Founded in 1546 as a mining town, Potosi in Bolivia soon produced fabulous wealth, becoming one of the largest cities in the Americas and the world with a population exceeding 200,000 people.
In Spanish there is still a saying, valer un potosi, "to be worth a potosi" (that is, "a fortune"). For Europeans, Peru (Bolivia was part of the Viceroyalty of Peru and was known as Alto Peru before becoming independent) was a mythical land of riches. Potosi appears as an idiom for "extraordinary richness" in Miguel de Cervantes' famous novel satirizing chivalry, Don Quixote (second part, cap. LXXI). One theory holds that the mint mark of Potosi (the letters "PTSI" superimposed on one another) is the origin of the dollar sign.
The tale of Potosi's origins begins in 1544 when a local Inca, Diego Huallpa, searching for an escaped llama, stopped to build a fire at the foot of the mountain known in Quechua as 'Potojsi' (meaning 'thunder' or 'explosion', although it might also have stemmed from potoj , 'the springs'). The fire grew so hot that the earth beneath it started to melt, and shiny liquid oozed from the ground.
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