The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta once again offers archaeologists enormous satisfaction. In that famous mountain system, located in northern Colombia and on the shores of the Caribbean Sea, a group of researchers discovered an extensive network of indigenous settlements.
They did this using LiDAR mapping (Light Detection and Ranging), an active remote sensing technology that uses laser pulses to measure distances with high precision, creating detailed 3D models and point clouds of terrain, buildings, and vegetation. It works like a radar: by emitting light and measuring the return time, it allows for accurate three-dimensional representations of large areas, even under dense vegetation.
Betoma will surpass Ciudad Perdida
Thus, the researchers led by Daniel Rodríguez Osorio, an anthropologist, master in Anthropology with an emphasis on archaeology and biological anthropology, and PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Texas at San Antonio, identified thousands of structures hidden under the vegetation; they revealed an occupation much wider and more complex than previously known.
It is called Betoma, a city that, without a doubt, will begin to be spoken of from now on as Ciudad Perdida once was. It is a complex set of several urban nuclei that eventually formed a functional unit of the pre-Hispanic era.
The system of interconnected settlements extends over more than 18 square kilometers and includes, so far, more than 8,300 stone structures, including terraces, paths, and house foundations, reported Semana magazine. This scale not only far surpasses Ciudad Perdida, but also proposes a new way of understanding how indigenous societies were organized in Colombia.
“This discovery shows that these were not isolated settlements, but a densely inhabited and articulated territory,” said the project researchers cited by that media outlet, which also referred to other academics and experts who view Betoma as expanding the archaeological map of the country and also forcing a reconsideration of the history of settlement in the Sierra Nevada itself.
To explain it more visually, Rodríguez Osorio describes Betoma as an “extensive network of interconnected settlements, without an apparent primary center,” which undermines interpretations that for decades favored the idea of large, single, hierarchical urban centers in Tairona culture.
A new symbol of Colombian culture
Betoma also reopens dialogue with the indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada, such as the Kogui, Arhuaco, Wiwa, and Kankuamo, who have maintained a spiritual and territorial relationship with this ecosystem for centuries.
But Betoma is consolidating as a symbol of Colombian culture for its ability to change the narrative. According to Semana, this is not just an archaeological discovery: “it is a vindication of ancestral knowledge, of the sophistication of indigenous cultures, and of their role in the construction of the country.”
The newly discovered city of Betoma is located on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, where Rodríguez Osorio and his team have been working since 2019. At that site, the researchers, in addition to using LiDAR mapping technology, conducted field surveys in the upper basin of the La Aguja creek, where they recorded 1,272 terraces. In the upper basin of the Frío River, they found another 678.
This number of terraces, although not final, allowed for an astonishing comparison: Betoma is equivalent to more than a dozen Ciudad Perdidas concentrated in a single basin.