Missing British explorer searches for Amazon’s ‘Lost City Z’
In the 1540s, the Spanish, who first entered South America’s Amazon basin, recorded indigenous legends about a lost city of great wealth, which they called El Dorado (Land of Gold). Centuries of fruitless attempts to find a lost civilization in the Amazon rainforest followed.
The last notable expedition was that of British explorer Percy Fawcett. Fawcett made seven expeditions to the Amazon Basin between 1906 and 1924 before disappearing on an expedition to what he called “Lost City Z.” Fawcett was inspired to explore by reading a wide range of historical sources, one of which was a mysterious document known as Manuscript 512.
Fawcett, a man of extraordinary mental and physical strength, was active at a time when Europeans were exploring jungles and waterways in search of ancient cities and treasure. At the time, very few European records of the Amazon region existed. Fawcett’s disappearance in 1925 during a search for Z in Mato Grosso, Brazil, continues to capture the imagination of writers and filmmakers.
My life changed completely in South America, and I spent nearly 10 years exploring the Amazon Basin
Percy Harrison Fawcett was born in 1867 in Torquay, Devon, England. It is the land of many explorers and navigators, including Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh.
The son of a wealthy aristocrat, Fawcett recalls a childhood starved of love. At the age of 19, he became a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and was sent to an outpost in the British Empire.
In 1901, Fawcett joined the Royal Geographical Society in London. He went to Africa as a surveyor for the British government collecting military intelligence. In 1906, he was appointed leader of the Amazon expedition by the Royal Geographical Society.
Fawcett’s life changed completely when he came to South America. Fawcett set out from La Paz, Bolivia, to map the vast border area between Bolivia and Brazil.
The indigenous people were angry at the unscrupulous capitalists known as the “rubber barons” who invaded their land to obtain natural rubber for use in the manufacture of cars and trains. Fawcett was also often seen as an enemy by the Native Americans.
Next page: Mysterious Manuscript “There’s a Roman-style spire on every street corner”
Fawcett spent nearly a decade exploring the Amazon Basin, becoming the first European to record many of its geographical features, including waterfalls. The words he left behind convey the sense of awe he felt.
“Overhead were the Ricardo Franco Hills, flat and mysterious at the top, with deep quebradas (ravines) carved into the sides. Like a lost world. Forested to the top. , it vividly imagines scenes that were lost in ancient times.”
The outbreak of World War I ended this era of exploration and forced Fawcett to return to Europe. Although he was in his fifties, he was in top physical condition and served in the army, proving himself to be an excellent soldier.
Mysterious Manuscript: “There’s a Roman-style spire on every street corner”
However, Fawcett’s feelings about South America remained unchanged. After the war, he returned to Brazil and prepared for what would be his last expedition.
Although Fawcett sometimes wrote about Brazil’s indigenous people in racist terms, he strived to understand their customs and language.
He lamented the impact that colonialists’ greed had on indigenous societies, and argued that there may be some credence to 16th- and 17th-century Spanish and Portuguese records of complex civilizations in the rainforest. I started thinking that there was no such thing. The records described things like “a very large settlement” and “excellent roads inside.”
Fawcett was particularly interested in Manuscript 512, a Portuguese document said to contain stories of adventurers and treasure hunters. The document describes how in 1753, adventurers searching for precious metals found a ruined city with huge buildings, roads, and squares, adding: “On every corner was a Roman spire. ” was written.
Scholars are divided over the document’s authenticity, with skeptics saying it is a fake. Brazil, which gained independence from Portugal in 1822 and later became a republic, has a short history and is unstable, so the discovery of documents that show that an ancient civilization like the Maya of Central America existed in the country would have been convenient.
However, many people at the time, including Fawcett, who believed in the theory that there was a complex civilization in the rainforest, thought the manuscript was genuine, and Fawcett set out to find its location. I became obsessed with it.
Next page: Ancient cities did exist
There was indeed an ancient city
Although Fawcett was inspired by Manuscript 512, he did not attempt to find the exact city mentioned there. The city mentioned in this document appeared to be in northeastern Brazil. Fawcett, who also consulted several other sources (though he did not disclose them), came to believe that there was a lost civilization in the wilds of Mato Grosso state in central Brazil, which he named the city Z. I called.
In April 1925, Fawcett, accompanied by his eldest son Jack and his best friend Laurie Rimel, set out from Cuiabá on an expedition to the Z. The letter Fawcett wrote to his wife was the last communication from the group. “We will disappear from the civilized world until next year. Imagine… us in a forest where no civilized person has ever set foot.”
And they really disappeared. Was it killed by an animal or someone?
Several expeditions were conducted to try to find out what happened to them. Peter Fleming, the brother of British novelist Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was one of those who conducted such expeditions. However, many of these attempts ended in tragedy, and Fawcett’s fate was never revealed.
In 1952, anthropologist Orlando Villas-Boas announced that he had discovered Fawcett’s remains and admitted that the Kalapalo indigenous people had murdered him, but an autopsy later revealed that the remains belonged to Fawcett. It turned out that it wasn’t a thing.
Fawcett’s story continued to influence culture for a long time. He is one of the people who inspired the movie character Indiana Jones. In addition, American journalist and author David Gran wrote a non-fiction book based on Fawcett’s story, “Lost City It was made into a movie titled City Z: The Lost City of Gold.
In his book, Gran cites testimony from Kalapalos who claim they did not kill Fawcett. It says, “Smoke was seen rising from Fawcett’s camp for several days, and he was probably killed by ‘hostile’ people in the eastern region.”
The mystery of Fawcett’s final days may never be fully revealed, but his quest for the lost city may have come to an end. In the decades since his disappearance, explorations of the northeastern state of Mato Grosso have uncovered the remains of a large urban settlement. The site is now located in the Xingu Indigenous Park and is called Kuikugu.
There are remains of boulevards, bridges and large plazas, and lidar (radar using laser light) exploration suggests that this part of the Amazon was inhabited by large-scale settlements between 1,500 and 400 years ago. has been done. Although the identity of Z and its exact location remain shrouded in mystery, Fawcett’s intuition that an ancient city was hidden here appears to have been correct.