Adventurers, explorers, historians and greedy people have wasted their time – or even their lives – searching for the lost city of El Dorado. Legend has it that the mystical place was abundant in gold and other riches.
El Dorado has already inspired films, books and has several references in pop culture – one of which is an album and a tour by the singer Shakira. But did the city really exist? Or is it just another Atlantis?
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(Photo: Scene from the film “The Road to El Dorado (2000)” – Reproduction – Dreamworks)
How did the myth of El Dorado come about?
It is said that the Spanish conqueror Sebastián de Belalcázar was the first person to claim that the shores of Lake Guatavita were El Dorado.
A few years later, around the 17th century, the Spanish writer Juan Rodríguez Freyle wrote a chronicle about something that refers to the lost city. In the text, he describes a ceremony performed by the Muisca people, in what is now Colombia.
The story goes that the chief's heir spent six years fasting in a cave. Afterwards, he had his body covered with gold dust and was sent to the middle of the lake on a raft full of gold artifacts.
The man would then have thrown all the gold and riches into the middle of Lake Guatavita.
Real background
Let's break the ice: the most accepted thing is that El Dorado never existed and has always been a myth. However, there is a grain of truth in the legend of this metropolis full of gold bars, which are worth more than money.
Jokes with Silvio Santos Apart from that, it is believed that everything happened as a result of a ritual with a man covered in gold dust. However, even this fact is shrouded in much mystery.
A study published in August this year, available on the University of Cambridge, provides details of an expedition carried out on Lake Guatavita. The place would have been the stage for a ritual.
The group was led by Juan Pablo Quintero-Guzmán. They were searching for any artifacts that indicated the alleged ritual had occurred. What they found were just a few pieces of pottery.
This means that perhaps the gold ritual took place, but only once.
More evidence
The pottery fragments were not the first signs that the story of the El Dorado ritual may be true. Over the course of the 20th century, further evidence emerged.
During a drain in 1912, gold objects were removed from the bottom of the lake, as well as some jewelry. As early as 1969, farmers found a golden raft in a cave.
Still, historians believe the El Dorado ritual happened only once. And, quite possibly, it was carried out as a form of appeasement at a time of political tension.
However, like everything involving the history of this mythical city, all of this only reinforces doubts about whether El Dorado was, in fact, a place or just an idea, or a ritual.
Graduated in Social Communication from the Federal University of Goiás. Passionate about digital media, pop culture, technology, politics and psychoanalysis.