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

the existence of the Muisca rite at Lake Guatavita. In fact, an almost identical raft was found on the edge of Lake Siecha, south of the village of Guatavita, during a drainage attempt in 1856. This golden raft subsequently came into the hands of a certain Salomon Koppel who sold it to the Imperial Museum of Berlin, from where it disappeared after World War I. These rafts are certainly evidence of a ceremony taking place on a lake, though the Muisca culture not only venerated water, but mountains, stars, planets, and ancestors as well. More importantly, the tribe did not actually produce gold themselves; they obtained it through trade with other tribes. Consequently, their gold objects are small and usually very thin, as is the surviving golden raft. It is unlikely that the Muisca would have possessed gold in enough quantities to either cover their chief in gold dust or tip prodigal amounts into the lake during the ceremony referred to in the myth.

Nevertheless, modern explorers continue to be fascinated by the possibility of finally locating El Dorado. In 2000, the American explorer Gene Savoy announced that he had discovered the lost pre-Columbian city of Cajamarquilla deep in virgin rainforest in eastern Peru. Some members of his team claimed that the site, which includes temples and burial sites, could possibly be the remains of the fabled El Dorado. A Polish-Italian journalist and explorer named Jacek Palkiewicz was not quite so reticent when in 2002 he announced that his expedition had located El Dorado beneath a lake on a plateau next to Manu National Park, southeast of Lima in Peru. Investigations are apparently still ongoing in both of these cases.

Despite more than 450 years of searching, the discovery of the fabulous wealth of El Dorado seems to be no closer than it was for the Spanish of the mid-16th century. The term itself has become a metaphor for the single

minded pursuit of wealth that is always just out of reach, constantly around the next corner. No doubt there are lost pre-Hispanic cities still to be discovered in the vastness of the Amazon rainforest, but El Dorado, whether a Golden Man or a Golden City, only exists in the minds of men obsessed with discovering the quickest path to riches.

the Lost, City of Helike

© Dr. A. Siokou

The plain of Helike and the Gulf of Corinth from the mountains.

The ancient city of Helike, situated on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, roughly 93 miles west of Athens, was originally founded in the Early Bronze Age (2600-2300 B.c.). The first prehistoric settlement was submerged beneath the waves about 2,000 years before the city was destroyed. In the eighth century B.C. Homer wrote of Helike sending ships to the Trojan War under the command of Agamemnon. By the time of its

destruction in the fourth century B.C., Helike had become a wealthy and successful metropolis, the leader of the 12 cities of the first Achaean league (a union of local city states), and founder of colonies abroad such as Priene, on the coast of Asia Minor, and Sybaris in Southern Italy. Helike's temple and sanctuary of Helikonian Poseidon was famous throughout Classical Greece, and was rivaled only by the Oracle at Delphi, across the Gulf of Corinth.

But all this was to change one terrible night in the winter of 373 B.C. For a period of five days, citizens of the city gazed in bewilderment as snakes, mice, martens, and other creatures fled from the coast and made for higher ground. Then, on the fifth night, "immense columns of flame" (now known as earthquake lights) were witnessed in the sky, followed by a massive earthquake, and a towering 32 foot high tsunami wave. The coastal plain was submerged, and as Helike collapsed, the tsunami rushed in and dragged its buildings and its inhabitants out with the retreating waters. The city and its surroundings disappeared beneath the sea, along with 10 Spartan ships that had been ancored in the harbor. The neighboring city of Boura, and the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, were also destroyed.

When a rescue party arrived the next morning, nothing remained of the once great city but the tops of the trees in Poseidon's sacred grove, peeping above the waves. Perhaps because Helike had been a revered center for worship of Poseidon (the god of earthquakes and the sea), a tradition originated among its jealous neighbors that the city's destruction was punishment sent by the angry god for desecrating his sanctuary. Following the disaster, the former territory of Helike was doled out between its neighbors, with the city of Aegio taking over leadership of the Achaean League. Hundreds of years later a Roman city was built on the site, which also appears to have been partly destroyed by an earthquake in the fifth century A.D. For centuries after the disaster ancient writers such as Pliny, Ovid, and Pausanias reported that the submerged

ruins of Helike could be glimpsed on the sea floor. The Greek scientific writer, astronomer, and poet, Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.) visited the site and recorded reports by local ferrymen of an upright bronze statue of Poseidon submerged in an inland lagoon, where it often trapped the nets of fishermen. But soon afterwards the area silted over and the location became lost.

In 1861, German archaeologists visiting the region obtained a bronze coin of Helike featuring a splendid head of Poseidon, but nothing else surfaced from the ancient site. Ancient writers had all stated that the remains of the city lay submerged beneath the Corinthian Gulf, but for decades numerous expeditions searched for it without success. In 1988 the Helike Project was formed to locate the lost city, but a 1988 sonar survey under their auspices revealed no trace beneath the sea. Consequently, director of the Helike Project, archaeologist Dora Katsonopoulou, and Dr. Steven Soter, of the American Museum of Natural History, decided to investigate the coastal plain. In 2001, a few feet beneath the mud and gravel, the