Fawcett's Final Dispatches and Disappearance

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These were some of the last words that British explorer Percy Fawett wrote to his wife before he disappeared forever in the Amazon rainforest Turns out she had plenty to worry about In nineteen twenty five, Fawet, his son Jack, and Jack's best friend Raleigh Remel, set out into the Amazon in search of a possible lost ancient city that faucet called Z Z had haunted the renowned explorer for years, finding it had truly become his obsession And nothing would stop him from searching for it In two years passed, with no word from the explorers, the Royal Geographical Society, the institution that had backed Fawcett off and on for more than two decades, officially declared him missing It was hard to believe that Fawcet, who had gained worldwide fame for a number of other expeditions and wartime heroics A man practically believed to be immune to death had gone without a trace. After he disappeared, finding Fawcett in the Lost City of Z became an obsession for a number of other explorers who ventured out into their own demise just as Fawcett had. A century later, Percy Fawcett's fate still remains a mystery. Some said he started his own civilization in the jungle Others that he found a portal to another world. or that he was held hostage by indigenous people for many years. died of natural causes or was quickly murered Accounts from indigenous residents of the region, which were largely discounted until recent years, have possibly shed some light on he and his group's grim fate. Today, we will discuss the remarkable life and the mysterious disappearance of Percy Harrison Fawett, a real life Indiana Jones The legendary explorer whose obsession with a fabled and fantastical hidden Amazonian city became his downfall on this historical, adventurous, maybe don't fuck with the jungle because the jungle will definitely fuck with you timee, sir This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck Well, happappy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Cummins, suck nasty Shameless, tsunami phobic Black Ag Steak House and Nightclub, markarketing director and you are listening to Time suck Hail Nimrod, Haail Lusfina, praise B to Good Boy Bjangles and Glory B to Triple M back in the suck Dungeon this week. Had an amazing time at Jazz Fest. Thank you, Nola Another big show today So much good source material I wanted to cut more out because around the You know, the three hour word equivalent, I just lose too much of my ability to bring enthusiasm and focus to these topics, but God, there's just so much fascinating shit I couldn't cut as I wanted to I say that to let you know that there will not be as many jokes and commentary as there often is. I don't think that will make this less entertaining though I found this fucking riveting M me feel like a kid again in the best possible way, R dreaming of fantastical adventures and hidden treasures H hope you feel the same Let's Fucking go Gonna to start things off with an overview of the Amazon rainforest before jumping into a complete timeline of the life and adventures of Percy Fawcett guy was This guy was brave. Yes, but also fucking nuts I' going to talk about his disappearance, the numerous search parties who have attempted to find him over the past century. Uh Yeahah, so let's go. The Amazon rain Oh my go. Amazon Rriver Differe R worord the largest drainage system in the entire world The river is at least four thousand miles long, slightly shorter than the Nile, maybe orr maybe slightly longer. It's a matter of debate Some Brazilian estimates have placed it as a bit longer than the Nile Either way it spans the distance approximately If there were if the river were to be straightened out from New York City across the Atlantic to Rome, Italy That's wild westernmost source is high up in the Andes mountains within a hundred miles of the Pacific Ocean And the mouth of the river is located in the Atlantic Ocean on the northeastern coast of Brazil In addition to the length of the Amazon, the location of its source has been the subject of debate since the mid twentieth century The Amazon Basin is the largest lowland in Latin America with an area of about point seven million square miles The basin includes the greater part of Brazil and most of Peru, significant parts of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and a small part of Venezuela twowo thirds of the basin is covered by the Amazon rainforest, which represents about half of the Earth's remaining rainforest area. Amazon rainforest stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the tree line of the Andes in the west. The forest widens from a two hundred mile front along the Atlantic to a belt roughly twelve hundred miles wide at the Andean foothills Approximately sixty percent of the rainforest is within the country of Brazil Amazon is the world's richest mostost varied biological reservoir containing millions of species of insects, plants, birds, and other forms of life Many species are theorized to have yet to be discovered there. The rainforest covers an area of two million three hundred thousand square miles compprising about forty percent Brazil's total area In the twentieth century, Brazil's rapidly growing population settled major areas of the Amazon, which drastically reduced the size of the rainforest as a result of settlers' clearance of the land to obtain lumber and create grazing pastures and farmland Bet nineteen seventy and twenty sixteen, the Brazilian Amazon forest cover declined onene million, five hundred eighty three thousand square miles to about one million two hundred eighty three thousand square miles Fortunately in the nineties The Brazilian government and various international bodies began efforts to protect parts of the forest from human encroachment, exploitation, and deforestation Conservation efforts have slowed forest loss considerably to roughly zo point one tozo two percent per year between two thousand eight and twenty sixteen Hopefully since twenty sixteen it is D don't have the data still yet But hopefully it's you know remained around the same. Vy, very impressive. Maybe someday we can actually go the other way shhifting focus back to the Amazon River teechnological advces made it possible for researchers to explore deeper into the remote headstreams to more accurately measure its length startarting in the nineteen fifties The explorers of the region cited various mountains in Peru as possible sources. studies, you know, done without precise measurements, were done with without precise measurements or applying hydrological research an expedition in nineteen seventy one sponsored by the National Geographic Society Pinpointed Caracanta River more of a small creek really which runs off the north slope of Mount Mizmi in southern Peru. as the source of the Amazon River This location became widely accepted by the scientific community until the mid nineties Polish expedition in nineteen eighty three Can we trust it? Contended that the source was actually another stream nearby called Apacheta Appacheta is six miles longer than the Caracanta, carries water year round, signaling to many that the Aachita is the true source of the Amazon iver And the most recent measurement of the Amazon from Apacheta Creek to the mouth of Marzo Marazzo Bay was four thousand three hundred and forty five miles. Very, very far Amazon has a warm, rainy and humid climate Major mammal wildlife includes the jaguire humanity Paper, red deer. Bara, bats, many other types of rodents and monkeys. More than eight thousand species of insects have been collected and classified, including, of course, disease carrying mosquitoes Nasty biting leaf cutter ants. A bunch of big ass creepy fucking flies Pretty cool, pretty chill fireflies various very angry, not fucking cool sting bees, suuper uncool nightmare hornets Demonic Devil wasps, horror movie Beatles, fuck my lifeife cockroaches Annoying Sicatus Just fucking kill me if that thing ever touches me centipedes. Are you fucking kittding me sccorpions Creepy disgusting ticks and giant horrifying spiders to name just a few The worst insects of all seem to be the Ombre Esino ants I don't know if you remember hearing about those when we were in South America a long time ago, talking about serial killer Pedro Lopez These mutants grow up to three inches in length inches have mandibles that allow them to gnaw their way through actual bone. They usually have no interest in eating humans. They do prefer sugary plants. I mean, who doesn't love sugar? but they will eat flesh if it's easily accessible The bodies of wild boars, spider monkeys, many other animals, occasional humans have been found stripped to the bone in the jungle The Ombre Aino ants are venomous And with enough bites, they can paralyze you So how do you like to go out that way? Hundreds of giant aggressive ants walking around in your fucking face, paralyzed face, walking into your mouth when you it's frozen and scream, eating their way into your head to the soft tissue of your ear canal And we really picture that vividly About twenty thousand five hundred species of fish have also been discovered in the Amazon h Some of them also horrifying, like the piranha which generally feed on other fish, but also attack animals and humans and will make you wish you were never born The waters are also home to alligators, turtles U, lot of other things with sharp teeth. But also cute stuff too like Amazon River Dlphins pink and preposterously adorable The Amazon also has giant anacondas Over twenty five feet long which are not adorable Not at all. The weigh over four hundred pounds and they're utterly terrifying. At the time of the European conquest of the Amazon, the bottom llands, and upland servacices the Amazon Rriver, and its major tributaries We're home to a dense stationary population of indigenous people. chosen to live around all these creepy bugs and animals because they're clearly tougher than me or you or we were just born there. and never told There there are fucking many places in the world that are a lot better live They've traditionally practed small scale farming, supplemented by fishing and hunting. The more elevated areas away from the rivers were home to smaller, widely dispersed, semi nomadic tribes These groups traditionally relied on hunting large and small animals and gathering wild fruit, berries, nuts, while practicing small scale agriculture and while also constantly trying not to get killed by the many fucking insane creatures that live in the forest jungle. A the early nineties The indigenous population of the Amazon Basin was still estimated to be about six hundred thousand people About one third of those individuals lived in Brazil By the early twenty first century though The indigenous population had decreased to less than two hundred thousand partly as a result of deforestation and commercial exploitation, sadly Also partly due to people being introduced to a comparatively easier and much less dangerous way of life and comeing to the realization that they don't have to live surrounded by disturbing bugs and snakes and ship for the rest of their days. I mean, let's be hon Would you want to give up AC and central heating in showers and a bedroom with a locking door. where you never have to worry about a twenty five foot anntaconda or Ombreino ants Fuck no, you wouldn' So why should they have to keep living like that Also in case you forgot, I did make up the Ombrecino ants for the Pedro Lopez suck and they are still just as fake now as they were back then But The Amazon actually does have some really creepy ants Kidding Aunt renowned for having the most painful sting allegedly of any insect in the world It sting produces extremely intense, agonizing pain comparable to actually being shot that last up to twenty four hours. While not usually lethal to humans, the pain is debilitating. These little fuckers grow to a little over an inch long and resemble stout, reddish black, wingless wasps And they I assume come from hell So that's fun the Indigenous people the Amazon. who remained in the jungle. and are extremely skilled at surviving in the inhospitable rainforest. though. they have figured out how to make a pooisonous cassava edible, for example. They've perfected the use of quinine isolated from the bark of the Sunchona tree to treat malaria. They've extracted fucking cocaine from the leaves of the cocoa plant to feel fucking invincible and immortal Uh, not all bad Uh, they've skilled navigators or they are skilled navigators in rafts and canoes. Bow guns Hammocks, other cool shit Early explorers reported that the river was fringed with villages, some of them pretty big lararge settlements home to thousands of people The early European explorers, not always super kind to the people of the Amazon A lot of people still aren't, unfortunately U They sometimes stole food, canoes from indigenous people, lararge number were enslaved from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Many others died from diseases new to them such as influenza, measles, and smallpox Survivors fled even more remote sections of the Amazon Basin forming much smaller tribes As recently as nineteen oh six, there were still reports of the capture and enslavement of indndigenous people as part of the local rubber industry. surprisingly, many tribes became quite hostile, hostile towards outsiders I can't blame them in the early days of exploration before planes in modern technology The Amazon River was the only way to access the rainforest Spanish explorer Franisco de Oriana descended the main course of the Amazon from the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes to the Atlantic from fifteen forty one to fifteen forty two becoming the first European to do so A variety of French, German and English explorers took expeditions into the Amazon in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries In nineteen thirteen, even an American U.S President Theodore Roosevelt. support a major tributary of the Amazon Despite having little jungle experience, fifty five year old Roosevelt described the expedition as his last chance to be a boy. Roosevelt enjoyed travel and involved hardship and risked two key components of the so called strenuous life he so vigorously endorsed He was warned about the risks. but said, if it is necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, quite ready to do so. wasn't kidd been a long time since we suucked him with that guy like I was a tough mother fucker h he nearly did just that A tririp almost killed him as it did so many other men Roosevelt traveled with Rondon. Colonel Rondon, a small army of porters, explorers, and scientists, his twenty three year old son Kermit, who had been living in Brazil Several men came down with tropical illnesses while crossing the Brazilian highighlands. Over half their pack animals died of exhaustion By the time they reached the so called River of Doubt in Fbruary of nineteen fourteen, they were forced to downsize due to a lack of supplies The final team of just twenty two men included three Americans, Roosevelt, Kermit and naturalist, George Cherry For Sherry They faced dangers at every turn as they went down river alligators, piranhas, hostile indigenous people, also tormented by mosquitoes and stinging flies Roosevelt was almost bitten by a venomous coral snake But it only managed to sink its teeth into his boot, not through it Roosevelt wrote it was interesting work For no civilized man, no white manen had ever gone down or up this river or seen the country through which we were passing The lofty and mountted forest rose like a green wall on either hand early March, they encountered the first of some rapids, which were impassable were forced to carry their boats through the forest and their progress slow to seven miles a day even had to stop to build some new canoes at one point. On march fifteenth, Kermit's canoe sucked into a whirlpool He fell over a waterfall He and a companion managed to swim to shore, but a Brazilian man named Simplico drowned in the rapids Over the next several weeks, the group realized that a band of indndigenous people were stalking them One of the party's dogs was shot with some arrows Soon Roosevelt himself fell sick with fever. cut his leg on a rock in early April, a porter named Julio shot and killed another Brazilian. caught him stealing food Vision failed to capture Julio and just abandoned him in the jungle So he pred in farew They continue downriver, their clothes, reduced to rags, facing starvation would have died were it not for some fish and hearts of palm they were able to eat Roosevelt became delirious from fever and infection, repeatedly demanded to be left to die son Kermit would not leave his father. Roosevelt lost a quarter of his body weight on the trip and survived an emergency leg surgery conducted on a river bank With the help of local Brazilian pioneers who lived in the jungle, harvesting rubber, They were finally able to get new canoes and traverse the last of the rapids And on april twenty sixth, the team cited a relief party, ordered in by Colonel Rondon who we will meet again in the timeline. Roosevelt returned New York in may of nineteen fourteen, strong enough to walk on his own and greet his admirers Some skeptics doubted that he had actually mapped a fifteen hundred kilometer river, but a nineteen twenty six expedition would confirm. his expedition's geographical findings By then the Rriver of Doubt had been renamed The Roosevelt River still its name today That was Roosevelt's last big adventure for the rest of his life. He would be plagued by various ailments he called his old Brazilian trouble. in the century since European contact Hless explores have been drawn to the region searching for lost ancient civilizations and treasure The Legend of El Dorado, specifically has drawn many to their deaths According to author David Gran, author of this episode's main source, Lost City of Z hale of deadly obsession Ever since Francisco de Oriana and his army of Spanish conquistadores descended into the Amazon River in fifteen forty two Perhaps no place on the planet had ignited the imagination or lured men to their deaths ar they Carvahal, Dominican friar, who accompanied Oriana, described women warriors in the jungle who resembled the mythical Greek Amazons Half a century later, Sir Walter Raleigh spoke of Indians with their eyes in their shoulders and their mouths in the middle of their breasts in the fucking Ayahuasa where they drinking to see that I sounds like they went on some intense spirit quests. ate the wrong roots, at the wrong tree bark maybe the right stuff And the most entancing vision of all Grand wrote was of Elldorado Elldorado means the gilded man That was originally the name of the ruler of this mythical wealthy civilization. where gold was reportedly so plentiful it was used as a cosmetic the time the kingdom became synonymous with its leader One chronicler reported that the king slathered himself in gold and floated in a lake And his subjects offered him gold and emerald jewelry According to Chronicer, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oado The great Lord goes about continually covered in gold dust as fine as ground salt He feels that it would be less beautiful to wear any other ornament. It would be crude and common to put on armored plates, hammered or stamped gold for other rich lords wear those when they wish To powder oneself with gold is something exotic unusual, novel and more costly For he washes away at night what he puts on each morning so that it is discarded and lost and he does this every day of the year Tue, that's insan That sounds like some kind of shit some kind of skin care regiment one of the Kardashians would promote Also believed that the kingdom of Elldorada was full cinnamon trees, a highly valuable spice at that time In February of fifteen forty one, the first expedition. in search of Elldorado was launched by Gonzalo Pizaro the younger half brother of Franisco Pizara, who conquered the greatreat Inca capital of Cusco fifteen thirty three Gonzle Pizaro was also the governor of Quito the capital city of modern day Ecuador Cazar wrote to the King of Spain, because of many reports, which I received in Quito and outside that city, from prominent and very aged chiefs, as well as from Spaniards, whose accounts agreed with one another that the province of La Canella Cinnamon and Lake El Dorado were a very populous and very rich land I decided to go and conquer and explore it. M Pazara put almost his entire fortune into assembling a large expeditionary