Eliécer Silva Celis
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dr. Eliécer Silva Celis |
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Portrait of Silva Celis in his museum
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| Born |
January 20, 1914 Floresta, Boyacá  Colombia
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| Died | July 4, 2007 (aged 93) Sogamoso, Colombia |
| Nationality | Colombian |
| Fields | Archaeology & anthropology of the Muisca |
| Known for | Archaeology, anthropology, mummies, Sun Temple |
| Spouse | Lilia Montaña Barrera † |
| Children | Margarita Silva Montaña and 3 others |
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Eliécer Silva Celis (Floresta, Colombia, 20 January 1914 - Sogamoso, 4 July 2007) was a Colombian anthropologist, archaeologist, professor and writer. He is considered a pioneer in the anthropology of Colombia. Silva Celis is known in Colombia for the reconstruction of the Sun Temple, the most important temple of the Muisca religion.
Eliécer Silva Celis has published many books and articles about the Muisca and other indigenous groups of Colmbia, only in Spanish.
Eliécer Silva Celis was born in Tobasía, vereda of Floresta, Boyacá on January 20, 1914. He became an orphan at young age and worked as street vendor and at the construction of the railway of Antioquia.
In 1937, at age 23, Silva Celis managed to finish his secondary education. The same year he entered the Escuela Normal Superior de Colombia in Bogotá, where Silva Celis got to know later famous people who fled the Nazis in Europe: Paul Rivet, Rudolf Hommes, Justus W. Schottellius, José Francisco Socarras, Gregorio Hernández de Alba and José de Recasens, among others. They taught Silva Celis ethnology, archaeology, physical anthropology, history, philosophy and linguistics.
In 1942 Silva Celis uncovered a Muisca cemetery with indigenous tombs in the Mochacá neighbourhood in Sogamoso. He found Muisca mummies and could establish the precise location where the Temple of the Sun of the Muisca had been. The Temple, dedicated to Muisca Sun god Sué, was destroyed by soldiers in the army of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada on September 4, 1537. When De Quesada's soldiers Miguel Sánchez and Juan Rodríguez Parra raided the Sun Temple in September 1537, they found mummies decorated with golden crowns and other objects sitting on raised platforms. With the finding of the location of the temple, he founded the Parque Indígena del Sol, present-day site of the Archaeology Museum in Sogamoso. The museum hosts more than 5000 pieces of the Muisca civilisation. In this museum he also reconstructed the Sun Temple. Later, Eliécer Silva Celis rediscovered El Infiernito, close to Villa de Leyva, an astronomical observatory of the Muisca. Silva Celis founded the Archaeological Park in Monquirá.
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