone was also a common material used to make important items like metates (small tables made for grinding corn or making tortillas with a stone roller), ceremonial mace heads, arrow heads, and tools.

In Guanacaste, the Chorotega culture existed for about two thousand years (from about 1500BC to 500 AD) along the northern pacific coast and rivers extending east out to the Tempisque River.  Many artifacts have been excavated in areas now known as Nosara, Garza, Samara, Carrillo, Hojancha, Nicoya and others on the Nicoya Peninsula.