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Tonight, a famed ancient city overflowing with gold.

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The legend of El Dorado takes hold amongst the Spanish,

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and people start looking for it everywhere.

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For centuries, explorers seeking it find only disappointment or death.

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It's less a quest for gold and more a fight for survival.

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Now we reveal the top theories surrounding this legendary city.

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Pictures from space show what appears to be rivers of gold weaving through the area.

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There could be a lost golden city right there under the rainforest canopy.

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There's not just one golden city. There's multiple golden cities.

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Does El Dorado exist? And if so, where could it be?

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El Dorado

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March 1537.

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For nearly 20 years, the Spanish have been on a mission to conquer South America

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with their infamous army of conquistadors.

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As part of that mission, Chief Magistrate Gonzalo Jiménez de Quezada

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leads an expedition to find an overland route from present-day Colombia to Peru.

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De Quezada and his men have been tasked with finding a way around or over or through

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the Andes Mountains, a long mountain range that has proven to be an obstacle to the Spanish conquistadors.

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It's a brutal trek. There's bad weather. It's cold. There's disease.

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The men are really ready to give up. But then, De Quezada hears a rumor

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that causes him to completely change his mission.

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The rumor. A city filled with gold.

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This is absolute music to De Quezada's ears because for Spanish conquistadors,

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nothing is more important than gold.

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For decades, the Spanish have been exploring Central and South America

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and conquering its peoples. Along the way, they've sent back ships filled with tons of gold

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and stories of unbelievable wealth to be found in the Americas.

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Stories of what is waiting to still be found, unlimited resources, unlimited land,

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unlimited food and wealth were believed to be possible.

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The problem is, by the time De Quezada gets to South America,

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most of the easy-to-find stories of gold have already been plundered.

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Now he's desperate to know, where is this so-called golden village?

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As De Quezada's troops press further south, they encounter the indigenous Moisica people.

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The Moisica are as advanced as the Aztec, Inca or even the Maya,

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but they aren't as warlike or even really as organized.

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They're more like a loose confederation of tribes,

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but they're known as skilled metal workers and their medal of choice is gold.

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Gold has no monetary value for them. They use it because it's soft and easy to work with,

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but it also has a spiritual significance for them because the Moisica's god, Cheminagagua, is a sun god,

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and gold shines like the sun.

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This suggested to Quezada that there was more where it came from

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and he was going to go find it.

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De Quezada's men quickly overpower the Moisica and interrogate them about where to find gold.

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The Moisica people describe a ritual to De Quezada in which a new leader is coronated

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and the ritual entails this new leader, he will be called the Zipa.

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He is covered in a sticky substance that then is covered with gold dust.

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Then they take him out to the middle of a sacred lake on a raft

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and they put gold statues, figurines and jewels on the raft

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and there are thousands of Moisica people standing on the banks watching all of this.

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At which point the chieftain immerses himself in the lake, cleansing himself of the gold dust

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and the attendants throw trinkets and gold objects into the middle of the lake.

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Thousands of people are along the banks also throwing gold themselves.

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And when that man emerges, he is the new chief, the Zipa, of the community

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and he is known importantly as El Dorado, the golden man.

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Although it's just a story of a man, De Quezada considers this to be something much bigger.

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He thinks of this man as a golden king who must live in a golden kingdom

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and therefore all he has to do is find it.

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Inspired by the story of the Moisica, De Quezada believes he'll find the golden city

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on the shores of a nearby lake.

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The Spanish press on and soon De Quezada comes upon a body of water called Lake Guadavida.

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Lake Guadavida is located about 35 miles northeast of Bogotá.

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It's a really beautiful, almost supernatural or eerie place.

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The lake is almost perfectly round. It's surrounded by trees.

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It reflects the sky. It reflects the environment around it.

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There's no obvious city on its shores, but De Quezada still thinks this is the place.

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He thinks this city must have either been abandoned or perhaps it lies underwater.

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The Spanish think that all they need to do is get to the bottom of the lake

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and they can recover all this golden jewels that have been thrown in.

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De Quezada is here in the mid-1500s, so the technology to get underwater simply isn't available.

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To get to the treasure, they assume they're going to have to drain the entire lake.

