Word: gold
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Dorado has materialized in the U.S. Last week more than 500 objects of Colombian gold went on exhibit at Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History. Most of these treasures-which next year will travel to Chicago, San Francisco and New Orleans-come from Bogotá's Museo del Oro (Gold Museum), which has collected some 26,000 ancient gold pieces, often buying them up from guaqueros (professional tomb robbers) who otherwise would probably sell them to foreign collectors...
...knows exactly when the New World's Indians first began working gold, but goldsmiths were apparently plying their trade in the Americas well before the time of Christ. By the 5th century A.D., there were whole towns of gold-workers. When the Spaniards finally arrived, the Indians had mastered all the goldworking techniques, including "lost wax" casting, known in the Old World...
Like the miners of the Klondike, the ancient artisans obtained much of their gold by panning. They also dug shafts into the ground and even set fire to hillsides to expose the gold-bearing soil. Smelting was done in small clay crucibles. Some objects, like the breastplates made in the Calima region of southwestern Colombia, were hammered into shape on stone anvils with instruments made of iron found in meteorites. To prevent the gold from becoming brittle and breaking while it was being worked, the goldsmiths annealed it-heating it and quenching it rapidly in water. For joining different pieces...
...glowing handiwork of the Colombian Indians extends beyond the museums and the museumgoers of Colombia and the U.S. Even the guaqueros, who in the past would melt down these treasures, have come to recognize that an ancient art object may be worth more than its weight in gold...
...north. The leaders of these trekboers (wandering farmers) founded two independent republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. No one but the native blacks would have cared had not a rich diamond pipe been found at Kimberley in the Orange Free State and an immense stratum of gold at Witwatersrand ("the Rand") in the Transvaal. As largely British "Outlanders" poured into the Rand to mine the gold, Empire Builder Cecil Rhodes plotted an uprising against Transvaal President Paul Kruger. But a premature raid tipped Rhodes' hand, and the Boers armed...