All language subtitles for Historys.Greatest.Mysteries.S06E16.XviD-AFG

Tonight, a lost city deep in the Amazon
jungle, and the man who vanished trying

to find it.

In the 1920s, Percy Fawcett was one of
the most famous explorers in the world.

He became obsessed with this place he
named the City of Z.

He writes a letter from his camp in the
jungle, and that's the last we hear from

him.

Millions around the world await the news
of Fawcett's fate, inspiring numerous

missions to find him.

At this point, he begins to suspect that
not only did they murder Fawcett and

his men, but they're the next ones in
line to be killed.

If you die in the jungle, in a few days,
your body can completely disappear.

Now, we'll explore the top theories
surrounding Fawcett's disappearance and

location of his legendary lost city.

Everyone knew when he was coming and
vaguely where he was going, so it

have been very hard to follow him.

Because the jungle is so thick, he might
have reached Z and walked right by it.

They've only uncovered maybe 10 % of
this massive civilization.

This could be exactly what Fawcett was
seeking.

What happened to Percy Fawcett? And
where is the lost city of Z?

Around 1500, Portuguese explorers begin
arriving on the coast of a place they

name Veracruz, which means true cross.

Today, we know it as Brazil.

At the time, they think it's an island.
They don't know yet that it's part of

this giant continent.

And what they find there is this
massive, massive river emptying into the

Atlantic Ocean.

They name the river and the rainforest
that surrounds it the Amazon.

And this is the largest rainforest in
the entire world. It's over 2 .3 million

square miles. That's over half of the
United States.

It's still a mostly unexplored frontier
because it's incredibly dense.

The canopy makes the forest floor very
dark, so it's not like you can grow a

of food there.

There are several diseases.

It's full of dangerous wild animals like
jaguars and anacondas. So it's not easy

to survive there at all.

Over the next couple hundred years, as
people are exploring deeper and deeper

into the Amazon, well, they're
constantly questioning the local

people, and they're hearing stories and
rumors and myths of these...

ancient lost cities of gold that are
just beyond the horizon or just beyond

mountain. And these stories are
spreading all across Western Europe at

So by the 19th century, printing presses
have been built on the backs of these

stories of European explorers going off
into the Amazon in search of ancient

lost cities of gold and untold riches.

One man long intrigued by these tales is
British explorer Percy Fawcett.

Percy Fawcett attended the Royal
Geographical Society to learn to be a

cartographer and make maps, and he also
served as an artillery officer in the

British Army. Those skills combined, his
military experience, his cartography

skills, get him sent to the newest
frontier, to the borders of Brazil, to

mapping this dense, unknown area.

He leaves the British Army and basically
becomes a professional explorer.

And by 1911, his exploits become very
popular for the newspapers back in

England. Stories like killing poisonous
snakes or dealing with extremely hostile

tribes.

So during his time in the Amazon,
Fawcett begins...

to really cultivate this obsession.

He's hearing stories about these lost
cities, lost civilizations, and he

in on one that he writes about using
just the letter Z.

He even travels to Brazil's capital city
to learn more.

And while researching at the National
Library of Rio de Janeiro, Fawcett

uncovers a mysterious 10 -page document
now known... as Manuscript 512.

And this 10 -page document written by a
Portuguese explorer back in the 1750s

describes this lost city as sitting
directly inside three archways and

up into a plaza that had language
written on the wall in what looked like

ancient Greek.

For Percy Fawcett, this is the
confirmation that he needs.

The stories that he's heard from the
indigenous tribe are now matching up

manuscript in a library.

And he knows it's now his time to find
the lost city of Z.

Based on the descriptions in Manuscript
512, Fawcett decides to focus his search

on the area between two rivers.

the Tapajos, and the Xingu River. There
were previous explorers that had tried

to penetrate the area, including
Theodore Roosevelt, but no Westerner had

fully penetrated the thick jungle in
that area before.

