Zenú

The Zenú or Sinú is an Amerindian tribe in Colombia, whose ancestral territory comprises the valleys of the Sinu and San Jorge rivers as well as the coast of the Caribbean around the Gulf of Morrosquillo. These lands lie within the departments of Córdoba and Sucre.

The Zenú culture existed from about 200 BCE to about 1600 CE, constructing major water works and producing gold ornaments. The gold that was often buried with their dead lured the Spanish conquerors, who looted much of the gold. With the arrival of the Spaniards, the tribe all but died out. The 16th-century Spanish chroniclers wrote about the Zenú who were still living there, but recorded little or nothing about the history of the Zenú.

In 1966 the geographer James Parsons drew attention to rake-like patterns that were visible on aerial photographs of the wetlands in the lower reaches of the river San Jorge, patterns that could not have arisen naturally. Ten years later a major reconstructive research started.

Around 200 BCE, communities of farmers and goldsmiths lived in the valleys of the Sinú, San Jorge, Cauca and lower Nechí rivers, all culturally related with similar artistic expressions, concepts of life and death, and environmental practices. Their means of subsistence were hunting, farming, fishing, and trading in raw materials and finished products. Around 950 CE, about 160 inhabitants per square kilometer lived in the San Jorge basin. After 1100, the Zenú population decreased for unknown reasons and moved to higher pastures that did not flood, requiring no drainage works, where they lived until the Spanish conquest.

The inland delta formed by the San Jorge River, the Cauca River, the Magdalena River and the Nechí River, south-west of Santa Cruz de Mompox, frequently flooded during the rainy season in the mountains from April to November, causing great inconvenience to the residents of the plains. Therefore, from 200 BCE onwards these people built a system of channels that enabled them to control the flooding and make large areas practical for habitation and agriculture. The system was expanded continually. Covering 500,000 hectares between 200 BCE and 1000 CE, it was at its greatest extent in the San Jorge basin, but channels were also constructed in the lower reaches of the rivers Cauca and Sinú.

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