The Gilded One

Today I read an article about an exhibition in the British Museum that wants to reveal to the world about Colombia's pre-Hispanic cultures. Everybody knows that "El Dorado" was in the past the city that a lot of adventurers wanted to find for the supposition of fact that the entire city was made of gold and in that way became rich. But the British Museum wants show to everybody the culture that inspired this legend who doesn't want to pass away. The exhibition has 300 objects from the "Museo del Oro" in Bogotá, with other objects from the British Museum.
For the pre-Hispanic culture that inhabited in Colombia the gold had a mystical meaning, for that people the gold was related with the supernatural, said Elisenda Vila Llonch, maybe was related to the sun.  This people lived is small communities and didn't write about their activities, but the Spanish adventurers who encountered them, wrote about what they saw. One of the thing that the adventurers saw was a ritual where a man covered with gold dust, floating in the lake in a raft with gold ornaments and emeralds. Then the person would through the cast to the gods. But the archaeologist said that the observers were unseeing by the flash of the metal precious, and they didn't see the other valued materials for the Andean people, like ceramic, featherwork, shells and textiles.
Although the pre-Hispanic culture thinked that the ceramic, shells and other objects were important than the gold, the museum has the gold objects like the main draw, objects like pots, head-dress and jewelry. In other section are the gold objects used to communicate with the spirit world, the animal world.
In the article said that the music was also important so in other section has a flute made of gold and objects similar to pots but were shakers. Also drugs were very important, they have gold pins with different designs, they dipped into vassels with lime and then licked. Other body ornaments helped to give the appearance of an animal to the person, the archaeologist said that the gold would transform the people into powerful animals and they could see different points of view of the world.
Elisenda Vila Llonch wants that the culture that inspired the myth, might come to light.
You can read this article in the link below:  http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/oct/15/british-museum-el-dorado-exhibition