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It's an insane amount of manual labor, but they have a captive workforce.

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Two conquistadors, Lazaro Fonte and De Quezada's own brother, Hernán Perez De Quezada, come up with a plan.

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They are going to empty out this entire lake by hand.

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They essentially form this huge bucket chain using the brute force of these captured Indigenous people.

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They'd spend months taking the water out of Lake Guadavida one bucket at a time.

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Progress is painfully slow. After three months, they haven't come close to their goal.

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They manage to drop the water level about 10 feet and they do find some pieces of gold in the mud that they manage to expose.

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It's not nothing, but it's certainly no lavish city of gold.

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Their bounty ends up being worth about $100,000 in today's money. Certainly not a fortune.

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Without the technology to explore any further, hundreds of years pass with no new discoveries.

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Then, in the late 1800s, a British entrepreneur is inspired to investigate.

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In 1898, Hartley Knowles hears about De Quezada's efforts.

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He has started the company for the exploration of the lagoon at Guadavida,

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and he now is taking his turn at getting to that gold.

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What's different now is that it's the turn of the century and Britain is an industrial powerhouse,

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so he has much better equipment at his disposal.

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They bring in a massive steam pump, an earth-moving equipment,

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to dig a huge tunnel under the middle of Guadavida and start to drain it.

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After six years, the lake is finally emptied, but what remains is another problem.

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Hartley Knowles manages to get to the bottom of the lake.

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The problem is, when he gets to the bottom of it, there's silt and mud and hard pan,

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and as it's baked in the sun, it becomes cement, and so they have to abandon the project.

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After spending all that time and money, Knowles and his company only end up finding about

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30 to 40 golden artifacts in the mud.

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They're auctioned off at Sotheby's in London in 1909,

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and they're sold for a whopping total of 500 British pounds.

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And unsurprisingly, the company goes bankrupt.

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By 1965, Lake Guadavida has been almost ruined,

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and the Colombian government has decided that it's had enough.

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The government bans any further exploration of Lake Guadavida,

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officially ending the quest for El Dorado here.

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But Lake Guadavida was not the only candidate for the location of El Dorado, not by a long shot.

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When Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quezada spreads a rumor of a lost city of gold in 1537,

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others quickly expand the search far and wide.

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The legend of El Dorado starts to take hold amongst the Spanish,

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and so they look everywhere all over South America.

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Many of these soldiers have come looking for gold, and they haven't seen much of it yet.

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Among the inspired conquistadors is Gonzalo Pizarro.

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He's the half-brother of Francisco Pizarro, the man who conquered the Inca Empire

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and brought boatloads of gold back to Spain.

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Because of the strength of his last name, Pizarro has been made the vice governor in Quito,

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which is modern-day Ecuador, but he has bigger ambitions than just being the local vice governor.

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In 1541, four years after de Quezada's expedition, Pizarro sets out on his own quest to find El Dorado.

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Pizarro enlists the help of his childhood friend and cousin Francisco de Oriana.

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Pizarro speaks to a different indigenous group in Ecuador,

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and he's told that the gold that de Quezada seeks is actually much further south than where he's looking.

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It's some 600 miles south, and it's not even in the Andes Mountain region.

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Avoiding the mountain sounds like a really good idea to Pizarro,

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but he doesn't realize this new destination is just as treacherous.

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According to his sources, El Dorado sits on the shores of a river deep in the Amazon rainforest.

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In February 1541, the two men leave Quito with 340 Spaniards and some 4,000 Indigenous people.

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They head due east across the Andes, then down into the lowlands,

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then toward the far southeast of Ecuador, where the Amazon rainforest begins.

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They end up being some of the first Europeans to explore the Amazon jungle.

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But they are not remotely ready for it.

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It's hot, it's humid, and the growth is so dense that they have to use their swords to hack their way through it.

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They have natives with them that they've brought, but the natives are from the mountain region,

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so they are also unprepared for this sort of climate.

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And as time goes on and they struggle more and more, they begin to be hungry,

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people begin to get sick, and some of them begin to die.

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It's almost like the harder the trek becomes, the more convinced Pizarro is that El Dorado is just around the corner.

