Colombia was one of the largest of those gaps.

This is not because Colombia is archaeologically unimportant.

The opposite is true.

The Bogotá Altiplano — the high plateau of Colombia’s Eastern Cordillera — has been inhabited continuously for more than eleven thousand years, making it one of the most uninterrupted archaeological sequences in the Americas.

The later cultures of this plateau include the Muisca, one of the most complex societies in pre-Columbian South America, who built a hierarchical chiefdom system, practiced elaborate goldworking, and maintained the trade networks that created the legend of El Dorado.

The Altiplano has been excavated by Colombian archaeologists for decades.