In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Peace be upon you. Although this journey will only be three or four episodes long, it will take us to a completely new world. A world where very few people have gone to this day. During this journey, we will pass through deep blue waters. We will see the beautiful islands in them. We will see the strange and wonderful creatures living on those islands. We will see such plants, trees, and fruits that are not found anywhere else in the world except there. We will see those interesting and strange treasures about which famous stories were heard, and the superpowers of their time were drawn to those treasures. We will also see those mysterious ponds about which it was famous that the water of life was hidden somewhere in them.
For the past two years, I have been wanting to take you on this journey because this world is still shrouded in mysteries today. And there were actually three reasons for taking you on this journey of this era. Number one, that verse of Al-Ankabut that says, “Travel through the land and see what creations Allah has made.” And God willing, you will see that this short season will be like a breath of fresh air for all of us. Because this season is a little different from our usual flavor. I have never done a project like this before. The second reason is that saying of Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib (may Allah be pleased with him) that there are many types of knowledge. Take whatever is good from any knowledge.
During this journey, we will sit on a ship and go to new worlds. We will see the people who lived there and the great buildings they built. We will see their amazing scientific knowledge. And after seeing all this, we will realize how big and powerful nations have passed before us. Just as Allah has said, “Travel through the land and see how powerful and strong the people were before you.” And then the third reason for making this project, which was actually a very interesting news report. A few years ago, in connection with one of my research projects, I was reading something about the jungles of Costa Rica.
Then a news report came to my attention that some people had reported seeing a pterodactyl flying in the dense jungles of Costa Rica. Pterodactyls, that is, those big dinosaurs that lived in this world thirteen crore years ago. Okay. Did they see these flying pterodactyls that we know by this shape? I highly, highly doubt that. Because there is no solid evidence in this regard. Except for a few local news reports, there is nothing else.
But after reading this news, my heart was telling me that if I do research in this area of study, I might get to see something very interesting, and my feeling was not wrong. I found such delicious, interesting, amazing, and best things that I have been wanting to share them with all of you for two years. You know that even today there are such isolated areas in our world that we don’t know what is happening there at the moment. For example, the very central part of Africa, which is covered with extremely dense forests.
For example, Congo, etc., where the jungles are so dense that there is always a dark shadow on the ground. Or the remote snowy areas of Siberia and Norway, where expeditions are almost impossible due to razor-sharp snowy cliffs. Or the very inner, that is, the core area of Antarctica, which is a no-go area for almost the whole world. Because one, it is very far from the mainland, and second, it often takes several months to deliver human supplies there. The jungles of Myanmar. You know that they are called ecological hotspots. Scientists always get to see something new there. And then deep, deep China.
These are such remote areas of our world that it is almost impossible to go there. Very, very impenetrable areas. Machinery cannot go there. Airplanes and helicopters cannot land there. Drones can go only to a very limited extent, and that too, equipped with highly specialized technology. So, while reading about these places, my eyes fell on none other than the dense and rainy forests of the Amazon. And the more I got to know and read about them, the doors of wonder opened up to me, and I realized that the Amazon is not just a land of dense forests and strange trees.
Rather, this system is a complete world in itself, where many stories have been born. Many civilizations have been born in these jungles. They have ruled here. They have built amazing buildings here. They have built temples and pyramids. Living in these jungles, they have done correct research on the heavens to an amazing extent and have found out those things that we are only getting to know today through modern technology. But despite all this knowledge, one day those civilizations were destroyed in a mysterious way within days without any clear reason.
It seems as if the Amazon jungle swallowed its inhabitants whole overnight. During my study, I saw that such stories of love, hate, revenge, jealousy, and greed have been written in these jungles that one is amazed that the inhabitants of these jungles were really the owners of such complex emotions. So I decided that I would make a series about the Amazon jungles and the civilizations that lived in them, the treasures of gold, silver, and emeralds found here, the precious jewels found in its blue seas, and the people who protected those jewels, whose events are so interesting and unbelievable that you will feel as if I am narrating the story of a movie, but I promise that all these events are historically true, historically accurate, and recorded in history.