So Fawcett decides that this is where
the lost city of Z has to be located,

he decides he's going to be the one to
explore it.

So in 1920,

Fawcett mounts an expedition, and it is
a total disaster.

Everything goes wrong.

He gets sick. The ox dies. He has to
shoot his own horse.

He basically ends up going home with his
tail tucked between his legs.

And, of course, after that, no one's
really interested in funding a follow

So this is where Fawcett...

Self -promotion really serves him well.
He gets funding from a group of

publishers who he promises an ongoing
story of his adventures, where along

the way as he travels, runners are going
to be carrying regular updates to the

media.

launches on April 20th, 1925.

He's joined by his 21 -year -old son,
Jack, Jack's friend, Raleigh Rimmel, two

Brazilian laborers, and a team of pack
animals.

Everyone seems to be in good spirits.

For the last month, he and his party
have been hacking their way through the

forest, and on May 29th, 1925, he's at a
camp called Dead Horse Camp, which is

unfortunately where he had to shoot his
horse on his last expedition.

And he writes to his wife telling her
that he's now going to be leaving behind

his local indigenous guys as well as
their pack mules and going totally on

because he wants to be able to move
quickly, stealthily into unknown,

territory of the Mato Grosso, one of the
most formidable regions of the Amazon.

And the word Mato Grosso means thick
forest. It's extremely treacherous

territory just to navigate, let alone
the wide plethora of dangers that await

you in the Amazon.

Going into the jungle, Percy knows he's
on his own, and there's going to be no

way to get any information out or,
frankly, no way to ask for help.

So he warns his wife in advance. He
tells her, it might be a year before you

hear from me.

This is the last communication ever
received from Percy Fawcett.

By the spring of 1927,

Fawcett has been gone for two years and
the newspapers haven't heard any more

from him. There's absolutely no word. At
this point, Fawcett's wife, Nina, and

his younger son, Brian, believe that
Fawcett is still alive in the rainforest

somewhere. And this is one of the
reasons why they support sending

after him.

But that's complicated by a number of
things. One, The same thing it's

complicated by for Fawcett, the density
and harshness of the jungle environment.

But it's complicated by another thing,
too, and that's that Fawcett tried to

keep secret the exact location of where
he was headed.

He could have been doing that for
safety, not wanting other people to

his footsteps or to come looking for him
and risk their own lives.

But he was probably also doing it for...

the sake of keeping the secret for
himself.

He didn't want anyone else following his
path and getting there first.

So by 1928, countless expeditions are
being launched, and people are even

funding their own trips to go try to
find some remnants of Percy Fawcett left

the jungles of the Mato Grosso region.

But Fawcett's worries about people
trying to follow him were totally

And estimates range that even as many as
100 explorers looking for Percy Fawcett

never returned from the Mato Grosso
region.

To date, no one has found him or hard
evidence of his death.

There's now a century's worth of
speculation on what became of Percy

The region that Fawcett was exploring is
beset with dangers.

It's easy to get lost, to become
disoriented, to lose one's sense of

to fall prey to one of the many dangers
of the Amazon.

You would think that a jungle would have
plenty of food and plenty of water.

But in fact, there are so many competing
species that live in a jungle, finding

food is actually difficult.

You think, oh, it's the most diverse of
species.

but you don't see a single thing. You
only hear these things because it's like

walking into a closet. It's black.

They all see you, and they're all
hunting you, but you're just blind in

jungle.

On one of Percy Fawcett's previous
expeditions, he himself, as well as the

of the crew, almost starved to death.

There's even a point where he seizes the
gun from his men to prevent them from

cannibalizing each other.

And in the Amazon, exhaustion,
starvation, dehydration, those are not

things that could kill you. There are a
lot of other things as well. There's

insects. There's tiny little bees that
are called eye lickers that can work

their way into your tear duct.

There's a small species of eel fish
that's known to swim up people's

and inhabit their bodies.

There are venomous spiders that can kill
a human being with a single bite.

