49 Fun Facts About El Dorado

The name 'el Dorado' originally referred to what?

A gold-dusted ruler: Spanish reports told of a chief who was coated in gold dust and washed it off in a sacred lake. Only later did the name pass to a lost city of gold.

The Muisca, the goldworking people behind the El Dorado legend, lived in the highlands of which modern country?

Colombia's eastern highlands were the Muisca homeland. To them gold was less wealth than a gift for the gods: by one expert's estimate, more than half of what they made was cast to be given away as offerings.

Besides gold, which gemstones did the Muisca throw into their sacred lakes as offerings?

Emeralds came from the Muisca's own mountains. The Spaniards tracked down the mines within months of arriving, but for all their efforts prised out only a few stones.

Where is the Muisca raft, the centrepiece of the El Dorado story, now kept?

Museo del Oro holds it. The little raft carries a chief surrounded by attendants, matching the old written accounts so closely that it is often cited as evidence the ceremony really happened.

Most Muisca 'gold' was really tumbaga, an alloy of gold mixed mainly with which other metal?

Copper, sometimes with a little silver: the mix melts at a lower temperature than either metal alone and is harder than copper, which suited the Muisca's casting.

The Muisca's most sacred temple, at Sogamoso, was dedicated to which heavenly body?

The Sun, whose god the Muisca called Sué. Gold mattered to them less as wealth than for its sun-like lustre, which is why so much of it was made only to be given away.

Emperor Charles V handed the governorship of which future country to the Welsers, a German banking family, as security for a loan?

Venezuela became 'Klein-Venedig', Little Venice, in 1528. The bankers' governors spent their time hunting gold in the interior, and in 1546 a Welser heir was beheaded there by a Spanish rival.

Which everyday trade good did Quesada's men follow like a trail up into the Muisca's mountains?

Salt cakes traded down to the lowlands told Quesada that a richer society lay uphill. The Muisca, known as the Salt People, produced plenty of it; the gold they were famous for had to be traded in.

Where was Walter Raleigh held for over a decade before being let out in 1616 for one last hunt for El Dorado?

The Tower of London held him from 1603 on a treason conviction, and he used the years to write a history of the world. The death sentence was never lifted, as he learned when the voyage failed.

From which city did Gonzalo Pizarro march east in 1541 on a disastrous search for El Dorado?

Quito had been in Spanish hands for only seven years. Pizarro marched out with an army of thousands, found no golden kingdom and could not feed his men, who were soon threatening mutiny.

On which Caribbean island did Walter Raleigh capture the El Dorado hunter Antonio de Berrio in 1595?

Trinidad was the old conquistador's base for a final push up the Orinoco. Raleigh stormed his town, questioned him about the golden city and then set off upriver to find it himself.

Which Latin pop star released the Grammy-winning 2017 album El Dorado?

Shakira's El Dorado World Tour had to be put back by months when she suffered a vocal-cord haemorrhage, and the album went on to win her third Grammy, for Best Latin Pop Album.

How was the Muisca's most sacred temple, at Sogamoso, destroyed during the Spanish conquest?

Looters' torches set it alight: two soldiers crept in at night to strip the gold and started the fire by accident. A full-size replica now stands in Sogamoso's archaeology museum.

Which city was formally founded in April 1539 with three rival conquistadors, Quesada, Belalcázar and Federmann, all present?

Bogotá rose on the Muisca plateau where three armies, each hunting a land of gold, had converged from three directions. Its airport is still called El Dorado.

Which US state named one of its original counties El Dorado, after gold was found there in 1848?

California's gold rush began at Sutter's Mill in Coloma. When the state's first counties were drawn two years later, the one around the mill was given the legend's name.

Which ancient technique did Muisca goldsmiths use to make their finely detailed offering figures?

Lost-wax casting: each figure was modelled in beeswax and cased in clay, then the wax was melted out to leave a mould for the molten metal. What looks like fine wire soldered on was cast in one piece, from threads of wax.

Which singer wrote and performed the songs for the 2000 animated film The Road to El Dorado, with lyrics by Tim Rice?

