A Glimpse of El Dorado

Manhattan welcomes a trove of ancient Colombian gold

To the conquistadors, the legend was a promise of fabled riches--a great lost city or a temple filled with treasures or perhaps an entire mountain of gold. Indeed, El Dorado (Spanish for "the gilded one") may well have had a basis in fact. Folklore holds that Colombia's Muisca Indians, who dwelt in the highlands near present-day Bogota, installed their kings by dusting their naked bodies with gold and then washing them in nearby Lake Guatavita. To complete the ritual, they dropped gold and jewels into the holy waters as offerings to their god.

Whether such lavish ceremonies really took place is uncertain. But unlike most of the Aztec, Maya and Inca treasures, which the Spaniards melted down and shipped back home in the form of ingots, many of the ancient gold objects of the Colombian Indians have survived. Protected by rugged terrain, dispersed over a wider area in many different tribal groupings, the Colombians avoided some of the worst depredations of the European invaders. They also buried their treasures in hidden tombs that escaped detection until recent times.

Now a bit of El Dorado has materialized in the U.S. Last week more than 500 objects of Colombian gold went on exhibit at Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History. Most of these treasures--which next year will travel to Chicago, San Francisco and New Orleans--come from Bogota's Museo del Oro (Gold Museum), which has collected some 26,000 ancient gold pieces, often buying them up from guaqueros (professional tomb robbers) who otherwise would probably sell them to foreign collectors.

It is a dazzling display, showing surprising creativity and craftsmanship and ranging from ornamental hanging jewelry to funeral masks, from little musical bells to such utilitarian objects as fishhooks and decorated tweezers. There are even miniature urns for holding the lime that the Indians mixed with coca leaves (to enhance their euphoric powers).

No one knows exactly when the New World's Indians first began working gold, but goldsmiths were apparently plying their trade in the Americas well before the time of Christ. By the 5th century A.D., there were whole towns of gold-workers. When the Spaniards finally arrived, the Indians had mastered all the goldworking techniques, including "lost wax" casting, known in the Old World.

Like the miners of the Klondike, the ancient artisans obtained much of their gold by panning. They also dug shafts into the ground and even set fire to hillsides to expose the gold-bearing soil. Smelting was done in small clay crucibles. Some objects, like the breastplates made in the Calima region of southwestern Colombia, were hammered into shape on stone anvils with instruments made of iron found in meteorites. To prevent the gold from becoming brittle and breaking while it was being worked, the goldsmiths annealed it--heating it and quenching it rapidly in water. For joining different pieces, they developed several methods, including a sophisticated process also known to Etruscan and Greek goldsmiths; it is called granulation, a form of oxygenless welding in which a drop of copper acetate (made by dissolving copper in vinegar) and glue was used to fuse the gold.

Respect for the glowing handiwork of the Colombian Indians extends beyond the museums and the museumgoers of Colombia and the U.S. Even the guaqueros, who in the past would melt down these treasures, have come to recognize that an ancient art object may be worth more than its weight in gold.

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