04x17 - The Search for El Dorado

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Tonight, a famed ancient city

overflowing with gold.

The legend

of El Dorado takes hold

amongst the Spanish,

and people start

looking for it everywhere.

For centuries,

explorers seeking it

find only disappointment

or death.

It’s less a quest for gold

and more a fight for survival.

Now we reveal the top theories

surrounding this legendary

lost city.

Pictures from space

show what appears

to be rivers of gold

weaving through the area.

There could

be a lost golden city

right there

under the rainforest canopy.

There’s not just one

golden city.

There’s multiple golden cities.

Does El Dorado exist?

And if so, where could it be?

March, 1537.

For nearly 20 years, the Spanish

have been on a mission

to conquer South America

with their infamous

army of conquistadors.

As part of that mission,

Chief Magistrate

Gonzalo Jimenez De Quesada

leads an expedition to find

an overland route from

present-day Colombia to Peru.

De Quesada and his men have

been tasked with finding a way

around or over

or through the Andes mountains,

a long mountain range

that has proven

to be an obstacle

to the Spanish conquistadors.

It’s a brutal trek.

There’s bad weather,

it’s cold, there’s disease.

The men are really ready

to give up.

But then De Quesada

hears a rumor

that causes him to completely

change his mission.

The rumor,

a city filled with gold.

This is absolute music

to De Quesada’s ears,

because

for Spanish conquistadors,

nothing is more important

than gold.

For decades,

the Spanish have been exploring

Central and South America

and conquering its peoples.

Along the way,

they’ve sent back ships

filled with tons of gold

and stories

of unbelievable wealth

to be found in the Americas.

Stories of what is waiting

to still be found,

unlimited resources,

unlimited land,

unlimited food and wealth

were believed to be possible.

The problem is,

by the time De Quesada

gets to South America,

most of the easy to find

stores of gold have

already been plundered.

Now he’s desperate to know,

"Where is this

so-called golden village?"

As De Quesada’s troops

press further south,

they encounter

the indigenous Muisca people.

The Muisca

are as advanced as Aztec,

Inca, or even the Maya,

but they aren’t as warlike

or even really as organized.

They’re more like

a loose confederation of tribes,

but they’re known

as skilled metal workers,

and their metal of choice

is gold.

Gold has no monetary value

for them.

They use it because it’s soft

and easy to work with.

But it also has a spiritual

significance for them

because the Muisca’s god,

Chiminigagua, is a sun god

and gold shines like the sun.

This suggested to Quesada

that there was more

where it came from,

and he was gonna go find it.

De Quesada’s men

quickly overpower the Muisca

and interrogate them

about where to find gold.

The Muisca people describe

a ritual to De Quesada

in which a new leader

is coronated,

and the ritual entails

this new leader.

He will be called the Zipa.

He is covered

in a sticky substance

that then is covered

with gold dust.

Then they take him out

to the middle of a sacred lake

on a raft, and they put

gold statues, figurines

and jewels on the raft.

And there are thousands

of Muisca people

standing on the banks,

watching all of this.

At which point,

the chieftain immerses himself

in the lake, cleansing himself

of the gold dust,

and the attendants

throw trinkets and gold objects

into the middle of the lake.

Thousands of people

are along the banks,

also throwing gold themselves.

And when that man emerges,

he’s the new chief,

the Zipa of the community,

and he is known, importantly,

as El Dorado, The Golden Man.

Although it’s just the story

of a man, De Quesada

considers this to be

something much bigger.

He thinks of this man

as a golden king

who must live

in a golden kingdom,

and therefore all he has to do

is find it.

Inspired by the story

of the Muisca,

De Quesada believes

he’ll find the golden city

on the shores of a nearby lake.

The Spanish press on,

and soon De Quesada comes

upon a body of water

called Lake Guatavita.

Lake Guatavita is located about

35 miles northeast of Bogota.

It’s a really beautiful, almost

supernatural or eerie place.

The lake is

almost perfectly round.