Elton John and Tim Rice had written the songs for The Lion King six years earlier. This time John is heard as well as credited: he narrates the story in song at intervals throughout the film.

How did merchant Antonio de Sepúlveda try to reach the gold in Lake Guatavita in the late 1500s?

By draining it: his workers cut a great notch in the rim, and the falling water exposed gold along the shore. Then the cut collapsed, the lake began to refill and the hunt was abandoned.

The golden Muisca raft was found in 1969 hidden where?

A cave in the hills, where local people found it inside a clay pot. An earlier golden raft, found at a lake in 1856, was lost in a fire, so this is the only one that survives.

In Muisca myth the mother goddess Bachué rose from a lake and returned to it as what?

A serpent: in the story she peopled the earth, then slipped back into the water with her husband, both of them turned to snakes. Lakes were holy places to the Muisca, and gifts of gold were left at their shores.

Gonzalo Pizarro's 1541 expedition in search of El Dorado was also lured by reports of a valley full of which spice?

Cinnamon turned out to be a few scattered trees. The expedition pushed on towards El Dorado, ran out of food, and the boat sent ahead to find some ended up sailing the whole length of the Amazon.

Which of Gonzalo Pizarro's officers went downriver for food and ended up the first European to sail the length of the Amazon?

Francisco Orellana was expected back within twelve days. Unable to return against the current, he sailed on for months and came out into the Atlantic, carrying tales of rich peoples along the banks.

Which Hollywood star played the gunfighter in Howard Hawks's 1966 Western El Dorado, opposite Robert Mitchum?

John Wayne's gunfighter comes to the aid of Mitchum's drunken sheriff. Only the title is borrowed from the legend, and the plot is one Hawks filmed three times, starting with Rio Bravo.

Which American carmaker sold a luxury model called the Eldorado for fifty years from 1952?

Cadillac chose the name in an in-house competition for a show car marking its own golden anniversary. The Eldorado stayed in its range until 2002.

Why did Charles V halt every El Dorado expedition in 1550?

To debate whether conquest was just: at Valladolid a panel of theologians heard a Dominican friar argue that the Indigenous peoples deserved the same rights as their conquerors. Both sides claimed to have won.

Which mutineer murdered Pedro de Ursúa in 1561, styled himself 'Wrath of God' and declared war on Philip II?

Lope de Aguirre, nicknamed El Loco, dropped the search for El Dorado, sailed down the Amazon to the sea and set out to seize Peru from the king. His own men killed him at Barquisimeto.

Which director took Klaus Kinski into the Peruvian jungle to film a conquistador's hunt for El Dorado?

Werner Herzog shot it in five weeks on Amazon tributaries, clashing with his raging star throughout. He later admitted the storyline was fiction, only loosely hung on a real mutineer.

Which video game series opened in 2007 with a treasure hunter's search for El Dorado?

Uncharted began in 2007 with Drake's Fortune, in which the hero, who claims descent from Sir Francis Drake, learns that El Dorado is not a city at all but a huge golden idol.

German explorers sent inland by the Welser bankers around 1530 hoped to find a passage to which ocean?

The Pacific, then called the South Sea: a way through the continent would have opened a new route to India's spices. What the explorers brought back instead were rumours of gold in the mountains.

Antonio de Berrio, heir to the conquistador Quesada, believed El Dorado lay in the highlands of which region beyond the Orinoco?

The Guianas drew Berrio into one expedition after another across the plains and down the Orinoco. Captives told him of a great lake there called Manoa, and the hunt became his life's work.

How did Walter Raleigh get Spanish soldiers to tell him the way to El Dorado in 1595?

He plied them with wine: the garrison had gone years without any, and in Raleigh's own words 'a few draughts made them merry', boasting of the country's riches and the ways into it.

Walter Raleigh was convinced that El Dorado's golden empire had been founded by whom?

Fugitive Incas from Peru, by Raleigh's account: a younger son of the emperor had escaped Pizarro's conquest and rebuilt and enlarged a golden city far to the east.

Which other legend sent the conquistador Coronado across the deserts of the American Southwest in 1540?

The Seven Cities of Cíbola turned out to be the adobe villages of the Zuni. Coronado found no gold, though his men became the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon.

