![]() These reports had yet to be corroborated by modern eyes, however, as no ancient cities had recently been sighted. Centuries earlier, Spanish conquistadors reported arriving in South America and seeing large, inhabited settlements with roads, agriculture, and centralized religious structures. ![]() In fact, Fawcett's obsession was shared by others and had some basis in the historical record. Fawcett held the occult notion that the sunken continent of Atlantis-the subject of an ancient Greek myth-may have been close enough to South America to cause migration and a new line of descendants. Indigenous jungle people were usually either “docile and miserable” or repulsive cannibals, but there was also a third, fairer-skinned group that Fawcett determined was perhaps of European origin. Despite his general courtesy and his interest in tribal legends, he held the racist views toward the native Amazonian tribes that were typical for the time. Although crew members perished of various sicknesses on some of his trips, Fawcett persevered and was able to gain help from some native people during dire times. In addition to being determined, he was an extraordinarily fit man, with knotted muscles and endurance beyond most of his comrades. During this journey, Fawcett's group nearly starved after running out of food, but he saw them through. More surveying trips followed, beginning with a 1908 expedition to map the source of the Rio Verde, a river in Brazil. Joined by his son and his son's best friend, Fawcett was last seen deep in the Brazilian jungle on May 29 of that year. Funded by international newspapers and geographical societies eager to share in what could become the most publicized adventure of its time, the veteran explorer embarked from Hoboken, New Jersey to major fanfare in January of 1925. ![]() His dream of finding such a city became an obsession with Fawcett, a tall, muscular Englishman who undertook his most famous adventure in his late 50s. Fawcett arrived at this conclusion by his travels: the discovery of intriguing ruins and intricate carvings, the stories of indigenous people who described a city ablaze with gold, and his study of documents ranging from the historical to the occult. This jungle city, which Fawcett dubbed “Z” (pronounced as the European “zed”), was inhabited, he believed, by an ancient, advanced society of light-skinned people who were possibly linked to the mythical continent of Atlantis. After several trips to the Brazilian Amazon, English explorer Percy Fawcett became convinced that a yet-undiscovered but inhabited city existed there. ![]()
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