It’s surrounded by trees,

it reflects the sky,

it reflects

the environment around it.

There’s no obvious city

on its shores,

but De Quesada still thinks

this is the place.

He thinks this city

must have either been abandoned

or perhaps it lies underwater.

The Spanish

think that all they need to do

is get to the bottom

of the lake and they can recover

all these golden jewels

that have been thrown in.

De Quesada is here

in the mid-1500s, so

the technology to get underwater

simply isn’t available.

To get to the treasure,

they assume

they’re gonna have to drain

the entire lake.

It’s an insane amount

of manual labor.

But they have

a c*ptive workforce.

Two conquistadors,

Lazaro Fonte and De Quesada’s

own brother,

Hernan Perez de Quesada,

come up with a plan.

They are going to empty out

this entire lake by hand.

They essentially form

this huge bucket chain.

Using the brute force of these

captured indigenous people,

they’d spend months

taking the water

out of Lake Guatavita,

one bucket at a time.

Progress is painfully slow.

After three months, they haven’t

come close to their goal.

They manage to drop

the water level about ten feet,

and they do find

some pieces of gold

in the mud that they manage

to expose.

It’s not nothing,

but it’s certainly

no lavish city of gold.

Their bounty ends up

being worth about $100,000

in today’s money,

certainly not a fortune.

Without the technology

to explore any further,

hundreds of years pass

with no new discoveries.

Then, in the late 1800s,

a British entrepreneur

is inspired to investigate.

In 1898, Hartley Knowles hears

about De Quesada’s efforts.

He has started

the company for the exploration

of the lagoon at Guatavita,

and he now is taking

his turn at getting

to that gold.

What’s different now is that

it’s the turn of the century,

and Britain is

an industrial powerhouse,

so he has much better equipment

at his disposal.

They bring in

a massive steam pump

and earth-moving equipment

to dig a huge tunnel

under the middle of Guatavita,

and start to drain it.

After six years,

the lake is finally emptied.

But what remains

is another problem.

Hartley Knowles manages to get

to the bottom of the lake.

The problem is, when

he gets to the bottom of it,

there’s silt and mud

and hard pan,

and as it’s baked in the sun,

it becomes like cement.

And so they have

to abandon the project.

After spending

all that time and money,

Knowles and his company

only end up finding

about 30 to 40 golden artifacts

in the mud.

They’re auctioned off

at Sotheby’s in London in 1909,

and they’re sold for a whopping

total of 500 British pounds.

Unsurprisingly,

the company goes bankrupt.

By 1965, Lake Guatavita

has been almost ruined,

and the Colombian government has

decided that it’s had enough.

The government bans

any further exploration

of Lake Guatavita,

officially ending the quest

for El Dorado here.

But Lake Guatavita

was not the only candidate

for the location of El Dorado,

not by a long sh*t.

When Spanish conquistador

Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada

spreads a rumor of a lost city

of gold in 1537,

others quickly expand

the search far and wide.

The legend of El Dorado

starts to take hold

amongst the Spanish,

and so they look everywhere,

all over South America.

Many of these soldiers

have come looking for gold,

and they haven’t seen

much of it yet.

Among the inspired conquistadors

is Gonzalo Pizarro.

He’s the half-brother

of Francisco Pizarro,

the man who conquered

the Inca Empire,

and brought boatloads of gold

back to Spain.

Because of the strength

of his last name,

Pizarro has been made

the vice governor in Quito,

which is modern-day Ecuador.

But he has bigger ambitions

than just being

the local vice governor.

In 1541, four years

after De Quesada’s expedition,

Pizarro sets out on his own

quest to find El Dorado.

Pizarro enlists the help

of his childhood friend

and cousin,

Francisco de Orellana.

Pizarro speaks to a different

indigenous group in Ecuador,

and he’s told that the gold

that De Quesada seeks

is actually much further south

than where he’s looking.

It’s some 600 miles south,

and it’s not even

in the Andes mountain region.

