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The Lost City of El Dorado: The Legend of the World's Greatest Treasure

2025-03-05 18:56:13Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
The Lost City of El Dorado: The Legend of the World's Greatest Treasure
The lost city of El Dorado

The myth of El Dorado, a city of pure gold, has captured the imagination of people for centuries. Entire pages of history are filled with countless quests and fruitless searches in uncharted jungles. From the time of the first Spanish conquistadors to modern times, the search for El Dorado remains one of the most fascinating stories in the history of human exploration and ambition. And it seems to still move people from all over the world today who are trying to discover it.

Between myth and reality

The story of El Dorado spread like wildfire from the accounts of Spanish conquistadors in South America, who based their tales on indigenous accounts. And so began a centuries-long hunt for the richest city in the world. One that has not yet ended, although its focus has changed as modern technological tools have dispelled the illusions of the past.

The Spanish conquistadors, a group of ruthless adventurers who invaded the Central and South American region, saw with their own eyes that many natives, especially the chiefs, were in possession of gold jewelry. However, the myth of the golden city from which all this gold came was created in 1529, not even 40 years after Christopher Columbus discovered the American continent.

Ambrosius Dalfinger, the German-born governor of the port city of Coro, in present-day Venezuela, organized a voyage west to the Maracaibo Lagoon. At the time, the general feeling was that Maracaibo was connected to the Pacific Ocean and that the discovery of such a sea route could facilitate profitable trade. On their journey, Dalfinger’s men noticed that all the leaders of the native tribes they met had gold. Which, they recounted, they had acquired through trade with a tribe “from the mountains,” who owned all the gold mines and controlled its movement.

These stories, and those told by the soldiers when they returned to the Spanish coastal ports, caused a veritable frenzy. The Muisca, the indigenous people who controlled the mountain passes, became famous as the richest people on earth. When, in fact, some captives told their stories about the coronation rituals of new kings, the excitement turned into a gold rush. According to the Muisca, whenever a king died, the new leader was taken on a raft to the middle of Lake Guatavita. There, four priests stripped him completely naked and covered his entire body with gold dust. When his body glistened in the sun and the people swore to obey his orders, the new king and all the gold ended up in the lake. This process continued for many centuries. So the Spanish began to call the Muisca king “El Rey Dorado,” the golden king, who of course, according to legend, lived in a city full of gold.

In 1534, Sebastián de Bellacatar, one of the leading conquistadors of South America, captured the present-day mountain city of Quito, then inhabited by the Incas. His hopes of finding tons of gold were dashed, and the general feeling was that the Incas had managed to remove the gold from their capital and hide it in a secret place. Among the captured kings and nobles was one who was not an Inca, but came from another tribe. His armor had many pieces of gold, so the Spanish considered it certain that he was the “Golden King.”

Continuous campaigns began immediately to conquer the Muisca and discover this lake of gold. When, of course, they arrived there, they discovered that the Muisca themselves had no gold, but obtained it through exchanges from different regions. In this way the focus of the search was expanded. Others searched in the mountains and others in the jungles, without, of course, having any results.

The certainty that the "Golden City" existed

The fact that El Dorado was just waiting to be discovered was such that mythical areas and names were even recorded on official maps. For example, Lake Parime, the mythical lake where the enthronement ritual took place, is shown on early Spanish maps of South America, in areas that were naturally unexplored.

The Lost City of El Dorado: The Legend of the World's Greatest Treasure

In the archives of the Spanish conquistadors of South America, who remained masters of the vast empire for more than three centuries, 137(!) official expeditions to discover El Dorado are recorded. Historical researchers who have studied that period estimate that over 10,000 people, alone or organized in expeditions, got lost in the mountains and jungles trying to find the golden city.

In the 1820s, German explorer and geographer Alexander von Humboldt completed his exploration of the area where Lake Parime was believed to have existed and informed humanity that he had found no trace of the lake or the city. Governments and states are no longer involved in El Dorado, and the search has now passed to… private initiative. Many people refused to believe that all these myths were baseless and continued their search, in even more inaccessible areas. Later, when modern technology with metal detectors and thermal imaging cameras came into play, there were missions that literally wiped out every inch of the Colombian highlands, as well as the jungle in the interior of the country.

Today, Colombia's Ministry of Culture has organized programs to exploit this myth, but only for tourist purposes. There are travel agencies that organize excursions within the country, in the footsteps of those who tried to find El Dorado and become very rich. The Minister of Homeland Security, however, admitted in 2022 that there are still "isolated cases" of people or groups moving to inaccessible areas, theoretically for tourism, but in reality still searching for lost treasures. The myth of El Dorado, of course, was very rich in terms of artistic expression. From Voltaire's satirical poem to H. Allan Poe's epic "El Dorado", the search for the golden city has been the best food for the artistic imagination. Poems, historical novels and literary books have been written about the stories related to the golden city.

Of course, cinema couldn't be left behind. A total of four films have the search for El Dorado as their main theme. If anything, the myth is still here.


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