There are anacondas that can easily kill
a human. In fact, Fawcett had shot an

anaconda that had attacked him during a
previous trip into the Amazon.

So this is not a safe place.

If something dies in the desert, you can
find that skeleton for hundreds of

years. Whereas in the jungle, it is so
rich with...

everything trying to live and turn the
next thing into fertilizer, if you die

there, in a few days, your body can
completely disappear.

But by 1925, Percy Fawcett has faced
these dangers numerous times and

survived.

So in many people's mind...

If there is anyone that could still be
surviving somewhere deeper than the

Amazon, it was Percy Fawcett. He was
notorious for escaping the most perilous

situations and somehow making it out on
the other side.

He's experienced starvation. He's walked
for days without food. He fought off a

giant anaconda and lived to tell the
story.

So if the jungle didn't kill him, it's
possible that something else did.

In the spring of 1927, two years after
explorer Percy Fawcett sent his last

message from the remote Amazon, he's
officially declared missing.

At this point, Fawcett and his team have
been missing so long, most people think

they're dead.

So George Dyock is an acquaintance of
Fawcett. He's a wealthy businessman, and

he decides.

that he's going to mount an expedition
to do exactly what Percy Fawcett didn't

want anyone to do, which is follow in
his footsteps and find him.

George Guyot is considered an extreme
daredevil. He was a test pilot shortly

after the Wright brothers. He was one of
the first people to fly at night. He'd

gone to the Amazon before, got captured
by locals, and barely escaped.

So he's pretty experienced in this
realm.

George Dyett advertises in newspapers
looking for a partner for his expedition

to find or to at least solve the mystery
of Percy Fawcett's disappearance.

Some 20 ,000 individuals from all over
the world respond.

He puts together a team of 26 people,
including indigenous guides, and also

brings with him a film crew because he
wants to document this whole thing for

posterity. He has three tons of gear and
supplies to help his team survive.

By June 1928, George Dyett reaches the
region of Mato Grosu, that area

where Percy Fawcett sent his last letter
to his family from.

And he has a huge stroke of luck.

Because he makes camp in a native
settlement where he meets this guy

who claims that he was the guide for
Percy Fawcett back in 1925.

Bernardino leads Dyat and some of the
others to this place where he had guided

Fawcett down on Fawcett's previous
expedition.

And he shows them these trees that have
these markings of lies in their bark.

And Dyat...

posits that Fawcett had made these marks
so that he would be able to find his

way back out after he discovered the
lost city of Z.

One of the things that makes Dyot's team
a little bit different from Fawcett's

team before is that they're using radio
to relay messages back to the home base.

Amateur radio operators are picking up
Dyot's messages and relaying them back

the rest of the world.

Shortly after arriving in Mato Grosso,
Dayot's expedition takes a dark turn.

Despite all the people and supplies that
Dayot brings with him, he left out one

really key necessity, a translator.

This becomes really problematic. When
they run into a local tribe, the

they have only basic pantomime.

to understand what they're trying to say
about the final fate of Percy Fawcett.

He thinks that the Nahuatl are telling
him that Fawcett and his men were

murdered by another indigenous group
known as the Soyos, because the Nahuatl

keep saying, Soyos, Soyos, and then
falling over as though dead.

Diet is aware of how dangerous it can be
to survive in the jungle. Dozens of

tribes live in the region, and it's
known that they have terrible, gruesome

fights between different tribes or with
the outsiders.

And there is a story, for example, about
this one tribe that attacked a village,

killed almost everybody in it, and then
they spent three days dancing and making

music among the rotten corpses.

But Dyat starts to wonder if this is a
deliberate misdirect.

As Dyat is negotiating with the Nahuatl,
in one of the huts, he sees a small

girl who's wearing what looks like a
necklace, and it's actually a nameplate

that says W .S. Silver Company.

Dyat knows that Fawcett had purchased a
lot of his gear from that company.

So he's thinking, Fawcett's been here.

