Languages revenue song loan bad credit lender schedule El Dorado is Spanish for “the golden one”, and the name owes its origin to the Muisca leader. It’s only over time, as legends accreted, that it came to apply to a mythical place. In fact, the ceremony at Guatavita was but the most famous of many rituals involving gold across ancient Colombia; and the Muisca were but one of many ethnic groups whose millennia of gold-making (as far back as 500 BC) are being celebrated at the British Museum.