Avoiding the mountains

sounds like a really good idea

to Pizarro,

but he doesn’t realize

this new destination

is just as treacherous.

According to his sources,

El Dorado sits on the shores

of a river

deep in the Amazon rainforest.

In February, 1541,

the two men leave Quito

with 340 Spaniards and some

4,000 indigenous people.

They head due east

across the Andes,

then down into the lowlands,

then toward the far southeast

of Ecuador, where

the Amazon rainforest begins.

They end up being

some of the first Europeans

to explore the Amazon jungle,

but they are not

remotely ready for it.

It’s hot, it’s humid,

and the growth is so dense

that they have

to use their swords

to hack their way through it.

They have natives with them

that they’ve brought,

but the natives are

from the mountain region,

so they are also unprepared

for this sort of climate.

And as time goes on

and they struggle more and more,

they begin to be hungry.

People begin to get sick,

some of them begin to die.

But Pizarro remains undeterred.

It’s almost like

the harder the trek becomes,

the more convinced

Pizarro is that El Dorado

is just around the corner.

He becomes consumed

with finding this city.

Nothing else seems to matter.

He drives these suffering men

further southeast,

looking for this river that’ll

ultimately lead him to gold.

Every time the Spanish encounter

any indigenous in the jungle,

Pizarro questions them

where this city of gold is,

and they always tell him,

"Keep going,

you’ll encounter it eventually."

After eleven months,

the crew has traveled

nearly 200 miles

with nothing to show for it.

By the time Pizarro’s company

gets to the banks

of the Coca River,

most of his men

are either dead,

dying or very sick.

They’ve lost 3,000 natives

and 140 conquistadors.

They’ve run out of food, eating

their horses to stay alive.

It’s less a quest for gold

and more a fight for survival.

The expedition is

on the verge of mutiny,

and so they make

a plan to build a boat

to travel down the river.

On December 26th, 1541, Pizarro

tells his partner, Orellana,

to take 50 men in the boat

down the river

to find food and bring it back

to the rest of the team.

The current of the river

is strong,

so Orellana

makes very good time.

Unfortunately, it’s 14 days

before they find any food,

and because of the current,

they realize

there’s no way to turn around

and go back,

so they decide

to just keep going forward.

Orellana has all the men

sign a document

saying that they understand

what they’re doing,

but they had no other choice.

Orellana knows this may end up

being useful later

because they may be

considered traitors

and sentenced to be ex*cuted.

After one month,

Pizarro realizes

his old friend

is not coming back.

Pizarro thinks maybe they were

att*cked by a hostile tribe.

But he also starts to wonder

if maybe his cousin

had betrayed him.

He thinks, "If I had found

El Dorado, would I come back?"

Gonzalo Pizarro takes

the remnant men who were

stranded on the side

of the river and arrives back

in Quito literally shoeless

and in rags,

and he vows that

if he ever sees Orellana again,

he’s going to k*ll him.

Meanwhile, Orellana

continues his journey.

The swift current has carried

Orellana’s team even farther,

and they still haven’t seen

any trace of a city of gold.

Eventually, they meet up with

the much larger Amazon River.

He figures this is

the sacred body of water

that will eventually lead

to El Dorado.

At first,

it seems he might be right.

As they get further

into the Amazon basin,

they start to see

these great settlements,

thriving cities with people

all adorned in gold.

These locals feed the Spanish,

and even teach them

some of their language.

As the Spanish keep going,

they hear stories of even

bigger, more opulent cities

deeper in the jungle.

But the farther they travel,

the less friendly

those encounters get.

They start running

into native groups

that are defensive

and then native groups

that are attacking them

and keeping them

from being able

to land anywhere on shore.

One of these att*cks

actually leads

to the naming

of the Amazon River.

It doesn’t have a name

until June 24th, 1542,

when Orellana and his men

are att*cked by a local tribe

where the women fight

right alongside the men.

He refers to these women

as Amazonas,

based on the mythical

Greek women warriors

described by Herodotus.

