The GraveYard Shift

[JD400]

NOW PLAYING El Dorado The Lost City Gold

TGYS

It was a fable that fueled a thousand fevered explorations into the mountains and rain forests of South America. The mere idea of El Dorado--a city of gold buried in the jungle--fired the imagination of Spanish conquistadors for centuries. But when no city appeared, so the legend faded.

This show begins the search anew. The recent find of a remarkable document has given new life to the search for El Dorado. Eager to follow up on these latest developments, host throws himself into an exciting journey that takes him from the icy waters of Lake Titicaca in Southern Peru, to the frozen Altiplano of the high Andes, then deep into the Amazon jungle as he struggles to discover the truth, once and for all, behind the legend of El Dorado. El Dorado (pronounced: [el do'?aðo], English /??l d?'r??do?/; Spanish for "the gilded one") is the name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dived into the Guatavita Lake. Later, it became the name of a legendary "Lost City of Gold", that fascinated explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors and was supposedly located on Lake Parime in the highlands of Guyana, South America. Imagined as a place, El Dorado became a kingdom, an empire, and a city of this legendary golden king.

In pursuit of the legend, Francisco Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro departed from Quito in 1541 in an expedition towards the Amazon Basin, as a result of which Orellana became the first person known to have navigated the Amazon River along substantially its entire length. El Dorado is applied to a legendary story in which precious stones were found in fabulous abundance along with gold coins. The concept of El Dorado underwent several transformations, and eventually accounts of the previous myth were also combined with those of the legendary city. The resulting El Dorado enticed European explorers for two centuries. Among the earliest stories was the one told by Diego de Ordaz's lieutenant Martinez, who claimed to have been rescued from shipwreck, conveyed inland, and entertained by "El Dorado" himself (1531).

During the Klein-Venedig period in Venezuela (1528--1546), agents of the Welser banking family (which had received a concession from Charles I of Spain) launched repeated expeditions into the interior of the country in search of El Dorado. In 1540, Gonzalo Pizarro, the younger half-brother of Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador who toppled the Incan Empire in Peru, was mad


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJCedJ0WT50