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He becomes consumed with finding this city. Nothing else seems to matter.

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He drives these suffering men further southeast looking for this river that will ultimately lead him to gold.

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Every time the Spanish encounter any indigenous in the jungle, he's out of questions them where the city of gold is.

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And they always tell him, keep going, you'll encounter it eventually.

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After 11 months, the crew has traveled nearly 200 miles with nothing to show for it.

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By the time Pizarro's company gets to the banks of the Cocoa River, most of his men are either dead, dying, or very sick.

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They've lost 3,000 natives and 140 conquistadors.

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They've run out of food, eating their horses to stay alive.

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It's less a quest for gold and more a fight for survival.

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The expedition is on the verge of mutiny, and so they make a plan to build a boat to travel down the river.

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On December 26th, 1541, Pizarro tells his partner Oriana to take 50 men in the boat down the river to find food and bring it back to the rest of the team.

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The current of the river is strong, so Oriana makes very good time.

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Unfortunately, it's 14 days before they find any food, and because of the current, they realize there's no way to turn around and go back.

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So they decide to just keep going forward.

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Oriana has all the men sign a document saying that they understand what they're doing, but they had no other choice.

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Oriana knows this may end up being useful later because they may be considered traitors and sentenced to be executed.

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After one month, Pizarro realizes his old friend is not coming back.

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Pizarro thinks maybe they were attacked by a hostile tribe, but he also starts to wonder if maybe his cousin has betrayed him.

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He thinks, if I had found El Dorado, would I come back?

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Gonzalo Pizarro takes the remnant men who were stranded on the side of the river and arrives back in Quito, literally shoeless and in rags, and he vows that he'd be ever sees Oriana again.

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He's going to kill him.

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Meanwhile, Oriana continues his journey.

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The swift current has carried Oriana's team even farther, and they still haven't seen any trace of a city of gold.

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Eventually, they meet up with the much larger Amazon River.

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He figures this is the sacred body of water that will eventually lead to El Dorado.

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At first, it seems he might be right.

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As they get further into the Amazon basin, they start to see these great settlements, thriving cities with people all adorned in gold.

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These locals feed the Spanish and even teach them some of their language.

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As the Spanish keep going, they hear stories of even bigger, more opulent cities deeper in the jungle.

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But the farther they travel, the less friendly those encounters get.

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They start running into native groups that are defensive and then native groups that are attacking them and keeping them from being able to land anywhere on shore.

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One of these attacks actually leads to the naming of the Amazon River.

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It doesn't have a name until June 24th, 1542, when Oriana and his men are attacked by a local tribe where the women fight right alongside the men.

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He refers to these women as Amazonas, based on the mythical Greek women warriors described by Herodotus.

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Oriana starts calling the area the River of the Amazons, and the name sticks.

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Finally, after eight months and over 3,000 miles, Oriana and his crew reach the Atlantic Ocean.

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Even though he doesn't know it yet, Oriana has just successfully traveled the entire length of the world's longest river, and he's the first European to do so.

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But unfortunately, he does it without reaching El Dorado.

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Word of Oriana's voyage reaches Quito and eventually Spain.

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Pizarro hears the news, and he accuses his cousin of treason, hoping to get him hanged.

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But in the end, because of the document that the entire crew signed and that detailed log that they kept, Oriana is found not guilty,

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and he returns safely to Spain where he's welcomed by King Charles I as sort of a celebrity.

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Once Oriana is back in Spain, he has pretty much one goal, and that is to get back to South America.

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He is convinced that he came so close to finding the real El Dorado.

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He basically makes the pitch to everyone that he can do this, that he will find the city of gold,

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that if he gets the supplies and the funding and the crew that he needs, he will be able to go straight to El Dorado itself.

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His pitch works. In May of 1545, Francisco de Oriana heads back into the Amazon.

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It's his second expedition to find El Dorado, but this time he knows exactly where he needs to go, and he's completely confident that he's going to get there.

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Spanish explorer Francisco de Oriana's first attempt to find El Dorado has failed, but in 1545, he's ready to try again.

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His previous expedition operated under the assumption that El Dorado is in the far western region of the Amazon rainforest, in what's now Ecuador.