force, He assembled a procession of more than two hundred mounted soldiers four thousand enslaved indigenous people people who are kept shackled into the day of departure They were followed by llamas, pulling wooden carts, roughly two thousand pigs and almost two thousand docks feeles excessive on the dog front I love I love dogs, but almost two thousand Not sure any expedition should have that many dogs The expedition headed east over the Andes, where a hundred roughly enslaved people died along the way from the cold Clearly they went too heavy in the dogs and too light on jackets and wool socks As these soldiers hacked their way through the Amazon Basin, they did find several cinnamon trees They hoped that the legends were true, but these trees were scattered about over vast territories, not consolidated into some big orchard making it pointless to try and, you know, cultivate them Pizar then encountered several indigenous people deep in the jungle, demanded to know where El Dorado was When they had no idea what the fuck he was talking about He tortured them Historian Pedro de Sieza, de Leon wrote, The Butcher Gonzalo Pizaro, not content with burning Indians who had committed no fault, further ordered that other Indians should be thrown to the dogs, who tore them to pieces with their teeth and devoured them was why the dogs were brought for terror Less than a year after departure, all the llamas had died and the expedition had eaten almost all of the livestock Also a bunch of dogs. Oh, and almost four thousand enslaved people had died of disease or hunger. Things were not going well Pizaro decided to split the survivors into two. The majority of the party continued to search along the river with him. hisis second command, Francisco de Oriana, took fifty seven Spaniards and two enslaved people downriver on a boat in hopes of finding food Dominican Friar, Gaspard, Carvaal traveled with Oriana, wrote that some of their party were so weak that they were reduced to crawling along the jungle floor in search of food Carvahall wrote in his diary, We reached a state of privation So great that we were eating nothing but le leather Belts and soles of shoes with certain herbs with the result that was so great It's the result that so great was our weakness that we could not remain standing Y God. I would feel sorry for them But they sound like there were some real sadistic pieces of shit for their torturing of the locals who deserved whatever fate became of them Rather than return to find Pizaro and his crew, Orian and his men decided to continue downriver until they would either die or see what the seeee what there was along it ing new car Carver Hll wrote of passing villages and being attacked by thousands of indigenous people, including female warriors Carvaall was struck in the fucking eyeball by an arrow during one attack someomehow survive that that pain lingered. On august twenty sixth, fifteen forty two, the boat was expelled into the Atlantic Ocean and they became the first Europeanans to havevel the length of the Amazon Never found that fabled city of gold Oriano would return to Spain down and e, but still wanted to find El Dorado. And in fifteen forty five, he invested all his money into another expedition Spanish authorities denied him permission to sail because they deemed his fleet unseaworthy, but Oriana launched the mission anyway and it was doomed from the start The plague killed almost a hundred people And one ship in seventy seven souls were lost at sea. So that's not good. Upon reaching the mouth of the Amazon, fifty seven more crew members died of disease and hunger Then seventeen more died in the tacks Ariana collapsed from fever ordered a retreat before his heart stopped beating. and then he died His wife would have been buried in the banks of the along the banks of the Amazon River Despite the obvious dangerers The promise of El Dorado continued to call to more brave explorers And now let's dive into a big ass adventurous timeline, of Percy Fawcett search for a hidden city. His adventures and his mysterious disappearance She's like y Trap on those boots, soldier We're marching down a time suck timeline Hercy Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones Fwet Percy Hrison Fawett was born august eighteenth, eighteen sixty seven in the seaside town of Torki, Devon located in Southwest England parents were Edward Boyd Fawcett, Mya Elizabeth The Fauccets were a family of old Yorkshire gentry. who were shipping magnets in the East Indies in the late seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, owned a lot of land even before all that So old money the time Percy came along Percy Fawcet's most well known sibling, his older brother Edward, was a mountain climber, occultist, and author of philosophical books and adventure novels He was actually a very close associate of Madame Helena Blvatsky I amm not trying to find more connections. That old fucking theosophical wack doodoo, by the way. She just keeps showing up lately Edward helped her write her big book, the biggest theosophical book, The Secret doctrine. so Huseel nuts Uh Eddie was all about the lost civilization of Atlantis, Lamerans, root races, all that shit He believed that imagination was the fundamental reality of the universe but was also an incredible chess player. Clearly the fawucets were an intelligent, interesting Unorrthodox bunch. A bunch of Fawett'sather Ct Edward Boyd Fawcett was an aristocrat. who was a member of the Prince of Wales innerircle Unorthodox, connected wealthy bunch Percy His father struggled with alcoholism though, from a very young age. He was nicknamed bulb in his later years because his nose became bulbous and nasty from drinking so much. fucking rough nickn Dude drank himself to death by the age of forty five, so he went fucking hard He also squandered most of his family's wealth by that point Percy's childhood was not great His mother Myra was said to be bitter and cruel A woman who openly resented her children Fosil later confided to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes that his mother was hateful While in public, he tried to protect his parents' reputation, though, he once wrote, pererhaps it was all for the best that my childhood was so devoid of parental affection turn me in upon myself I mean, he didn't end up being a tough dude Fossy's parents They would be able to send him to an elite public school. He attended Newton Abbey Proprietary collollege in the eighteen eighties ring up, he was a recipient of frequent canings for misbehavior there, forced to conform to the standards of Victorian gentlemen. knew how to talk about art, how to waltz, how to behave properly in front of women He was also taught, quote, mastery over bodily instincts such as sexual desire sounds creepy personersal journals, Fawet wrote of Craving for sensual excitement and vices and desires that were too often concealed. Yeah Yeah, you can have people tell you stuff's all naughty and fucking bad for you and your body's still gonna to want it. That's kind of how we're wired Victorian gentlemen were expected to be fearless leaders in battle and sports were considered for future military experience. Fostet became a skilled cricket player a fierce competitor in both rugby and boxing At age seventeen, he was sent to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, nicknamed the Shop He had no desire to be a soldier But his mom wanted him to go anyway because she liked stylish uniforms, the kind they wore there That's some odd reasoning It's like pressuring your kid to go to medical school because you think having a stethoscope hanging around your necklk school New cadets were put through hours of drills there each day. if they violated the code of conduct, they'd be flogged A lot of f floggying a lot of caning back then Older cadets engage in hazing rituals such as forcing new cadets to stick their arms and legs out an open window in the cold for hours at a time or force them to stand on a couple of stack stools, you know, and then kicking that shit out from underneath them Fawcet wrote that by the time he graduated, two years later, he learned, quote to regard the risk of death as the most picant sauce to life. So he's a hard dude now byy eighteen eighty eight, twenty one year old Faucet made into a tough man from all those childhood beatings, perhaps. had become a lieutenant in the Royal Army stationed at Fort Frederick in the British colony of Ceylon which is now Sri Lanka Once there, Fawcett decided to use his one month leave. for a little exploratory adventure, the first of many Conial administat was given a note by a village headman for whom he had done a favor, and the note claimed that in the city of Badulla There was a rocky plane And beneath that rocky plane was a cave. And in that cave There many jewels and gold to an extent greater than that possessed of many kings The administrator himself did not take the note seriously passed along to Fawcett thinking he might find it interesting and boy, did he? Faosett who is not as wealthy as most of his fellow aristocratic officers. the idea of treasure too attractive to abandon We traveled eighty miles down the coast and another hundred miles inland to try and find this place did not find the treasure because it probably doesn't exist, but later during his first adventure. But then he came back another time with the map team of hired men He did find a spot that resembled a cave from the note, still no treasure They spent hours digging. They did find some old pottery shards and alive and very dangerous cobra. But still these failed attempts they excited him and would not dissuade him from future adventures That spring, after return to Fort Frederick, Fawcett learned that Archduke Franz Ferdinand of later World War I infamy was coming to visit the country and a gala was planned in his honor He attended the gala, saw a beautiful young woman Probably a girl really, agewise, named Nina Agnes Patterson daughter of a colonial magistrate custom prevented Fawcet from approaching Nina to ask for a dance. So he had somebody else present him Mina was a highly educated young woman. She spoke German and French. had studied geography, religion, Shakespeare and more. She advocated for women's rights, was curious about many other cultures and religions day after meeting Nina Fawcett wrote a letter to his mother telling her that he had met the only one I want to marry He was smitten. Fasa proceeded to make regular trips to the other side of the island to courourt Nina. named her cheeky because she always had to have the last word he said. She called him puggy because of his tenacity Niner later told a reporter I was very happy and I had nothing but admiration for Percy's character An austere, serious and generous man On october twenty ninth, eighteen ninety Fawet proposed to Nina, telling her my life would have no meaning without you That is pretty epic She accepted, but then their happiness would be short lived. Some of Fawcett's family opposed the engagement. told him that Nina was not a virgin. Back when that was a way bigger deal than it is now for most rational people. It is unclear why his family objected so strongly to Nina, posossible Fosa's mother was involved in the scheme Just apparently she was a fucking nasty woman. Fossa was furious wrriting to Nina, you are not the pure young girl I thought you to be. Oh for fuck's sake Lucifininea is annoyed he ended the engagement and they had no contact for years Nina returned to Britain took her some time to recover from the heartbreak. But eventually she met Army Captain Herbert Christie Pritchard They married in the summer of eighteen ninety seven, but then just five months later, he died of a cerebral embolism. momoments before he died, he told her to marry Fawett, interesterestingly By this time, Fawcett had learned about his family's scheme and now he begged Nina to take him back. Nina later admitted, I thought I had no love left for him. I thought that he'd killed the passion I had for him with his brutish behavior when they reunited, quote, we looked at each other and invincibly this time Happiness jumped all over us found each other again Now definitely was a virgin But I guess Percy got over that silly shit and the two will marry in a few years time And now before we move forward, this feels like a good spot for today's first of two Mid showhow sponsor Baks If you don't want to hear these ads ever again, T fucking shit. U know you can sign up to be space lizard on Patreon You can help us make monthly charitable contributions, which I gott to get better about advertising this year. We do them every month so You can get a catalog ad free episodes three days early and more When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter You're the expert because you know what fits your life And getting it right starts with good information. 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AK Madam Blovatsk, AKA, the quQueen of newew age bullshit Well, that's who claimed to a psychic, amongst other things was of course the primary founder of a fringe religious movement called the Theosophical Society A few more quick words about her before we move on She was born in Russia in eighteen thirty one, maybe. I can't believe anything she said. She openly professed to be a virgin for much of her life, despite being married twice and also having a son with another man She promoted asesceticism while also smoking up to two hundred cigarettes day two hundred a day. Goddamn and swearing off it She traveled to America and Europe in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties, gathering followers who admired her supposed power to levitate objects and speak with the dead She claimed that she was a conduit for a brotherhood of reincarnated Tibetan Mahatmas her religion, phosoph, meaning wisdom of the gods, Druwan occult teachings and Eastern religions. Theosopice also became Buddhist and aligned themselves with religious leaders in India and Sri Lanka who opposed British colonization efforts One of those followers was Fawcett's older brother, Edward, one of her most die hard followers Fawcett had always looked out to his older brother After Edward traveled to Sri Lanka in eighteen ninety to take the pancil the five precepts of Buddhism Fawet did the same, a scandalous act for a British military officer who was supposed to be promoting Christianity and colonial rule In addition to fringe religious movements, Fawcett was also obsessed with tales of explorers such as Richard Francis Burton Dicks do famously love to go exploring and David Livingon. Burton once famously disguised himself to enter Mecca. In eighteen fifty three, Livingston searched for the source of the Nile River and disappeared in the heart of the African continent. Explorer Henry Morton Stanley set out to find him. rememarkably he did. greeted him with the now infamous phrase Dr Livingston, I presume De Faosett for several more years. He continued his military career, continued his occult obsession, reading about interesting fantastical things He was promoted to captain on june fifteenth, eighteen ninety seven later served briefly in Hong Kong and also in Malta. By the time he was in his thirties, he knew military life was no longer for him though wantanted to go to the Royal Geographical Society in London to uncover his destiny In the nineteenth century, several English scientists, admirals, and merchants believed an institution was needed to create a map of the world based on observation That led to the founding of the Royal Geographical Society, the RGS in eighteen thirty Fawcett showed up at the RGS headquarters in London on february fourth, nineteen hundred was there to meet Edward Reeves, the map curator of the RGS and chief instructor of Svey. Faucett was taken up to the third floor where classes were held Reeves told Fawcett and the other students that if they heeded his instructions They can become the next generation of famous explorers Reeve is going to teach them to fix their position anywhere on any map that if they were brave enough They could chart the rest of the world's undiscovered lands At the RGS, Fawcet was taught to survey, to record, to classify his surroundings, The RGS also offered instruction on botany, geology, meteorology, and anthropology By that time, the field of anthropology was mostly made up of amateur enthusiasts rather than studied professionals. Students there were also taught how to organize and execute an expedition sururvival skills, basic medicine like removing a decayed tooth, inducing vomiting after ingesting poison They were instructed that they could drink animal blood or eat certain insects to avoid starvation taught how to deal with hostile, indigenous people, how to take somebody prisoner They were instructed that if a member of their party died, they should record a detailed account of what had happened with corroborating testimony and the expedition member should be buried with dignity The year later, Fawcett passed his final exam in all these courses with And then he eagerly awaited his first mission. before that mission came january thirty first, nineteen oh one, he and Nina went After the wedding day, they moved to the garrison in Sri Lanka where they fucked a bunch. Just guessing But I feel pretty confident that they did Their first son Jack would be born in March of nineteen oh three Picularly beautiful boy in Fawet' word. Fawcett often bragged about his son, saying stuff like he ran about it seven months old and talked freely at a year old. He was and is physically and intellectually far ahead Pd Papa That same year, Fawet received his first assignment from the British government, and he was sent to Morocco to act as a spy. I was instructed to go in disguised as a cotographer and to observe people, places and conversations He knew his handler as James. He was asked to assess nature of trails, villages, water, army and organization arms and guns and anything political In the nineteenth century, British government of recruited explorers and map makers as spies a good way to sneak people into foreign land, utilizing recruits who knew how to collect geographical and political data Fossa was able to get access to the Royal courourt y on the sultan of Morocco Fawcet wrote at the time, the sultan is young and weak in character. Personal pleasure is the first consideration. And time has past bicycle trick riding at which he is a considerable adept plane with motor cars, mechanical toys, photography, billiards, pigs sticking on bicycles. feeding his menagerie Fawet delivered his observations to his handler and returned with his wife and son to England That would be the only time he would ever act officially as a spy His skills caught the attention of Sir George Tobman Goldie C colonial administrator He became president of the RGS in nineteen oh five Gold played a major role in the founding of colonial Nigeria Al scandalize society by running off with a governness to Paris He was a very eccentric man, known for carrying a tube of lethal poison with him wherever he went Casey ever became physically disabled or was diagnosed with an incurable illness Ely nineteen oh six gold be summon Fawet for a meet Fawcet had been sent to different garrisons since Morocco, most recently in Ireland. Now gooldi ass faucet if you knew anything about Bolivia Fosa did not. Goldi told Fossa that beyond the mountains was a massive tropical forest and plains that the area was largely unexplored So much so that Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru still did not agree on where their borders actually lay In fact, back in eighteen sixty four, boundary disputes between Paraguay and neighboring countries had caused one of the worst conflicts in Latin American history leading to the death of about half of Paraguay's population Many sources suggest a loss of between three hundred and four hundred thousand people as many as ninety percent of the male population perishing leaving only about twenty eight thousand adult males alive in Paraguay in eighteen seventy. And now because of a big rubber boom, defining the boundaries was critical to prevent more blood loss. The three countries had established a boundary commission and wanted an impartial observer from the RGS to map the borders beginning in the area between Bolivia and Brazil that comprised hundreds of miles of rugged terrain take up to two years to accomplish this mission and there was no guarantee of safety. Fawet briefly thought about his wife about his young son Jack, what would happen to them in his absence? also did not hesitate to say yes He wrote Destiny intended me to go so there