Lost gold city

Hi,

I saw a show on The History channel about a lost gold city named El dorado in South America. Archaeologists and ordinary people tried to locate the the city but failed Many died in the forests and on the rivers (because of the rains that made the water go up and down).
El dorado was made in gold almost everything that could be gold was gold !

But I wounder my they don't ask the help of like NASA to use satellite to maybe locate the city?

And if you have some more information please post.

Thanks

El Dorado! City of Gold, dreamt of by thousands and found by none.

They tried the satellite idea, but the reflected sunlight from the gold was too much for the satellite and it burned out before it could transmit the exact location.

It's a myth, a tale, a dream. Never existed.

Yeah, it was a tale invented by the natives to get the spanish the hell away from them. It's thattaway--->

Originally posted by Chuck Stevenson


They tried the satellite idea, but the reflected sunlight from the gold was too much for the satellite and it burned out before it could transmit the exact location.

LoL But still if someone will found it, it would be awesome!..... But I guess that will never happen

The Amazon.

The problem is the amount of tree coverage.

If it was easy to spot such things, we would have found them all by now. There are meant to be places in Africa, Middle East, South America, South Pole, etc.

But for one reason or another [sand, jungle, water, ice, etc] they can't be seen.

Originally, the myth did not involve a city of gold at all. The legend derives from the Muisca people of South America. The story goes that either their king or their chief priest would be the primary figure in a ceremony in which their skin was covered with gold that had been reduced to a fine dust. This gold dust was spread over every part of their body, so that they appeared to be a golden person.

Following this, the locals would pile high a raft with precious jewels and a great amount of gold. The king/priest would raft out to the centre of Lake Guatavita and dump the precious cargo into the bottom of the lake as an offering to his god. The story largely stems from a second-hand account by Juan Rodriguez Freyle about his friend Don Juan. From his account:

They placed him on the raft ... and at his feet they placed a great heap of gold and emeralds for him to offer to his god. In the raft with him went four principal subject chiefs, decked in plumes, crowns, bracelets, pendants and ear rings all of gold. They, too, were naked, and each one carried his offering .... when the raft reached the centre of the lagoon, they raised a banner as a signal for silence. The gilded Indian then ... (threw) out all the pile of gold into the middle of the lake, and the chiefs who had accompanied him did the same on their own accounts.

Source - Wikipedia
Wikipedia has a good article that explains the origins of the myth in the form of El Dorado the golden man, as well as a brief but concise account of the El Dorado as a golden city myth.

As Rikamaru said, the manipulation of the story to become that of a city of gold was probably an effort to spare the people's own cities from falling to the conquistadores by trying to entice them to explore elsewhere for even greater riches.

There also exists a legend regarding the mythical Seven Cities of Gold, which were said to have been cities that acted as safehouses, where Incan gold was kept hidden from Cortez.

Mysterious Cities of Gold was also a cartoon which dealt with three children's quest to find the mythical golden cities. I was quite into it when I was but a lad, since it seemed quite involving for its day (early 1980s). At the end of each episode they would present facts about the Amazon and the Incas. This is where I first heard of the origins of the El Dorado myth as relating to an individual rather than an entire city.

[edit on 4/9/05 by Jeremiah25]

Good post Jeremiah. I want to add that in addition to the myth of the golden city there are many more stories, some true, some with a basis in truth. I am including two factual stories.

For the original poster I would say you are on a wild goose chase with El Dorado, you have more probable chance of searching for the gold of the Incas hidden in the mountains.

I also want to say that myth is often based on 'some' fact. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the Incas did have a lot of gold. Any doubts can be assauged by taking a visit to your nearest museum to see the wonderous pre-Columbian artificats. Though I have to point out that most of the original gold was melted down and did not survive.



The Incas considered a lot of things 'gold'. Gold was good. The sun was gold, the maize was gold, the way a beautiful maiden who had bathed in the river (which had gold dust residue) looked when the sun shone on her. If it was healthy, beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, the Incas considered it gold - which derived from their love of the sun.

Inca means children of the sun.

A mere trinket to the Incas was a lifetime of wealth to the Spaniards, often second sons - which explains some of their brutal and ignorant behaviour. They stood in line to inherit nothing and so had nothing to lose and everything to gain by exploiting new lands for the 'king' and for 'god'.