Which king had Walter Raleigh beheaded in 1618 after his last El Dorado expedition attacked a Spanish town?

James I had ordered him not to fight the Spaniards. When Raleigh's men stormed Santo Tomé on the Orinoco, his son died in the attack, his captain took his own life, and the king revived an old treason sentence.

Lake Guatavita and the Muisca heartland of the El Dorado legend lie high in which mountain range?

The Andes, in their eastern range. The first Spaniards to climb to the plateau lost many men on the way up, and were astounded by the goldwork they found at the top.

Which explorer, travelling the Orinoco in 1800, laid to rest the myth of Lake Parime, El Dorado's supposed home on the maps?

Alexander von Humboldt argued that the great 'lake' was really the seasonal flooding of a savannah, mistaken for open water. Mapmakers who had drawn it for two centuries finally rubbed it out.

In which 1759 satire does El Dorado appear as an ideal society whose riches contrast with the greed everywhere else?

Voltaire's Candide stumbles into a hidden kingdom where gold lies on the ground for the taking. He leaves with a fortune loaded on a hundred red sheep and loses nearly all of it within a few chapters.

Which poet wrote 'Eldorado', using the name as a symbol of an unreachable goal?

Edgar Allan Poe published it in April 1849, at the height of America's gold rush, partly as a wry answer to the fever. His knight grows old on the quest and is finally pointed towards the Valley of the Shadow.

Which studio made the 2000 animated film The Road to El Dorado?

DreamWorks Animation made it as only its third animated feature. For all the talent involved it flopped, taking in well short of its budget of some $95 million.

Who voiced the con men Tulio and Miguel in The Road to El Dorado?

Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh recorded their lines together in the same studio, unusual for an animated film, and some of the banter they improvised ended up in the film.

Quesada named the conquered Muisca lands the 'New Kingdom of' which Spanish city?

Granada, where Quesada had trained. The name outlived him by centuries: the colony he founded, and later a whole Spanish viceroyalty, was known as New Granada.

Small Muisca figures of gold, cast only to be given to the gods as offerings, are known as what?

Tunjos were not jewellery and were never worn. Analysis suggests the pieces in an offering were cast as a set, perhaps only hours or days before they were left for the gods.

Which Dominican friar, once a colonist himself, became a fierce critic of the conquistadors and the first 'Protector of the Indians'?

Bartolomé de las Casas gave up his own estate and its forced labourers in 1515. He spent the next half-century writing and lobbying against the conquest, most famously in A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.

Which monarch was on the English throne when Walter Raleigh first sailed in search of El Dorado in 1595?

Elizabeth I had knighted Raleigh a decade earlier, then disgraced him for secretly marrying one of her ladies-in-waiting. He came home promising her a golden empire, with almost no gold to show for it.

A treasure-hunting company that worked at Lake Guatavita in the early 1900s was financed from which country?

England: the company shipped its finds home for exhibition and auction, but after years of work they were a handful of small pieces from the lake's edge, nothing like the treasure of legend.

Which conquistador's capture of the Aztec capital in 1521 helped rekindle Spanish hopes of finding more lands of gold?

Hernán Cortés's haul from Mexico, followed a decade later by Pizarro's from Peru, made any rumour of a third golden kingdom believable. Expeditions were soon pushing into the interior of South America.

Columbus, whose reports began the hunt for golden lands, came to believe that which biblical place lay on the new continent?

The Garden of Eden: reaching the South American mainland on his third voyage, in 1498, he decided it might be the Earthly Paradise itself. He also hoped it held Ophir, the land that supplied King Solomon's gold.

Before he chased El Dorado, Walter Raleigh sponsored which English settlement in North America?

Roanoke, the 'Lost Colony': its settlers had vanished by the time a ship returned for them in 1590. Raleigh never set foot in North America himself, and five years later he turned south to the Orinoco instead.

Long before El Dorado, which fabled land of Greek legend was said to gleam with gold and the mystery metal orichalcum?

Atlantis, in Plato's telling, had walls sheathed in metal, with orichalcum prized second only to gold. Europeans carried such tales of rich lands beyond the ocean with them to the Americas.