This girl has this nameplate.

How did it get there?

At this point, Dayot begins to suspect
that not only did the Nahuatl murder

Fawcett and his men, but that he and his
men are the next ones in line to be

killed. Many of his men are sick and
starving.

They have been infected by diseases like
malaria and yellow fever. Things are

not going well for him at all.

At this point, Dayot and his team are
pretty dispirited.

And then one night at camp, rumors start
to go around that the chief of the

Nahuatl is planning to kill them all,
like they killed Fawcett.

The next morning, the Nahuatl men are
nowhere to be found.

Until suddenly, the entire party is
surrounded, not just by the Nahuatl, but

lots of different tribes, all pointing
weapons at them.

Dyat decides that his only choice here
is to pacify the Nuhukwa with as many

gifts as they still have. After a little
while, the conversation is completely

breaking down, and they start to decide
it might be time for us to figure out a

way out of here.

Dyat decides, my best chance is to
promise more gifts in the morning.

So at night, they decide to escape. They
sneak out from the camp very, very

quietly. They go to their boats and they
drift off, making no sound,

going away with the current.

The indigenous people chase after them,
but they manage to escape.

Remarkably, after six months of
originally landing in Brazil, George

surfaces from the jungle with an amazing
story to tell. He hasn't found Percy

Fawcett. But he's found some evidence
that Fawcett was with the Nahuatl, and

says that the Nahuatl killed Fawcett.

People find that pretty plausible, but
it's also clear that Diot really likes

the attention.

He stars in a B -movie about his own
expedition into the Amazon.

And there's others who think that...

Fawcett wouldn't have been quite so
socially inept. He'd had interactions

the indigenous people of the Amazon
before, and none of them had gone that

south.

Many people don't believe the story that
Fawcett was murdered by indigenous

people because they had confidence in
his diplomatic skills.

He had always had a very fine ability to
make peace with the people that he came

into contact with, and they find it hard
to believe that his diplomatic skills

would fail him.

That means that it's possible that
something else was responsible for his

demise.

Some experts believe Percy Fawcett's
1925 quest for the lost city of Z ended

with his murder by an indigenous tribe.

But these weren't the only dangerous
people lurking in the Amazon rainforest.

In 1924, just before Fawcett arrived,
There was an attempted military coup

in Brazil, which was put down. The
rebels dispersed throughout the country,

large number of them settling in the
Cuiabá region in the Mato Grosso, right

about the time that Percy Fawcett
arrived.

These rebels were armed. They were
dangerous. They were known to attack any

foreigners who were in the region. They
not only would rob them, but they

sometimes just murdered them.

These Brazilian rebels, they knew who
Percy Fawcett was. He was a celebrity in

these areas. Everyone knew when he was
coming and vaguely where he was going.

it wouldn't have been very hard to
follow him. All you have to do is wait

his local Brazilian guides return and
send Percy off down the jungle and then

follow the trail that they had cut. And
thus you have Percy Fawcett, his son,

and his son's friends sitting in the
jungle by themselves waiting to be

ambushed. There is little hard evidence
to prove this theory until a surprising

discovery over 50 years after Percy
Fawcett's disappearance.

In 1979, this British biologist is in
the Amazon making a wildlife film, and

hears about this interesting ring at a
local pawn shop in Cuitahua. When he

to check it out, the owner is long since
dead, but his wife is still there, and

she hands him a ring.

with a motto written on it in Latin. And
the translation is, Difficulties be

damned. The Fawcett family motto.

Fawcett's family confirms without doubt
that that was the very ring that Percy

Fawcett took on the expedition.

It's possible that he was murdered and
that ring was sold at the pawn shop.

also possible that Fawcett used this
ring as a gift to get either food or

guidance or something.

to help him along the way. So the
existence of this signet ring in the

doesn't necessarily mean that Fawcett
was killed, or it doesn't even mean the

end of the story.

