Qualla: El Infiernito

El Infiernito: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Bertram, CC SA 1.0. The Spanish called it El Infiernito -- "The Little Hell" -- because the upright stones horrified them. Phallic in shape, carved from pink sandstone, and arranged with geometric precision across a valley floor outside Villa de Leyva, the monoliths looked to sixteenth-century conquistadors like evidence of paganism that deserved condemnation. What they were actually looking at was a calendar. The Muisca people had built an astronomical observatory capable of tracking the sun's movement across the seasons, and the stones were its instruments.

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Image: Andrew Bertram | CC SA 1.0

El Infiernito: Stones That Tell Time

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Petruss, Public domain. A total of 109 monoliths have been excavated at El Infiernito: 54 in the northern row and 55 in the southern, aligned on an east-west axis across the Monquira Valley on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense. The lithic pieces are carved from pink sandstone, many shaped into columns with a...

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Image: Petruss | Public domain

El Infiernito: A Sacred Landscape

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Alerios assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. El Infiernito was more than a timekeeping device. The site served as a center for religious ceremonies and spiritual purification rites, a place where the Muisca gathered to worship the sun and encourage fertility of both land and people. Several earthworks surround the standing ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Alerios assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

El Infiernito: Rediscovering the Observatory

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ángel M. Felicísimo from Mérida, España, CC BY 2.0. The first formal description of the site came in 1847, when Colombian army geographer Joaquin Acosta reported 25 stone columns half-buried in the valley. Alexander von Humboldt studied the findings and recognized that the stone alignments could anticipate astronomical phenomena -...

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Image: Ángel M. Felicísimo from Mérida, España | CC BY 2.0

El Infiernito: What the Conquistadors Missed

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Juanme17, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Spanish saw diabolism where there was science. They condemned the phallic forms as obscene and labeled the site a place of pagan worship, a judgment that gave El Infiernito its enduring name. But the stones tell a different story -- one of a people who observed the sky with e...

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Image: Juanme17 | CC BY-SA 3.0