And to be honest, sometimes I am surprised that a documentary or a feature film has never been made on them. You know that at one point, the people of the Amazon jungles and its coasts had become so powerful that they even challenged the Mughal Empire, one of the biggest superpowers of the world at that time. God willing, I will share that incident with you later. So let’s come and start the Amazon series today. The Amazon jungles are spread over about seven million square kilometers. That is, the jungle of the Amazon alone is about nine times bigger than the whole of Pakistan.
Now you can imagine for yourself that if a jungle is nine times bigger than Pakistan, what kind of remote and unexplored areas will be there? The densest jungles in the world, the most exotic birds, the most dangerous insects, extremely poisonous fish, and about three thousand wild tribes, about which we know very little even today, all live in the Amazon. But this is just a small introduction to the Amazon, whereas I want to tell you the whole story of the Amazon. And this story begins with the world of about six hundred years ago. You all know that our present era is called the Age of Information Technology. That is, the world of computer chips.
But this world was not always like this. Before us, there was another era, which was called the Age of Steam. That is, the age of steam, when the steam engine was invented and an industrial revolution came rapidly in the world. The steam-powered motor car replaced the horse-drawn carriage. Steam locomotives replaced bullock carts. The world started making factories and mills powered by steam instead of farming. But before the Age of Steam, there was another era, which we today call the Age of Sail. That is, the age of sails. Now, it used to be that the captains of sea ships used to find their direction in the sea at night by looking at the stars.
But then the magnetic compass was invented, and sailors found out that we can find our direction in the seas even during the day using a compass. For this, we don’t need a large crew and an astrologer. And thus, the designs of sea ships started to change. Now, ships started to be made lighter and smaller than before. Due to their size, these ships could now sail against the wind, and thus, with the era of sails, a new era began in this world. The Age of Exploration, the Age of Discovery, when the ships of the big countries of the world started to explore new worlds through the seas.
Vasco da Gama left Portugal with his three ships and, finding a new sea route, reached here, that is, present-day India. Christopher Columbus left Castile, that is, present-day Spain, and as it is generally said, he discovered America. Then, after four years of hard work, Ferdinand Magellan built a ship on which he then circumnavigated the world’s oceans and then made a map that we recognize today. Otherwise, before that, the map of our world used to look something like this, that is, very different. This was the era when the new and old worlds were seeing each other for the first time.
That is, India, Africa, and Europe were the old worlds that were well established. Whereas Australia and South America, that is, the land of the Amazon jungles, were completely new worlds. And with the meeting of these two worlds, a very interesting thing happened, which we today call the Columbian Exchange. This was the era in which many people, food, trees, and plants reached from one place to another and were introduced. For example, chocolate came to India and Europe for the first time from the jungles of the Amazon. Otherwise, before that, it was not known what chocolate was.
And the inhabitants of the Amazon jungles saw horses from Europe for the first time. Otherwise, they did not know what horses were. And during this great exchange, the stories of one world reached the other. And among these stories was the story of the cities of solid gold in the Amazon jungles. The stories of the lost cities of gold in the Amazon traveled to the Europeans who were fond of adventure. And among those adventurers was a man named Francisco de Orellana.
Francisco also reached the Amazon jungles with his ship, and he was determined to find the lost city of gold. But he was having a lot of trouble going inside the jungles. So his first mate on the ship advised him that if there is any inhabited city in these jungles, then it will definitely be along the banks of this big river that flows through this whole jungle. So Francisco crossed the whole river in search of the city of gold.
But in the middle of the jungle, at one place, his ship was attacked by a tribe that consisted only of women. And they were shooting arrows in such an expert and aggressive manner that they seemed to be very well-trained warrior women. Francisco managed to save his ship with great difficulty and got out of there, but impressed by those warrior women, he gave these jungles and this river a name that is used in the Greek language for a woman who is a more expert hunter than men and a more skilled warrior than them. That is, the Amazon.
