24. Wishful Thinking Transformed a Legend Into a Strong Belief
Over the years, and with repeated retellings, the legend of El Hombre Dorado, the Golden Man, was transformed. What began as a tribal chief coated in gold dust became a city made of gold, then a kingdom of gold, and finally a fabulously wealthy empire that had more gold than the rest of the world put together. The story was helped by the fact that Spaniards and other Europeans had encountered a lot of gold among the natives of the Caribbean coast of South America.
They reasoned that there must be a huge source of gold somewhere in the interior. In due course, many Spanish Conquistadores and other European adventurers who heard the more ridiculous El Dorado story version describing a city of gold, came to believe in its existence. The lust for gold and fabulous riches said to be found in the mythical city fueled numerous expeditions and searches in the 1500s and 1600s. None of them discovered the nonexistent city of gold, and most of them found nothing but suffering and grief in a futile quest to find a myth.