Orellana starts calling the area

The River of the Amazons,

and the name sticks.

Finally, after eight months

and over 3,000 miles,

Orellana and his crew

reach the Atlantic Ocean.

Even though he doesn’t

know it yet, Orellana has just

successfully traveled

the entire length of the world’s

longest river, and he’s

the first European to do so.

But, unfortunately, he does it

without reaching El Dorado.

Word of Orellana’s voyage

reaches Quito

and eventually Spain.

Pizarro hears the news,

and he accuses his cousin

of treason,

hoping to get him hanged.

But, in the end,

because of the document

that the entire crew signed

and that detailed log

that they kept, Orellana is

found not guilty

and he returns safely to Spain,

where he’s welcomed

by King Charles I

as sort of a celebrity.

Once Orellana is back in Spain,

he has pretty much one goal,

and that is to get back

to South America.

He is convinced

that he came so close

to finding the real El Dorado,

he basically makes the pitch

to everyone that he can do this,

that he will find the city

of gold, that if he gets

the supplies and the funding

and the crew that he needs,

he will be able to go straight

to El Dorado itself.

His pitch works.

In May of 1545,

Francisco de Orellana

heads back into the Amazon.

It’s his second expedition

to find El Dorado,

but this time, he knows

exactly where he needs to go

and he’s completely confident

that he’s gonna get there.

Spanish explorer

Francisco de Orellana’s

first attempt to find

El Dorado has failed.

But, in 1545,

he’s ready to try again.

His previous expedition

operated under the assumption

that El Dorado is

in the far western region

of the Amazon rainforest,

in what’s now Ecuador.

After a disastrous attempt,

they couldn’t find it there.

But as Orellana traveled east

along the Amazon River

in what’s now Brazil,

he saw larger cities

with indigenous there

adorned in gold.

And it’s in that area

in which he believes

he will find El Dorado.

Last time, after att*cks

by native peoples,

Orellana wasn’t really

able to get very far from shore

and really explore these cities

or what lies beyond.

So that’s what he’s going to do

this time.

On May 11th, 1545

Orellana departs from Spain.

The disaster

of his previous expedition

is fresh in his mind,

so he is attempting to be

more than prepared

this time around.

He brings four ships,

more than 300 men and supplies

to build an additional two ships

when they get to the mouth

of the Amazon to help them

navigate up the river.

He has everything he needs.

He knows the way.

This time, he can’t fail.

They sail first

to the Spanish-controlled

Canary Islands, where they spend

the first couple of months

loading supplies,

getting the ships ready

for the open seas,

and recruiting more men.

The next planned stop

is the Cape Verde Islands,

off the west coast of Africa,

which the Spanish also control.

It’s here where

Orellana’s expedition

starts to really unravel.

There’s an epidemic

that kills 98 of his men

and then another

60 of them desert.

He’s downed so many sailors

that he decides

to abandon one

of his ships entirely

and cross the Atlantic with

just the remaining three ships.

The Atlantic crossing is

a disaster from the outset.

One of his ships

is blown off course

and he never sees it again.

This costs Orellana

an additional 77 men,

more supplies

and all of the material

that they were gonna use

to build those additional

two ships to navigate

up the Amazon.

In spite of that,

on December 20th, 1545,

Orellana arrives

on the east coast of Brazil.

When he arrives,

he has only two ships

and fewer than 100 men.

This is not a promising start

to what he knows

is going to be

a difficult expedition.

Thankfully, there’s a lot

of food where they land,

and the natives are friendly.

So Orellana’s men

suggest that they just

make camp and regroup

for a little while.

But Orellana is so eager to find

El Dorado that he says,

"No. On we go."

Orellana may have

been here before,

but this time he gets lost.

The mouth of the Amazon is

a wild tangle of tributaries.

The group travels

over 300 miles,

trying to find the entrance

of the Amazon River.

The journey

is over before it’s begun.

They never even got

anywhere near El Dorado.

In fact, they never even got

into the main

Amazon River itself.