In the early 2000s, some old evidence is
uncovered that suggests a different

fate.

TV writer and director Misha Williams
reaches out to Fawcett's family, and in

return, he gets an entire trunk of
materials of Fawcett's not previously

released to the public.

And what he finds is a lot of material
gathered by Fawcett's son, Brian, the

who didn't go with him, who basically
spent his entire life, until he died in

the 1980s, researching his own father.

According to his son, Brian, Percy
Fawcett isn't just looking for the lost

of Z just to say he found it. He thinks
if he can find this city, he'll be able

to find lost science and possibly
unheard of technology to set up his own

civilization in the middle of the
Amazonian jungle.

According to Brian Fawcett, his father,
Percy, thought that the lost city of Z

could have been a refuge for people
escaping the lost

city of Atlantis.

He believed that Atlantis may have been
located in the Atlantic Ocean, and then

when it famously was lost under the
water, people leaving that place sought

refuge in the Amazon forest and
established that civilized utopian

in the lost city of Z.

And as far -fetched as a lost Atlantean
continent somewhere off the coast of

South America may seem, in 2013, the
Brazilian Geology Service actually

a huge sunken landmass continent off the
coast of South America.

Fawcett's goal might have been to create
a utopian society with the

technological advances from the lost
city of Atlantis.

And I have to say, there's something
intriguing to me about that theory.

After Fawcett experienced World War I,
he was incredibly disillusioned with

humanity was capable of.

He spent so much time in the Amazon
seeing tribal peoples live in

a kind of harmony with the natural
world.

It would not surprise me completely if
he wanted to escape.

into the jungle and live out the rest of
his days in this kind of resurrection

of the lost city of Atlantis.

The question still remains, did Fawcett
ever find what he was looking for?

And if he did, or if he created his own
enlightened civilization in the middle

of the forest, why hasn't anyone else
found it yet?

It seems clear to some researchers that
if we want to answer these questions

about Percy Fawcett, what we need to do
is find the lost city of Z itself.

Whether explorer Percy Fawcett was
killed, succumbed to the elements, or

chose to stay in the Amazon jungle, one
thing's clear, he never came back.

It's one of the great puzzles in the
history of archaeology.

Since the 1920s, there have been
countless attempts to figure out exactly

happened to him.

Some believe that the best way to try
and find him is to try and find the

he was supposedly looking for, the lost
city of Z.

It's hard to say that there could ever
be a silver lining to the fact that the

rainforest is regularly and consistently
shrinking.

But since the 1920s, it's gotten a lot
easier to search around that region

because of that very fact. The
rainforest is getting smaller.

The last few decades have been really
compelling in terms of what we are

uncovering in the Amazon rainforest.

Significantly, a researcher from the
University of Florida named Michael

Heckenberger published a book in 2005
called The Ecology of Power that...

chronicles his research and some of his
expeditions in the region very near

where Percy Fawcett was looking.

Heckenberger makes a jaw -dropping
discovery.

The Shingu River traveled all the way
through the Amazon, but at the headwater

of it, Heckenberger found evidence of
over 20 cities.

an entire population that had been
overgrown by the jungle.

These villages are pre -Columbian,
dating back possibly as far as 800 CE.

However, we don't know the ancient
indigenous name of this site. The only

that we have for it is an adoption of a
local Brazilian site called Cui Cugu.

This site lines up almost perfectly with
Fawcett's idea of what his lost city of

Z would have looked like.

Massive monumental architecture, wide
open plazas, as well as geometrically

aligned monuments and highways that
extend off in the jungle that connect to

other settlements, as well as aqueducts
running underneath the city, as far

exceeding anything that existed in
Europe at the same time.

Researchers estimate that they've only
uncovered maybe 10 % of this massive

civilization, which means there's even
more yet to be found.

This could be exactly what Fawcett was
seeking.

Kuhikugu is similar to some of the
things that Percy Fawcett believed about

lost city of Z. There is the broad road.