could be no other answer. Doubt his wife share that exact sentiment But also guessing she knew who she was getting married to and away he went Fawcett traveled to the Amazon on the SS Panama, which was filled with quote, toughs, would be toughs and leather faced old scoundrels. Itounds like theact opposite of any crwise I've ever been on which is tended to be filled with people who don't want to fight peopleople who really don't want to fight Hay grandparent Fawcett secondcond command was thirty year old Arthur John Chivers. engineer and surveyor recommended by the RGS their shippp docked in Panama where construction of the canal was currently underway. Fawcett saw dozens of coffins stacked on the pier when he arrived, his first real confirmation of how deadly the region could be Since construction began in eighteen eighty one, over twenty thousand workers had already died mostly from malaria and yellow fever. Fucking skeeters Is there a bug more annoying than those Fawcet soon boarded another trip to or ship, excuse me to Peru. then to could train up up the Andes. When the train reached twelve thousand feet in elevation, he got on another boat across Lake Titikaka the largest lake in South America, both in terms of volume of water and surface area. and yes, it is pronounced Titikaka before boarding another train that took him to Lapaz, the capital of Bolivia He then waited over a month for the government to provide a few thousand dollars more for provisions and travel expenses And before moving forward, a bit more on Lake Boobyurd. I mean Tirikaka It's twelve thousand five hundred feet, claims to be the highest navigable lake in the world since it is full of big commercial water craft. It's up to one hundred and eighteen miles long, up to fifty miles wide. and almost a thousand feet deep in places massive lake that I did not know existed until this episode to faset now On july fourth, nineteen oh six, his first Amazon expedition was ready to depart Faucet and chivers traveled over the Andes and descended into the jungle. At one point, early on they got trapped in a blizzard could not see more than a few feet in front of them. Then once they had made it down to about three thousand feet elevation, they looked into a valley and saw the Amazon below. packing for a trip like that must have been a bitch. Fawcet and Shivers abandoned their pack animals for a raft now that took them to the Amazon Frontier, a collection of little towns that were part of the rubber boom The first frontier town they came to was called Uh, this's a tough one. Ru Re N Bak Ruade, Nabake, something like that in Northwest Bolivia. U not It was around twenty thousand people now this place, but nothing more than just a few huts back then Fawcet wrote about the site in his journal, saying My heart sank and I began to realize how truly primitive this river country was. Back in eighteen seventy two, Bolivia in Brazil had attempted to build a railroad through the jungle, but so many workers died from disease or violence at the hands of the indigenous tribes that it quickly became known as the Railroad of the deead Holy shit that sounds ominous That railway was still under construction when Fawcett arrived, but only five miles of track have been laid The Amazon was so rugged and wild that there was really no way to enforce the law. he found out Bery Wild West When they reached the outpost of Riberalta Now a city of about one hundred thousand people, but much smaller back then, much much smaller. Faosa witnessed a boat carrying thirty indigenous men and women in chains to shore where they were inspected for purchase He was shocked to learn that soulless rubber barons sent armed posis into the jungle to kidnap and enslave tribes to replace dead laborers. People who were literally worked to death only to be replaced by more people who would be worked to death In one instance in Peru, the British government launched an investigation and discovered that the Peruvian Amazon company specifically committed genocide by attempting to enslave the indigenous population cast rated be headed. set on fire crucified, upside down, mutilated, starved, drowned, et cetera. women and girls routinely raped and murdered thirty thousand indigenous people died at the hands of just that one company in just a period of six years. They went full fucking evil. I could do an entire episode on just the Peruvian Amazon companany. Good reminder, what a corporation that cares only about profit can and will do if left entirely to their own devices with no laws, no law enforcement to enforce any kind of morality Because of the cruelties of the rubber boom, indigenous people were even more wary of strangers than they were before that course made Fawcett's mission much more dangerous In the RGS journal, Fawet wrote The wreched policy, which created a slave trade, and openly encouraged a reckless slaughter of the indigenous Indians, many of them races of great intelligence cause them to develop a deadly vengeance against the stranger On september twenty fifth, nineteen oh six, Fawucet and Sivers. Ntheless Lef Riberalta with twenty amateur explorers and Indigenous guides out into the jungle. Cook was a Jamaican prospector named Willis A former Bolivian military officer who spoke some English acted as their interpreter Fawcett war warned the men that anyone who broke a limb or became sick would very likely die in the forest. They would not be carried out, could not be and they would have to be abandoned M, how fucking desperate or crazy would you have to be to sign up for this madness? In their canoes, the crew headed westward on the six hundred mile planned route T traveling the frontier between Brazil and Bolivia Now they've been dangerered at every turn from fallen trees blocking the river to hungry piranhas just below the waters surface In one report to the RGS, Fawcet claimed he saw a sixty foot anaconda. Sty feet Probably, but still it must have been a big snake. Much of the anaconda was submerged in the water 's probably quite bit smaller, but still, big scary motherfucker Several months into the mission, Fawett wrote, It was one of the gloomiest journeys I've made For the river was threatening and it's quiet, and the easy currents in deep water seemed to promise evil ahead The deemons of the Amazonian rivers were abroad, manifesting their presence in lowering skies, downpours of torrential rain and somber forest walls Uh Nope Heart nope to all of this. No thank you Fast kept his team on a strict schedule They woke at first light, washed in the river ate some porridge and some tin milk and sugar for breakfast. Within a few minutes, they were on their way again. They spent the day collecting data such as land surveys, sketches, barometric, temperature readings listings of forest and Flora, excuse me, in Fauna Only stop for a few minutes to eat some biscuits for lunch. They would walk up to twelve hours a day Shortly before sundown, they would stop and set up camp For dinner they'd have powdered soup supplemented with random animal meat from whatever they had managed to hunt in the jungle They ate armadillos Stingrays, turtles, anacondas, rats, monkeys Fawet wrote monkeys are looked on as good eating Their meat tastes rather pleasant But at first the idea revolted me. becausecause when stretched over a fire to burn off the hair, they look so horribly human At night they were swarm by mosquitoes and small black blood sucking flies called peums which are not deterred by netting. Fawcet wrote or at least not by their ning Foszet wrote The the PM settled on us in clouds. We were forced to close both ends of the boat's palm leaf shelter with mosquito nets and use head veils as well. Yet in spite of that, our hands and faces were soon a mass of tiny itching blood blisters Fun. Oh man, what a fun trip. If this a vacation, I would w want to fucking literally murder my travel agent. The Menov Inci were able to recognize different insects, just by the sounds of their wings rubbing together sixix months into the expedition. Most of the dudes were sick. They experienced fever, thirst, headaches body aches, most likely d to malaria or yellow fever And then one morning, Fawett discovered a trail of footprints and realized that the group of that a group of indigenous people had been tracking them Foster and his men were, of course, nervous But he made them agree that they would not shoot at any indigenous people under any circumstances When the RGS learned about Fawet's instructions, one member warned that his method would be court assassination Fawcett conceded that his approach was risky but it was the only way a small, easily outnumbered group could show friendly intentions That night it was difficult for everybody to get some sleep, knowing they were being watched But they weren't attacked On another day, they came upon a series of river rapids. One of their crew members went inland to look for a way around them. hours passed with no word Fawett and several others events she went looking for the missy man. They found him. But he wasn't doing great he had forty two arrows, literally forty two different arrows st ticen out of his body fucking bone air with the fuck out of him as they drifted down river another day They spotted a group of indigenous people in the river bank Their bodies were painted all over Their ears had pendulous lobes Qills were thrust from side to side to their nostrils He wanted to make contact with them, but his men were paddling away from them was the right call The group fired a bunch of arrows at the boats One he went through the side of Percy's boat, strong as arrow but they did escape with the help of some rapids Soon after that, Fawett's right hand man Chivers had a full on nervous breakdown. Can you blame him? there're in hell after his breakdown Fawcett sent Shivvers and several others back to the Amazon F frrontier likeike back back to the part where they they came from where there was actually some talents Soon after that, two of Fos' men died from fever By that point, Fawcett was missing his family badly. He had missed the birth of his second son Brian. He was tempted to give up but he was still in good health compared to the rest of his men and still determined to complete the mission. Fawett Willis the Cook, his interpreter, they continued on and soon incredibly, they did finish surveying the border between Bolivia and Brazil In May of nineteen oh seven, FawSet presented his findings to the South American Boundary Commission and the RGS According to author David Gran, quote, he had redefined the borders of South America And he had done it nearly a year ahead of schedule Uh And then despite The horrors of what he had just been through It didn't take him long to return to the jungle. The next time, Fawcet tried to persuade his new second command, Frank Fisher, to explore the Rio Vverde on the Brazilian and Bolivian border forty one year old Fisher was an engineer, a member of the RGS He was hesitant to explore the Rio Verde because the South American Boundary Commission had not contacted them to do so They were instead tasked with surveying a region in southwest Brazil near Carumba Excuse me, now a city of about one hundred thousand people, then just a few thousand Fawett insisted on mapping the river in addition to the region near the city, a river that was so unexplored, no one even knew its source. Fisher and seven others or with Fisher and seven others. they set out from Kurumba heading four hundred miles northwest before traveling down the river on some rafts. Two ras. They passed the Ricardo Franco Hills three thousand feet high sandstone plateaus wrote Time and the foot of man had not touched those summits They stood like a lost world forested to their tops. And the imagination could picture the last vestiges of an age long vanished Eventually the river rapids became impassable forcing the crew to follow the river on foot They can only bring a few days of rations with them and would have to live off the land. for most of their sustance Now The jungle was so thick that he advanced no more than half a mile a day Pear God They were out of food by the ninth day on this on foot leg of the expedition. food turned out to be extremely difficult to find A Fawet wrote starvation sounds almost unbelievable in forest country And yet it is only too likely to happen All they could find were handfuls of nuts and palm leaps Fishing was unsuccessful The men wanted to turn back, but Fasa was determined to find the source of the Ro Vverde pushing ahead, things quickly went from bad to worse The men got so thirsty they held their mouth open when it rained, trying to catch a few drops of water. Then Fisher was infected by some kind of poisonous ant bite Uh that en a tree fell on one member of the expedition, nearly killed him, forcing others to carry his supplies. Al almost a month later, the men reached what appea to be the source of the river. Even though he was so weak, he could barely move his limbs, Fawcet took measurements anyway The partarty success photo shows a group of very thit, very haggard looking dudes Fos has struggled to find a way back at one point accidentally ended up on the edge of a cliff He wrote, how long could we carry on was a vital question Unless food was obtained soon, we would soon beble too feeble to make our way out by any route They'd gone for over a month with almost no food and were starving to death. Food consumed their thoughts. They were irritable, weak paranoid confused. Some of them develop fevers Fawcet fearing a mutiny ordered Fisher to collect everyone's guns One man tried to give up and begged Fawcett to just leave him to die Fawett end up helding or ended up holding him at knife pointint forcing him to keep walking Many of the men were so weak that they stopped swatting at the bugs. They constantly pessered them Keeping watch for hostile tribes Foss explained that, quote, in ambush. In spite of its moment of terror and agony, it quickly is quickly over And if we regard these matters in a reasonable way, It would be considered merciful P shit Several days later they came upon a deer in the forest. Fawett had just one shot at it and fucking nailed it meat restored their strength. Well, it restored strength for some of them Some of them are too weak to eat and five of them die By the time Fosa returned to La Paz, Bolivia, he resembled a living skeleton But he sent a triumphant telegram to the RGS saying Heel Verde cononquered Fasa returned to England at the end of nineteen oh seven, relieved to be home He wrote I wanted to forget atrocities to put slavery, murder, and horrible disease behind me And to look again at respectable old ladies whose ideas of vice ended with the indiscretions of so and so's housemates I wanted to listen to the everyday chit chat of the village Parson Discuss the uncertainties of the weather with the Yoklals pick up the daily paper on my breakfast plate. I want it in short to be just ordinary. as though South America had never been. And yet Fawcett soon could not ignore the growing urge to explore there again. He wrote, Deep down inside me, a tiny voice was calling. At first scarcely audible, it persisted until I could no longer ignore it. It was the voice of the wild places, and I knew that it was now part of me forever inexplicably, amazingly, I knew I love that hell Fiendish grasp had captured me And I wanted to see it again Dude loved a challenge. Maybe it was a little bit of a Masochists loved to face almost insurmountable adversity to see if he could, you know, surmount what few others could Um I mean, I get it. you know, sometimes Even after a real ass womoppon, like even after being like the first kill I'll play Fortnite again. L like right away And that's kind of the same thing, right? prettytty much almost A few months later, Foset was back on the move, and over the next decade and a half, he would explore thousands of square miles of the Amazon and help map South America further He was away from home most of that time. wife Nina lived, quote, a very uncertain and lonely life without private means miserably poor, especially with children whole family sacrificing for his obsession. The longer Fauccet spent home, the more restless he became. His son Brian later admitted in his diary, I felt relieved when he was out of the way Sounds like he was a better explore than he was a dad or a husband most of the time Nina supported the family with Fawet's six hundred pound annual salary from the Boundary Commission wasn't exactly a fortune. She was forced to move often to find cheaper rent Fos's daughter Joan was born in nineteen ten in the midst of his expeditions There were times when Nina expressed interest in accompanying her husband on an expedition, but Fawcett never agreed to take her Still she learned how to read the stars and kept herself in good health in casey ever asked She also encouraged Joan to keep herself in shape as well Nina once wrote to Sir John Scott Keltty, former secretary of the RGS and a close supporter of Fawcet Someday perhaps she is in Joan may win the laurels of the Royal Geographical Society as a lady geographer. and so fulfill the ambition that her mother has striven for in vain so far It only later recalled about her memories of her father's visits home Daddy gave us a tremendous amount of fun because he didn't realize the danger. He was always encouraging us to climb across roofs and up trees. Once I fell on the cervical vertebrae of my neck, that cost me a fortnight in bed with high delirium and unconscious. Since I had that accident, my neck has always been slightly stopped Fawcet' oldeston Jack idolized his father, wanted to be just like him. Fawcet was proud and boasted that Jack was fascinated by his tales of adventure When he was home, the two would go hiking, sailing, and play cricket together In nineteen ten, when Jack was sent to boarding school, Fawet wrote his son a poem titled going to school. Never forget us, brave little man, mother and father trust in you Be brave as a lion, yet kind, returning, ready to fight in a verse to wrong. Never forget you're a gentleman and never a fear you'll do Life is short and the world is wide Were just ripple on life's great pool Enjoy your life to the best you can all will help to enrich the span But never forget you're a gentleman And the time will come when we all with pride will think of your days at school. He probably knew how to write it better than I just did. probably made it flow better. So, you know, we could be a pretty solid debt It's not traditional In a letter to Nina, Fawcett wrote about Jack's future, describing his son as, quote, a leader of men I think possibly an orator Always an independent, lovable, erratic personality, which may go far bundle of nerves, inexhaustible, nervous energy, a boy of boys, capable of extreme, sensitive and proud, the child we long for, and I think, born for some purpose as yet obscure As the years pass, Fawcet' renown gre Although he did not have one single massive achievement, like reaching the summit of Mount Everest or or the Pes He had mapped as much of Amazonia as any other explorer One reporter called Fawcett, probably the world's foremost expert on South America His accomplishments occurred at a time when England was worried about the state of the emmpire and the manliness of their next generation press raved about Fawcett's accomplishments, portraying him as an ultra masculine hero One newspaper reported the lure of the wild. has not lost its power upon men of the fearless and resourceful type, represented by major fauccets In early nineteen eleven, Fawcett dozens of scients explorer attended Fawcet's lecture. before the RGS Leonard Darwin, the society's president at that time, described how Faucet mapped unexplored regions and demonstrated that there was a place on Earth where the explorer can go forth and exhibit perseverance, energy courage, forethought, and all those qualities, which go to make up the qualities of an explorer of the times now passing away presented slide showing photos of the Amazon and sketches of his maps. He told the Eager crrowd, What I hope is that the publicity of these explorations may attract other adventurous spirits into this neglected part of the world But it should be remembered that the difficulties are great and the tales of disasters al long run For the few remaining unknown corners of the world exact a price for their secrets Without any desire whatever for self glorification I can vouch for it that it requires a great enthusiasm to successfully bridge year after year, the wide gulf which lies between the comforts of civilization and the very real risks and penalties