And if El Dorado is hiding deep

in Brazil, they’ll never know.

In the end, less than 40

of the original 300 men survive

by making it back to the island

of Margarita,

just west of Trinidad.

After the collapse

of Orellana’s expedition,

he’s basically branded a liar.

People begin to suspect

that he made the whole thing up

or maybe that he

was just covering up

for having abandoned Pizarro

or that he just wanted

to secure funding

for his next expedition.

But the rumors of El Dorado

sitting somewhere along

the Amazon persist,

and over the next hundred years,

a handful of other expeditions

to Brazil are launched,

all of which turn up nothing.

Eventually,

the search for El Dorado

in the Amazon appears

to die out.

Then, in December, 2020,

astronauts on board

the International Space Station

spot something peculiar

near Bolivia.

Pictures from space

show what appears to be

rivers of gold

weaving through the area.

They turn out to be

illegal gold mining operations

and they are huge,

which is obvious,

if you can see them from space.

This evidence

reignites a modern-day hunt

for El Dorado, this time

in a whole new area.

In 2022,

a team of researchers led

by Heiko Prumers

from the German

Archaeological Institute

head to the Bolivian rainforest

to do 3D scanning

of the landscape from the air.

And what

these researchers discover

is absolutely amazing.

It appears to be

an ancient civilization

that’s been lost for centuries.

There are pyramids,

60 feet high,

rectangular structures,

paths and roads.

It’s like a city

hidden inside the rainforest.

The team estimates

this settlement was abandoned

nearly 500 years ago,

around the same time

the conquistadors arrived.

Prumers estimates

that it might have taken

researchers centuries to find

these cities in the jungle,

but the LIDAR technology

allowed them

to find it in a matter of days.

So the media seizes

on this story.

I mean, who doesn’t love

a treasure hunt?

And the myth of El Dorado

has been going on

for hundreds of years,

and now we have these images

that suggest there could be

a lost golden city

right there under

the rainforest canopy.

Further aerial investigations

have turned up geoglyphs

and massive roads

the size of highways.

All of this leads us

to believe that Orellana

was telling the truth

about the cities that he saw.

Unfortunately, a full

expedition proves too difficult.

The Amazon basin itself

is enormous.

It’s more than 2.7 million

square miles,

and about two million

of those square miles

have never really been

explored or studied.

It’s an area the size of India.

There’s a lot

we still don’t know

about the interior

of the Amazon.

It’s just so overgrown

and impenetrable.

The access is difficult.

The terrain is difficult.

The weather conditions

are difficult.

There’s no way

to get in equipment.

For now, aerial studies

are our best bet

for finding any answers.

So it seems

that Orellana wasn’t lying,

that he was telling the truth,

at least about the cities.

We can’t be totally sure

about the gold.

The lure of El Dorado,

the lost city of gold,

has captured the imagination

of generations

of treasure-seekers.

But perhaps none are

more renowned or more determined

than a world famous

British explorer

who takes on the search

in the late 1500s.

In 1585,

England and Spain are engaged

in a long running conflict.

So you’ve probably heard

of the Spanish Armada.

That’s just a part

of a 19-year long w*r

called the Anglo-Spanish w*r.

While that w*r was fought

officially between

these two countries,

there was also

a very large amount

of guerrilla warfare.

The English were

sponsoring piracy,

what they called privateers,

sending ships out

to basically att*ck

the Spanish ships

that were attempting

the conquest of the New World.

One of the top

English privateers

is Sir Walter Raleigh,

who’s already famous

as an explorer and a statesman.

And he’s a favorite

of Queen Elizabeth I.

While he’s off

raiding Spanish ships,

he hears a lot

about what they’ve been up to

in South America.

Including their search

for El Dorado.

At some point in the 1590s,

Raleigh hears the story

of Juan Martinez,

a conquistador who had explored

the Orinoco river area

20 years earlier in the 1570s.

According to Martinez,

when his expedition fails,

he’s blindfolded by the natives

and taken to a city of gold.