Next time you hear the name Amazon, you will know that these jungles and this river were named Amazon because of those warrior women. By the way, a great river flows through this entire Amazon jungle, which is called the Amazon River. That is, the name of the jungle is also Amazon, and the name of the river is also Amazon. And the Amazon River is debatably the largest river in the world. But apart from these two names, there is one more name that you should keep in mind. Because that name will keep appearing from time to time throughout all the episodes, and that name is the Spanish conquistador.
This is a Spanish word and is used for every conqueror who came to the Amazon jungles and went on to conquer some area or settlement. Once the Age of Exploration or the Age of Discovery began, that is, the inhabitants of the old world started to settle colonies in the new world, during that time, these two worlds gave a lot to each other. Europeans brought domestic cattle, horses, and sheep to these jungles, and the Amazonians gave new crops to Europe. Chocolate, potatoes, and tomatoes, etc.
But the thing that really drew the attention of the Europeans to the Amazon was the stories of the cities of gold here. The Spaniards established a colony in the Amazon where a soldier named Diego de Ordaz lived. One night, Diego was on duty at a gunpowder depot, but during his duty, Diego fell asleep, and he didn’t even realize when the lantern fell during his sleep, and in no time, he burned down the entire depot, including the tent. For this negligence, Diego was jailed, from where some of his friends, after a few days, took pity on him and helped him escape at night.
But while running in the jungle, Diego got lost somewhere in the trees. After wandering in the jungle for many days and being in a life-and-death situation, Diego, by chance, reached a tribe living in the jungle, where the kind-hearted people gave him shelter. They gave him food to eat. They gave him a place to sleep. For many days, Diego stayed inside this tribe, and by chance, during that time, the coronation ceremony of the king of that tribe came. You all must know that in tribal systems, there are some special rituals to make a king, which are called coronations.
Now I am going to tell you in Diego’s words what he saw happening during that king’s coronation. He says that for many days I stayed with those tribal people who called themselves the Muisca people, and when it was time for their chief, whose name was Zipa, to become king, all the tribesmen gathered on the bank of a lake. And on one bank, the king himself was also standing. As we all watched, he started applying a golden-colored powder to his body, which, on closer inspection, I realized was gold dust.
And the king applied so much gold powder on his body that it was like salt or some worthless dust. And after that, he sat in a boat made of gold and went into the lake. While the tribesmen standing here and there started throwing things made of gold, silver, green emeralds, and precious stones around the king standing inside the lake. And suddenly my eyes fell on the fact that all those people themselves had beautiful crowns of solid gold on their heads. And they have an amazing amount of treasure of emeralds, gold, and precious stones that they were throwing into the lake for quite a long time, that is, for several minutes.
And after this strange ritual, when Zipa came out of the lake, he had officially become a Muisca king. This whole incident was written by a 16th-century Spanish priest, Juan Rodríguez Freyle, in his book “The Chronicles of El Carnero,” and this was the incident that, with Diego’s return, became famous in the Spanish colonies and then across the sea in the streets of Spain within days. And although people had forgotten the name of the Muisca king, the Spaniards then gave him a name that is famous in the history books to this day. The El Dorado. That is, the Golden One.
The one who is golden from head to toe. And thus, a wave of sensation spread throughout Europe that the Amazon jungle is full of treasures. Now, before I tell you more, a question arises in the mind: what if Diego is lying? What if Diego never saw such a coronation? At that time, too, this thought had come to some people’s minds. So some Spaniards then reached the Amazon in search of that lake. Because if they had found that lake and the treasure in it, it would have been proof that Diego had indeed seen the truth.
A grand ritual was indeed performed in that lake. But obviously, how much could they empty the lake with buckets and tubs? So a few years after Hernán, another conquistador tried again. And what did he do this time? He hired laborers and dug trenches around the lake so that the water of the lake would go into those trenches, and it really happened. The water of the lake was reduced to a great extent. And those people once again started to find artifacts made of gold, precious jewels, and ornaments, many of which jewels they also sent as gifts to the king of Spain.
But then suddenly misfortune prevailed, and the laborers who were digging the trenches, those trenches collapsed on them due to being still wet and soft. And in this tragedy, about a hundred laborers were killed, after which the rest of the laborers refused to work. But by this point, those people had extracted more than three hundred million dollars worth of gold from this lake. Now, I am a little weak in mathematics, so you can calculate for yourself how many Pakistani rupees three hundred million dollars would be in today’s terms. It would probably be in billions.