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After a disastrous attempt, they couldn't find it there.

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But as Oriana traveled east along the Amazon River, in what's now Brazil, he saw larger cities with indigenous there adorned in gold.

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And it's in that area in which he believes he will find El Dorado.

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Last time, after attacks by native peoples, Oriana wasn't really able to get very far from shore and really explore these cities or what lies beyond.

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So that's what he's going to do this time.

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On May 11th, 1545, Oriana departs from Spain.

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The disaster of his previous expedition is fresh in his mind, so he is attempting to be more than prepared this time around.

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He brings four ships, more than 300 men, and supplies to build an additional two ships when they get to the mouth of the Amazon to help them navigate up the river.

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He has everything he needs. He knows the way. This time, he can't fail.

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They sail first to the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands, where they spend the first couple of months loaning supplies, getting the ships ready for the open seas, and recruiting more men.

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The next planned stop is the Cape Verde Islands, off the west coast of Africa, which the Spanish also control.

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It's here where Oriana's expedition starts to really unravel. There's an epidemic that kills 98 of his men, and then another 60 of them desert.

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He's down so many sailors that he decides to abandon one of his ships entirely and cross the Atlantic with just the remaining three ships.

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The Atlantic crossing is a disaster from the outset. One of his ships is blown off course and he never sees it again.

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This costs Oriana an additional 77 men, more supplies, and all of the material that they were going to use to build those additional two ships to navigate up the Amazon.

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In spite of that, on December 20th, 1545, Oriana arrives on the east coast of Brazil.

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When he arrives, he has only two ships and fewer than 100 men. This is not a promising start to what he knows is going to be a difficult expedition.

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Thankfully, there's a lot of food where they land and the natives are friendly, so Oriana's men suggest that they just make camp and regroup for a little while.

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But Oriana is so eager to find El Dorado that he says, nope, on we go.

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Oriana may have been here before, but this time he gets lost. The mouth of the Amazon is a wild tangle of tributaries.

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The group travels over 300 miles trying to find the entrance of the Amazon River. The journey is over before it's begun.

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They never even got anywhere near El Dorado. In fact, they never even got into the main Amazon River itself.

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And if El Dorado is hiding deep in Brazil, they'll never know.

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In the end, less than 40 of the original 300 men survive by making it back to the island of Margarita, just west of Trinidad.

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After the collapse of Oriana's expedition, he's basically branded a liar.

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People began to suspect that he made the whole thing up or maybe that he was just covering up for having abandoned Pizarro,

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or that he just wanted to secure funding for his next expedition.

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But the rumors of El Dorado sitting somewhere along the Amazon persist.

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And over the next hundred years, a handful of other expeditions to Brazil are launched, all of which turn up nothing.

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Eventually, the search for El Dorado in the Amazon appears to die out.

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Then in December 2020, astronauts on board the International Space Station spot something peculiar near Bolivia.

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Pictures from space show what appears to be rivers of gold weaving through the area.

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They turn out to be illegal gold mining operations and they are huge, which is obvious if you can see them from space.

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This evidence reignites a modern-day hunt for El Dorado, this time in a whole new area.

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In 2022, a team of researchers led by Heiko Prumers from the German Archaeological Institute

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head to the Bolivian Rainforest to do 3D scanning of the landscape from the air.

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And what these researchers discover is absolutely amazing.

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It appears to be an ancient civilization that's been lost for centuries.

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There are pyramids 60 feet high, rectangular structures, paths and roads.

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It's like a city hidden inside the rainforest.

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The team estimates this settlement was abandoned nearly 500 years ago.

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Around the same time, the conquistadors arrive.

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Prumers estimates that it might have taken researchers centuries to find these cities in the jungle,

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but the LiDAR technology allowed them to find it in a matter of days.

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So the media seizes on this story. I mean, who doesn't love a treasure hunt?

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And the myth of El Dorado has been going on for hundreds of years

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and now we have these images that suggest there could be a lost golden city right there under the rainforest canopy.

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Further aerial investigations have turned up geoglyphs and massive roads the size of highways.

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All of this leads us to believe that Oriana was telling the truth about the cities that he saw.