There are bridges and moats and
sophisticated architectural features. It

or less in the area where Fawcett
thought that the lost city of Z might be

located.

But if these ruins match Fawcett's
description of Z, and they're located

he was looking, why didn't he find them?

It took Michael Heckenberger 13 years of
living right next to these

archaeological sites before he even
discovered them, due to the fact that

have been covered up by centuries upon
centuries of jungle growth.

Even if Percy Fawcett did discover the
site of Coo -ee -Coo -goo, his

could have been thwarted by the
extremely fierce and dangerous tribes

in that area even today.

It's entirely possible that Percy
Fawcett could have walked right by Coo

-Coo -goo and never seen it. The jungle
could have completely obscured any clue

that he could have found to the
existence of this civilization.

Explorers continue to find this out the
hard way as recently as 1996.

In 1996, the explorer James Lynch leads
a party looking for Fawcett into the

Amazon rainforest, accompanied, among
other people, by his 16 -year -old son.

They run into some indigenous people who
are very upset about seeing them there.

Lynch and his crew were kidnapped and
held hostage for three days, and they

threatened with a horrible and painful
death. They say, if you don't give us

everything we want, we will tie you over
the river and dip you into the water

while piranhas chew away your flesh.

Alternatively, we will slather you
completely from head to toe with honey

lay you on the ground and let the bees
sting you to death.

They only escape.

Because he basically hands over all of
his belongings, all his equipment and

boats, and that's when they finally let
him leave.

So it's clear that Fawcett might even
have found this city and still

wasn't able to explore it.

Excavation is ongoing at Cui Cugu, and
it's going to take a lot more work to

really uncover the full extent.

of what there is to be found there. New
sites are being discovered in the Amazon

regularly, and they're not just in
Brazil.

Percy Fawcett's 1925 expedition and
subsequent missions to find him all

focused on the Brazilian Amazon.

But the entire rainforest covers 5 .5
million square miles and eight

to look for the city of Z far beyond
Brazil.

One of the ongoing obstacles to
exploration of the Amazon rainforest is

density. It's hard to move through, and
it's also hard to see through.

Even when we can fly planes over it and
take pictures, the canopy is so dense

that light doesn't even make it through.
So pictures certainly aren't going to

help. Over the last few decades, new
technology has been able to use LIDAR,

light detection and ranging, to actually
see through the canopy to what lies

below.

So LIDAR technology has really
revolutionized archaeology because it

archaeologists to get a picture of what
is under the dense rainforest in a way

that you couldn't if you went in with
machetes and hacked your way through.

Basically, they fly over an area in a
plane. They shoot these infrared lasers

down onto the ground in a grid format.
And then that grid reveals things that

exist underneath the rainforest canopy.

LiDAR technology tells us when there are
things on the ground that merit

archaeological attention.

Scientists quickly latched on to this
technology because it allows them to map

large areas in these archaeological
sites. And in the Amazon jungle, it's

extremely important because they can not
only map them, but it gives them a

perfect three -dimensional model, if you
will, to see what lies below the jungle

with the vegetation removed.

And it allows them to zoom in and
actually see very fine detail.

In 2018, a team of German researchers
use LiDAR in northern Bolivia and

a massive urban settlement in a region
known as Llanos de Morros.

The digital images reveal this massive
network of structures that they think

dates back anywhere from 500 to 1400 CE.

Compared to the sites in Brazil, This
site in Bolivia might actually be a

match for Fawcett's lost city of D. If
that's the case, then Fawcett was about

thousand miles off target.

Llanos de Mojos is one of the largest
archaeological sites ever discovered in

the Amazon.

It is complete with colossal step
pyramids, large wide -open plazas that

oriented to astronomical bodies in the
sky and geometrically aligned to one

another with aqueducts used to funnel
water from the local rivers into the

and large highway systems extending off
into the Amazon likely to connect to

other cities that are in arguable size
somewhere that we haven't even

yet. And the estimated population of
Llanos de Mojos is over 1 million

To put that in perspective, the
estimated population size of ancient

height was also 1 million people.