In the stories of the conquest there are references to the indians being amused that the Spanish were so amazed at all their gold. I believe one story goes that an Inca prisoner just gave one man his bracelet because the Spaniard couldn't keep his eyes off of it. In another more gruesome story, a warrior had his hand hacked off for a solid 'trinket'.

1. Atahualpa Prince of the Incas was captured by Francisco Pizarro and his men and watched while his people died, were tortured, burned/etc... He promised them he would give him two rooms full of gold. This was agreed and Atahulap's servants faithfully brought gold vases, plates, to him every day until the wealth amassed. Needless to say, the Spanish went against their word and King Atahualpa was killed anyway after being 'converted' to christianity. Truly a dark time in history.

It was greed that drove the Spanish Conquistadors, they wanted to get their hands on the Inca gold. Upon Pizarro's first meeting with the Sapa Inca Atahualpa, he was carried in by bodyguards covered in sheets of gold. Atahualpa wore a woollen braid interwoven with gold, wound round his head. Each of his earlobes were encrusted with a gold disk. He offered the Spaniards beer in large golden vases.

The meeting ended violently with Atahualpa's capture. He bargained for his life by offering to fill a room with treasure. The ransom was brought from all over the Inca kingdom.

One-fifth of Atahualpa's ransom was reserved for the king of Spain; the remainder was shared out between Pizarro and his men. In total, the ransom consisted of about 6,000 kg of gold worth about 31 million pounds and 11,000 kg of silver worth 850,000 pounds. Silver was so abundant that the Spaniards used it to shoe their horses. Very little Inca gold survives today in its original form because the Spanish melted it all down into ingots.

Some of those ingots made it home to Spain. A visit to the churches in Sevilla and Andalucia should show you what happened to that wonderful gold. It is a good example of what happens when riches are looted and people slaughtered all in the name of christianity.

Tales of the ships being so loaded down with gold from the new world that they often sank before reaching their destination, spawned even more myths and legends of pirated, sunken or buried treasures.

2. General Ruminahui - a prominent Inca warrior, hid gold and treasure in the Llanganati. He prefered it to be lost forever rather than handing it over to the Spanish. This story is fact, but depending on where you hear it, some of the quests to find it have spun of some wonderful books, films and games. The gold has never been found till this day. The indians hid an estimated 700 tons of gold in those mountains.

An Inca General named Rumiñahui fled the marauding Spanish and took with him a large share of the ransom he had been collecting for his King. He disappeared into the remote mountainous region of Ecuador called the Llanganati. The load of gold artifacts he took with him is considered the largest undiscovered treasure in Latin America, valued at two billion dollars.

Since Ruminahui's disappearance, generations of adventurers have sought Atahualpa's gold. As if gripped by a vengeful curse, the mountains of the Llanganati have refused to surrender this gold, punishing those who would have it with the spite of a broken race.

The Incas and the Conquest - www.hc09.dial.pipex.com...
Inca gold: An expedition - www.ecuadorexplorer.com...
Gold in the Ancient World - www.gold.org...


Book source:

Lost Treasure of the Inca - Peter Lourie
The Conquest of the Incas - John Hemming


[edit on 4-9-2005 by nikelbee]

Dunno, theres still alot on this planet we havent seen...plenty of forests that havent been viewed by the moderners, cant really say they dont exist untill we've seen everything...coz we just dont know!
Interesting, would be amazing if it was discovered, and even better if it was soon!

Woodsy

You have voted nikelbee for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

This was an excellent post. Well done, nikelbee. I would love to see more posts that are well researched, referenced and contain quotes and images to get their point across. Excellent work!

Thanks for that Jeremiah.

I came across an account of seeing 12 locations of buried Spanish gold.
King Carlos sent in his troops to claim the gold but the gold was
long ago buried and those with the maps long gone when the Spanish
ships arrived.

The Gold in the El-dorado Isn't Literal Gold, Its Nanomachine.

If you're talking about the Brazilian one it's original name is Manoa, and it has been reported by Brazilian indians troughout the centuries as being a city lost in the middle of the jungle fully operational containing for what they describe pyramids and a population composed by "strange" white blond people.