which dog every footstep in the unexplored forests of this still little known continent. One Bolivian emissary in attendance, set of faucets map of South America I must tell you that it is owing to Major Fawet's bravery that this has been accomplished If we had a few more men like him I'm sure there would be not a single corner of the unexplored regions Faucet had taken on a legendary status. What some explorers took years to do, Fawucet had accomplished in months He rarely got sick. There was actually some speculation that he had superior physiology and immunity from tropical disease Faoscett himself said he had a quote, perfect cononstitution. Not only was he extremely disease resistant, but he also had hed senses that allowed him to avoid predators Fawcett wr once wrote an encounter with a pit viper in his journal Writing what amazed me more than anything was the warning of my subconscious mind. and the instant muscular response I had not seen it tntill it flashed between my legs, but the inner man, if I can call it that, not only saw it in time, but judged its striking height and distance exactly, and issued commands to the body accordingly Fawcett's RGS colleague, William Barkclay, noted that over the years, Fawcett developed. the conviction that no danger could touch him and the belief that his actions and happenings were f ordained Although Fossa possessed extreme determination, strength and resistance to exhaustion and disease, he was also difficult to work with He would not let anything or any one stand in the way of his goal He was very loyal to those who could keep up with them, but if they could not, he despised them. their illness, their death, just confirm their cowardice to him personality was actually partially to blame for a disastrous nineteen eleven expedition For that one, he was paired with James Murray, a polar scientist. They were tasked with exploring hundreds of miles of jungle surrounding the Heath River along Bolivia's northwestern border with Peru with the goal of mapping the region and studying the wildlife and inhabitants there Murray had been born in Glasgow, Scotland in eighteen sixty five son of a grocer. but this young man became fascinated by the recent discovery of microscopic organisms With a microscope and a specimen jar, he turned himself into a mostly self taught expert in that field Murray was enlisted in Ernest Shackleton's famous Arctic expedition where he conducted recordings of marine biology He and Fawett had met each other for the first time in September of nineteen eleven when Murray arrived in San Carlos, a littleittle outpost on the Bolivian Peruvian border Although Fossa declared in a letter to the RGS that Murray is an admirable man for the job Each man a man had underlying biases about each other FossA believed exploring that the exploring the Amazon was much more difficult and of more scientific importance than any polar exploration He also resented that polar explorers were more popular with the public and with investors Murray felt certain that his expedition with Shackleton made him essentially superior to Fawcet These two men were joined by British corporal, Henry Coston, who responded to Fawet's newspaper ad. and Henry Manley, a twenty six year old Englishman who listsed his profession as explorer despite a lack of experience They were also accompanied by a handful of indigenous porters Heroic anonymous men whose names sadly were never recorded in history books adventures in their own right though And now before diving into this disastrous expedition, Time for today's second of two Mid Show sponsor break Hey, this is Jeff Lewis from Radio Andy, Live and Uncensored, catch me talking with my friends about my latest obsessions, relationship issues, and bodily ailments. 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Hope you heard some deals you liked And now let's returned to the fall of nineteen eleven The expedition prepared to depart the outpost on october fourth, nineteen eleven to begin the journey north along the banks of the Heaths River Alivian officer warned Fawcett that he should not go this way because the local guuarayo people in the region were known to attack outsiders But FOSA would not be deterred The expedition would be a battle against nature from the very beginning. ne night Marie woke up to a swarm of vampire bats. attacking their pack animals. He wrote about this saying several mules with ugly wounds and streaming with blood As they were passing up the animals, the men were also attacked by the vampire bats. Their wounds bled heavily, and according to Fawcett, we woke to find our hammocks saturated with blood For any part of our persons touching the mosquito nets or protruding beyond them, we're attacked by these loathsome animals P pack animals struggle to the difficult terrain And they were low in fucking blood They were forced to quickly abandon them, taking only a pair of dogs Each man carried a packet of supplies, that weighed about sixty pounds And Fawcetted Murray to carry one extra item for him, his gold sifting pan Murray struggled with the weight of his pack You need to stop for rest often FaosA would be forced to have a porter help him along And then Murray fell behind while ascending a summit and lost track of the group for a little while He continued along the river as far as he could. When he sat down to rest his aching feet, he removed his boots and socks and peeled off some of the skin from his ankles I love watching movies like Indiana Jones as a kid, but in real life, get the fuck out of here All Marie had to eat was a pound of homemade caramels. Nina Fawett had prepared for the entire group Murray ate half of the box after taking off his fucking ankle skin wasashed wasash down all that candy with river water Oh my god. all those parasites and bacteria, I'm sure he feelelt great They smoked a few cigarettes and passed the fuck out The group found him in the morning, Fawcett reprimanded him for his slowness, but Murray continued to fall behind after this He became so beaten and demoralized he gave up on conducting any scientific work Tensions rose higher and higher. Murray became a bit afraid of Fauccet. whose disposition had become harder every year he' spent in the jungle Foset once wrote in his private papers Civilization has a relatively precarious hold upon us, and there is an undoubted attraction in a life of absolute freedom once it has been tasted The callall of the Wild is in the blood of many of us and finds its safety valve and adventure Now he loved the shit. Fosa believed that they would make no progress with Murray And he also came to believe Murray was stealing from them Some of the communal provisions were decreasing at a suspicious rate. So Faostet confronted Murray about the theft And Murray was indignant. He wrote, Told them what I had eaten. It seems my honorable course would have been to starve. But then not long after that confrontation, Henry Cost in comomorate with the communal maze. they'd been saving up for later in the trip Murray claimed it was a surplus from his personal supplies Fawcett now ordered that because Murray had stolen it, he would not be allowed to eat any bread they were going to make from that maze thenen Uh Murrie got malaria And Costing got something worse called Asspundia. some nasty affliction caused by a parasite transmitted by sandflies. It destroys the flesh around the mouth, nose and limbs. So that's fun Then one of Murray's fingers grew in flamame after brushing against a poisonous plant And his fingernail fell off And then his hand developed a quote very sick, deep, separnating or suurating wound These all these old timey words. He was then afflicted with a horrific bout of diarrhea It gets worse, so much worse. Before he'd recovered from his diarrhea and all this other shit diary he probably got from drinking that river water Murray woke up one day to find literal maggots crawling in his knee and arm. Oh my go. And not cowling like on his skin, like into his skin He tried to poison the maggots with substances like nicotine, mercury, chloride kind of a anon of potash. Some of the worms died, others started to rot. someome of them Some of them grew up to an inch long an occasion would poke out of his body. This is unreal. He's like a walking corpse. Fasa was as expected, unaffected He did did almost. he did find a couple maggots under his skin. Uh But he didn't poison them, like Murray. I guess he was just like, fuck you maggots, goo ahead and eat on me and his wounds remained uninfected Crazy badard probably thought of probably thought of these maggazs as like his new pets, you know, his new travel companions. Oh look at these little guys. That's cute despite their miserable state and the loss of both dogs to being eaten by a fucking puma They continued the mission Mury came to believe that Fawcett had zero empathy for anybody else A L little bit of a sociopath. Faoset didn't give a fuck what he thought and refused to slow down despite all the illnesses Eventually at one point Muray refused to carry Fosett's gold washing pan anymore and just fucking dumped it along with most of his possessions including his hammock and clothing Mur's not doing well This miserable bastard After dumping all this shit, he had toleep on the ground now, and bugs were justrawling all over him every night, fucking more maggots probably And then then his entire body swoll up And he has puss and worms all over him and gang green Iention he has some gang green. He smelled horrific Flies were constantly swarming around him as if he were already dead. Acording to author David Gran, with a route not even half done The moment had arrived that FawA had warned every expedition member of. Were he too sick to carry on would be abandoned Fawett discussed Murray's abandonment with both Coston and Manley Murray later reflected There was a curious discussion camp tonight I just picture this guy I sittit there with the fucking swarm of flies around him, Maggots crawl in and out of his, you know, swollen skin. L literally looks like a fucking zomb Listening to people talk about abandoning him He said there was a curious discussion in camponight on the question of my abandonment. when traveling in the uninhabited forest without other recourses that you carry with you. every man realizes that if he falls sick can't keep up with others, he must take the consequences The others can't wait and die with him This calm and mission of the willingness to abandon me was a queer thing to hear from an Englishman Although it did not surprise me as I had gaued his character long before Ultimately Fawsa decided to diver the mission to get Murray to the nearest settlement Coston esorted a delirious murie. I can't believe he's able to travel still until they came across a frontiersman who promised to carry him back to civilization. Coston told Murray he hoped any harsh words would be forgotten Also warned Murray that his infected knee was worse than he thought. The memory gathered that Costinon and the others fully expected him to die I can'tve he didn't die Fawucet ml and cost contined the jungle A month later when they finally emerged in the jungle in a little village in the region of Cohata, Peru They had received no word of Murray Once he was back in La Paaz, after completing yet another expedition, Fawett sent a letter to the RGS informing them that Murray was probably dead U no. Now he was actually alive and furious after more than a week The frontiersman who took him in his mule. had taken Mary to an outpost along the border of Bolivia and Peru. this outpost was nothing more than a single house But there, a man named Sardon and his family somehow nursed that fucker back to health They removed the macketets from his body drained his sores of infection Then when he was strong enough, they didn't even lose a limb. They put him on a mule, sent him to L Paz, he arrived there at the beginning of nineteen twelve And then Murray accused Faws of trying to murder him 't maintain this, he wrote Everything that could humanely speaking be done for him was done Strictly speaking, he owed his condition to unsanitary habits. insatiability for food and excessive partiality for strong liquor all of which are suicidal in such places. I have little sympathy for him He knew to a detail what he would have to put up with and that on such journeys of a pioneering character illness, suchuch on Sorry, the way these fuckers right U Oh my God, he knew to a detail what he would have to put up with and that on such journeys of a pioneering character They don't use fucking comas like they're supposed to. Illness and accidents cannot be allowed to jeopardize the safety of the party Everyone who goes with me understands that much clearly beforehand That was a really, uh a thoughtful way of being like, now he's a fucking bitch he's fucking weak. Fuck is Actic explorations. You can't handle this shit. Well, the RGS declared that Fawcet did what he could for Murray under the circumstances and asked him to quietly put the matter to restst before it became his scandle It is not clear whether Fwett ever apologized to Murray or vice versa. I doubt it. The full details of the feud were never made public Henry Costin eventually recovered his health, despite being a quote, dreadful sight when he returned. And he would even decide to go back into the Amazon Faucet Murray was of course fucking dut He want to go back to the Arctic And in June of nineteen thirteen, at the age of forty nine, he joined a Canadian expedition. Six weeks later, his ship got stuck in a bunch of ice. guy was fucking doom Uh, Murray had helped lead a mutiny against a capt And then he and his faction escappe with some sleds where they disappeared and likely froze to death They were never seen again. The only subsequent hint of their fate was a sailor scarf belonging to one of them, seamman Stanley Morris later found buried in an ice floe strongly, strongly assume that they died and horribly so Ben Murray lastast few years of his life were brutal By this point in the timeline, you might be wondering where where the fuck is the Lost city of Zee? When does that come in how did Fawcett come to believe in the ancient city hidden in the Amazon Well, according to David Gran There was no epiphany, no bolt of lightning rather theory developed over time, with a clue here and a clue there and fits and starts and with unexpected turns, the trail of evidence reaching as far back as his days in Sealon at Fort Frederick Fawcett at first learned that it was possible for a great kingdom to seclude itself in the jungle, and, after time had taken its in inextorable toll palaces and thoroughfares to vanish under creeping vines and roots but the notion of Z A lost civilization concealed in the Amazon began truly to take hold when Faoswet encountered the hostile Indians he had been warned to avoid at all costs backack in nineteen ten Fos and Henry Coston and sever oers have been exploring the Heath River, when they were attacked with poisonous arrows He pulled the boat to the opposite bank, ordered his men to drop the rifles. The assault continued. Fawcett then instructed one of his men to start playing the accordion Okay to further show their peaceful intentions. Well, that's random The accordion fuck did they bring accordion on that expedition for this very purpose Is that really going to soothe anybody? Do you feel soothed right now Fawett ordered the rest of the party Wh the according was being played. Uh, you know, people who are fearing certain death, to start singing the soldiers of the Queen Another interesting choice It sons once did loyally declaim the the way. What' you guys singing this? while, someomebody else like name name When singing of a soldiers' breraak. I mean, I'm sure they played a different melody, but still Fawset then took off the handkerchief around his neck, waded out into the river, waving it over his head as a peace flag Over the years, he had picked up a few pieces of indigenous dialects He called out the word friend over and over. He said friend, friend, friend As you cross the river, Not even totally sure if he was speaking the right language It worked The arrow ceased A man appeared from behind a tree Ooppt out, paddle over to faucet in a raft. Fawset use signs to indicate he wanted to be taken across He was escorted to the other side of the river, led out into the forest. hisis party feared he was killed he emerged back out of the forcest about an hour later withithout his Stetson gun He had befriended a group of Gorayu people known to attack trespassers He wrote in a dispatch They helped us to make camp, remaining in it all night and giving us yuccca, bananas, fish, necklaces, parrots, and in fact all they had Fossa was surprised that the group had such substantial food source Stores, he observed that the indigenous people knew how to use the deadly force plants as medicine They knew which plant could lure fish to the surface and poison them while posing no risk to humans or to the water supply They use the same poison as a cure for toothaches Fosi concluded that the Auarayus were a most intelligent race of people. After his nineteen ten expedition, Fawcett came to believe that the indigenous people of the Amazon held secrets that have been overlooked by Western historians So we started to seek out other tribes for more info in nineteen eleven Fawcett resigned from the South American Boundary Commission to pursue anthropological inquiries in the region You developed a signature approach for interacting with tribes He would walk slowly towards them with his hands outstretched, his palms open. We traveled in small parties, you know with no armed soldiers to seem less hostile And for the most part that worked. One day while staying with a group of EhA people in the Bolivian region of the Amazon Fosit observed that they too had a stockpile of food They developed medicinal herbs and treatments to protect themselves in the jungle. had a special way of removing those nasty maggots According to Fawet They would make a curious whistling noise with their tongues and at once the grub's head would issue from the blowhole Then the Indian would give the Sar a quick squeeze, and the invader would be ejected Faosett also said F fucking maggots cral in your skin is so horrific. Fawett also said, with illness and disease so prevalent, it is no wonder that herbal remedies are used. It seems as though every disorder has its appropriate nature cure Of course, the medical profession does not encourage people to make use of them, yet the cures they affect are often remarkable. And I speak as one who has tried several with complete success That's awesome Like many explrs of the time, Fawet wondered did indigenous people ever build large settlements in Amazon? Al Foset found another piece of evidence, bolstering his belief in Z in nineteen fourteen He was traveling with Henry Coston and Henley u Henry Manley In the Brazilian Amazon, far from major rivers And they came upon a large clearing in the jungle. in that clearing They found a whole bunch Dinosaur bones. Dinosaur bones. Yeah. We want to see them. Dinosaur bones. Yeah, whereere can we see them No, Souly no. But did it find a bunch of dome shaped houses? made of thatch? That's cool Esestimated this summer' seventy feet high, one hundred feet wide. Nearby were gardens of maze, yuccca, bananas, sweet potato There didn't seem to be anyone else around, but Costin found an elderly woman cooking over a fire inside one of the houses drawn inside for the smell of the food, followed by Fawcett and Manley. The men motioned to their stomachs. The woman she just handed them bowls of food Then as they were eating They found themselves surrounded by men Fawcet wrote they slipped by various entrances not previously noticed. And through the doorway beside us, we could see the shadows of Mormon outside Fawcett removed his handkerchief and instructed Coston to give the tribe something. Caa made the mistake of presenting and striking a match. After a brief moment of panic, Fawcet presented a necklace A member of the tribe handed them a gourd full of nuts for the necklace And that was the beginning of their friendly relations Fawcett had befended a previously unknown tribe that Fawcett classified as the Makushi He'd also discovered that the village was surrounded by more settlements home to thousands of people. FaS' discovery prompted the president of the American Geographical Society to proclaim we do not know of anything so amazing in the history of recent exploration Fawett noticed that in the regions far from the major rivers, away from travelers and rubber trade and slavers, tribes