El Dorado Legend: Disease and the Fall of Amazon Civilizations. The original El Dorado legend came from the Muisca tribe near Lake Guatavita in Colombia The legend involved a king covered in gold dust diving into a primordial lake Francisco de Orellana's 1541-1542 expedition documented large cities along the Amazon

The original El Dorado legend came from the Muisca tribe - a king covered in gold dust diving into Lake Guatavita. Orellana documented large settlements along the Amazon in 1541-1542. Recent archaeological surveys reveal cities of significant scale destroyed by European disease. 📜🦠

Key Facts

  • The original El Dorado legend came from the Muisca tribe near Lake Guatavita in Colombia
  • The legend involved a king covered in gold dust diving into a primordial lake
  • Francisco de Orellana's 1541-1542 expedition documented large cities along the Amazon
  • Of 220 Spaniards and 4,000 indigenous people on Orellana's expedition, only 43 survived
  • European diseases (smallpox, influenza) spread through the Amazon ahead of explorers
  • By the early 1700s, European explorers found only small villages, not the cities Orellana described
  • LIDAR has found cities with populations up to 1 million people in the Amazon
  • Orellana saw people with elongated skulls in Amazonian cities

Source: Luke Caverns on Ancient South America (2+ hours) by Luke Caverns