Chapter · Colombia · Legends
El Dorado was a man
A lake, a raft of rushes, and a word that turned
El Dorado was never a city: it was an heir who was stripped, smeared with sticky earth and dusted with gold before being set on a raft. This path follows that word's journey, from an Andean lake to an English book of 1596, reading the three documents that tell it.
Context first
A lesson to read before the others, to set the scene.
- The place
- The era
- The people
The lessons in this chapter
- 1What the text describesEl Carnero describes a Muisca chief's investiture as a protocol: a fast in a cave, a raft of rushes, a man covered in gold dust, and a flag that commands silence.10 min
- 2The object that says the same thingA gold piece nineteen centimetres long, cast by lost wax and found by chance in a cave in 1969, shows the scene the Spanish chronicle describes: a man seated at the centre of a raft, surrounded by offering bearers.10 min
- 3How a man became a cityAn adjective kept and a noun lost is all it takes: in sixty years the gilded Indian of an Andean lake becomes Manoa, imperial city on a salt lake the size of the Caspian.11 min
How these lessons are written
Each lesson starts from first-hand sources: Wikisource, Gallica, Persée, archives, museums and institutes. A fact without a source does not get written, and every lesson lists its own as direct links.
The rhythm
A lesson is five minutes of cards and four questions. Those questions then come back the next day, then at 3, 7, 21 and 60 days, and that return is what makes it stick. One a day is enough, and you can do several in a row.