were both healthier and larger She thought that the Makushi people had a sophisticated culture that made pottery had names for the planets. beautiful mus Fawcett wrote, in the utter silence of the forest, when the first light of day had stilled the night longong uproar of insect life. These hymns impressed us greatly with their beauty Many of the tribes faucen encountnered, like the Makkushi had legends of larger and more beautiful settlements Fawcett noticed other clues, hinting at a lost civilization paintings and carvings of human and animal figures on rocks throughout the jungle He'd also found shards of ancient pottery in the soil in places where there was no human life for hundreds of miles He noticed that wherever there was a high ground above the plains, he found artifacts between the summits were geometrically aligned paths that look like roads or causeways As Fossso was developing his theory of a lost ancient civilization the Amazon, he was also aware of competition from other explorers who were surveying the last of this uncharted land FosA's biggest rival was Alexander Hamilton Rice an American doctor who trained at the RGS. Rice had graduated from Harvard Medical School in nineteen oh four, was interested in tropical diseases, which had led him to the Amazon During FOSA's nineteen oh seven expedition Rice was traveling over the Andes with amateur archaeologist H Hiram Bingham. Dr. Rice descended into the basin to search for the source of several rivers and study indigenous inhabitants Realizing he lacked technical training, Rice enrolled in the RGS' School of Astronomy and Survey graduated in nineteen ten, returned to explore the Amazon Basin Unlike Fawucet, Dr. Rice was said to be calm and precise He assembled large teams, not small ones, secured the best gear and technology available He once performed emergency surgery on an indigenous woman who had a liver abscess and saved her life The RGS noted that the procedure was probably the first surgical operation under chloroform carried out in this primeval wilderness Uh Fawcet was aware that Rice had far more money than he did, Rice was the wealthy grandson of a former mayor of Boston and governor of Massachusetts. also married Eleanor Widner, the wealthy widow of a Philadelphia business tycoon With millions of dollars at his disposal, Rice and his wife helped finance a new lecture hall at the RGS. Faucet and Rice kept an eye on each other, guarded the routes closely for fear of being beaten to a discovery. Another explorer whose arrival of faucets was Brazilian Colonel Candidro Mariano D Silva Rndon partially indigenous We first heard of Ron Don when he accompanied Theodore Roosevelt during his expedition Rundon had helped lay telegraph lines across parts of the jungle, had started the Indian Protection Service. Foswett expressed his admiration of Rondon, but was also distrustful of him and felt he sacrificed too many lives by traveling in too big a parties Rond Don did not understand why Fawcett resisted taking Brazilian soldiers on expeditions Fawcett had told the RGS he preferred Englishmen owing to greater powers of endurance and enthusiasm for adventure Fawet word to Dr. Rice might be on the same trail as him for the lost city of Z nineteen eleven, the world was shocked Hram Bingham, with the aid of a Puian guy discovered the rus of Machu Picu in the Andes And what a fucking cool thing to discover or guess, you know, rediscover h I'm lucky enough to have I traveled to Macho Pico and it is incredible FSA began searching for scrolls that recounted the early conquistadoreas journeys of the Amazon. By the early twentieth century, most historians and anthropologists had dismissed the Legend of Elldorado And a lot of what the conquistadores or conquistadores claim to have seen in their journeys, some scholars believe the tales were caused by imaginations gone wild. or embellished to please monarchs and excuse their disastrous expeditions Fawett also believes that the legend of El Dorado specifically was an exaggerated romance. but he did not completely dismiss the possibility of a lost ancient civilization He noted that the Dominican friar Gaspard de Carvajal who accompanied Francisco de Oriana down the Amazon was a respected priest, and his account was confirmed by others in the expedition Fawett had encountered female chiefs in the Amazon, which went along with early accounts of female warriors written by Oriana According to David Grnd, during Facet' era the banks the Amazon River and its major tributaries contain little more than small scattered tribes They can K to Dores, however uniformly reported vast and dense indigenous populations. Caraall had noted that some places were so thickly populated that it was dangerous to sleep on land When Oriana and his men went ashore, they saw many roads and fine highways leading into the interior Some of which were like Royal highighways in Wider The account seemed to describe what Fawcet had seen, only on a much grander scale When the Spanards invaded one village, Carvahhall said they discovered a great quantity of maize. and there was also found great quantity of oat. F which the Indians make bread and very good wine resembling beer And this is to be had in great A plenty. There was found in this village, a dispensing place for this wine, and there was found a very good quality of cotton goods Villages overflowed with cassavas, yams, beans and fish. and there were thousands of turtles cultivated in pens for food The Amazon seems to sustain large civilizations and highly complex ones The Conquistadors observed cities that glistened in white, with temples, public squares, palisade walls with exquisite artifacts The failure of Victorian explorers and ethnographers to find any similar settlements reinforced the belief that the Conquistadori's accounts were full of lies As one historian had early described Carverhall's report Why had so many of the Chroniclers provided such similar testimony, Fawcet wondered. He speculated that small poox and other diseases had wiped out millions of people in South America just like it had in North America And, you know, perhaps a natural disaster caused, you know, the collapse of some civilizations as well He believed that the Amazon contained the greatest secrets of the past yet preserved in our world of today There was also a manuscript that Fawcett considered the final evidence, the big smoking gun he needed. for the reality of the Losity of Z. Manuscript five twelve. which is a store in Brazil's national liibrary. The document is titled historical acccount of a large, hidden and very ancient city discovered in the year seventeen fifty three authorship is unknown Some believe it was written by a Portuguese explorer. Zao de Silva Gimar ees Mar. In eighteen thirty nine, naturalist Manuel Ferrera Lagos found the docent in the library's collection. Author Did Gran traveled to the National Library with no guarantee to be given access to the fragile document But the head of the manuscript division allowed him to see it A librarian who spoke English helped him to translate the document. The writer described how he and his men incited by the insatiable greed of gold, set out into Brazil in search of treasure After a long and troublesome journey, and almost lost, for many years, we discovered a chain of mountains so high that they seem to reach the ethereal regions and they served as thrones for the wind or for the stars themselves Eventually, they found a path to the mountains that appeared intentional, not created by nature At the top of the path, they witness the ruins of ancient city They found the stone archways, a statue, roads and a temple. The ruins well showed the size and grandeur which must have been there populous and opulent it had been in the age when it flourished Upon his return to civilization, the explorer sent the document to his viceeroy urged him to dispatch an expedition to find the city It is not known what happened with the report or if the explorer tried to reach the city again. And obviously humanif f can you know, made make all that shit up Well, Fawcett came across his manuscript while doing some research the National Library of Brazil. Grant noted that there are hieroglyphics written the bottom of the manuscript The exxplorer had observed these images carved into ruins and they were identical to some drawings in Fawcett's diaries, meaning he copied them after viewing this document After consulting archival records and interviewing tribes, FSA believed that a large city And possibly some descendants of its former residents was in the jungle surrounding the Jingu iver In the Brazilian state of Matagrasu this was Percy's Lost city of Ze Temember of nineteen fourteen now After completing a reconnaissance trip with his royal followers, Manley and Coston, Fawett felt ready to launch a big expedition specifically to find Z. However, when he emerged from the jungle He learned that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated marking the start of World War I. patriotic dude, fawets set sail for England. Though he was now forty seven years old, he felt compelled to volunteer to fight His wife must have been like, Are you fucking kidding me? You can't just stay home for a little while after briefly visiting his family He made his way to the Western Front, where he would serve as a major in the Royal Field Artillery. He was placed in charge of a battery of more than a hundred men Fawcett who was used to the struggles of the jungle was excellent at holding his position in the trenches The dude was a fucking beast Some of Fos's men were drawn to him his leadership style Others despised him, found him unforgiving A twenty two year old secondecond Lieutenant Cecil Eric Lewis Lynn recalled that Fawcett was, quote, one of the most colorful personalities I've ever encountered. and a man of magnificent physique and great technical ability. Another officer wrote that Foset quote was probably the nastiest man I've ever met in my life And his dislike of me was only exceeded by my dislike of him Polarizing du January of nineteen sixteen, FosSa was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel putut in command of a brigade of more than seven hundred men He tried to keep informed of Amazonian expeditions while engaging in battle. He received a notice of expeditions led by the Americans who were not yet involved in the war. This intensified his fear that somebody was going to discover Z before him He was also offended when in nineteen fourteen, the RGS had presented his rival, doror Rice with a gold medal for his quote, meritorious work on the headwaters of the Oranoco and the Northern tributaries of the Amazon And by early nineteen sixteen, Rice was preparing another expedition an RGS bulletin announced that Rice would ascend the Amazon in the Rio Negro with a quote view to still further extend our knowledge of the region previously explored by him That spring, Fosser received a letter from the RGS informing him that he had also been awarded a gold medal in honor of his mapping in South America He received the Founder' medal h Rice had received the Patrononss medal They both were equal in prestige. And so now, you know, he's He's feeling better about it all. Nina Fawcet wrote that receiving this medal was the dream of her husband's life. Man, Dude had so much passion for exploration Foset obtained leave to attend the award presentation on may twenty second. After the ceremony, he returned to the frontlines. He received orders that the British commommand was launching an assault With the goal of ending the war, what would become known as the Battle of the Song. In early July of nineteen sixteen, Fawcett and his men took a position along a river in northern France. providing covers thousands of soldiers climbed up the trench walls and marched ono the battlefield Fawcett witnessed German gunners emergge from holes unleash machine gun fire on the British soldiers. He could do nothing to protect the men walking to their deaths A acccording to David Gran, no force of nature in the jungle had prepared him for this man made onslaught Bs of letters and photographs that men had carried into battle fluttered over their corpses like snow The wounded crawled into shellholds, shrieking Fawcett called it Armagedd On the first day of the offensive, almost twenty thousand British soldiers died and nearly another forty thousand were wounded sixty thousand in one day The greatest loss of life in British military history Fawcet, quoting a friend, wrote that cannibalism, quote, at least provides a reasonable motive for killing a man which is more than you can say for civilized warfare. On january fourth, nineteen seventeen, the London Gazette reported Fwett had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order Medal for his battlefield leadership and heroics In total, over one hundred and thirty RGS members died in that war. Percy was lucky enough not to be one of them In March of nineteen seventeen, Nina Faostet informed the RGS that her husband had been gassed After Christmas in nineteen sixteen the man who was thought to be invincible had been injured Fawcett suffered lasting effects from the poison but would eventually recover He also suffered long term psychological damage According to David Gran, when he visited home on leave, He often sat for hours without speaking Holding his head in his hands He sought solace in spiritualism and occult rituals offered a way to communicate with missed loved ones Fawcet soon wrote to Arthur Conan Doyle about his experiences with mediums During one Seance, he said his mother spoke through the medium who told him She loved you so as a little boy, and she has remorse for treating you badly She would like to send her love, but fears it might not be accepted Some officers allegge that Fawett used a Ouija board to help make tactical decisions during the war. Captain Henry Harold Hemming wrote in an unpublished memoir, he and his intelligence officer would retire to a darkened room and put their and put their four hands but not their elbows on the board Fawsett would then ask the Ouiji board in a loud voice if this was a confirmed location for the enemy's position. And if the miserable board skidded over in the right direction, not merely would he include it in his list of confirmed locations but often order twenty rounds of nine point two Howitzer to be fired at the place Well, that's intense. Using a ouija board for battlefield decisions. F first time I' ever heard of that one And imagine doing that Imagine imagine doing that in fucking' works. time and time again. Thank you, Saitan for your help loveve work with you buddy Meanwhile Fawcet' obsession with finding and Z had become stronger than ever FosSA was in contact with Costin and Manley throughout the war trying to secure their services in the future alsoso petition the RGS for funding Secretary Sir John Kilty asked Fawcett to be patient Kilty as it was difficult for them to make any promises at that time Fosa complained to guilty nineteen eighteen, I am getting older, and am I dare say impatient of lost years and months On june twenty eighth, nineteen nineteen, Germany signed a peace treaty, in surrender markking the end of the war Foss had returned home to England, saw his wife and children regularly for the first time in years I was shocked by how much a son Jack now sixteen had grown Jacine keeping up with his fitness regime hopes of joining father one day in the jungle which is adorable Jack participated in high jump contests and enjoyed playing cricket Young Jack, despite his athletic prowess, was still awkward around girls, seemed most at ease with his childhood buddy, Raleigh Rimmel Foss' son Brian wrote that Raleigh was born a clown and was the perfect counterpart to the serious jack boys grew up together Uh Saton Dvish Devonsire And Raleigh's father, a Royal Navy surgeon, died of cancer in nineteen seventeen when Raleigh was only fifteen. If Jack wasn't with Raleigh, which was rare, he was with Brian who wasn't like his father and brother Brian was not as athletic and often bullied by other kids. He was also always in Jack's shadow Brian later recalled, att school it was always Jack who distinguished himself in games in fights and by standing up to the severe canings of the headmaster. Fawetted obviiouss preference for Jack. Always wanted to spend time with Jack and praised him as a future explorer Brian once wrote in a letter to his mom, Nina, that at least when Fawcet was away, There were no favorites So that suck while stuck at home, Fawcett never gave up on his pursuit of funding His travel companion Many died of aart heart attack after the war Coston married wanted to settle down Costic confided in his family that Fawet's Achilles heal was that he hated slowing down, and that he needed someone he trusted to tell him when to stop He feared that without him or Manley, no one would be able to hold him back The RGS and several other institutions turned down Fawet's request for funding. post war economy, scientific exploration Just not an immediate priority Additionally, university anthropologists and archaeologists with more specialized specific you know interests were displacing generalized explorers like Fawcett, right? It was the end of an era Times they were a changing as they always are to some extent Most of these specialists disputed Fawet's theory of Z Fosset wrote in his journals, I cannot do scientific men to accept even the supposition that there are traces of an old civilization in the Amazon Most experts at the time believed in environmental terminism and decided that the Amazon was too inhospitable for tribes to construct a sophisticated society The scientific community also discredited FawSsA because of his citation of the early Chronicles of El Dorado One Swedish anthropologist acknowledged that Fawett was, quote, an extremely original man, absolutely fearless but that he had boundless imagination And one RGS official remarked He is a visionary kind of man who sometimes talks Rather nonsense. I do not expect that his going in for spiritualism has improved his judgment Fawcett had a loyal faction of supporters within the RGS, including instructor Edward Reeves and Sir John Kelty In nineteen twenty Fawett moved his entire family to Jamaica. Maybe to be closeer to the Amazon And so his children would have an opportunity to grow up in the viral ambiance of the newew world Jack was not phazed by the move because his buddy Raleigh also moved there with his family after his father died Jack got a job as a cowh on a ranch. Raleigh worked on a united fruit plantation night, the boys plan future treasure hunting adventures. Then in February of nineteen twenty, FSA departed on again for South America in hopes of securing funding from the Brazilian government now His rival, Dr. Rice was already back in the jungle This time on a boat specifically designed to navigate the treacherous Amazon river Rice had also brought with him a wireless telegraphy set An early version of a radio that allowed him to receive news from the outside world. The machine cost about six thousand bucks at the time around one hundred thousand in today's dollars Dr. Rice's expedition discovered a rock formation with paintings similar to the ones Fawet had observed. Also had an encounter with the Uh, Yen a man Yenna And a mama people ' theses a lot of tough words. Dr. Rice differed from Fawcett in his approach to indigenous people, rather than be left to celebrate their own traditions, he believed they should be, quote civilized and converted to Christianity When encountering a group of Yanamama people, Rice presented gifts of knives and mirrors, but his men kept their guns aimed When the Yanamama aimed their bows at Ryice's men, he ordered a warning shot to be fired over their heads The Yonamama then began to shoot arrs at them, one landing by Rice's foot doror Rice gave the command open fire. It is not known how many were killed in the preceding attack. in his report to the RGS, Rice characterized the Yanamama as the aggressors Fawcett appalled, told the RGS that Rice's actions were reprehensible. At the same time, there reports that Rice had found ancient paintings spurred Fauccet into a frenzy of fundraising In Rio, he stayed with British ammbassador, Sir Ralph Pagee. who lobby the Brazilian government on his behalf the RGS, while they had not agreed to give faucet funding, they did write on his behalf to the Brazilian government, noting that it is quite true that he has a reputation of being difficult to get on with But all the same, he has an extraordinary power of getting through difficulties that would deter