In 1925 the adventurer and British Army Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett ventured into the Mato Grosso accompanied by his son Jack and a friend of whom little is known, Raleigh Rimmell. Fawcett was friends with the writers H. Rider Haggard (creator of the adventurer Allan Quatermain) and Conan Doyle, who was inspired by their adventures to write his novel The Lost World.
On May 29, he launched himself in search of a lost city that he called “Z”, where “the fire that never goes out” is found. Fawcett was convinced that he was in the thick of the Mato Grosso . He had found a document from 1754 that described the expedition of Francisco Raposo, a bandeirante (a name used for those who ventured into the interior of Brazil) seeking the legendary gold and silver mines of Muribeca. Instead, Raposo found a stone city.
Fawcett became convinced of the veracity of this story by studying pottery remains he had collected on his journey through northern Chile and a 10-inch figure given to him by his friend Haggard. This black basalt statuette, now lost, represented a priest with an Egyptian-style headdress holding a tablet with some inscriptions in his hands. Haggard told him that it came from Brazil and, according to Fawcett, of the 24 symbols that appear, 14 he had seen on prehistoric ceramic pieces from different areas of Brazil. One of the explorer’s extravagant beliefs was to believe that you can have extrasensory perception of a person through an object that you have touched: it is psychoscopy . Holding the idol in the dark, he saw that the Atlanteans had arrived in Brazil. I didn’t need more.
In search of Z
His conviction was so deep and the secrecy with which he kept his plans was such that he does not know with certainty what his route was . From the letters that Jack and Fawcett himself sent, it is known that they traveled from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo, where they visited the Butantan Institute, a reference center yesterday and today for antivenom serum. From Sao Paulo they went to Puerto Esperanza (Argentina) where they went up the Paraná and Paraguay rivers in the Iguatemy until they reached Cuiabá , capital of Matto Grosso. There Jack Fawcett wrote to his mother and his little brother Bryan: “We will leave Cuiabá on April 2nd and it will take from six weeks to two months to reach the place where papa arrived on his previous trip, the Bacairí Post. Until the city ‘Z’ It will probably take another two months and we may locate the lost city on the day that dad turns 58, on August 31.” It is believed that his destination was the Serra do Roncador , where he would find the entrance to his longed-for Atlantean city.
The last time they were seen was crossing the Alto Xingú, a region located between the equatorial forest of the southern Amazon and the savannah of central Brazil. On May 29 he sent a letter to his wife Nina: ” I hope to make contact with the old civilization within a month and reach the main objective in August… In any case, our fate is in the hands of the gods!… We are at Dead Horse Camp, Latitude 11º 43′ 5″ and Longitude 54º 35′ West… Do not fear that we will fail.” This was their last communication; they were never heard from again . According to Bryan, his father he deliberately sent wrong coordinates: “he was very careful in determining geographical positions. Surely he did not want anyone to follow his trail in Matto Grosso.”
In late 1927 the North American Newspaper Alliance (one of Fawcett’s backers) organized a rescue expedition led by George M. Dyott. He left Cuiabá in May 1928 with 4 other explorers and 5 local porters. Following the most likely path, Dyott found the first signs of Fawcett among the Anauqua : one of the chief’s sons wore the name tag of one of Fawcett’s purveyors, and in the chief’s hut was an English metal chest. Chief Aloique acknowledged having guided Fawcett, who had fallen into an ambush by the Suya, a tribe that lived on the river of the same name. Dyott set out for the Kalapalo village with Aloique and tried to convince them to accompany him to the place where Fawcett was said to have died. One night Aloique and the Kalapalos disappeared . Dyott began to fear that he would also need a rescue expedition. After promising the Indians more gifts for the next morning, at night he went out like a soul from the devil: his group did not stop rowing for 14 hours . His conclusion: “That Colonel Fawcett and his companions perished at the hands of Indians seems to us to be beyond any doubt.”
Kuhikugu, the remains of a lost civilization
But in the early years of this century history took a turn. At the headwaters of the Xingú River, the University of Florida anthropologist Michael Heckenberger, who was developing his work among the Kuikuro, discovered a lost city in the Amazon jungle, Kuhikugu , a name that means “the true needle fish”. In an area of the Amazon that was believed to have always been virgin forest, an urban complex appeared, an agglomeration of interconnected towns and villages occupying an area of 200,000 km 2 . It is estimated that more than 50,000 souls lived in Kuhikugu, which was inhabited from 1,500 years ago to about 400 years ago, a number that puts it on a par with medieval European cities. It is thought that its last inhabitants disappeared due to the diseases that the Europeans brought to America.
The most important settlement is X11, on the eastern shore of Lake Kuhikugu. There are defensive ditches, palisades, roads, dams and ponds that its inhabitants used for fish farming. Since then , evidence of some kind of civilization of which we know nothing of its existence has been discovered throughout the Amazon : gigantic lines drawn on the land, remains of fortified settlements, megalithic monuments and even complex networks of roads where they were supposed to. There should be nothing but jungle.
Was Kuhikugu the Z city that Fawcett sought? Many think so. What is certain is that the remains of those three explorers rest somewhere in the Xingú , as do the more than 100 people belonging to the 13 expeditions that have entered the dangerous Amazon jungle in search of them, most for publicity and notoriety. None of them paid attention to the words – usually melodramatic – of this man: “If I alone can’t get out, others with less experience have to get lost too and I don’t want anyone to lose their lives for me. to look for me.”
Reference:
Grann, D. (2009) The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, Doubleday
