1. El Dorado The City of Gold

2. El Dorado

3. The Gilded One El Dorado was first the name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and dove into Lake Titicaca as an initiation rite

4. Lost City Later, El Dorado came to be known as the “lost city of gold”. The city has fascinated and eluded explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors.

5. Location? "El Dorado shifted geographical locations until finally it simply meant a source of untold riches somewhere in the Americas," says Jim Griffith, a folklorist in Tucson, Arizona.

6. South America

8. The tale of El Dorado does contain scraps of the truth

9. In the 16th century when Spanish explorers reached South America, they heard tales of a tribe of natives high in the Andes Mountains

11. The Amazon Basin

14. During his second trip in 1617, he sent his son, Watt up the Orinoco River. SWR stayed behind and his son was killed in a battle with the Spaniards

16. "Over the Mountains of the Moon, down the Valley of the Shadow, ride, boldly ride…if you seek for El Dorado." -Edgar Allan Poe

17. "I don't think we've ever stopped seeking El Dorado." -Jose Oliver, lecturer for the Institute of Archaeology, University College London

18. References: Drye, Willie. "El Dorado Legend." nationalgeographic.com. National Geographic, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2011. Bandelier, A. F. A. The Gilded Man, El Dorado (New York, 1893). Fernandez de Oviedo, Gonzalo Historia General y Natural de las India, islas y Tierra-Firme del Mar Oceano, Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1851. Freyle, Juan Rodriguez El Carnero: Conquista y descubrimiento del Nuevo Reino de Granada. ISBN 84-660-0025-9 Hagen, Victor Wolfgang von The Gold of El Dorado: The Quest for the Golden Man Naipaul,V.S. The Loss of El Dorado, 1969 Nicholl, Charles The Creature in the Map, London, 1995 ISBN 0-09-959521-4