anybody else On february twenty sixth, Fwett met with President U Epitasio Pazilla And Colonel Candido Rondon Head of the Indian Protectionerv Fosser presented himself as a colonel, even though he ended his service as Lieutenant colonel. The War Office had refused his request to approve his change in rank. But he inflated his rank anyway As recounted by Colonel Rondon, Fawcett made a real case forZ and emphasized that the archeological research would be important for Brazil The president asked Rondon what he thought Rondon suspected that Fawcet may have ulterior motives, like exploiting natural resources for England He was also aware of the rumors that Fawcett was a spy Rondunn argued it was not necessary for foreigners to conduct expeditions presresident Uh promised the British ambassador, He would help though. but did not indicate how exactly Rondon insisted that it was imperative that the search involve a joint Brazilian British expedition. Fawett, his temper rising, announced that he planned to go to alone then The President initially sided with Ron Don said the expedition should include Brazilians Th then economic problems cause the government to withdraw from the expedition. So another roblox E then she Fosa was given enough fundso for a quote bare bones operation. Fawcett had enlisted a British Army officer, who was an RGS member But then that officer backed out at the last minute Fawcet posted an ad in the papers, received a response from Louis Brown, an Australian boxer thirty one year old American ornithologist Ernest Holt They met in Kuyaba, the capital of Matagrasu there in just six years time, the rubber boom town had collapsed Since Faos had been there before, he described Kuuba as impoverished and backwards. It had become a little better than a ghost town While staying there, Fawcet feared that Rondan's men were spying on him to he gathered provisions for his expedition causing him to write his letters in code now. Once their supplies were gathered, the three men, two horses, two oxen and two dogs marched north to the Shingu River. acccording to David Gran, soon after everything began to unravel. Rains flooded their path and destroyed their equipment. Despite his ferocious appearance, suffered a mental breakdown This fucking jungle just breaks people Fawcet, fearing another Murray like disaster, dispatched him back to Kuuba Holt too grew feeble He said that it was impossible to do fieldwork because of the horrific conditions. And he maniacally cataloged the bugs that were attacking him until his diary contained details of almost nothing else What a shit show? While going over all of this initially, I fucking cackled so many times just how brutal this jungle is how just, yeah, just demolish people. Reads like a canampt be tripp into he Fawcett now fifty three years old, also struggling during this expedition, his leg became swollen, infected and painful, making it difficult for him to sleep or fucking hike One night he took an opium pill, hoping for a little bit of relief, but instead it just made him violently ill He wrote it was rather unusual for me to be laid low in this way. And I was heartily ashamed of myself A month into their journey, their animals started to collapse. A maggot infested ox, so many maggots This ox laid down just never got back up Holt shot a starving dog One horse drowned. Another horse just dropped dead from exhaustion The site bec that site where the horse died became known as Dead Horse Camp At one point, Holt knelt down asked Fawcett to let him die Fawcet grew incredibly frustrated, fearing this would be his last opportunity to find Z But he also knew that if he left H, he would truly die He decided they would have to take him back and the trip would be nothing more than a sickening, heartrending failure Fossso was reluctant to admit that his own leg troubles had also made it nearly impossible to proceed In their struggle back to the outpost, they went thirty six hours without water They finally returned to Kuaba in January of nineteen twenty one Candido Rndan was more than pleased to hear about this failure. He published a press release declaring that Colonel Fosset's expedition was abandoned. In spite of all his pride as an explorer, he came back thin, naturally disappointed for having been forced to retreat before entering the hardest part of ingu Fawcett made plans to return with Holt, who is still under contract and who was determined to go through the expedition, despite nearly dying Holt traveled to Rio to get more supplies, Mewhile Fawet analyzed his performance on the expedition, began to suspect he was sending information back to Dr. Rice or another rival though Fawcet sent a message to Holt informing him, quote, Unfortunately, we live in think in different worlds. and to no more mix in oil and water And as the objects of this journey with me come first in personal considerations last, I prefer to finish it alone. than to risk results unnecessarily. was shocked, wrote in his diary After close association with Colel Fawett for a period covering one year I find that the lesson most clearly impressed upon my mind is never again, under any circumstances form any connections with any Englishman whatsoever. For the first time, Fawcett seriously considered his son Jack now as an ideal travel compampaion strong, young and loyal. He believed in Z's existence like his dad did However, he was only eighteen, not quite ready for such a dangerous expedition Fawcett refused to put his mission on pause though to wait for Jack. Instead, he sold half of his military pension to buy provisions and made a new plan. His wife must have wanted to fucking kill him He decided he would travel to Zee from east to west Starting in the Brailian coastal state of Bahia passing where he thought the earlier explorer found the city in eight in seventeen fifty three She would walk hundreds of miles inland towards the jungles of Montagrasso in august nineteen twenty one Fawucet set out into the jungle alone. This dude was as fucking insane as he was tough He wrote loneliness is not intolerable, when enthusiasm for a quest fills the mind. Sure, budd He was hungry. He became very hungry and thirsty Early on in the journey hiss mind began to play tricks on him At one point he thought he saw the shape of the city in the distance, but it was just an optical illusion fuckking mirage brought him by his delirium. This desperate adventure was very short lived. He ran out of supplies after three months. That's still a long time though Force him to either retreat or die After returning from another failed expedition, Fawett headed to Los Angeles, California now, where Nina had moved the family in his absence The Rimels had also moved there. Jack and Raley were living up in Hollywood now That's awesome, hanging around movie sets, trying to land some roles Fos had a proposition for his favorite son, the very thing Jack had longed for, an expedition together by an explorer in recent Sck subject, T. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, had actually volunteered to go with Fawucet But Fosa was reluctant to take him because of his ego and lack of experience specifically in the Amazon. Thats that's a big fuck up, I think. I bet Lawrence would have crushed it Maybe maybe Fawcet would have lived had he brou Lwrence. That guy was a tough motherfucker too. Fawcett instead offered the spot to Jack Warning him it would be difficult and dangerous, a test of faith, courage, and determination Jacksonot hesitates to say yes And Nina had no objections to sending her son into the Amazon. She believed Fawcet's seemingly superhuman survival abilities would also protect Jack and that he posess similar abilities as his father accccording to David Gran, yet her motivation seems to have gone deeper than that. To doubt her husband after so many years of sacrifice was to doubt her own life's work Indeed, she needed Z just as much as he did wanted Raleigh to come with him He needed his best friend on the most important mission of his life Raleigh's mother, Elise was reluctant to allow her youngest son to go, but Raleigh was insistent. He told his older brother Roger he felt unsatisfied and unsaked He thought the expedition would help him earn a pile of dough and find some purpose and meaning Fosset sent word to RGS that he had two travel companions, both strong as horses and keen as mustards But once again, U When he tried to secure funding, it didn't didn't happen His most recent failed expedition had given his critics more ammo Fawcet had no financial backers, very little savings. He was officially bankrupt now In September of nineteen twenty one, finances forced the family to move to Stoke Canon, England, where they rented a small house with no running water No electricity Foscet couldn't afford to send Jack to university. Brian and Jones stopped attending school to do chores and odd jobs Fawet even started to sell family possessions and heirlooms all in excuse me by nineteen twenty three, Fawcett was so poor, he couldot pay his annual three pound membership dues to the RGS Fawet wrote to his confidant,ir John Kelty I wish you would give me the benefit of your advice as to whether I could resign without something in the nature of a scandal for a founder's medalist The fact is that the forst inertia and family going to California have left me on the rocks. I'd hope to weather them But such hope seem to wilt away, and I do not think I can hang on. It is rather a fall from dreams Nina began to grow worried about her husband, telling a friend PHF was the in the lowest depths of despair Brian Fawcett later recalled, My father's impatience to start off on his last trip was tearing at him with ever increasing force fromr reticent, he became almost surly felt that the RGS had turned its back on him. He denounced his enemies at the society. at the society and complained about money wasted on Antarctic expeditions He declared that all the skepticism in Christianom will not budge me an inch for my belief in Z. He was going to see it through somehow or other, even if I have to wait another decade, he said Fosus aroundround himself a spiritualist who confirmed his belief in Zeom One seer told him about a city full of jewels publish essays in journals like Occult Review writing about his quest for the treasures of the invisible world Okay, so it's just getting pretty fucking weird. Fawcett came up with various business schemes and his attempts to raise money for this expedition, including a mine in Brazil, oil prospecting in California. None of that worked out for him told a family friend it seemed as if some evil genius was trying to put every possible obstacle in our way In the spring of nineteen twenty four now Fawcett learned that Dr. Rice was preparing for yet another expedition compiled a team of experts, a wireless radio system, a hydroplane, and aerial cameras Rise declare that with the airplane, the whole method of exploration and geographical mapping will be revolutionized The expedition produced a documentary film titled on the trail of El Dorado On april thirteenth, nineteen twenty four, Fawet presented his case for an expedition in the Amazon Basin again to the RGS because he needed funding so desperately He gave into the society's demands for more information about his route and the suspected location of Z He concluded that in the southern basin of the Amazon, between the Tapjas and Jingu tributaries were quote, the most remarkable relics of ancient civilization He sketched a map and submitted it with his proposal writing This area represents the greatest area of unexplored country in the world. Portuguese exploration and all subsequent geographical research by Brazilians or foreigners has been invariably confined to waterways plan to take an overland path between the Pajas and Jingu Ineptember of nineteen twenty four, FossA met with British War correspondent and former RGS member George Lynch now connections in the U.S. and in Europe He was also enthralled by the ID of Z In exchange for a percentage of profits from the expedition, Lynch offered to help fundraise Lynch left for the U. in October, he knew Faw' story would sell, so he reached out to the media. For days he secured thousands of dollars by selling the story rights for the expedition to the North American Newspaper Alliance, a consortium of publications in almost every major US and Canadian city Most explorers recounted their expeditions after the fact, but Fawcett would send indigenous runners out with dispatches during the journey, providing the world with updates as he progressed Lynch also sold the rights for the expedition to newspapers throughout the world So tens of millions of people would read about FaosS's journey. Fawett was wary of trivalizing the expedition in the media, but grateful for the needed funding. Lynch also informed him that his proposal was generating equal enthusiasm amongst prestigious American scientific institutions. the American Geographical Society offer the expedition a thousand dollars grant The Museum of the American Indian provided another thousand dollars grant In November, Fawcet wrote to Keltty I judge from Lynch's cable and letters that the whole affair is catching the fancy of Americans. It is, I suppose the romantic streak that has made and no doubt will make empires He warned that word would get out that a modern Columbus was turned down in England And he offered the RGS one last chance to support him. The RGS bred me as an explorer and I don't want them to be out of an expedition that is sure to make history. sureure to make history After years of pushing the society voted to support Faoset's expedition now and furnished him with equipment The total raised amounted to about five grand This was enough money for Fawcett, Jack, and Raleigh to have the expedition, but to not enough for them to have a salary Much of the financing would be paid only upon completion of the journey Fossa said in a letter to Kelty that it was, quote, not a sum which would inspire most explorers He added in another letter, in some ways, I'm rather glad that not one of the three of us makes a red scent unless the journey is successful For nobody can say we were after money in undertaking this rather perilous quest. It is an honest scientific research animated by its own exceptional interest and value Jack was equally excited as his dad att twenty one, his dream was finally coming true By this time, Jack was, quote, the reflection of his father ord to Ban. At fifty seven years old, Fawett was still in incredible shape Tall, lean, muscular could walk for days at a time with little to no food Brian wrote that Jack's six feet three inches were sheer bone and muscle and the three chief agents of bodily deneiggration alcohol, tobacco, and loose living We're revolting to him Jacket spent years lifting weights, keeping a strict diet, studying Portuguese, learning how to navigate by stars. It was all coming to fruition for him. Fawet truly believed Jack and Raleigh were ideal for the mission because they were so close Even after months of isolation and physical suffering, they were unlikely to harass and persecute one another, or to mutiny against him Fawcett agreed that Raleigh, who was almost six feet tall and muscular, had a fine physique for exploration Jack wrote to a confidant of his father, Now we have Raleigh Rimmel on board who is every bit as keen as I am. He is the only intimate friend I've ever had. I knew him before I was seven years old, and we have been more or less together ever since. He is absolutely honest and decent in every sense of the word, and we know each other inside now. Although Jack and Raleigh we were going to learn through a trial by fire Fawet wrote in his journals. Jack has the makings of the right sort is young enough to adapt himself to anything. and a few months on the trail will toughen him sufficiently If he takes after me, he will not contract the various ills and diseases And in an emergency, I think his courage will stand. Raleigh will follow him anywhere It was decided that Nina and fourteen year old Joan would move to Madeira. Portuese island that a cheaper cost of living so they could afford to do this seventeen year old Brian was devastated that he was not chosen for the expedition turned his focus to railroad engineering now soon working with a company in Peru He was actually the first in his family leave for South America this time Fasa told Brian, he was responsible for his mother and sister while he was away and that any financial assistance he could give would greatly help them entire family look forward to Fawet and Jack returning as heroes And all the fame and fortune that would come from that, Brian later recalled in two years time, they would be back And when my first home Lave fell Dew, we would all meet again in England After that, we might make a family home in Brazil where the work of the future years would undoubtedly lie However when Brian's family dropped him off at the train station That would be the last time he would ever see his father and brother O december third, nineteen twenty four, Fwcet and Jack boarded a ship from New York sayaying their final goodbyes to Nina and Jones. They would meet Raleigh in the city Upon their arrival, Fasa discovered his business partner, James Lynch. This is so fucked up had sequestered himself in the Waldorf story Hotel. with an abundance of alcohol and sex workers Dude spent over a thousand dollars, which is like, you know, equivalent to fucking tens of thousands of dollars today on the expions or one thousand dollars of the expeditions's limited funds Pying his fucking ass off Fawet feared the expedition was ruined over before it began headadlines of this scandal caught the attention of John D Rockefeller. who now wrote to me four thousand five hundred dollars check Now they had the money more money than they'd expected originally And there would be no stopping Fawcett from his mission In January of nineteen twenty five, Fawcett Raleigh, and Jack were at the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey abard the SS Vabon, an ocean liner bound for Rio dee Janeiro Rosa told a crowd of reporters that only a small expedition could survive this journey. that they could live off the forest and would not pose a threat to indigenous peopleles. He said that their expedition, quote will be no will be no pampered exploration party with an army of berars, guides and cargo animals Such top heavy expeditions get nowhere. They linger on the fringe of civilization and bask in publicity Where the real wild start, bears are not to be had anyway Animals cannot be taken because of lack of pasture and the attack of insects and bats. There are no guides for no one knows the country. It is a matter of cutting equipment to the absolute minimum carrying it all oneself and trusting that one will be able to exist by making friends with the various tribes one meets Fawcet added We will have to suffer every form of exposure. We will have to achieve a nervous and mental resistance, as well as a physical, as men under these conditions are often broken by their minds succumbing before their bodies My God, I can't believe after all the shit he's been through She's going to go through it again On febrary eleventh, nineteen twenty five, the three men departed from Rio towards the interior of Brazil Brazilian authorities demanded Fawcett sign a statement, absolving the government of any responsibility in case of their demise, which Fawet agreed to Despite the waiver, the government was welcoming to the explores and provided free transport to the frontier in luxurious railroad cars Raleigh previously eager for adventure, was now in poor spirits though During the voyage to Brazil, he'd fallen in love with the daughter of a British duke. He wrote to Brian Fawet I became acquainted with a certain girl on board And as time went on, our friendship increased, till I admit it was threatening to get serious Raleigh wanted to tell Jack the depth of his feelings, but Jack had complained he was making a quote fool of himself. Raleigh considered getting married in Rio, but Facet and Jack talked him out of it too bad for Rolly Raleigh recalled the Colonel and Jack were getting quite anxious, Afraid I would elope or something I came to my senses and realized I was supposed to be the member of an expedition and not allowed to take a wife along headad to drop her gently and attend to business Jack asked Raleigh if he would get married when they returned from the jungle Raleigh replied that he wouldn't make any promises but he did not intend to be single his entire life The three spent a few days in Sao Pao to visit