Raleigh speaks to other Spanish

conquistadors, and they tell him

that the golden city he’s

looking for is called Manoa.

And they tell him

that it is the imperial city

of this region, which

at the time is called Guyana.

It’s located near

a lake called Parime.

It’s supposedly

a saltwater lake that’s massive.

It’s 600 miles across.

Raleigh is told that the natives

get all their gold

from the lake itself,

that it flows down the river

and tumbles into the lake,

where they can find it.

In April, 1595,

Raleigh arrives in South America

with four ships and 100 men.

So after landing

near present-day Guyana,

Raleigh and his men

take five small boats

up the Orinoco River.

It’s a long and arduous process

because they’re going

against the current,

and his men are not used

to all this heat and humidity.

After a month, they’ve gone

a little over 200 miles,

and they’re exhausted.

So they decide

to pull off the river,

take a break, and recover.

When they come ashore,

Raleigh and his compatriots

make contact with a native tribe

who’s friendly to them

and who’s also adorned in gold.

At this point,

there are literally

just nuggets of gold lying

on the banks of the river.

Raleigh ends up befriending

the chief of this tribe.

His name is Topiawari,

and he tells Raleigh

of a giant lake

full of gold just nearby,

and Raleigh, of course,

assumes this must be Parime.

This is the lake

he’s looking for.

Raleigh spends

the next three months

desperately searching

for El Dorado.

All of his men are exhausted.

They’re in no condition

to keep going,

so he decides

that he’s going to turn back,

and when everyone is refreshed

again, they will start over,

and they’ll come back

and find it.

When he arrives back in England

at the end of August, 1595,

Raleigh expects

a hero’s welcome.

He’s certain he’ll be

celebrated and will have

no issues raising funds

for a new expedition,

but that’s not what happens,

because he doesn’t bring back

any gold, there’s no

return on investments,

and so nobody wants

to fund another expedition.

Ultimately,

Raleigh waits another 22 years.

Queen Elizabeth I

dies on March, 24th, 1603,

and she was his main patron.

So after her death,

Raleigh decides to support

a rival for the Crown instead

of the rightful heir, James I.

But James becomes King,

and Raleigh is

immediately imprisoned

in the Tower of London,

where he remains until 1616.

Even languishing in prison,

Raleigh never gives up

on his dream

of finding El Dorado.

And in 1617,

he’s pardoned by King James

and finally given permission

for a second expedition

to South America

under one condition.

The King knows how much

Raleigh hates the Spanish,

but there’s finally peace

between the two countries.

So he makes Raleigh promise

that he’s not gonna do

anything to disrupt

this delicate truce

that the countries have.

Reluctantly, Raleigh agrees.

Raleigh departs

England for a second attempt

in 1617.

This time,

he brings along his son Wat.

When they reach the mouth

of the Orinoco River this time,

Raleigh, who’s now an old man,

sends his son Wat

to lead a search party,

while he stays

back on board the ship.

Within days, his men did exactly

what they were told not to do.

They went into Spanish territory

and started a fight.

Wat Raleigh is sh*t through

the neck with a musket and dies.

When the rest of the party

returns to the ship,

the second in command

commits su1c1de.

Raleigh is distraught.

Their mission is over.

He’s lost his son.

He’s disobeyed the King,

and he has no gold

to show for it.

He decides to turn around

and head back home,

knowing full well the fate

that he’s about to face.

Upon his return to England,

Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded

by order of King James I,

accused of deliberately

inciting w*r

between England and Spain.

It’s another tragic end

in the search for El Dorado.

It seems to be a curse

for anybody trying to find it.

And there’s

a further ironic twist.

Centuries later, in 1871,

a gold mine is opened

in El Callao, Venezuela,

very close to the location

where Raleigh stopped

with his men and met the natives

adorned with gold.

It turns into one

of the richest mines

in the world at the time,

exporting more

than a million ounces of gold

in a 20 year period.

