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El Dorado: The truth behind the myth

By Dr Jago Cooper
Curator of the Americas, the British Museum

14 January 2013

The dream of El Dorado, a lost city of gold, led many a conquistador on a

fruitless trek into the rainforests and mountains of South America. But it
was all wishful thinking. The "golden one" was actually not a place but a
person - as recent archaeological research confirms.
Columbus's arrival in the Americas in AD1492 was the first chapter in a world-
changing clash of cultures. It was a brutal confrontation of completely
opposing ways of living and systems of beliefs.

The European myth that arose of El Dorado, as a lost city of gold waiting for
discovery by an adventurous conqueror, encapsulates the Europeans' endless
thirst for gold and their unerring drive to exploit these new lands for their
monetary value.

The South American myth of El Dorado, on the other hand, reveals the true
nature of the territory and the people who lived there. For them, El Dorado
was never a place, but a ruler so rich that he allegedly covered himself in gold
from head to toe each morning and washed it off in a sacred lake each evening.
 Jago Cooper (r) found ancient traditions were kept alive at Lake Guatavita by Enrique Gonzalez (l)

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The real story behind the myth has slowly been pieced together over recent
years using a combination of early historical texts and new archaeological
research.

At its heart is a true story of a rite of passage ceremony carried out by the
Muisca peoples who have lived in Central Colombia from AD800 to the
modern day.

Different Spanish chroniclers arriving in this alien continent in the early 16th
Century began to write about this ceremony of El Dorado, and one of the best
accounts comes from Juan Rodriguez Freyle.

In Freyle's book, The Conquest and Discovery of the New Kingdom of Granada,
published in 1636, he tells us that when a leader died within Muisca society
the process of succession for the chosen "golden one" would unfold. The
selected new leader of the community, commonly the nephew of the previous
hi f ld th h l i iti ti l i ti i th fi l t f
chief, would go through a long initiation process culminating in the final act of
paddling out on a ra onto a sacred lake, such as Lake Guatavita in Central
Colombia.

Surrounded by the four highest priests adorned with feathers, gold crowns
and body ornaments, the leader, naked but for a covering of gold dust, would

set out to make an offering of gold objects, emeralds and other precious
objects to the gods by throwing them into the lake.

The shores of the circular lake were filled with richly adorned spectators
playing musical instruments and burning fires that almost blocked out the
daylight from this crucible-like lake basin. The ra itself had four burning fires
on it throwing up plumes of incense into the sky. When at the very centre of
the lake, the priest would raise a flag to draw silence from the crowd. This
moment would mark the point at which the crowds would commit allegiance
to their new leader by shouting their approval from the lakeshore.

Fascinatingly, many aspects of this interpretation of events have been

validated by painstaking archaeological research - research that also reveals
the exceptional skill and scale of gold production in Colombia at the time of
European arrival in 1537.
 Tunjos or offerings to the gods were le in sacred places like lakes and caves

Within Muisca society gold, or the more specifically an alloy of gold, silver and
copper called tumbaga, was highly sought aer, not for its material value but
for its spiritual power, its connection to the deities and its ability to bring
balance and harmony within Muisca society. As Muisca descendant Enrique
Gonzalez explains, gold does not symbolise prosperity to his people.

"For the Muisca of today, just as for our ancestors, gold is nothing more than
an offering... gold does not represent wealth to us."

Recent research by Maria Alicia Uribe Villegas from the Museo Del Oro in
Bogota and Marcos Martinon-Torres from UCL Institute of Archaeology has
shown that within Muisca society these "gold" objects were made specifically
for immediate use as offerings to the gods to encourage them to balance the
equilibrium of the cosmos and ensure a stable relationship with their
environment.

According to archaeologist Roberto Lleras Perez, an expert on Muisca gold

working and belief systems, the creation and use for Muisca metalwork was
distinct in South America.

"No other society, as far as I know, dedicated over 50% of their production for
votive offerings. I think it is quite unique," he says

The gold objects, like the collection of tunjos (votive offerings, most
commonly flat, anthropomorphic figures) on digital display at the British
Museum, were made by using the "lost wax" process - creating clay moulds
around delicate wax models before melting them and casting them in gold.

Since all the gold objects in each offering have the same chemical signature as
well as unique manufacture traits, it is clear these objects were being
specifically made for this offering and may only have been in existence for a
matter of hours or days before being deposited.

Incredibly, a gold ra depicting a scene exactly like that described by Juan
Rodriguez Freyle was found in 1969 by three villagers in a small cave in the
hills just to the south of Bogota. This scene of a man covered in gold going out
into a sacred lake, such as Lake Guatavita, is the real story of El Dorado.

The Muisca Ra is on display at the Gold Museum in Bogota

The way this story grew into the myth of a legendary city of gold reveals the
distinct way in which gold was a source of material wealth for European
conquerors. They had little understanding of its true value within Muisca
society. European minds were simply dazzled by just how much gold must
have been thrown down into the deep waters of the lake and buried at other
sacred sites around Colombia.

In AD1537 it was these stories of El Dorado that drew the Spanish

conquistador Jimenez de Quesada and his army of 800 men away from their
mission to find an overland route to Peru and up into the Andean homeland of
the Muisca for the first time.

Quesada and his men were lured ever deeper into alien and inhospitable
territories where many lost their lives. But what Quesada and his men found
astounded them, as the goldworking of the Muisca was like nothing they had
ever seen before. The exquisitely craed gold objects used techniques beyond
anything ever seen by European eyes.

Tragically, the desperate hunt for gold is still very much alive. Archaeologists,
working at fantastic research institutions like the Museo del Oro in Bogota, are
 o g at a tast c esea c st tut o s l e t e useo del O o ogota, a e
fighting against a rising tide of looting. So just like the European
conquistadors of the 16th Century their modern counterparts continue to
ravage South America's past and rob us of the fascinating stories behind it.

The quantities of gold uncovered by these looters is still astounding. In the

1970s when new sites were discovered by looters in northern Colombia it
caused the world gold market to crash.

This El Dorado-inspired looting of gold has meant that the vast majority of
precious pre-Columbian gold objects have been melted down and the real
value of these artefacts as clues to the workings of an ancient culture have
been lost forever.

Fortunately, surviving collections of objects curated at the Museo del Oro in

Bogota and British Museum in London can provide an insight into these
different perspectives on material value and human perception and most
importantly tell the true story behind the myths of El Dorado.

The story of El Dorado is explored further in the Lost Kingdoms of South

America, a series for BBC Four starting on Monday 14January at 21:00 GMT and
the British Museum Digital Exhibition.

You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook

More on this story

Country profile: Colombia

14 August 2012

Related Internet Links

The British Museum

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