Bogota!
Gold Museum: Pre-Colombian Expressions It is difficult to imagine that the Europeans could look at such sensitive and beautiful objects and see only the glitter of gold. In the words of our guide Diego Parra,"They turned it into coins, they turned it into bricks, and we lost our culture forever." Colombian indigenous people believed heavenly birds brought gold in their beaks. It was valued as sacred given back as as offering. Some of the objects we saw were very tiny miracles of the finest craftmanship. One very small work (only about as big as pictured here) was found in the 1960s hidden inside a gourd. It depicts the sacred practice that gave rise to the legend of El Dorado. A chief was dressed in gold and taken on a golden raft to the middle of a lake, items of gold were dropped into the lake as offerings. The Spanish tried various ways to recover it, forcing the natives to dive or try to bail the water out of the lake. Fortunately, they didn&#
