Tolita-Tumaco gold figure

Discovered near the border of Colombia and Ecuador, the 100 BC figure is from the Tumaco-Tolita culture. The Tumaco-La Tolita lived on the coasts of Ecuador and extended as far north as Buenaventura, in Colombia.

The peak of the Tolita culture lasted around 700 years. Its demise was marked by the abandonment of the Island of La Tolita around 400 AD. The artisans of the Tumaco culture excelled in the work of gold, platinum and tumbaga (an alloy of gold and copper). These metals were mainly used for artistic objects. The earliest evidence of the use of metals in the region comes from the archaeological site near the Islandof la Tolita, where a sheet of gold was found that was dated between 915 and 780 BC. The metalsmiths of the Tolita culture were the first in the world to work with platinum, at least 1,400 years before European blacksmiths. Platinum has a very high melting point, so Tolita blacksmiths had to develop techniques to work the metal without melting it, one of them is sintering, which is achieved by mixing platinum powder in gold or silver.