The funny thing is that some of them and a few explorers that allegedly saw it say they saw the same thing and that it vanished before their own eyes to never see it again. Many have died trying to find it or simply vanished leaving no trace whatsoever.

Many of the descriptions match even being years apart of each other.

There are diaries from explorers ( Bandeirantes ) dating from 16-17 century in the National Library of Rio de Janeiro.

The most recent and well known story is the one about Colonel Percy Fawcett who went after it to never return. But at that time there were indigenous tribes in that region which were still isolated from everything else and were still practicing cannibalism, so it's not hard to believe that he and his team were simply eaten.

But there are loads of controversy regarding that because the descendants of that same tribe say that Percy got there in pretty bad conditions with almost his entire crew already dead due to the hard environment in the Forest. They promptly treated him and he end up living with them for years until his death.

It's said that there are two of these cities, one located in Brazil (probably around Mato Grosso and Amazon) and another on the Central America's South.

Early this year another expedition was assembled to search for Manoa but I have no idea how that went. My guess is that nothing happened otherwise we would be hearing something about it by now.

It's a interesting reading though to say the least.

Another one which is still not explained and people don't see to bother that much are the Phoenician inscriptions at the "Pedra do Gávea" in Rio de Janeiro which predate the Portuguese colonization and weren't written by Brazilian Indians since they didn't had writing and much less a Phoenician one.

But that's how historians work, as soon something doesn't fit their "theories" they choose to neglect a few facts so their story works.

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

You can certainly find better links than those two cheap ones above

reply to post by thomas_

The most recent and well known story is the one about Colonel Percy Fawcett who went after it to never return. But at that time there were indigenous tribes in that region which were still isolated from everything else and were still practicing cannibalism, so it's not hard to believe that he and his team were simply eaten.

recent expedition to the are turned up personal items of his from the tribe.
It was discovered that the "lost city" he was looking for is really a collection of small villiages that covered a wide area. They had roads between them, they built canals, to carry water and ponds to raise fish in.
There is a thread that mentions this area.

reply to post by 11undercover11


There has been a lost inca city found recently in the brazillian jungle, it was the last refuge of the imperial court.
it was found via satellite, but only because the area was narrowed down via years of research.

there is another story of a lost city of gold that comes out of the northern amazon, the part of the basin dominated by huge mesa's, thousands of feet tall.
The story was somewhat reinforced in 1930's by an american gold prospector.
He was flying from wherever he was prospecting to somewhere else, dont really remember.
But his plane had some mechanical problem, and he was forced to land on one of the mesa's.
On this mesa he found huge gold nuggets laying on the ground, he repaired his plane loaded up some gold and went back to civilization, confident he could find the mesa again,. He never did, and spent the rest of his life looking.

reply to post by punkinworks


I'd tend to doubt that story as most of the mesa's I've read about are bare sand stone with very uneven 'dimpled' surfaces caused by erosion.

Now that story mentions the northern amazon - the tepui there tend to be different than the more vegetation covered ones in Guiana highlands.




But then it does make a good story.





[edit on 19/9/09 by Hanslune]

reply to post by Hanslune


I doubt many of the particulars of the story, except that some of the giant nuggets were documented with photographs.
I have mesa's here where I live that are similar only much much smaller, and like you say they are not the smoothest places.
I do doubt that a plane could land on an unprepared one and still be flyable.
None the less the guy was quite well know in the amazon for several decades, because of his unending search.
I would bet he crashed and walked out, and the story drifted with the years.
A saw a film doc about the tale, and they went to the place where he thought he landed. I was surprised at how arid the norther amazon basin was, they were in venezuala i beilieve. It was dry grasslands in the valley floor and the flanks of the mesa were covered with rain forest, with the tops being a cloud forest, just as in the pic you posted.
the expedition found that the local indians hadnt even made it to the top of the mtn, their trail stopped 3/4 of the way up, likely taboo or something.
Any way they didnt find any gold, but did find an amazing collection of isolated flora and fauna.
geologicaly speaking the area is amazing, with the tall mesa's formed by the prehistoric lake that once filled the amazon basin.
water carved caves 3000 feet up that empty out into thin air.

reply to post by punkinworks


Howdy Punkinworks

Yeah it sounds like they were doing the documentary in the area know as the Guiana highland were the mesa have a bit of vegetation.