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Unfortunately, a full expedition proves too difficult.

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The Amazon basin itself is enormous. It's more than 2.7 million square miles.

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And about 2 million of those square miles have never really been explored or studied.

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It's an area the size of India. There's a lot we still don't know about the interior of the Amazon.

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It's just so overgrown and impenetrable. The access is difficult, the terrain is difficult, the weather conditions are difficult.

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There's no way to get an equipment.

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For now, aerial studies are our best bet for finding any answers.

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So it seems that Oriana wasn't lying, that he was telling the truth, at least about the cities.

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We can't be totally sure about the gold.

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The lure of El Dorado, the lost city of gold, has captured the imagination of generations of treasure seekers.

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But perhaps none are more renowned or more determined than a world-famous British explorer who takes on the search in the late 1500s.

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In 1585, England and Spain are engaged in a long-running conflict.

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So you've probably heard of the Spanish Armada.

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That's just a part of a 19-year-long war called the Anglo-Spanish War.

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While that war was fought officially between these two countries, there was also a very large amount of guerrilla warfare.

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The English were sponsoring piracy, what they called privateers, sending ships out to basically attack the Spanish ships that were attempting the conquest of the New World.

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One of the top English privateers is Sir Walter Raleigh, who's already famous as an explorer and a statesman, and he's a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I.

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While he's off raiding Spanish ships, he hears a lot about what they've been up to in South America.

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Including their search for El Dorado.

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At some point in the 1590s, Raleigh hears the story of Juan Martinez, a conquistador who had explored the Orinoco River area 20 years earlier in the 1570s.

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According to Martinez, when his expedition fails, he's blindfolded by the natives and taken to a city of gold.

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Raleigh speaks to other Spanish conquistadors and they tell him that the golden city he's looking for is called Manoa.

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And they tell him that it is the imperial city of this region, which at the time is called Guyana.

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It's located near a lake called Parime. It's supposedly a saltwater lake that's massive. It's 600 miles across.

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Raleigh is told that the natives get all their gold from the lake itself, that it flows down the river and tumbles into the lake where they can find it.

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In April 1595, Raleigh arrives in South America with four ships and 100 men.

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So after landing near present-day Guyana, Raleigh and his men take five small boats up the Orinoco River.

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It's a long and arduous process because they're going against the current and his men are not used to all this heat and humidity.

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After a month, they've gone a little over 200 miles and they're exhausted, so they decide to pull off the river, take a break and recover.

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When they come ashore, Raleigh and his compatriots make contact with a native tribe who's friendly to them and who's also adorned in gold.

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At this point, there are literally just nuggets of gold lying on the banks of the river.

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Raleigh ends up befriending the chief of this tribe. His name is Topiawari and he tells Raleigh of a giant lake full of gold just nearby.

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And Raleigh, of course, assumes this must be Parime. This is the lake he's looking for.

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Raleigh spends the next three months desperately searching for El Dorado.

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All of his men are exhausted. They're in no condition to keep going, so he decides that he's going to turn back and when everyone is refreshed again, they will start over and they'll come back and find it.

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When he arrives back in England at the end of August 1595, Raleigh expects a hero's welcome.

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He's certain he'll be celebrated and will have no issues raising funds for a new expedition. But that's not what happens because he doesn't bring back any gold.

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There's no return on investments and so nobody wants to fund another expedition.

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Ultimately, Raleigh waits another 22 years.

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Queen Elizabeth I dies on March 24th, 1603 and she was his main patron.

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And so after her death, Raleigh decides to support a rival for the crown instead of the rightful heir, James I.

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But James becomes king and Raleigh is immediately imprisoned in the Tower of London where he remains until 1616.

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Even languishing in prison, Raleigh never gives up on his dream of finding El Dorado.

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And in 1617, he's pardoned by King James and finally given permission for a second expedition to South America under one condition.

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The king knows how much Raleigh hates the Spanish, but there's finally peace between the two countries.

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So he makes Raleigh promise that he's not going to do anything to disrupt this delicate truce that the countries have.

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And reluctantly, Raleigh agrees.

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Raleigh departs England for a second attempt in 1617.

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This time, he brings along his son Watt.

