Thursday, April 14, 2022

El Dorado: Real History Behind the Legend

 From Live Science:

El Dorado was a mythical city said to be rich with gold, first reported in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The rumoured location of El Dorado is disputed in different sources, but most commonly said to have been in South America. Many explorers and those seeking gold or fortune searched for El Dorado. However, according to the journal The Historian(opens in new tab) El Dorado was in fact a combination of several myths, rather than one fixed location. In some accounts El Dorado is a man, in others a lake or a valley. By 1835, the myth of El Dorado was already three centuries old, according to the BBC(opens in new tab), but its origin and whether a real city of gold existed is still disputed. One of the most famous El Dorado origin stories was first mentioned when Juan de Castellanos, a conquistador-turned-priest, included it as part of his verse history of Spanish heroism in the Americas, "Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias(opens in new tab)", likely written in the 1570s. (Read more.)
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