James Stewart
speaker
3,838 appearances
20 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 3 Sep
James Stewart’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 15 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.
Appearances
The name comes from the Muisca people, who lived high in the Andes of modern day Colombia from AD 500 and still do to this day actually.
To the Muisca, gold wasn't a symbol of wealth or private treasure.
It had a deeper meaning, it was sacred.
During rite of passage ceremonies, a new ruler, known by the Spanish as El Dorado or the Golden One, would undergo a dramatic ritual.
His body would be covered head to toe in gold dust, and he would set out on a raft into the centre of a sacred lake, most famously Lake Guatavita, 75km northeast of what is now the capital, Bogota.
Once in the center, priests and attendants would cast gold and precious other things into the lake as offerings.
Then covered in gold, the ruler might submerge himself into the water and return to shore with the remaining dust washed off his skin and remaining in the water.
When Spanish chroniclers like Juan Rodriguez Frele in the 16th century shared these second-hand stories, over many centuries, stories of immense gold offerings and dazzling ceremonies became more than just decorated leaders.
They turned into a whole city full of treasure that Europeans just sort of reimagined.
Soon the idea had taken on a life of its own, and just as cartographers redrew maps to include lost cities like Atlantis, the name El Dorado also started to appear.
Fortunately though, science eventually intervened, and remarkably a gold raft depicting the exact scene we've just described
was found in 1969 by three villagers.
It was hidden away in a small cave in the hills, showing the man covered in gold going out into a sacred lake, the real story of El Dorado.
So yeah, in the end scientists weren't able to uncover a city of gold, but they did find something arguably way more valuable.
Now we go deeper, literally, because one of the Amazon's strangest secrets isn't in a wall or a road, but instead is its soil.
Bear with me here.
I know that doesn't sound as exciting, but trust me, it is.
Because if humans lived in all those amazing sites we've showcased in this video, which does seem very likely, how did they exist in spite of the rainforest's naturally poor and nutrient-depleted soil?
How did they grow stuff?
It's impossible, right?
Showing 2081–2100 of 3,838 · page 105 of 192
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