Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries, Brian Haughton [books you need to read .TXT] 📗

vegetable dyes. If there was an abundance of gold among the tribe it is certainly plausible that it could have been used as body decoration. Perhaps there was some truth in the Gilded Man legend after all, but could it be the origin of the El Dorado story?

There are, however, other elements involved in the beginnings of El Dorado. Another rumor circulating among the Spanish at the time of the conquest was that a rebel group of Inca warriors had managed to elude the conquistadors and escape to the mountains of Venezuela. The rebels allegedly took large amounts of gold and precious stones with them and founded a secret new empire. There were also various stories told by captured Indians of a rich land lying beyond the mountains east of Quito, the modern capital of Ecuador, where the people strolled about covered in gold ornaments. In a letter written in 1542 to Charles V, King of Spain, conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro refers to this rich land as Lake El Dorado, perhaps a reference to the Golden Man ceremonies of the Muisca. Pizarro was one of a number of Spanish invaders who organized expeditions to search for the fabulous lost city. Another element in the El Dorado story is the interest the Spanish had in the cinnamon the Incas used. In Europe, spices were highly valued as a method of preserving food (in the days before refrigeration), and huge profits could be made from trading in the commodity.

The conquistadors found out from the natives that the spice originated with tribes located east of Quito. In February 1541, an expedition headed by Gonzalo Pizarro with Francisco de Orellana as his lieutenant, and including 220 Spanish adventurers and 4,000 mountain Indians serving as porters, left Quito in search of cinnamon and the fabled El Dorado. During his obsessive quest for these valuable commodities, Pizarro would often brutally torture Indians until they told him what he wanted about the existence of hidden gold and cinnamon trees. The expedition followed the courses of the Coca and Napo rivers, but soon began to run short of provisions, and before long more than half of the Spanish and 3,000 of the Indians had perished. In February 1542 the expedition split into two parts, with Francisco de Orellana pursuing a course down the Napo, and Pizarro eventually deciding to struggle back overland to Quito. From the Napo, Orellana and his men finally found their way to the Amazon and sailed its entire length to the Atlantic Ocean, an incredible achievement. But they never found El Dorado.

But this did not deter the Spanish. Driven by their lust for gold and spices, a series of adventurers spent much of the 16th century in search of the vast

treasure they believed existed in some hidden location in the jungles or mountains of Ecuador or Columbia. In 1568, wealthy explorer and conquistador Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada received a commission from King Philip to explore the southern Llanos, a vast expanse of tropical grassland plain situated in Colombia. In December 1569, the expedition, which included 300 Spaniards and 1,500 Indians, set off from the Columbian capital of Bogota in search of El Dorado. But the expedition, confronted with the harsh mosquito-ridden environment of the dismal swamps and the blankness of the dusty plains, was a disaster. Three years later, Quesada arrived back in Bogota accompanied by just 64 Spaniards and four Indians.

The original myth of the Muisca ceremony at Lake Guatavita combined with the Lake El Dorado of Gonzalo Pizarro convinced many explorers that the lost city may in fact be located near a lake. English explorer and Courtier Sir Walter Raleigh launched another search for El Dorado in 1595, in an attempt to restore lost favor with Queen Elizabeth I. His expedition sailed along the Orinoco River for many weeks, but found nothing. However, in his book The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guyana with a Relation to the Great and Golden City of Manoa, Raleigh claimed that El Dorado was a city on Lake Parima on the Orinoco in Guiana (modern-day Venezuela). Raleigh's map showing the the city on the lake was so convincing that the mythical Lake Parima was marked on maps of South America for the next 150 years. It was not until the early 19th century, with German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, that it was proved that neither the lake nor the city had ever existed.

Though Lake Parima was entirely mythical, there was never any doubt about the existence of Lake Guatavita. Perhaps this was, after all, the location of El Dorado. As soon as the Spanish invaders learned that the Muisca deposited precious objects in Lake Guatavita as offerings, they immediately set about organizing the draining of the lake. Wealthy merchant Antonio de Sepulveda used a workforce of Indians to cut a trench to drain the lake in 1562, but only succeeded in lowering its level slightly. De Sepulveda did, however, find a number of gold discs and emeralds in the mud at the lake's edge. Nevertheless, the total haul from the drainage was recorded as only "232 pesos and 10 grams of good gold." Another attempt to drain the lake in 1823 by Don `Pepe' Paris, a prominent citizen of Bogota, found no precious gold artifacts. Further drainage projects in the early- to mid-20th century discovered a few items of interest, but nothing similar to what would be expected from the repeated deposits of gold supposedly made in the sacred lake. Finally, in 1965 the Colombian Government brought an end to these efforts, which by then had visibly scarred the lake, and put Lake Guatavita under national protection.

In 1969, an exquisitely detailed solid gold model of a raft 10.5 inches in length was found by two farm workers in a cave near the town of Pasca, close to Bogota. The model raft contains a regal figure towering above 10 attendants, all wearing elaborate head

dresses. It has been interpreted by many as confirming