El Dorado: The truth behind the myth

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.

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 chief, would go through a long initiation process culminating in the final act of paddling out on a raft onto a sacred lake, such as Lake Guatavita in Central Colombia.

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