The Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted across the world for thousands of years, appearing in writings by Herodotus, the Alexander romance, and the stories of Prester John. Stories of a similar waters were also evidently prominent among the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean during the Age of Exploration, who spoke of the restorative powers of the water in the mythical land of Bimini. The legend became particularly prominent in the 16th century, when it became attached to the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, first Governor of Puerto Rico. According to an apocryphal story that features a combination of New World and Eurasian elements, Ponce de León was searching for the Fountain of Youth when he traveled to what is now Florida in 1513. Since then, the fountain has been frequently associated with Florida.
Herodotus mentions a fountain containing a very special kind of water located in the land of the Ethiopians, which gives the Ethiopians their exceptional longevity.[1] A story of the "Water of Life" appears in the Eastern versions of the Alexander romance, which describes Alexander the Great and his servant crossing the Land of Darkness to find the restorative spring. The servant in that story is in turn derived from Middle Eastern legends of Al-Khidr, a sage who appears also in the Qur'an. Arabic and Aljamiado versions of the Alexander Romance were very popular in Spain during and after the period of Moorish rule, and would have been known to the explorers who journeyed to America. These earlier accounts clearly inspired the popular medieval fantasy The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which also mentions the Fountain of Youth as located at the foot of a mountain outside Polombe (modern Kollam[2]) in India.[3] Due to the influence of these tales, the Fountain of Youth legend remained popular through the European Age of Exploration.[4]
There are countless indirect sources for the tale as well. Eternal youth is a gift frequently sought in myth and legend, and stories of things such as the philosopher's stone, universal panaceas, and the elixir of life are common throughout Eurasia and elsewhere. An additional hint may have been taken from the account of the Pool of Bethesda in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus heals a man at the pool in Jerusalem.
Bimini
According to legend, the Spanish heard of Bimini from the Arawaks in Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. The Caribbean islanders described a mythical land of Beimeni or Beniny (whence Bimini), a land of wealth and prosperity, to the Spanish, which became conflated with the fountain legend. Although by the time of Ponce de Leon, the land was thought to be located in northwest towards the Bahamas (called la Vieja during the Ponce expedition), the natives were probably referring to the Maya.[4] This land somehow also became confused with the Boinca or Boyuca mentioned by Juan de Solis, although Solis's navigational data placed it in the Gulf of Honduras. It was this Boinca that originally held a legendary fountain of youth, rather than Bimini itself.[4] Sequene, an Arawak chief from Cuba, purportedly was unable to resist the lure of Bimini and its restorative fountain. He gathered a troupe of adventurers and sailed north, never to return. Word spread among Sequene's more optimistic tribesmen that he and his followers had located the Fountain of Youth and were living in luxury in Bimini.[citation needed]
Bimini and its curative waters were widespread subjects in the Caribbean. The Italian-born chronicler Peter Martyr told of them in a letter to the pope in 1513, though he didn't believe the stories and was dismayed that so many others did.[5]
Ponce de León and Florida
In the 16th century the story of the Fountain of Youth became attached to the biography of the conquistador Juan Ponce de León. As attested by his royal charter, Ponce de León was charged with discovering the land of Beniny.[4] Although the Indians were probably describing the land of the Maya in Yucatan, the name — and legends about Boinca's fountain of youth — became associated with the Bahamas instead. However, Ponce de León did not mention the fountain in any of his writings throughout the course of his expedition.[4] While he may well have heard of the Fountain and believed in it, his name was not associated with the legend in writing until after his death.
The connection was made in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Historia General y Natural de las Indias of 1535, in which he wrote that Ponce de León was looking for the waters of Bimini to cure his impotence.[6] Some researchers have suggested that Oviedo's account may have been politically inspired to generate favor in the courts.[4] A similar account appears in Francisco López de Gómara's Historia General de las Indias of 1551.[7] In the Memoir of Hernando D'Escalante Fontaneda in 1575, the author places the restorative waters in Florida and mentions de León looking for them there; his account influenced Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas' history of the Spanish in the New World.[8] Fontaneda had spent seventeen years as an Indian captive after being shipwrecked in Florida as a boy. In his Memoir he tells of the curative waters of a lost river he calls "Jordan" and refers to de León looking for them. However, Fontaneda makes it clear he is skeptical about these stories he includes, and says he doubts de León was actually looking for the fabled stream when he came to Florida.[8]
It is Herrera who makes that connection definite in the romanticized version of Fontaneda's story included in his Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano. Herrera states that local caciques paid regular visits to the fountain. A frail old man could become so completely restored that he could resume "all manly exercises… take a new wife and beget more children." Herrera adds that the Spaniards had unsuccessfully searched every "river, brook, lagoon or pool" along the Florida coast for the legendary fountain.[9] It would appear the Sequene story is likewise based on a garbling of Fontaneda.