After this incident, yes, another thing became famous: that this lake is cursed. That is, it is cursed. And whoever tries to take the gold of this lake will lose his life. Obviously, after the death of a hundred laborers, the spread of such rumors was inevitable. So two hundred years passed, and no one touched that lake again. Until about a century and a half ago, a British explorer, Mr. Hartley Knowles, once again tried his luck in this lake.
And this time, they adopted a very aggressive method to empty the lake. Using all their resources, they started draining the entire lake with the most modern machinery and water pumps of their time. And what was left behind was a four-foot thick layer of mud. And now you see how misfortune prevailed this time: it was not easy to work in the mud. Although they could clearly see the gold sunk in the mud, but due to the mud, neither any machine could go in, nor any human.
So they decided that first, we will let the mud dry, and then we will start digging in it again. But this decision proved to be another misfortune for them because after drying, the mud became as hard as concrete, which made further digging almost impossible for Hartley’s team. And by this point, Mr. Hartley’s company had also gone bankrupt. So this was the last operation that was done for the sake of extracting gold from this lake. Because then about a hundred years ago, the Colombian government also strictly banned going near that lake. And at that time, there is no permission for any kind of salvage operation there. But that lake, this is the real picture of that lake, which is still there today. It is once again filled with water.
A Muisca king, El Dorado, who passed away centuries ago, became a living symbol of wealth and gold. But let me tell you one more thing: although all the countries that fall in the Amazon jungles have banned all kinds of operations in search of gold, but still, the illegal search for lost cities of gold is still going on there. About three years ago, when the ISS, that is, the International Space Station, took satellite images of the Amazon jungles, the deforestation of the jungles in the illegal search for gold was clearly visible.
In fact, satellite data shows that in 2008, this illegal search had become very fast because you will remember that in 2008, there was a sudden boom in the price of gold. So obviously, those who were looking for gold in the Amazon must have also intensified their efforts. But for now, let’s go back to the Age of Exploration. You see, the truth is that the Lake Guatavita of the Muisca king is just one example of the treasures of gold and jewels of the Amazon.
The fact is that at that time, that is, in the Age of Exploration of the 15th century, Spanish explorers were collecting about one and a half lakh tons of gold and silver from the Amazon every year and sending it back to Spain and the rest of Europe. Because of this gold and silver, the city of Antwerp in Belgium had become the center of the world’s economy and the richest city in Europe. This was the time when the price of gold and silver in Spain, in those days, had exceeded two trillion dollars. Two trillion dollars. That too, in the 15th century. Amazing.
This is the reason why the Spanish monarchy became the richest monarchy of its time. And at that time, that is, in the Spain of 1603, a French traveler writes in his diary that everything in Spain has a price except gold and silver. That is, so much gold has come that gold has become virtually priceless. By the way, you must keep this point in your mind because the presence of so much gold had a very unexpected result. God willing, I will talk more about this. So please keep this point in your mind. The Age of Discovery was the era when Christopher Columbus discovered this land for the first time, which we today call America.
Or at least it is believed so. Although now many sources claim that no, people had discovered America even before Columbus. But with Columbus on that day, there was another young man on the ship who was influenced by the stories of the Amazon, whom we today know as Ponce de León. Juan Ponce de León. His name itself sounds very mysterious. And in a Spanish book written in 1535, “Historia general y natural de las Indias,” it is written that the king of Spain had sent Ponce de León with a very special and mysterious task. In search of the water of life.
Because the king had heard that somewhere in the jungles of the Amazon, there is a spring whose water makes the drinker young for a long time. What exactly is the water of life? I have already worked on this in the fourteenth episode of the season “40,000 Years of Knowledge.” So it would be unnecessary to repeat all those details here again. But I would definitely like to tell you the story of Ponce de León once. It so happened that in 1575, a Spanish officer named Hernando de Escalante, who was once the victim of a shipwreck, that is, a sea accident.