Llanos de Mojos might be a better fit
than Cuihugu for something like the

lost... city of Z because it is massive.
Remember, Cuicugo is a series of

interconnected settlements.

There's about 20 interconnected
settlements.

But Llanos de Mojos is a huge city of a
million people with monumental

architecture and pyramids. It's massive.

Attesting to sophisticated civilizations
that existed in the New World long

before European contact.

Archaeological evidence does point
towards the fact that the Amazon was

much more densely inhabited than anybody
has previously thought over the last

500 years. And it's very likely that
cities as big or bigger are still

to be rediscovered somewhere deep in the
heart of the Amazon.

believe locating the actual lost city of
Z could shed light on the explorer's

fate.

Others contend that finding it is highly
unlikely.

This takes us back to Manuscript 512.
This is the document that sets Fawcett

his journey, and it's been verified as
coming from the 1700s, but we still

know who authored it or why.

We'll never know if the original
document that sent Percy Fawcett in the

manuscript 512, was actually factual.

This could have been an earlier explorer
using his imagination to help raise

money.

When explorers were making inroads into
the Americas, they went to great lengths

to convince their funders to give them
money. They promised them endless

of gold and other precious metals in
order to entice them to support these

expeditions.

Percy Fawcett did this himself. When he
needed funding, he sold his story of

adventure to the news.

That could be what's happening here.
Manuscript 512 could basically be a

pitch, looking for someone to be willing
to fund exploration.

So maybe Fawcett devoted his entire life
to

something that wasn't even real.

Another issue is that there were many
civilizations hidden in the jungle, as

know now.

So how do we know that this document was
describing not one city, but many other

civilizations or cities that somebody
encountered, and it was just a mixture

them?

We know that Hernán Cortés found
Tenochitlán, the Aztec capital. We know

Francisco Pizarro found Cuzco.

A city that at one point housed
potentially 10 million people.

The realities of places like this fuel
the rumors of places like the Lost City

of Z.

Details from the Fawcett family papers
have convinced some historians that the

Lost City of Z is more of an idea than
an actual place.

Fawcett's youngest son, Brian, spends
his whole life trying to figure out what

happened to his father and older
brother. He goes through reams of

does lots of historical research, even
travels to the Amazon to try to find out

the truth.

And at the end, he begins to suspect
that the lost city of Z was more of a

spiritual or metaphysical quest than a
quest for gold and ruins.

We know from his family's explanations
that he was leaning heavily into

mysticism. He was using Ouija boards and
psychic mediums as part of his journey

of discovery.

And it may be that his goal in the end
wasn't to find the lost city of Z. His

goal may have been to found his own
city.

Percy Fawcett and the lost city of Z
remains one of the biggest puzzles in

history of exploration.

Percy Fawcett feeds into our fantasies
of what an explorer is like because of

his bravery and character.

I think whenever you have a mystery,
whenever you have someone who disappears

and is never heard from again, whenever
you don't have an answer, that creates

fodder for uncertainty. And out of
uncertainty come legends and rumors and

attempts to solve the mystery. So I
think that the Percy Fawcett story is

these that will always inspire more
speculation, more stories.

All of these finds, Heckenbergers, these
German research teams in northern

Bolivia, I think they're just the tip of
what we're going to begin finding. And

it's really turning on its head the
beliefs that people have held for a

long time that there were never large
populations of people living in the

Amazonian basin.

That whole notion is being completely
upended by these fines.

The suggestion to me is that time will
reveal more cities, more lost cities,

very likely the lost city of Z.

Whatever Percy Fawcett was searching
for, he didn't find it, at least as far

we know.

The city itself may be waiting for
someone else to locate it.

And that means a new generation of
explorers are likely to continue to

for Fawcett and the infamous lost city
of Z.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for
watching History's Greatest Mysteries.