The mine is still active today.

There is potentially $2 trillion

worth of materials

in the ground right beneath

where Raleigh and his company

had stopped.

He just missed it.

Conquistador Gonzalo De Quesada

spreads the story

of El Dorado in 1537,

but his is not

the first Spanish take

on this legendary city.

In fact, ten years earlier,

a group of Spanish explorers

have an incredible experience

of their own.

It’s a story so unbelievable,

it becomes famous

throughout Spain.

In 1527, conquistador

Panfilo de Narvaez

departs for the New World

with 600 men.

His mission,

to explore and colonize

what is now the Gulf Coast

of America.

Narvaez visits and maps

what are now Hispaniola,

Cuba and Florida,

but like many expeditions

at the time,

it had its struggles.

Narvaez himself dies

within the first year,

and ships and supplies

are lost to hurricanes.

By 1532, only four

of the original 600 men remain.

Eventually, they cross

the Gulf of Mexico

and land in what is now Texas,

becoming the first Europeans

to cross the Gulf.

They need to get back

to a Spanish outpost,

the closest being in Mexico,

so they start walking through

today’s American Southwest.

After a few years,

in 1536, they’re able

to get back to Mexico City,

where they tell their tale

of survival, which is

incredible in its own right.

But even more incredible

is something they heard about

along the way,

seven different cities of gold.

And just as the Narvaez

crew comes back

with their stories

of cities of gold,

Quesada is hearing stories

of a golden city in Colombia.

At this point, many

of the Spanish begin to believe

it’s all connected.

There’s not

just one golden city.

There’s a gold-rich civilization

spread through the Americas

with multiple golden cities,

and El Dorado

is just one of them.

In 1539, Mexican Governor

Vasquez de Coronado

decides to investigate.

Coronado sends up Franciscan

Friar Marcos De Niza, and one

of the original survivors

from the first expedition

to bring back evidence

of the seven cities of gold.

When the friar returns

five months later, he shares

stories of a fantastical

pueblo he calls Cibola.

It is just full of wealth,

as though it is made of gold.

The area

that the friar describes

is in present-day New Mexico,

and the region

of the Zuni people.

Coronado mounts

an even larger expedition,

convinced that

the Cibola described

by Marcos de Niza

is in fact El Dorado,

one of the famous golden cities.

On April 22nd, 1540,

Coronado’s team departs

from Culiacan.

Coronado dispatches

400 conquistadors

and 2,000 indigenous peoples.

What they find is

small outposts dwellings

that looked like pueblos.

There are seven cities

in the area,

but they’re all

very similar to the first.

They’re very small,

no evidence of gold.

It seems, in fact, that Coronado

had been duped by the friar.

But Coronado is convinced

the stories of El Dorado

are still true.

The peoples of these pueblos

tell Coronado

that there are cities of gold,

but they’re farther

to the north,

and they should keep marching.

And Coronado and his men,

believing that they haven’t

reached it yet, keep marching

for months and months

and hundreds

and hundreds of miles.

By 1541, they’ve journeyed

as far north as modern Kansas.

They don’t discover El Dorado,

but they are the first Europeans

to see the Colorado River

in the Grand Canyon.

Coronado eventually returns

to Mexico City in 1542.

It was a long,

disastrous journey

that did not result in finding

a fantastic city of gold.

Coronado ends up bankrupt

and dies a few years later,

yet one more life ruined by

the search for unending wealth.

What’s ironic about all of this

is that years later,

those same small pueblos

would turn out to be rich

in ores like silver,

copper, and turquoise.

If the Spanish hadn’t been

so focused on finding

the golden city of El Dorado,

they might have discovered

the riches

that were there all along.

Explorers have

searched for the famed city

of El Dorado for five centuries

across both

north and South America.

No one has found it.

There’s certainly been

no shortage of people looking

for El Dorado, especially

among the Spanish conquistadors.

And some theories suggest

that there might be

a pretty good reason for that,

which is that El Dorado

as a city was simply made up.

