Blinded by the Light
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0Aaaaand now we know why nobody’s ever found the damn place. A city made entirely of gold? Who thought that would be a good idea? Maybe a strange group of nocturnal humans? Perhaps a society of blind people looking to start their own great civilization? Well, if they weren’t blind at first, they probably were when they gazed upon their creation for the first time in the sunlight.
El Dorado, the city of gold, a name that conjures images of ancient South American architecture wreathed in precious metal, glinting in the sunlight amongst the massive trees of the rainforest. Based entirely on speculation, rumor, and good old fashioned misinformation, nobody has ever found evidence of this fabled Columbian city, and many explorers that left their homes in search of it never returned. If no city of gold was ever truly seen, what was it that started the whole thing? Why were the Europeans of the 1600’s and 1700’s so convinced of its existence?
The story starts with greed and with a lust for gold and treasure. During the early colonial period, the Spanish made their way into the heart of Central and South America and found many cities and civilizations there to greet them, most of which contained substantial mineral wealth in the form of gold and other treasures. During these excursions, a tale arose of a people who lived high in the Andes in Columbia and their rituals. The tale went that at his coronation ceremony, a new chief was ritually covered in gold dust and made to dive into a deep lake. As he swam upward, the dust floated down into the depths along with other treasures thrown in by his subjects as a means of appeasing the god that was said to live deep in the water, a means of securing the god’s favor. Upon hearing the story, the Spanish dubbed this chief El Dorado, “The Gilded One” and it passed by word of mouth for some time and became a topic of conversation when discussing the wealth hidden in South America. Eventually, the Spanish found the lake mentioned in the story, Lake Guatavita, and tried to drain it in the mid 1500’s but only found a few hundred gold pieces along the water’s edge. They were never able to find the treasures supposedly hidden in the central depths of the lake.
As time went on, the story shifted from being about the supposed “Gilded One” and El Dorado became the name of a geographical location not associated with the lake found in Columbia, though the gilded chief was often associated with this new city of gold and seen as an emperor or some other royal figure. In time, the legend became more and more exaggerated. Rather than a man covered in gold dust, El Dorado became a village with vast sums of gold, then a city covered in gold, and then an Empire with even its roads made of the precious metal. Europeans exploring the New World and finding villages, hamlets, and towns throughout the continental interior asked after it when talking to the native inhabitants. These people would always point and give directions, indicating that El Dorado or some other wealthy city was just a ways off, if they would just keep going.
Naturally, the Europeans never found it.
The search for El Dorado, to me at least, reflects the frantic search for wealth in a chaotic world. Some explorers, confronted with immense riches, stunning new cultures, and breathtaking new lands were still not satisfied with what they’d found. There was always something bigger, something more valuable just ahead if they could only find it. It’s a little bit inspiring to hear of that attitude, especially when one considers the incredible dangers these people faced. On the other hand, it also seems that they missed the wealth and experiences right in front of them. Quite a shame.
While it’s true that nobody ever found El Dorado, it could also be true that many have stumbled upon the city and simply been struck blind by its gleaming facades in the morning sun.
They don’t say people are “blinded by greed” for nothin’!
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I seem to remember an animated movie where some Spanish guys find El Dorado. It may have been called El Dorado. Can’t remember, but I remember it was funny!
If you discovered a city made entirely of gold, then you’d profit more by destroying most of it. With all that gold, the price would be nothing. Plus, people could start to notice gold was/is not exactly useful beyond currency. Especially back then.
Road to El Dorado
You’re thinking of the animated movie The Road to El Dorado. And indeed, it was quite funny.
In a similar vein, Terry Pratchett talks about the fountain of youth in one of his books. What they don’t tell you about drinking from the fountain is, be sure to boil the water first.
A city actually made OUT of gold, you say?
My goodness, those poor people!
No really,
Gold is quite dense, and so it weighs quite a bit.
I would imaging that their architecture would have to be designed to support such weight!
Also since gold is quite soft, I could easily see it buckling and deforming under all that weight…
so the city probably would look like a city made out of butter that has melted a bit.
Also I would be wary of having any high temples,
as lightning loves to strike tall structures.
Since gold is a really good conductor of electricity and the whole city is made up of it, one lightning strike would spell disaster for those living there. One why to get around that though is just have EVERYTHING, including the floors and streets.
Then, if lightning struck, the electricity would go directly to earth,
instead of through the people, due to electricity following the path of least resistance.
Another downside, gold is also a a good conductor of thermal energy,
so the buildings would be quite hot, not to mention the surface of everything that was exposed to sunlight, would heat up quite a bit.
(Thus also heating the air around everything)
In other words, a city made COMPLETELY out of gold would be suicide!
Not to mention, gold is somewhat RARE! …
(I can’t even begin to imagine what the toll on the land would be due to the mining, nor do I really want to think about it.)
Maybe they just gold-plated the city to not have to worry about all that. But, then again, “City Plated in Gold” doesn’t exactly sound quite the same.
Weird. I just so happened to be listening to ‘The Road to El Dorado’ theme song when I opened this page.
my highschool’s football team were called ‘the dorados’, also, due to a typo, the student council once posted all over campus flyers reading ‘anuses of gold’ in spanish.
it’s kind of fun to watch when different cultures start to sort of rub off on eachother like that.
hahaha I laughed out loud at “Anuses of Gold”….oh boy…
Sexy, amirite?
“Dorados”…
Now I must dig up some edible golf leaf and gild some tortilla chips…
I was always a bit mystified even as a little kid as to why anyone would ever believe such an obvious tall tale. The amount of gold implied is “big rock candy mountain” level absurd, even assuming a gold-rich land.
And that’s even before getting into why anyone who actually had so much gold would value it at all, much less use it as a display of wealth. That much gold would make gold utterly ordinary and worthless. To say nothing of the problems of actually building anything big out of it.
Yeah people back then weren’t as culturally savvy, but they knew all about scarcity-based value, they had enough technical engineering knowledge to build castles and cathedrals and sailing ships and such, and they knew how soft and heavy gold is. It just seems so blatantly waaaay far over the line between “rumor” and “idiot superstition” that even for the period it’s really hard for me to imagine anyone with half a brain taking it seriously.
…But they did. It’s just so freakin’ damn weird.
One might say the same about our dot com bubble, and how it keeps happening even though it has happened, yet when something big is going on like discovering a new half of the world, or the dawn of the internet, and you combine that with the lust for an easy path to a life of ease, people tend to forget that most of the existing rules still apply even when something big changes.
Just a small correction. It´s Colombia, not Columbia.
This thing has already come to jump the shark as a resort idea 1792 (ca. Crystal Pavillion) and 1910-1980 at least. So few gold (in color) BD or DVD+R blanks anymore, though… What happened to blue and gold chocolate chips that they are so rare now?
Gold is pretty useful once you get the lead out; definitely a commodity sinkable in products (CPUs over $600 RoHS exception allowing,) well documented in US Federal and of course Technion standards and statements of strategic use and reservation. Is it more impressionable than bottle plastic (polyethelene terepthalate?) Pretty much, since it doesn’t oxidize.
I’ve been knee deep in Guatavita. Lovely lake. And over here we have one of the most famous pieces of jewelry involved in the whole dorado legend, a small gold representation of the Gilded One on his boat. I like to visit the dude at his museum in my city often. oh, BTW, there was a tribe who upon capturing spaniards on the conquest wars, decided they craved gold so much that the best way of executing them was to pour molten gold down their throats.
I just discovered your webcomic. Amazing job. You got a new fan. Now, I must keep on reading the archives.