Above: Muisca raft, Gold Museum, Bogotá, Colombia. Thought to depict an actual ceremony that originated the El Dorado myth. Legend tells of a Muisca king who would cover himself in gold dust during festivals, then dive from a raft into Lake Guatavita. This golden piece was found in Pasca, Cundinamarca, Colombia, in 1969.
In 1542 a Spanish Conquistador with the uncomfortably long name of Francisco de Orellana Bejarano Pizarro y Torres de Altamirano navigated the Amazon river basin in search of a great treasure, the fabled lost city of gold – El Dorado. He didn’t find it, but he did find a vast population in villages, towns, and even large cities of wood and earth. Back in Spain, Francisco de Orellana and his chronicler, Dominican chaplain Gaspar de Carvajal, reported that the river basin was populated by as many as a million people in huge settlements with monumental wooden structures, connected by wide well traveled avenues. The news was enough for Charles the First of Spain to send Orellana back on a second expedition with royal backing, but due to unpaid debts, international intrigue and simple bad luck, the second expedition of several hundred Spaniards ended in tragic failure. The majority of the force never made it to the Amazon, and of those who did, many died from attacks by natives and disease, among them Francisco de Orellana. Delayed by the intrigues of European politics, subsequent expeditions over a decade later sailed up the Amazon in search of Orellana’s great cities, but instead they only found scattered small villages clinging to the riverbanks with seemingly endless and impenetrable rainforests beyond. Orellana and his Dominican priest were labeled liars and opportunists, and his stories of large cities and a million people a fantasy. What they didn’t understand was the vast population, who had no natural disease immunity, had been wiped out by smallpox, influenza, fevers, and other nameless epidemics brought by the Europeans and then spread from village to town to city with deadly efficiency by the connecting avenues and trade routes. As the cities and towns were emptied of their inhabitants, the rainforest quickly reclaimed and rotted the wooden structures and obscured the avenues. It’s estimated that all evidence of this massive civilization had vanished into the undergrowth in as little as 5 – 10 years.
Above Left: A Francisco de Orellana commemorative Three Peseta Postage Stamp from Spain, 1965.
Above Right: Variegated maize ears One of the main crops grown throughout Central and South America. photo by Sam Fentress ~ used by permission, / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
Throughout the ensuing 450 years, explorers searched for great cities, and found none. Convinced in their European smugness that a great civilization could only exist in cities of brick and stone, they declared the Amazon basin could never have supported a lost civilization. Colonists, and later scientists, archaeologists, and botanists studied the rainforest soil and determined that it was so low in nutrients, so scrubbed by constant heavy rain, and so highly acidic that sustained agriculture was impossible. They also judged Francisco de Orellana and Gaspar de Carvajal’s accounts to be exaggerations and perhaps even outright lies, the product of fortune hungry explorers. It wasn’t until the late 20th and early 21st century that archaeologists and scientist began to rediscover the truth. The first evidence came in the 1960’s with the discovery of geoglyphs in various places throughout the jungle. Geoglyphs are large areas of artificially raised and/or lowered landscape that form patterns on the ground. They can form human or animal figures, geometric, or even random patterns, but they all suggest a large or highly organized population must be responsible for their creation. As evidence mounted and opinions began to change, technology broke the story wide open. “LIDAR” – a type of laser-based radar that enables a view through the overlying forest and organic detritus, began to show vast areas criss-crossed by hidden roads, canals, and dotted with settlements, villages, and great cities. Francisco de Orellana had told the truth, only he underestimated. It’s now believed the Amazon basin could potentially support a population nearing eight million people, and quite possibly more. If Orellana’s cities were real …what of the city of gold… did such a treasure exist, too? That all depends on your definition of treasure. For the people of the Amazon, a reliable food supply was a treasure as great as gold was to the Conquistadors. To understand how such a population could feed itself, scientists began re-examining the soil, and listening to the indigenous people who told stories of “black earth” – in Portuguese “Terra Preta,” a highly valued and fertile soil found in deposits of few to several hundred acres still found throughout the jungle. When first discovered Terra Preta was thought to be natural in origin. Some proposed a volcanic origin, others believed it to be the product of flooding, or natural sedimentation. In actuality it is anthropomorphic (man made), composed of an intentional mixture of charcoal, wood ash, bone, broken pottery, compost and animal and human waste combined with the acidic, low fertility Amazonian clay soil. It’s thought the indigenous nomadic people, practitioners of slash and burn agriculture, noticed that plants growing near campsite waste piles and latrine areas grew better and faster, and made the leap to permanent settlements. It’s doubtful they understood the reason at first, but as time went on there is evidence they began make calculated steps to improve the soil for farming. Evidence shows that eventually human, animal and food waste consciously were collected and combined with wood ash and charcoal to compost into a rich soil amendment. The Terra Preta it formed is still rich and fertile, and has even been studied for its regenerative properties. Scientists are only now beginning to understand the benefits this man made soil and to see it for the treasure it truly is.
Below: Anthropogenic (man made) Black Earth, aka Terra Preta, as found at the archaeological site of Hatahara on the middle Amazon, near Manaus, Brazil. Used by permission.
(Photo by Manuel Arroyo-Kalin)
Mckey, Doyle & Rostain, Stéphen. (2015). Farming Technology in Amazonia. 10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9893-2.
