Muisca astronomy

This article describes the astronomy of the Muisca. The Muisca, one of the four advanced civilisations in the Americas before the Spanish conquest of the Muisca, had a thorough understanding of astronomy, as evidenced by their architecture and calendar, important in their agriculture.

Various astronomical sites have been constructed on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, the territories of the Muisca in the central Colombian Andes, but few remain today. Many archaeoastronomical places have been destroyed by the Spanish conquistadores and replaced by their catholic churches. El Infiernito, outside Villa de Leyva, is the best known of the remaining sites. The Temple of the Sun in sacred City of the Sun Sugamuxi has been reconstructed.

Important scholars who have contributed to the knowledge of the Muisca astronomy were José Domingo Duquesne and Alexander von Humboldt in the late 18th and early 19th century and modern researchers as Eliécer Silva Celis, Manuel Arturo Izquierdo Peña, Carl Henrik Langebaek and Juan David Morales.

The Muisca were an advanced civilisation, who inhabited the Altiplano Cundiboyacense and as southeastern part of that the Bogotá savanna before the Spanish conquest of the Muisca, of what became known as Colombia today. The onset of the Muisca Period is commonly set at 800 AD, following the Herrera Period, and the reign of the Muisca lasted until the arrival of the Spanish in 1537.

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