Fountain of Youth National Archaeological Park
The city of St. Augustine, Florida is home to the Fountain of Youth National Archaeological Park, a tribute to the spot where Ponce de León is traditionally said to have landed. The tourist attraction was created by Luella Day McConnell in 1904. "Diamond Lil", as she was known, fabricated stories to amuse and appall the city’s residents and tourists until her death in 1927.[10]
Though there is no evidence that the fountain located in the park today is the storied fountain or has any restorative effects, visitors drink the water. The park exhibits native and colonial artifacts to celebrate St. Augustine's Timucuan and Spanish heritage.
Author Charlie Carlson claims to have spoken with a supposed St. Augustine-based secret society claiming to be the protectors of the Fountain of Youth, which has granted them extraordinary longevity. They claimed Old John Gomez, a protagonist in the Gasparilla legend from Florida folklore, had been one of their members.[11] In August 2006, popular American magician David Copperfield claimed he had discovered a true "Fountain of Youth" amid a cluster of four small islands in the Exuma chain of the Bahamas which he recently purchased for roughly $50 million. "I've discovered a true phenomenon," he told Reuters. "You can take dead leaves, they come in contact with the water, they become full of life again. … Bugs or insects that are near death, come in contact with the water, they'll fly away. It's an amazing thing, very, very exciting." Copperfield, who turned 50 in September 2006, says that he hired scientists to conduct an examination of the "legendary" water, but as of now, the fountain remains off limits to outside visitors.[12]
Literature and popular culture
The Fountain of Youth lives on as a metaphor for anything that potentially increases longevity. It is a frequently used plot device in age regression stories. Nathaniel Hawthorne used the Fountain in "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" to demonstrate that positive thinking is a far better remedy than deluded journeys to Florida for legendary cures; Orson Welles directed and starred in a 1958 TV program based on the legend;[13] and Tim Powers featured it in On Stranger Tides, a novel of 18th century pirate-voodoo adventure. In 1953, the Walt Disney Company created a cartoon entitled Don's Fountain of Youth, in which Donald Duck had supposedly discovered the famous fountain and can't resist pretending to his nephews that it really works. Seven years later, in "That's no fable!" Carl Barks revisited the myth this time with Scrooge McDuck and his nephews finding the real fountain. In 1974, Marvel Comics featured the Fountain (which works if bathed in, but cripples if drunk from) in Man-Thing and later The Savage She-Hulk. In the 1976 comedy series Big John, Little John, a middle-aged man drank from the Fountain of Youth and then switch back and forth from 12-years-old to 43-years-old throughout the series. In the 1994 computer game Sid Meier's Colonization, finding a Fountain of Youth in a Lost City rumor would bring several people to the docks in Europe; this could be found several times during one game. In 2005 the Fountain turned up in the DC Comics series Day of Vengeance. The fountain and its waters form the main plot device in Microsoft and Ensemble Studio's Age of Empires III campaign "Blood, Ice and Steel". Recently, characters in the 2006 Darren Aronofsky film The Fountain search for the Tree of Life to cure a brain tumor. Jorge Luis Borges refers to the Fountain of Life in a short story in the book The Aleph, in which the people who are immortal get tired of it and eventually start looking for the Fountain of Death to reverse their immortality.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, is based on a journey in search of the Fountain of Youth. This was alluded to at the end of the previous film where Captain Jack Sparrow had taken the map from Captain Hector Barbossa. The Fountain from On Stranger Tides requires two people to drink from silver chalices found on the ship of Ponce de Leon; whoever drinks from the chalice filled with a mermaid's tears will take the remaining years of the other drinker's life and add it to their own.
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