When the Spanish arrived in the Americas, the search for El Dorado, a mythical land of abundant gold, became a common activity. It was not only a myth, however, as gold working was important in Colombia and Panama 1500 years before the arrival of the Spaniards. Skilled artisans fashioned ritual masks, containers, and ornaments, using a method called lost-wax casting. The artistry and beauty of the gold work amazed the Spanish, and has attracted looters and imperiled archaeological sites ever since.In ancient Latin America, tools like axes, needles, and awls were first made of copper, but the addition of tin or arsenic to create bronze made a much harder and more useful metal. Iron and steel were not known in the New World prior to European contact, so bronze became widespread as a metal for everyday uses.Most metal objects in ancient Latin America were not tools, but display items associated with status and ritual. The sound qualities of such items as bells and rattles, and the colour qualities of metals such as gold and silver, were important aspects of ritual items. Gold and copper were first worked in the South American Andes around 1500 BC, but the most advanced metallurgical technique was the development of combinations of different metals, or alloys. Alloys of copper-silver and arsenical bronze first developed in northern Peru around AD 200, and tin-bronze was being made in Bolivia before AD 850. These technologies spread northward to Mesoamerica with maritime trade along the Pacific coast. By the time the Spaniards arrived, complex metallurgical techniques had spread throughout much of Latin America, tied intimately to the production of ritual objects.