2-La Ciudad Perdida: The Lost Colombian City
Around 1,300 years ago, an ancient people called the Tairona built an incredible city along the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountainsides. It was put up at the top of the hills by the command of their god, who wanted them to live close to the stars.
People lived there for 700 to 800 years—until the Spanish conquistadors arrived. The Tairona never met them, but the diseases the Spaniards brought with them spread to the Tairona and wiped them out. The last people in the city died, it was left barren, and an entire civilization was forgotten for hundreds of years.
The city wasn’t discovered until the 1970s, when a group of bandits making their way through the jungle stumbled upon it by chance. By pure luck, they found an ancient, overgrown city full of gold jewelry and jade figures.[9]
They pocketed what they could find and sold it on the black market, where they came to the attention of archaeologists. Soon, the city known only as “The Lost City” was found, after nearly 500 years hidden in the jungle.