The modern Kogi Indians living on the coast and in the valleys of the Sierra Nevada are descendants of the Tyrons. The Tayrons themselves called themselves differently, and this name was given to them by the Spaniards. The meaning of the word “tairo” is “pouring metal”, which, in fact, the Spaniards demanded from the Indians. The colonial war lasted for about a hundred years in this area, but the Indians, with their primitive weapons, had no chance of defeating the conquistadors armed with firearms. Thus, the Tyrone culture gradually fell into decay and was forgotten. The once flourishing cities have disappeared into the thickets of the jungle.
In fact, those Indian tribes, which the Spaniards called the Tayrons, belonged to the Kagaba people. They are now known as “kogi”. For many years, this people has been studied in detail by Professor Reichel-Dolmatoff. He established that all the terraces, houses and temples of the koga (in particular, in the city of Buritaka) were built in accordance with the laws of cosmogony, according to the arrangement of the constellations.
The Kogi believed that the universe is a kind of egg-shaped space, which was determined by seven parameters: north, south, west, east, zenith, nadir and midpoint. This space is divided into nine areas, nine worlds, the middle of which is the fifth, is the world in which we live. All the structures of the koga were built according to this image.
The buildings of the koga are also egg-shaped, since, according to the ideas of the builders, we live in the middle fifth layer. The bottom four layers are underground, and the top four are above the ground. Men and women lived separately at the koga. Each community had an egg-shaped male house. Its roof was topped with a pillar like a flagpole. Opposite the men’s house was a women’s house, from the ridge of which two crossed beams protruded.
Scientists cannot determine the source of knowledge of the Tyrons, and they do not really believe what the Indians themselves say about themselves. Therefore, this people remains a mystery. In one of the temples of the koga, a rope of a sufficiently large diameter hangs from a pillar on the roof, which passes through four cosmic layers to the fifth, corresponding to the Earth. The priests believed that thanks to this rope they were in contact with their cosmic teachers.
In 1926, Professor Theodor K. Preuss (Vienna) published an article that focused on the intriguing myth of the Kogi Indians. He said that in ancient times there was a Flood on Earth and one of the priests built a magic ship on which he placed animals of all kinds. After the water disappeared, the ship stopped on the Sierra Negra mountain range. The priest and his elder heavenly brothers descended to earth. Since that time, a rope has been hung in every kogi temple as a reminder of this event. Similar legends exist among the most diverse peoples of the world. For example, the Sumerian “King’s List” says: “After the water subsided, the kingdom descended to Earth again.”
The Akkadian “Tale of Gilgamesh” also speaks of a terrible flood, during which Utnapishti built an ark, saved his family and a couple of animals and birds. These legends seem to many people today to be somehow very distant, fabulous, however, lost in the jungle cities, such as Buritaka, like silent witnesses, remind of the formidable reality of the ancient world, which may repeat itself …