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Published Thursday, August 13, 2020
Pre-Hispanic era stone path
discovered in Heredia
On Wednesday, road workers of the Ruta Uno Trust company between the Castella and Barreal area in Heredia Province discovered a stone path that could have been built by the ancient inhabitants of the pre-Hispanic era.
During the initial land removal work, the stone path was detected and classified as an "archaeological find", for which the place was isolated. Workers followed the guidelines ordered in the "Law on National Archaeological Heritage."
Ruta Uno Trust is in charge of the enlargement of the Ruta 1 highway.
"The area of the discovery, which consists of a pre-Hispanic road built with stones that remain isolated while work is carried out in other areas of the project to avoid delays in the schedule," Ruta Uno Trust said in their statement.
According to Alejandro Araya-Oviedo, Environmental Supervisor, the archaeological studies required in the area were coordinated with specialists from the National Museum of Costa Rica. The goal is to know the extension of the road and its characteristics to present a proposal for the conservation of the archaeological structures discovered.
The pre-Hispanic era, commonly referred to as pre-Columbian era, incorporates all period subdivisions in the history of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continent, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during the Early Modern period.
According to the historian Ana Maria Botey Sobrado, in her book "Costa Rica: from autochthonous societies to 1914", she details how before the arrival of the Spaniards to America, the original inhabitants of Costa Rica numbered some 400,000 people scattered throughout the country, most of them located in the North Pacific and the Central Valley.
"Of all the existing ethnic groups, the Huetares were the most powerful and best organized indigenous nation in Costa Rica when the Spanish arrived," Botey said.
Christopher Columbus arrived in the territory of present-day Costa Rica on September 25, 1502. It was his fourth trip from Europe to the Americas.
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