Download El Dorado: The Search for the Fabled City of Gold AudioBook Free
Alongside the famous Lost City of Atlantis, perhaps no mythological city has captured the imaginations of people or been the foundation for exploration that can compare with El Dorado, the fabled city of yellow metal that the Spanish thought was located someplace in South America. The roots of the Spaniards' idea in the lifetime of the mythical city was predicated on their rumors encircling the tribal chief of the Muisca in present-day Colombia; the Spanish noticed that his initiation included covering himself with precious metal dust particles and diving into Lake Guatavita. Needless to say if the chief could cover himself in yellow metal, he must have access to a lot from it, and for this figure the misconception of El Dorado sprang up. Naturally the idea in the lifetime of El Dorado propelled it from being only a city to a whole empire itself, and this spurred several journeys in the 16th hundred years, including one by Francisco Pizarro's one half sibling, Gonzalo, and another by Sir Walter Raleigh. Although none of the journeys actually found out such a location, they resulted in a great deal of lives lost and a lot of exploration of the heart and soul of South America. Moreover, despite the fact none of the explorers actually found El Dorado, the gossips and journeys only cemented the belief that such a location existed, and El Dorado was actually located on maps made by several European countries for centuries. As folklorist Jim Griffith once said, "El Dorado shifted physical locations until finally it simply meant a way to obtain untold riches someplace in the Americas." Actually it would not be until about the early 19th hundred years that explorer Alexander von Humboldt disproved El Dorado's lifetime, at least in the spot it was assumed to be located for over 200 years.