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When they reach the mouth of the Orinoco River this time, Raleigh, who's now an old man, sends his son Watt to lead a search party while he stays back on board the ship.

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Within days, his men did exactly what they were told not to do.

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They went into Spanish territory and started a fight.

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Watt Raleigh is shot through the neck with a musket and dies.

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When the rest of the party returns to the ship, the second in command commits suicide.

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Raleigh is distraught. Their mission is over. He's lost his son. He's disobeyed the king and he has no gold to show for it.

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He decides to turn around and head back home, knowing full well the fate that he's about to face.

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Upon his return to England, Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded by order of King James I,

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accused of deliberately inciting war between England and Spain.

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It's another tragic end in the search for El Dorado. It seems to be a curse for anybody trying to find it.

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And there's a further ironic twist.

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Centuries later, in 1871, a gold mine is opened in El Caillau, Venezuela.

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Very close to the location where Raleigh stopped with his men and met the natives adorned with gold.

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It turns into one of the richest mines in the world at the time,

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exporting more than a million ounces of gold in a 20-year period. The mine is still active today.

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There is potentially $2 trillion worth of materials in the ground right beneath where Raleigh and his company had stopped.

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He just missed it.

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Conquistador Gonzalo de Quezada spreads the story of El Dorado in 1537,

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but his is not the first Spanish take on this legendary city.

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In fact, 10 years earlier, a group of Spanish explorers have an incredible experience of their own.

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It's a story so unbelievable that becomes famous throughout Spain.

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In 1527, Conquistador Panfilo de Narváez departs for the new world with 600 men,

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his mission to explore and colonize what is now the Gulf Coast of America.

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Narváez visits and maps what are now Hispaniola, Cuba, and Florida.

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But like many expeditions at the time, it had its struggles.

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Narváez himself dies within the first year and ships and supplies are lost to hurricanes.

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By 1532, only four of the original 600 men remain.

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Eventually, they cross the Gulf of Mexico and land in what is now Texas, becoming the first Europeans to cross the Gulf.

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They need to get back to a Spanish outpost, the closest being in Mexico, so they start walking through today's American Southwest.

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After a few years in 1536, they're able to get back to Mexico City where they tell their tale of survival,

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which is incredible in its own right.

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But even more incredible is something they heard about along the way, seven different cities of gold.

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And just as the Narváez crew comes back with their stories of cities of gold,

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Quezada is hearing stories of a golden city in Colombia.

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At this point, many of the Spanish begin to believe it's all connected.

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There's not just one golden city.

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There's a gold-rich civilization spread through the Americas with multiple golden cities.

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And El Dorado is just one of them.

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In 1539, Mexican governor Vasquez de Coronado decides to investigate.

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Coronado sends up Franciscan friar, Marcos Daniza, and one of the original survivors from the first expedition to bring back evidence of the seven cities of gold.

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When the friar returns five months later, he shares stories of a fantastical pueblo he calls Sibola.

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It is just full of wealth, as though it is made of gold.

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The area that the friar describes is in present-day New Mexico and the region of the Zuni people.

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Coronado mounts an even larger expedition convinced that the Sibola, described by Marcos Daniza, is in fact El Dorado, one of the famous golden cities.

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On April 22, 1540, Coronado's team departs from Culiacán.

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Coronado dispatches 400 conquistadors and 2,000 indigenous peoples.

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What they find is small outposts, dwellings that look like queblos.

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There are seven cities in the area, but they're all very similar to the first.

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They're very small, no evidence of gold.

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It seems in fact that Coronado had been duped by the friar.

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But Coronado is convinced the stories of El Dorado are still true.

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The peoples of these pueblos tell Coronado that there are cities of gold, but they're farther to the north and they should keep marching.

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And Coronado and his men, believing that they haven't reached it yet, keep marching for months and months and hundreds and hundreds of miles.

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By 1541, they've journeyed as far north as modern Kansas.

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They don't discover El Dorado, but they are the first Europeans to see the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon.

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Coronado eventually returns to Mexico City in 1542.

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It was a long, disastrous journey that did not result in finding a fantastic city of gold.

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Coronado ends up bankrupt and dies a few years later.

