For hundreds of years, treasure hunters and historians alike have searched for El Dorado, the lost city of gold. spite of numerous expeditions around all of Latin America, the city of gold remains a legend, with no physical evidence to substantiate its existence.
The origins of El Dorado come from legendary tales of the Muisca tribe. the Muisca practiced a ritual for every newly appointed king that involved gold dust and other precious treasures. When a new leader was appointed, many rituals would take place before he took his role as king. During one of these rituals, the new king would be brought to Lake Guatavita, where he would be stripped naked, and covered in gold dust. He would be placed upon a highly decorated raft, along with his attendants, and piles of gold and precious stones. The raft would be sent out to the center of the lake, where the king would wash the gold dust from his body, as his attendants would throw the pieces of gold and precious stones into the lake. This ritual was intended as a sacrifice to the Muisca's god. To the Muisca, "El Dorado" was not a city, but the king at the center of this ritual, also called "the Gilded One." While El Dorado is meant to refer to the Gilded One, the name has now become synonymous with the lost city of gold, and any other place where one can quickly obtain wealth.
In 1545, Conquistadores Lzaro Fonte and Hernn Perez de Quesada attempted to drain Lake Guatavita. As they did so, they found gold along its shores, fueling their suspicion that the lake contained a treasure of riches. They worked for three months, with workers forming a bucket chain, but they were unable to drain the lake sufficiently to reach any treasures deep within the lake. In 1580, another attempt to drain the lake was made by business entrepreneur Antonio de Seplveda. Once again, various pieces of gold were found along the shores, but the treasure at the depths of the lake remained concealed. Other searches were conducted on Lake Guatavita, with estimates that the lake could contain up to $300 million in gold, with no luck in finding the treasures. All searches came to a halt when the Colombian government declared the lake a protected area in 1965.
The most recent attempt to find El Dorado occurred in 2000. The Monastery of Santo Domingo was searching for underground Incan tunnels, when they found a large tunnel beneath the Monastery, but no gold. Then in 2001, Italian archaeologist Mario Polia discovered a document from the 1600s that contained descriptions of a city that could potentially be El Dorado. Within the area, located in Paratoari in Peru, tools and evidence of manmade structures have been recovered, but El Dorado remains a mystery.
