An Explorer Who Vanished On An Important Mission May Have Made A Spectacular Discovery
The Edwardian adventurer Percy Fawcett always had a way of defying the odds — until he vanished among the thick canopies of the Amazonian jungle. Ever since his disappearance, many have speculated about what really happened to the experienced explorer. And, more exciting still, what he might’ve found in the wilds of Brazil.
The search for Z
Believed to have been one of the models for Indiana Jones, Fawcett, with his Stetson hat and fashionable beard, certainly looked the part. And when he ventured out in search of a lost South American metropolis dubbed simply Z, the whole world watched in fascination. Would he defy his critics and emerge from the Amazon victorious? Or would his ambition finally take him past the point of no return?
Fawcett's fate
As the months and years ticked by with no news from Fawcett’s expedition, his peers were forced to admit that he was lost. And one by one, they mounted search operations to establish the explorer’s fate. But the reports that trickled out of the jungle were garbled and contradictory, shedding little light on what’d happened to the missing men.
An incredible secret
Almost 100 years after Fawcett’s doomed expedition, his story continues to fascinate and inspire. During that period, researchers have discovered that the lost city of Z mightn’t have been a red herring after all. From deepest, darkest Brazil, where large areas of rainforest remain untouched by Western explorers, an incredible secret’s emerged.
Leaving Cuiabá
In April 1925 Fawcett left Cuiabá, then an isolated settlement in the heart of the Amazon jungle, and headed out into the unknown. His mission was one that’d consumed his life for the past decade: to locate the remains of a civilization that once thrived in the Mato Grosso state of Brazil. And despite ridicule from the scientific establishment, he remained convinced that he’d succeed.
