Miguel Triana
Miguel Triana Ruiz de Cote (26 November 1859 – 29 April 1931) was a Colombian engineer and scholar of the Muisca, the indigenous people of central Colombia. He is best known for his 1922 book La Civilización Chibcha (The Muisca Civilization), which explored the Muisca culture. He also studied Muisca religion, society and rock art, and was one of the first Colombians to connect the Muisca with their pictographs, describing hundreds of rock paintings in El jeroglífico Chibcha.
Born in Bogotá, Triana studied civil and military engineering at the Escuela de Ingeniería del Coronel Antonio de Narváez, graduating in 1880. He worked on the Puerto Wilches train line (completed in 1883), on the central northern highway and railway in Cúcuta, and on irrigation projects in the Valley of Sogamoso as part of a study to dewater Lake Tota.
From 1890 he was director of public works in Nariño, and from 1917 he managed Bogotá’s Municipal Tramway. He also taught physics, hydraulics, geometry, trigonometry and drawing at the Universidad Nacional in Bogotá. Triana was active in several organizations and founded the Sociedad Colombiana de Ingenieros in 1887.
He married Juana Echeverri and had one son, Jorge Felipe Triana Echeverri. Miguel Triana died in Bogotá on 29 April 1931.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 03:45 (CET).