one of the largest snake farms in the world now, where Fawset received five years worth of anti snake bite serums After that, the three men got untrained to the border of Brazil and Bolivia Where Fawcett had gone in nineteen twenty I saw some quite interesting things In the cattle country were numerous parrots, and we saw two flocks of young rheas, ostrich like birds, about four to five feet high. There was a glimpse of a spider's webon a tree with a spider about the size of a sparrow sitting in the middle Oh, fuck that A week later they arrived in Kurumba frontier town of the Bolivian border, we've been to before. that marks the end of the railroad line and their luxury accommodations Jack wrote to Nina about a rundown hotel in town, saying the laboratory arrangements here are very primitive The combined bathroom and shower room is so filthy that one must be careful where one treads But Daddy says we must expect much worse in Kuba. february twenty third, they loaded their equipment onto a riverboat bound for Cyuba The ship was meant for twenty people, but held twice seventy passengers There were no private quarters and the men fought for space. Jack enjoyed the opportunity to practice Portuguese with the other passengers, Raleigh, unwilling to learn more than please and thank you, apparently wrote. Rley's a funny chap He calls Portuguese quote, this damn jabbering language and makes no attempt to learn it Instead he gets mad at everyone because they don't speak Engl On march third, the ship arrived in Cuba which according to Raleigh was a go fororsaken hold best seen with eyes closed Not great This was our stepping off point into the jungle, but first it would have to wait several weeks for the rainy season to pass Fawcett hated to delay, but he learned his lesson from nineteen twenty They spent their time collecting more provisions and reviewing maps Jack andaleigh enjoyed fantasizing about what life would be like after the expedition, right? They were certain they were going to become rich and famous Jack said, We intend to buy motorcycles and really enjoy a good holiday in Devin looking up all our friends and visiting the old haunts And's so fun to be young and dreaming of fame and fortune While the boys daydreamed Fawcet obtained four horses and eight donkeys One mule was called Gertrude Another mule with an unusually shaped head, was called dumb dumb Love that A third was called soorehead as an S O R E soorehead Sounds like some flies had already fucking gotten a hold of him. Their two hunt dogs were named Pastor and Chulum or pastor and Chulum Faw had also learned what had happened with his rival, Dr. Rice expedition. There had been no word from his party for several weeks as they're exploring a tributary of the Ri Bronco twelve hundred miles north of Kyuba manyany words that they were lost until an amateur radio operator way over in England picked up more signals coming from the Amazon Fucking crazy from that far away The operator wrote down the following message Progress slow, owing to extremely difficult physical conditions Personnel expedition numbers over fifty, unable to use hydroplane at present due to low water Objects expedition being obtained Uh all well, this message sent by Expedition's own wireless rice Rice was eventually able to use that hydroplane. Over several weeks, his team had surveyed thousands of miles of the Amazon from the sky, discovering that the Prima and Orinoco rivers did not share the same source They also found and spent several hours with a group of Yanamama people Rice's expedition was considered a historic achievement that allowed for a bird's eye view of the Amazon. And Dr. Rice declared, those regions where the natives are so hostile or the physical obstacle so great as to be effectually bar entrying on foot The airplanes passes over easily and quickly All Fawcet cared about was that rice had not found Z Before they departed, the explorers visited John Arrens, a German diplomat in the region Fawcett asked Errenons to delay or to relay, excuse me, any letters he received from the jungle Next morning, the group made their final preparations. They donned their gear, loaded their rifles, hired two indigenous porters and guides who would accompany them for about a hundred miles north until they reached the most dangerous and uncharted terrain n twentieth, nineteen twenty five, a crowd gathered to see the party off into the jungle John Arins rode alongside them for about an hour on his horse. thenen watch as they headed, quote into a world so far completely uncivilized and unknown by people First they would cross the so called dry forest. They traveled seven miles in their first day, Jack and Raleigh, learned what their daily routine would be throughout the expedition. They had to set up camp before dark, string up their hamocks and netting to protect themselves from insects. Fawcett eventually increased the pace from seven miles a day to ten as the young guys got used to that and then to fifteen. One afternoon, they approached the Monso River Fosa got separated from the group Their guys didn't know which way Faucet to turn, Jack found indentations from hooves on one of the trails, gave the order to follow trail led to the river, but fossil was nowhere to be found The group fired their rifles into the air, called out for him but received no response. That's fucking scary It was a very anxious night, but in the morning, they fired the rifles again, and as they were eating breakfast, Fawcett appeared on his horse He explained he hadd been looking for rock paintings and had lost sight of the group and that he hadd spent the night sleeping on the ground Again, this dude is a fucking beast The group spent a day in camp recovering from this ordeal wrriting some letters to be sent back to civilization They camped in a spot that Fossa described as the pickiest place in the world A bite on Raleigh's foot became infected. causing him to become depressed Fawet wrote to his wife, it is a saying that one only knows a man well when in the wilds with him Raleigh in place of being gay and energetic is sleepy and silent Jack, however, seemed to be thriving. He wrote that he had gained several pounds of muscle in spite of far less food And he also wrote, Raleigh has lost more than I've gained And it is he who seemed to feel most the effects of the journey Because of Raleigh's condition and the weakened animals, they stopped for several days at a remote cattle ranch owned by a farmer named U Herminic oh my gosh Hermenigildo Galvio who is considered a rutless frontiersman Galvallio had pushed farther into the frontier than most people would ever venture and reportedly had a posse of hunters who killed indigenous people who threatened his empire Despite his nast's reputation, he welcomed Faosa's party into his home The three men soon headed east after that towards Bakairi. of the Bakca Eri Post, where in nineteen twenty, the Brazilian government had set up a garrison that settlers call the last point of civilization. A month after leaving Kuuba They arrived at the Baka Erie Post And that settlement only consists of about twenty huts surrounded by some barbed wire One explorer described the outpost as a pinpick on a map Isolated, desolate, primitive and God forsaken The B Baka Eri tribe was one of the first in the region that the government had tried to acculturate. In a letter to the U. S to a U. S sponsor, Fawett wrote The Baka Eries have been dying out ever since they became civilized There are only about one hundred and fifty of them now. They have in part been brought here to plant rice, cassava, which is sent to Cuyuba it fetches at present high prices The Bakeres are not paid. Rggedly clothes mainly in khaki government uniforms, and there is a general squalor and lack of hygiene, which is making the whole of them sick Yeah, great job fucking showing them civilization asshols Jack turned twenty two on may nineteenth to celebrate Fawcet dropped his liquor band for one night. The following morning they prepared to head into the jungle to the nor wrote that they' entering an absolutely unexplored country now Acording to author, David Grant, before them, there were no clear paths. and little light filtered to the canopy They struggled to see not just in front of them, but above them, where most predators lurked The men's feet sank into mud holes, their hands burned from wieldy machetes The skin bled from mosquitoes Even Fawcett confessed to Nina, years tell in spite of the spirit of enthusiasm Sounds like They could really use some thrive DFT derma fusion technology expedition patches to keep your spirits high, your blood out of bug's mouth, and your feet ever moving and blister free. Everyones having to die in If that silly MLM nutritional scam, would have just been around. Th three fuckers could have probably found the Losity of Z completely dug it out and then ran across the surface of the river to the nearest city while carrying millions of dollars worth of ancient treasures And about a week tot But he didn' And Raleigh's other foot actually actually I wish I had a thrive fucking allergy begun patch right now. Everything is blooming today. So sorry if my voice feels different than normal I just cannot stop getting my nose to run Uh anyway Raleigh's other foot soon became infected. It's poor bastard He was suffering from jaundice. One of his arms was also swollen C Jack complained to Ana that Raleigh was unwilling to do his fair share of work, and he was always scared and stolen Raleigh had lost interest in the quest now He complained that he no longer wanted to be rich and famous. He just wanted to open a small business and settle down someplace Uh Yep, jungle is breaking him When Jack talked about how the archeolog or talked about the archaeological importance of Z, Raleigh simply said that's too deep for me. Jack wrote, I wish Raleigh had more brains Their friendship is breaking down now. Lifelong friendship He said, I wish Rey had more brains. as I cannot discuss any of this with him, and he knows nothing of anything He sounds pretty grouchy. We can only converse about Los Angeles or Saton What he will do during a year at Z, I don't know. Raleigh wrote to his brother, I wish to hell you were here You know there was a saying, which I believe is true Two's company, Th's none. It shows itself quite often with me now Raleigh noted that Jack and Fawcett held a sense of inferiority for others Consequently at times, I feel very out of everything Of course, I don't outwardly show it, but still, as I've said before, I feel awful lonesome for real friendship. And just quick, the jungle is destroying these guys Several days later, the group reached deeadorse camp Where Fawcett had had one his horse die in nineteen twenty Horses die. They were approaching the territory of the Suyas and Kaya Po people After passing through their territory, they plan to go east to the Chavante territory where I guess it was even more formidable The Cvante had first been contacted by the Portuguese in the late eighteenth century Many moved into villages where they then died of disease and violence at the hands of soldiers. They eventually moved back to the jungle near the so called river of death nineteenth century German traveler wrote From the time, from that time onwards, the Cvante no longer trusted any white man These abused people have therefore changed from compatriots into the most dangerous and determined enemies They generally kill anyone they can easily catch Despite the ris Fossa was confident they would succeed He wrote it It is obviously dangerous to penetrate large hordes of Indians traditionally hostile I believe in my mission and in his purpose The rest does not worry me, for I have seen a great deal of Iions and know what to do and what not to do I believe our little party of three white men will make friends with them all Well, he's very optimist Other guys were reluctant to go on and Fawet knew it was now time for them to go back. Fost even pulled Raleigh aside and encouragge him to go back with him J just let him and his son go alone He wrote to Nina, I suspect I suspect Constitutional weakness fear that we shall be handicapped by him He warned Raleigh that after this, there was no way to carry him back out of the jungle. Raleigh, despite his misery, insisted He would see it through Fawett, Jack and Raleigh were lastasting alive, may twenty ninth, nineteen twenty five at Dead Horse Camp Fawcett finished his last dispatches and wrote that he would try to get out more communication in the coming year, but that it would be unlikely He wrote in one of his final messages By the time this dispatch is printed which shall have long since disappeared into the unknown And Raleigh wrote to his mother and family I shall look forward to seeing you again in Old Cali when I return The last thing Fawet wrote to Nina was You need have no fear of any failure And then disappeared Two years would pass with absolutely no updates theirir fate was a mystery The RGS officially declared the men lost in January of nineteen twenty seven Mina Facett, however remained hopeful and ask the RGS not to lose confidence She told a reporortter that year any day now may bring a cable for my husband announcing that he is safe and is returning Elsie Rimmel felt the same, saying, I believe firmly that my boy and those he is with will come back out of that wilderness Brian, who was now twenty assured Nina, there was no reason to worry How much fith they had in theirad By the spring of nineteen twenty seven, theories were swirling about what had happened to the explorers One popular theory was that they were being held hostage by indigenous people and that they would eventually escape In September nineteen twenty seven, Roger Courttervill a French engineer claimed while traveling to the source of the Paraguay river in Matete Grasso, he found faucets ack and Raleigh living in the wilderness Brian met with Courterville thought he described Fawcett exactly, but noticed that every time Courivval told his story, he changed some details Nina meanwhile defended her husband's reputation and pointed out discrepancies in Courtreville's statements You know remain confident that FosA was alive But she was worried that something had happened to the expedition She believed they were most likely kidnapped by indigenous people. Fawcett's old rival doctor Rice visited Nina to reassure her that even if they'd been taken hostage, Fawett would find a way out Nina had not wanted to send in a rescue team because Fawa did not want anyone risking their lives to find him But she did ask Rice if he would be willing to go However, Dr. Rice had decided to retire from exploring The RGS declared, we hold ourselves in readiness to help any competent and well accredited search party The society would receive hundreds of letters from interested volunteers. In Fbruary of nineteen twenty eight, forty five year old George Miller Dyett, a member of RGS, launched the first major rescue effort it was previously a pilot during World War I, but gave up flying to become an explorer. get experience in the Amazon and even once been held captive by a tribe there before The North America Newspaper Alliance sponsored the rescue effort I plan to first u or to file daily dispatches with a short wave radio and to film the expedition. He was one of the earliest explorers to bring a motion picture camera with him Diett posted an ad seeking a volunteer who was small spare of wirey builduild. as he believed that small men, like himself, did best in the jungle and exerted less energy Probably true. He received about twenty thousand applications One of those applications was from Raleigh's brother, Roger Rimmel He told Riats, I am most anxious naturally and do consider I am as and do consider I am as entitled to go as much as anyone Diet, however declined its application In the end he chose four unmarried men who could operate the radio and movie camera On the eve of their departure from New York, Diet broke on his own rules, married Perus Stehenss Wright, who was almost half his age. They planned to honeymoon during the voyage to Rio They departed from Hoboken on february eighteenth, nineteen twenty eight, Else. Rimel came to say Farewell, give him a package for Raleigh if they found him. Oh my God,' so sad. Dyatt said goodbye to his wife and Rio Once he got to the frontier, he recruited a small army of Brazilian helpers and indigenous guides bringing the party to twenty six members. They arrived in Baka Ee post in June. While camping there, Diot met an indigenous man named Bernardino claimed he had been Fawett's guide down the Kurivu iver, one of the headwaters of the Jingu He agreed to l a lead diet as far as he took faucet. Shortly after departure, Diet saw Y shaped marks carved in some tree trunks A possible sign that Fawet had been there After treking north for a month The party reached the settlement of the N Nahula O of the many tribes li and around the JXingu iver. Several of them welcome died in his crew but the chief Alo Ike seemed hostile Diet was surrounded by the chief's children, he noticed something tied around one of the boys's necks small brass plate engraved with WS silver and compomany. That was the firm that supplied faucet with gear Diet struck into thef or snuck into the chief's hut, found a military style metal trunk into the corner Di tried to interrogate Akay W signign language, Otto EK, also using sign language indicated that the trunk was a gift, also indicated that he had guided three white men to a neighboring territory Diet asked Alike and some of his men to take him on the same route. Alike warned that the violent Sus people live in that direction But he eventually agreed to guide in exchange for some knives Diet continued questioning Aoke. As the expedition made their way through the forest, Aoeke added a new element to his story that Foscett and his men had been killed by the Suyaz people This made diet even more suspicious. He wrote, The finger of guilt seems to point to Alike Eventually Diets' radio stoppedking and the expedition was running out of food and water. Some of the men got sick, so sick they could barely walk St diet continued on with just two men in hopes of finding faucets remains The night before they left, one of the men in his party, an indigenous man, reported that he overheard Alake plotting to murder Diet and steal all his equipment And Diet now felt confident that he had found Fawcet's killer As a deterrent, Diat told chief he now planned to bring the entire party. Next morning, O Eke and his men were gone Soon afterwards, groups of people from various tribes in the Xhingu region came out of the forest demanding gifts. When diet ran out of things to give them, they became hostile promised that in the morning, he would have knives and access for them. Late at night Di and his men escape back down the river. One of his crew managed to get the radio working to relay the message, A sorry to report Fawcet Expedition perished at the hands of hostile Indians Our position is critical. can't even afford time to send full detail by wireless mustust descend the ingu without delay or we ourselves will be caught their radio to speed up their exits when they finally returned months later, they were considered heroes. published his book manan hunting in the jungle, and then starred in aollywood film By the ear by the early thirties, nineteen thirties, his story started to collapse. Brian Fawcet pointed out that his father, who didn't want anyone knowing his route, would have never left markings in the trees to guide the way And the gear that Dayat found in Alake's house might have been a gift from Fawett or from Fawcett's earlier nineteen twenty expedition Diets assessment of out ofK as treacherous also cannot be trusted because their interactions were conducted in sign language When missionaries and other explorers entered the region years later, they described Alike and the Nahuka people as very peaceful and friendly Brian Foset also wrote Diet must have swallowed hook line and sinker what he was told. I say this because there was no Bernardino with my father's party in nineteen twenty five FosS Brailian helpers were called Gardinia and Samao. On march twelfth, nineteen thirty two now A man appeared outside the embassy in So Paulo demanding to see the consul genereneral about an urgent matter concerning Percy Fawcet Consul genereneral Arthur Abt have been a friend of Fawcts And in a sworn statement, the visitor claimed, My name is Defon Ratin I amm a Swiss subject I came to South America twenty one years ago fiveive months earlier while hunting near the Papas Papazaazs iver