El Dorado – Truth In The Legend

"Over the Mountains of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride, if you seek for El Dorado"

Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada discovered Muisca people in 1537. Following their discovery, Muisca people were conquered and their cities looted. They found some gold not very much. The greedy looters refused to believe that such a disappointing discovery could be the "real El Dorado”. Hence, they kept searching for years after years but in vain.

The Muisca people had a tradition, where their king would be stripped naked and cover himself in a specific gold alloy dust and jump into the legendary Lake Guatavitá, just north of modern-day Bogotá, from which he would emerge clean. “El Dorado” referred to an individual, translates to 'Gilded Man' or 'Golden One', the legendary kings of the Muisca (also known as Chibcha) people from northern Andes of modern day Colombia, associated with this celebrated ritual. This being a very celebrated occasion was pretty well known to neighboring tribes as well. Words flew from mouth to mouth and hence landed in the ears of the conquistador.

With time, El Dorado stopped being an individual and began being a fabulous city of gold.

From date as early as 1531 the Spaniards possibly knew somewhere in the Eastern Ranges of the Andes there is existed a sacred lake, associated with Indian rituals involving significant portion gold was, the exact location of the same lake was onlydiscoveredin 1537 by famous Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada while on one of his expeditions.

Within Muisca`s gold, also known as “tumbaga” was highly sought after. Tumbaga is an alloy of gold, silver and copper in specific proportion, it was not only known for its material value but for its certain spiritual power. Gold does not symbolize prosperity to these people, but for its connection to their deities and its ability to bring balance to the Muisca society. Just as Muisca ancestors, for the current generation as well, gold is nothing more than an offering. To them gold does not represent wealth as well.

With time the legends of El Dorado lost its luster. But, in 1969, in a small cave just to the south of Bogota, three villagers found out a gold raft depicting a scene just like described in legends, of a man covered in gold going into a sacred lake, as said about Lake Guatavita.

Following this, there were many more loots, although not as much as the legends say, but quantities of gold uncovered by these looters is still astounding. In northern Colombia, when the looters were discovering new sites for gold in the 1970s, it caused the world gold market to crash.This specific legend inspired loots have caused the vast majority of precious gold objects to be discovered by looters. This resulted those pre-Columbian gold has been melted down and the real value of these artifacts as well as clues to the workings and technology of an ancient culture has been lost forever.

The desperate hunt for the city of gold is still alive in one form or the other. Just like the conquistadors of the 16th Century their modern counterparts maintained the trend to ravage South America's past. Archaeologists, working on the same are fighting against a rising of looting to protect the fascinating stories behind the gold.