After getting well, he lived with a local tribe in those jungles for seventeen years out of his own interest. And he writes in his memoirs, in his journals, that a man named Ponce de León has come from Spain, who is vigorously searching in the jungles for a spring whose water will keep him young. From my sources, I have come to know that in the reports that have been sent to the king of Spain from these deep jungles, it is written that here we have found a marshy area which is about six kilometers long.
To the north of these swamps, there is a pond that fills up at high tide, that is, when there is a high tide in the seas, and when there is a low tide, that is, when the water is low, some water remains in the pond. And the water of that pond, that lagoon, has the ability to miraculously heal wounds. And I think that Ponce de León has been sent here from Spain in search of that water. Hernando further writes that during my seventeen years, I have often heard such incidents.
Where the chiefs of the local tribes regularly go to a spring whose water maintains their strength. And I am seeing that during this attempt, Ponce de León and his companions have hardly left any river, stream, lake, or pond whose water they have not tasted. You know that for eight years, Ponce de León had been searching for the water of life in those dense jungles. And the pond whose reports were sent, that is, the pond about which the king was told that its water heals wounds, there was indeed a real reason behind that pond.
You see, the pond that the Spanish explorers saw in the marshy area had walls made of limestone, that is, limestone. This means that the water of that pond must have had a huge amount of calcium, magnesium, and many types of minerals. Which are very helpful in keeping human skin young. And bathing in that salt-rich pond would have made the skin feel much fresher than before. And inspired by the stories of that pond, Ponce de León had been searching for the water of life, that is, the Fountain of Youth, for the next eight years.
Was the thing that Ponce de León was looking for really this pond or some other water of life? I don’t know that, but remember one thing, that the water of life or water with similar properties really exists, we all know that. Because when it was sprinkled, the roasted fish of Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) came back to life. I have already explained that incident in the first season, and it is a bit off-topic, but since it is a relevant incident to the water of life, I will definitely tell it to you once.
This incident was written by a Greek historian Herodotus, who is called the Father of History, in his book “Historiae,” that in that region of Africa, which is half in Sudan and half in Egypt, that is, whose name at that time was Macrobia, there live people of a special race who are extremely beautiful in appearance, tall and well-built, powerful, and a very warrior-like people, and they have so much gold that they even put their criminals in shackles of gold.
Herodotus writes a very amazing incident about their physical strength: when the king of Iran, Cambyses II, sent his delegation to Macrobia to say that you should come under my rule or I will attack you. So the king of the Macrobians gave his bow to the Iranian delegation that had come with this message, and he said that if you can bend this bow and put a string on it, then I will accept your word right now. I will leave my kingdom and become your slave.
And the interesting thing is that there was not a single person in the entire Iranian delegation who had the strength to bend that bow. That is, the Macrobians were so powerful that only they could bend their bow. But the strangest thing was that they lived for very, very long years. The average age of their people was at least one hundred and twenty years. That is, twice as long as the average human today. Herodotus himself also met those people, and he tells that their diet was generally based on milk and meat.
But when I asked their king about their long lives, he mysteriously took me to a strange spring where some people were washing their bodies, and their bodies were shining as if they were bathing in oil instead of water. But a very beautiful, faint, purple flower scent was coming from their bodies. That is, the lilac flowers. And the water of the pond hidden between the mountains in which those people were bathing was so strange that it was as if whatever entered it lost its ability to float.
Nothing could float in that water. Neither any wood nor anything else. But everything went to the bottom of that water. And the king told me that this is our special spring whose water makes our lives so long. And some history accounts claim that that was the spring of the water of life. Well, there are many other stories about the water of life that I have told you in the first season. But these were the stories that inspired Ponce de León to search for the water of life in the Amazon and the Caribbean islands for eight years.
This was just a small glimpse of those attractions, those fascinating stories, that were pulling Europeans like madmen towards the Amazon jungles during the Age of Discovery. But I have only told you a part of this amazing history so far. Because today’s episode is only this much. God willing, from here on, I will now tell you about the civilizations that lived in the Amazon jungles, who had mastered celestial sciences to an amazingly accurate extent.But all that, God willing, in the next episode.
