April
17
/ 2015
It was gold and silver that drove the Spanish on in their exploration and conquest of the Americas. By the 1530s, less than 50 years after Christopher Columbus had reached the New World, the Spanish had succeeded in conquering the two superpowers of the region, the Aztec and the Inca Empires. Yet, the encounter with these powerful empires, and the material wealth gained from them served only to fire the imagination and increase the European lust for gold. Both before and after the destruction of these empires, legends about fabled cities and places filled with gold, silver and other precious objects arose amongst the conquistadors, sending the explorers ever deeper into the interior of the continent. One of the legends