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Yet one more life ruined by the search for unending wealth.

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What's ironic about all of this is that years later, those same small pueblos would turn out to be rich in ores like silver, copper and turquoise.

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If the Spanish hadn't been so focused on finding the golden city of El Dorado, they might have discovered the riches that were there all along.

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They have searched for the famed city of El Dorado for five centuries across both North and South America.

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No one has found it.

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There's certainly been no shortage of people looking for El Dorado, especially among the Spanish conquistadors.

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And some theories suggest that there might be a pretty good reason for that, which is that El Dorado as a city was simply made up.

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Based on the artifacts that we've found, we know that some indigenous communities in Central and South America used gold for decoration and religious purposes.

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But that's it. That's all we know.

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We have no proof of an actual golden city, apart from the fact that the Spanish were told stories about it and were obsessed with finding it.

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So one school of thought is that the natives were telling Spanish the truth that there was a city of gold. But what if they lied?

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The indigenous people of the New World aren't stupid.

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They were understandably confused by the Spanish desire for gold.

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They did not value it in the same way that the Spanish did. They used it for decoration for religious purposes, but not for monetary value.

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But they could clearly see the obsession that the conquistadors had with getting more gold.

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The Spanish come in with threats and attacks. They'll do anything to get this gold, even kill for it.

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Many South American historians believe this inspires the natives to lie.

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When the Spanish come looking for gold, the indigenous people just want to survive. They want to get the Spanish out of there as fast as possible.

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So they tell them, yes, there is the gold you're looking for. It's just over those mountains, just down that river, just on the other side of this forest.

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And the Spanish take the bait every time and move on looking for that gold.

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So one of the best examples of this is what happens to Coronado when he's marching through the southwestern desert looking for El Dorado.

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Every Pueblo he stops at tells him that this city is a little more north until he ends up all the way up in Kansas.

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It's not just the natives who benefit.

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The Europeans use it to their own advantage. They embellish claims of El Dorado and its riches in order to attract crew and financial backing for their expeditions.

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When Francisco de Oriana goes back to Spain, he has no gold to show for his efforts.

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But what he does have is stories. And when he tells the king what he heard about the Golden City of El Dorado, it works.

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He gets his next expedition funded.

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There's one more convenient use for the El Dorado lie.

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As the colonial conquest of South America ends, the Spanish have an issue.

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They have hundreds, maybe thousands of conquistadors with nothing to do.

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There's no one left to conquer. There's no more gold to steal. They're sitting around getting drunk, causing problems.

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Until they're given a new purpose.

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The actual Spanish government comes up with a plan to send these idle soldiers off on hunts to look for El Dorado.

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Which by this point they assume will be wild goose chases.

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Not only does it keep them occupied, but it gets them out of the cities and into the jungles for weeks, months, maybe even years with a chance that they won't come back.

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At this point the search for El Dorado isn't about finding gold. It's actually about getting rid of problems.

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One such documented expedition takes place in 1560.

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That year, the Spanish send 300 conquistadors on a search for El Dorado, led by Pedro de Ursúa.

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Ursúa is asked to bring along a particularly troublesome group of soldiers, led by Lope de Aguirre, to essentially get rid of him for a while.

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Aguirre murders Ursúa and he and his soldiers go on a marauding expedition, leaving a trail of death and destruction.

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Most of the 300 die along the way. It's an awful scene, but it also shows that the Spanish government by 1560, they no longer even believe that El Dorado exists or is worth looking for.

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It's just a convenient way to get rid of troublemakers. Ursúa says so himself in his letters.

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He was just trying to occupy Aguirre and these idle veterans, and he got himself killed in the process.

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But thanks to the Spanish explorers and modern day excavations, we know that South America had, and still has, tons of gold.

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It's just not all piled up in one city, like the stories said.

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And in that sense, the legend is real. It's not like these stories are promising gold where none exists. It does.

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And man's imagination and greed filled in the rest.

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Archaeologists continue to search for lost ancient cities throughout South America and have found nearly a dozen in the past decade alone.

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But none matches the allure of the tantalizing lost city of gold.

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Perhaps one day, El Dorado will be finally uncovered.

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I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.