El Dorado revealed: Unraveling the mysteries of the fabled 'city of gold'

The earliest version of the El Dorado story came from the Muisca people, who inhabited the Andean highlands of what is now Colombia.

According to sources such as Juan Rodríguez Freyle, the Muisca performed a sacred initiation ceremony in which their new leader, the zipa, coated himself in fine gold dust and paddled to the centre of Lake Guatavita on a wooden raft, which carried golden objects and emeralds.

Once he reached the middle, he cast the offerings into the water to honour the gods and affirm his divine right to rule.

The ritual was spiritual rather than physical in purpose, and the gold held a symbolic role rather than used as currency, and it fulfilled as a sacred need rather than a sign of material wealth. 

Spanish explorers first heard about the ceremony in the 1530s from indigenous guides and informants who had witnessed the ritual or heard about it from relatives.

These accounts, which often combined spiritual and historical elements, fascinated the conquistadors, especially since they had already encountered large quantities of gold in their earlier campaigns in Central America and Peru.

The ritual of the golden man did not mention a city, yet the Spanish imagination, filled with dreams of conquest and enriched by earlier encounters with the Inca, quickly converted the story into something much grander.

Over time, the figure of the zipa became a king, then a ruler of a powerful empire, and eventually the source of a legend that placed a shining city deep within the unknown lands. 

The myth grew through retelling and change as it passed from mouth to mouth and pen to page.

Writers such as Pedro Cieza de León and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo recorded detailed versions of the tale that added new elements, extended the geography, and linked the story to other rumours of wealth in the Amazon and Orinoco basins.

Reports of natural gold deposits in rivers and valleys added credence to the fantasy, while misunderstandings about indigenous rituals and trade routes helped relocate the myth from one region to another.

Some scholars have even suggested that local communities may have encouraged these stories to mislead or redirect Spanish intrusions.

By the end of the 16th century, El Dorado had ceased to be a single location and had instead become a shifting promise of fortune that could exist anywhere beyond the next ridge or across the next river. 

In the years after the conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish obsession with El Dorado intensified.

Between 1536 and 1538, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada led a major expedition from the Caribbean coast into the highlands of modern-day Colombia, where he subdued the Muisca and seized large quantities of gold and emeralds.

Although he never found a golden city, the wealth he captured strengthened belief that larger kingdoms might lie beyond.

His success encouraged others to undertake their own expeditions, and the rivalry among Spanish adventurers often led to overlapping claims and violent clashes that created confusion about the real geography of the interior. 

Sebastián de Belalcázar and Nikolaus Federmann, who arrived separately from different directions, attempted to claim the same territory for their respective backers in Quito and Venezuela.

Their overlapping expeditions in the Colombian Andes produced little gold but added to the growing collection of reports and rumours that suggested El Dorado might be real.

By the early 1540s, Spanish officials and nobles had invested heavily in attempts to locate the fabled city, often financing journeys that brought no return.

The most dramatic of these expeditions took place in 1541, when Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of Francisco Pizarro, launched a major expedition from Quito that pushed eastward across the Andes and into the upper reaches of the Amazon Basin. 

Pizarro’s force, which began with several hundred soldiers, horses, and thousands of native porters, soon became bogged down in thick forest, torrential rain, and food shortages.

After months of suffering and near starvation, he ordered his subordinate, Francisco de Orellana, to take a group of men and follow the river in search of food and reinforcements.

Orellana’s controversial decision to continue the journey without returning sparked debate about whether he had defied orders or was forced by necessity.

Orellana instead continued down the Amazon, which made him the first European to travel its entire length in 1542.

Although his voyage yielded valuable information about the region, he found no city of gold.

Later in the century, the myth moved east into the Guiana Highlands, where explorers such as Antonio de Berrío led several expeditions in the 1580s and 1590s to find the empire of Manoa, said to be located beside a great inland lake known as Parime.

Berrío’s reports reached the English court, where they inspired Sir Walter Raleigh to lead his own journey into the Orinoco region in 1595.

Raleigh published a widely read account that described fertile lands, vast rivers, and a golden city, even though he never found any such thing.

His exaggerations established the myth in English literature and cartography, and maps of the time, such as those by Jodocus Hondius in 1599, began to feature Lake Parime prominently, even though no one had seen it.

Raleigh returned for a second expedition in 1617, but the journey ended in failure and helped bring about his execution. 

By the 18th century, cartographers and explorers had started to express doubts about the physical reality of El Dorado.

Repeated failures to locate Lake Parime or any city resembling Manoa prompted a review of the original sources.

The supposed lake, often exaggerated in size by early cartographers, gradually disappeared from maps as explorers crossed the area and found only savannah and seasonal wetlands.

Some modern scholars believe that the illusion of a large lake came from seasonal flooding in the Rupununi region, which may have misled early European observers. 

In the 20th century, archaeological research began to re-examine the original context of the legend.

Excavations at Lake Guatavita confirmed that the Muisca had conducted ritual offerings there, and divers recovered hundreds of gold artefacts from the lake bed.

Among the most important finds was the famous Muisca Raft, a ritual object depicting the zipa and his attendants during the lake ceremony, which now resides in the Gold Museum in Bogotá.

These discoveries supported the historical basis for the original ritual, yet they also showed that the story had been distorted almost beyond recognition.

There was no city of gold, only a ceremony of religious devotion that had been misunderstood and exaggerated into a tale of unimaginable wealth. 

Other researchers proposed that real cities in remote locations, such as Machu Picchu in Peru or the legendary Ciudad Blanca in Honduras, might have contributed to European fantasies about hidden civilisations.

These sites, built in rugged or inaccessible terrain, demonstrated that indigenous societies could create large urban centres far from major trade routes or colonial outposts.

However, none of these cities matched the descriptions of El Dorado, nor did they contain the endless gold that the stories promised. 

Today, the term “El Dorado” no longer refers to a specific location. Instead, it has become a metaphor for impossible quests and elusive rewards.

The legend survives in literature, film, and everyday speech, where it symbolises the pursuit of unattainable dreams or ambitions driven by greed and fantasy. 

El Dorado, more than any other legend from the Age of Exploration, reveals the consequences of belief without evidence and ambition without limit.

The pursuit of the city consumed vast resources, destroyed thousands of lives, and justified some of the most aggressive expansion into regions that had previously remained untouched by European conquest.

Men died of starvation, exposure, disease, and violence in jungles they could not navigate and among peoples they did not understand.

The Spanish Empire poured men and money into one expedition after another, only to reap failure and disappointment. 

The myth also illustrates how stories, once removed from their cultural context, can become tools of abuse.

Spanish chroniclers took a Muisca religious tradition and transformed it into a justification for conquest and extraction.

By presenting the legend as a fact, they encouraged colonial officials to ignore the rights and dignity of indigenous societies, which treated them instead as obstacles or keys to finding treasure.

The real cultures that gave rise to the story were either destroyed or ignored in the process, and their beliefs were misrepresented in pursuit of imperial gain. 

In the end, El Dorado never existed as the conquistadors imagined it. There was no golden city hidden in the rainforest, no wealthy empire beyond the mountains, and no kingdom beside a lake of legends.

What remained was a powerful caution against the dangers of mythmaking, and a reminder that when ambition overrides reason, even the most sacred beliefs can be twisted into tools of destruction.

The story of El Dorado tells us more about the desires of those who believed in it than about the peoples who first told the tale.