Based on the artifacts

that we’ve found,

we know that some

indigenous communities

in Central and South America

used gold for decoration

and religious purposes.

But that’s it.

That’s all we know.

We have no proof

of an actual golden city,

apart from the fact

that the Spanish were

told stories about it

and were obsessed

with finding it.

So one school of thought

is that the natives were telling

the Spanish the truth,

that there was a city of gold,

but what if they lied?

The indigenous people

of the New World aren’t stupid.

They were

understandably confused

by the Spanish desire for gold.

They did not value it

in the same way

that the Spanish did.

They used it for decoration,

for religious purposes,

but not for monetary value.

But they could clearly see

the obsession

that the conquistadors

had with getting more gold.

The Spanish come in

with threats and att*cks.

They’ll do anything to get

this gold, even k*ll for it.

Many South American

historians believe

this inspires

the natives to lie.

When the Spanish

come looking for gold,

the indigenous people

just want to survive.

They want to get the Spanish out

of there as fast as possible.

So they tell them, "Yes, there

is the gold you’re looking for."

"It’s just over those mountains,

just down that river,

just on the other side

of this forest."

And the Spanish

take the bait every time

and move on looking

for that gold.

So one of the best examples

of this is what happens

to Coronado

when he’s marching through

the Southwestern desert

looking for El Dorado.

Every pueblo he stops at

tells him that this city

is a little more north,

until he ends up

all the way up in Kansas.

It’s not just

the natives who benefit.

The Europeans use it

to their own advantage.

They embellish claims

of El Dorado

and its riches

in order to attract crew

and financial backing

for their expeditions.

When Francisco de Orellana

goes back to Spain,

he has no gold to show

for his efforts,

but what he does have

is stories.

And when he tells the King

what he heard

about the golden city

of El Dorado, it works.

He gets his next

expedition funded.

There’s one more convenient use

for the El Dorado lie.

As the colonial conquest

of South America ends,

the Spanish have an issue.

They have hundreds, maybe

thousands of conquistadors

with nothing to do.

There’s no one left to conquer.

There’s no more gold to steal.

They’re sitting around

getting drunk, causing problems.

Until they’re given

a new purpose.

The actual Spanish government

comes up with a plan

to send these idle soldiers off

on hunts to look for El Dorado,

which, by this point,

they assume

will be wild goose chases.

Not only does it

keep them occupied,

but it gets them

out of the cities

and into the jungles for weeks,

months, maybe even years,

with a chance

that they won’t come back.

At this point,

the search for El Dorado

isn’t about finding gold.

It’s actually

about getting rid of problems.

One such documented

expedition takes place in 1560.

That year, the Spanish

send 300 conquistadors

on a search for El Dorado,

led by Pedro de Ursua.

Ursua is asked to bring along

a particularly troublesome group

of soldiers, led

by Lope de Aguirre,

to essentially get

rid of him for a while.

But Aguirre murders Ursua,

and he and his soldiers

go on a marauding expedition,

leaving a trail

of death and destruction.

Most of the 300 die

along the way.

It’s an awful scene,

but it also shows

that the Spanish government,

by 1560,

they no longer even believe

that El Dorado exists

or is worth looking for.

It’s just a convenient way

to get rid of troublemakers.

Ursua says so himself

in his letters.

He was just trying to occupy

Aguirre and these idle veterans,

and he got himself k*lled

in the process.

But thanks

to the Spanish explorers

and modern-day excavations,

we know that South America

had and still has tons of gold.

It’s just not all piled up

in one city,

like the story said.

And, in that sense,

the legend is real.

It’s not like these stories

are promising gold

where none exists.

It does, and man’s imagination

and greed filled in the rest.

Archaeologists continue

to search

for lost ancient cities

throughout South America,

and have found nearly a dozen

in the past decade alone.

But none matches the allure

of the tantalizing

lost city of gold.

Perhaps one day, El Dorado

will be finally uncovered.

I’m Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History’s Greatest Mysteries."