People are always looking for lost cities and occasionally one is found: Borobudur in Indoesia, Marchu Picchu in Peru and Angkor Wat in Cambodia, for example. But perhaps some of the places people look for never existed — or did they? Here are just a few famous mytical cities.
El Dorado
El Dorado is a legend that began in 1537, when Spanish explorers found the Muisca people i the mountains of what is now Colombia. They heard the story of a chief who covered himself with gold and dived into a lake of pure mountain water.
The story went to Quito and people began to talk of El Dorado — ‘the golden man’. Soon people started to think of El Dorado as a place, too — city of gold and amazing riches.
The Spanish sent many people to look for El Dorado, but they never found it. Nowadays, the name ‘El Dorado’ is still used to mean ‘a place where you can get rich quickly’.
Atlantis
There was once an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, inhabited by people. It was the legendary island of Atlantis.
The people of the island were very rich, thanks to the natural resources on their island.
For hundreds of years, they lived simple lives. But slowly they began to change. They started to become greedy and to want power. So the gods decided to destroy Atlantis. Suddenly, the island and its people were swallowed by the sea and were never seen again.
Most people say Atlantis never existed — it was just a story made up by a Greek philisopher, Plato. But there are still people who look for it.
Shambhala
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is a mystical kingdom that is hidden somewhere behind the snowy peaks of the Himalayas.
Shambhala is a word from an old language that means ‘place of peace’ or ‘pleace of happiness’. It is said that there is no war in Shambhala, and that the city is inhabited by beautiful people who live in fabulous houses.
It is also said that, in the future, when the world is full of greed and war, a huge army will come out of Shambhala, destroy the world’s bad rulers, and start a new Golde Age. Some people say this will happen in 2424.
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