And Machagasso He claimed that he had encountered a tribe holding an elderly white man with long yellow hair When the tribesmen got drunk that evening, the white man approached identified himself as an English colonel He asked Raddon to go to the British consulate and inform Major Paget that he was being held captive The former British ambassador to Brazil, sir Ralph Pageet with a friend of Fawetts I might say his name is Paaget earlier. I think it's Ralph Paget. Abbott noted in a letter to the RGS that these facts were only known to me and a few personal friends Mina Fawet and Elseie Rimmel thought Ratten's account sounded credible You didn't want to get her hopes Still, she sent a telegram to a Brazilian news outlet, stating she was convinced her husband was still alive. However Claudia Rondon interviewed Rattin for three hours and noted that the place Raddin indicated he'd found Fawucett was five hundred miles from where the expedition was last seen. Paget was contacted and wondered why Rattten was allowed to leave the tribe while Fawcet was forced to remain prisoner Yeah, that doesn't make a lot of s Abot was convinced Rattenon was telling the truth though, especially because he promised to rescue Fawcett without a reward Baton now sent out with two men, one of them a reporter. They walked the jungle for several weeks until they reached the Renus river. In a dispatch from may twenty fourth, nineteen thirty two, they announced they were about to enter hostile territory thenen The men were never heard from ever again Stories like that one, other tales of lost explorers did little to dissuade future explorers hunting for Fawucet and Z. In nineteen thirty four, the Brazilian government issued a decree banning search parties unless they received official permission Still, though, explorers continue to go into the wild without authorization. There are no official statistics, but the number of deaths from these expedions is thought to number around one hundred Nina Fawett followed all developments in the Fawet mystery, as she called it She studied his old log books, letters, and photographs, asked the RGS to share any reported sightings or rumors She insisted that she had trained herself to remain impartial regarding any sightings or tales of their fate. However, she told her friend once My heart is lacerated By the horrible accounts I'm obliged to read, and my imagination conjures up gruesome pictures of what might have happened It takes all my strength or will Push these horrors out of my thoughts. The brutal wear and tear is great By nineteen thirty six The majority consensus was that the party was dead Even the Rumel family accepted that but not Nina By this time, Ninu had almost no money except for a small portion of Fawcet's military pension that he hadn't sold and a small stipend that Brian sent her from his job with a railway company She wandered around the world F from Brian's home in Peru to Joan's home in Switzerland, where her daughter lived with her husband, Jean Des Monet, an engineer In the thirties needa began to receive report from missionaries in the Jingu area who wanted to convert indigenous people. In nineteen thirty seven, American missionary Martha L. Monich claim that at a ikuru village She met a boy with pale skin and blue eyes. She was told he was the son of Jack Faoscett who had a child with an indigenous woman The tribe refused to give the boy up Other missionaries told similar stories a white child in the jungle Th in nineteen forty three, Brazilian media multimillionaire, Asie, Chateauubriand, sent his tabloid reporter, Edmar Morell to find the boy Months later, Morll returned with a seventeen year old boy called Dulipe. He was considered Fawcet's grandson and the white God of the Jingu Filipe a shya nervous boy was photographed in Life magazine, paraded around Brazil. people crowded in a movie theatater, just to see photage of him Marll called Brian Fawcett in Peru, asked if Pianina wanted to adopt the boy L out photos of Dulipe And they realized he wasn't white at all He was nowbino Sadly, when he was no longer a commercial attraction, Dulfi was abandoned in Kuyuba far from his home and the people he grew up with. And he would die quickly of alcoholism there Another sad story. In April of nineteen fifty one, Orlando Viaz Boaz, a Brazilian government official known for his defense of indigenous people announced that the Kalaalo people admitted the tribe had killed three explorers Boaz reported that the called Apollo tribe told him that Fawcett and his companions were killed because they had failed to bring gifts and had treated the tribe rudely Fawett allegedly suffered a blow to the head, Jack and Raleigh were killed at the bottom of an embankment and thrown into a lagoon Boz also claimed he was led to the bones of Colonel Fawett near the village. Decades This was thought to have been the fate of Fawet Jack and Rolly And the Calapo Calapo people were considered the villains But there's more to the story as we will hear soon further down the timeline In nineteen fifty three, a full twenty eight years after the party's disappearance, Fawet' son Brian published Epliration Fawet collection of his father's writings bit by late nineteen forty five, the then seventy five year old Nina was in poor health, suffering from severe arthritis and anemia She described herself as having no home No one to help me or meet me and crippled woman She suffered many ways much more than Percy ever did While he was off on his adventures, she often barely had enough money to keep the family from being homeless. And she saw her husband, you know, less than the Amazon did, it seems Still as late as nineteen fifty, Nina stated she would not be surprised if her husband who would now be eighty two And Jack who would now be forty seven were to walk through her door She's had to hold on to hope Nina surrounded herself with psychics who attempted to contact the lost Explorers. Brian, who was caring for his mother in Peru wrote to his sister, Joan. I really don't think her days on Earth will be many She herself would be the first to claim she's breaking up Nina once wrote to Joan that she must be prepared for the call at any moment Have you really and truly asked yourself? Have I any fear of death and the hereafter She expressed her hope that her death would be easy that she would fall asleep and not wake up. Brian wrote to Joan in a way it would be a good thing for her to go out here in Peru There would be a rather pleasing thought in her leaving her remains in the same continent as her husband and son Most of Brian's life have been marked by death She'd lost his father, his brother, his first wife had died of diabetes when she was pregnant with her child He had since remarried, but suffered bouts of wild, despairing sorrow Rina gave Brian all Fwet's loog books and diaries which Brian called the pathetic relics of a disaster, whose nature we had no means of knowing After twenty years as a railroad engineer, Brian wrote, I feel that I'm wasting my life, just going to a lousy office every day signing a lot of stupid papers and driving back again During his lunch break, he read his father's papers, putting him on or picturing him on his expeditions Brian had once been resentful and disinterested in his father's work because he had not been chosen for the expedition, but now he'd become obsessed He decided to quit his job, piece together his father's writings into exploration faucets As he worked on the manuscript, Brian told Nina Daddy seems very close to me. as though I were collaborating at his conscience direction Naturally, there are times when it tugs in my heartstrings a lot Brian finished a draft in April nineteen fifty two When the book was published the following year became an international sensation Nina died soon after the publication on september eighth, nineteen fifty four at the age of eighty four. I hope she did' in fact go quietly and peacefully in her sleep In the early fifties, Brian launched his own expeditions in search of his father, brother, and Raleie He suspected that his father was dead and that Raleigh died soon after leaving Dead Horse camp But he wondered if Jack maybe could have survived Brian reached out to the British embassy in Brazil, asking for permission to conduct a search He wrote that he could not legally declare Jack dead without satisfying myself that all has been done. British officials refused to facilitate a search Brian went to Brail anyway He knew he would not make in the jungle, so he rented a small plane searched by air You know, dropping thousands of fllyers into the wilderness that asked, are you Jack Fawcet If your answer is yes, then make this sign holding arms above your head Can you control the Indians if we land Brian never received a response or found any evidence that his brother was alive Another expedition, Brian search for thevelocity of Z. At one point he thought he found it only to realize it was just an outcropping of sandstone that looked like a city today's went on, Brian began to fear that there never was isz He later wrote, The whole romantic structure of fallacious beliefs already rocking dangerously collapsed about me, leaving me dazed He wrote in his diary. Was Daddy's whole conception of Z a spiritual objective and the manner of reaching it a religious allegory Brian died on august tenth, nineteeny four in Cumberland, England at the age of seventy eight Over a decade later in June of nineteen ninety six An expedition of Brazilian scientists and explorers went into the jungle searching for fauccet's remains The fish was led by forty two year old James Lynch who'd heard about Fawcett from a reporter and dove head firstirst into research Lynch worked at Chase Bank in Sao Paulo. He was married with two kids, but in his thirties became restless started going on days long adventures into the Amazon jungle. Like other explorers, Lynch was stumped by the fact that Fawcett kept his route so secret that not even his wife knew his true destination Lynch studied the book Expliration Fawet, which appeared to contain a hint about Fawet's true route. For example, Fawet wrote our route will be from Dead Horse Camp eleven degree, forty three minutes south and fifty four degreree thirty five minutes west where my horse died in nineteen twenty one. Lynch plugged coordin into a GPS, which pin pointoed a spot in the southern b basin of the Amazon in the Brazilian state of Matagrasso. Lynch would have to traverse some of the deepest jungle of the Amazon and enter land controlled by indigenous people that remains secluded from outsiders recruited Brailian engineer Rennee Delmatte, whom he had met during an adventure adventure competition They would spendths studying satellite images of the Amazon to determine their best route Lynch also worked with a shipuilder to construct two vessels that were shallow enough to traverse the Amazon swamps He recruited two mechanics who could repair equipment to experienced off road drivers, and forensic anthropologist Dr. Daniel Munz who in nineteen eighty five had helped identify the remains of Joseph Mengela Lynch's sixteen year old son, James expressed his interest in going James had done well on a previous expedition, So Lynch agreed The team prepared to depart in Kuuba, where Fawet launch his ill fated expeditition They spent days driving through the basin, following the trail to the clearing along the Jingu iver to the spot Faosset was last seen alive. point Lynch decided they would have to proceed by boat He had several crew members go back with their heaviest gear. Once he found a place for a bush plane to land, he would send the coordinates to have the equipment dropped off The remaining team got into two boats, began to travel down the JXingu river Shortly before sunset, Lynch saw several pairs of eyes, watching him from the distant river bank He told his team to cut their engines. As the boats drifted to shore, Lynch and his men got out At the same time, a group of indigenous men emerged from the forest. One of them stepped forward. Some of the men spoke Portuguese, identified their leader as the chief of the uioru tribe Pot tribe. Lynch presented them with some of the gifts they brought along, such as beads, candy, and matches. They were granted permission to camp near the Kuikuro village and to land a plane in a nearby clearing The follow day Lyne and his son were invited to a lagoon. Bathed with giant turtles, Lynch heard the sounds of a plane landing Moments later, one of the Quikuro people came running telling Lynch tellelling Lynch justust the word trouble Over two men from the Kiku Ro and neighboring tribes surrounded the camp, holding bows, rifles, and spears Five Lynch's men rushed the plane, which was only designed to hold the pilot and four passengers. They shouted for the pilot to take off. seeveral Kukuro men rushed toward the plane and grabbed onto the wings. The pilot concerned about weight, threw clothes and papers out before a hasty takeoff. Lynch and his eleven remaining team members were then put on small boats and told by one man, you are our prisoners for life fucking terry Lynch would eventually manage to escape from captivity He told author David Grant that after the group was transported upriver, they were forced to stay in a makeshift camp spend his time looking for weak spots When night fell, he collapsed from exhaustion When he woke up in the morning, the first thing he saw was the tip of a spear in the forest They were soon surrounded by a circle of tribesmen, five older men who appeared to be tribal leaders sat down in front of the group to determine their fate One by one, men addressed the leaders. E so often a man who spoke Portuguese translated for Lynch's group explained that they' had been accused of trespassing. The negotiations lasted for two days. Lynch recalled, quote, there would be these endless hours of debate, and we didn't know what was going on And then this translator would sum up everything in a single sentence. It was like, bam They're going to tie you over the river and let the pro They're going to tie you over the river and let the piranas see you Spam. They're going to cover you in honey and let the beast sting you to death. And then they just go back to talking. What a fucking absolutely terrifying experience The the tribe soon began to target his son James Lyn thought about trying to escape, but that was a death, you know, a wish. He said He then noticed that four of the leaders seemed to defer to a fifth one. who is least swayed by the passionate arguments for their execution When several people indicated that they were going to tie James up and kill him, Lynch approached the fifth chief. With the help of a translator, he explained that he was sorry if they had offended his people. He began negotiations agreed to give up his group's boat and equipment in exchange for their release Eventually, the chief accepted Lynch used his radio to send an SOS with coordinates, and a busush plane was dispatched to rescue them value of his ransom was worth was a thirty thousand dollars worth of equipment Oh my God, when Lyncha finally boarded the plane, he thought about Percy Fawcett and wondered if he too had been taken hostage He told David Gran, I don't think anyone will ever solve the mystery of FossA's disappearance. It's impossible In two thousand four, another new theory emerged about Fawcet'saearance. According to previously hidden papers, Fawcett had no intention of returning to Britain. plan to set up a commune in the jungle Theater and TV director Misha Williams gained some permission to search through Fawett's private correspondence. And according to Williams, Fawett wanted to follow what he called the grand scheme Setting up a secret community based on a mixture of spiritual beliefs involving the worship of his son Jack, okay tenets of theosophy. Ohow, cool. Williams told the Guardian I can now show that there were scores of associates who were planning to go out and join Fawcet to live in a new freer way Williams claimed he was a confidant of Faos's descendants and that he uncovered a drawing of a female spirit guy. who he believed was at the heart of the journey or at the heart of the mystery Sirit was said to only appear to Fawcett family or those who tried to follow the Lost Eedition's path luring them into the jungle. Okay Williams also said that much of the uncertainty surrounding the disappearance of Fawett could be explained by the family's attempts to protect his reputation He claimed Brian's book expxiration Faucet was a smokescreen This theory seems to be pulled mostly out of Mishe's ass. Nothing but tabloid fodder and a pathetic money grab attempt, I think Now to close out our timeline, let's meet the author of our main source and learn how he got involved in his own expedition to find Fawcett and what he thinks may have happened David Graham has always considered himself a disinterested reporter who did not get involved personally in his stories In two thousand three he joined the New York as a staff wrider Two years later, he would travel over ten thousand miles from New York to London to the Jingu River, studying the disappearance of Percy Fawcet Gran wrote in Losocity of Z, I told myself that I had come simply to record how generations of scientists and adventurers became fatally obsessed with solving what has often been described as the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century And all started in two thousand four, when Gran was researching a story on the mysterious death of an expert on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his character Sherlock Holmes. He saw a reference to Fawcett's role in inspiring Doyle's book, The Lost World He was intrigued by Facet's story and the Lost city of Z. Gran wrote about his decision to travel into the remote Amazon Let me be clear I am not an explorer or an invventure I don't climb mains or hunt. I don't even like to camp I stand less than five feet nine inches tall and I'm nearly forty years old with a blossoming wa waistline and thinning black hair I suffer from Karatoka Terato Konas degenerative eye condition that makes it hard for me to see at night. I have a terrible sense of direction and tend to forget where I am on the subway and miss my stop in Brooklyn. I like newspapers, takeake out food, sports highlights and the air conditioning on high. Given a choice each day between climbing the two flights of stairs to my apartment or riding the elevator, I invariably take the elevator That's so funny to. I love the self depcating humility But when I'm working on a story he added Things are different Ever since I was young, I've been drawn to mystery and adventure tales ones that had what Ryder Haggard called the grip. In Fbruary of two thousand five, Grant traveled to London to the British Archives where Fawet's most sensitive papers were kept He also visited the RGS to request more of Fawcet's papers Gran then traveled to Cardiff, Wales and found one of Facet's grandchildren, Rolette D Monet Guarin, a daughter of Joan Fawett Well, that was now in her fifties She referred to her grandfather as PHF, which was what everyone in the family called him. Although the family had avoided the media, Rolete welomed Gran into her home Grant asked her if she could rely on the known coordinates for Dead Horse camp He asked if he should rely on the known coordinates for Dead Horse' camp to start his journey And Rote claimed that Fawet wrote those coordinates as a way to throw people off his trail. Grant asked why Bron Fawcett would have continued the deception and exploration Fawcett She explained that he wanted to honor his father's wishes So that's interesting Reltin gave Grand permission to look through the diaries and log books she kept in her home There was a book for every year from nineteen oh six to nineteen twenty one, full of notes and observations from Fawcett's expeditions. Ritt also showed Graan Fawcett's treasure book. full of stories about secret treasures like ala Petag Gala, the legendary likely mythical treasure site in Sri Lanka that had inspired early adventures for Percy Fawet, that whole secret cave under the rocky plain. In the diaries Fawett wrote about Z often There were drawings of hieroglyphics, references to legends about a city enormously rich in gold, so much so as to blaze like fire fsa became more secretive in later entries. In the nineteen twenty one log book, he outlined the code he used to send messages to Nina. When looking to the log, Gran found a note in the margins of one page that spelled out Dead Horse Campps coordinates on the same page that were significantly different than the ones in exppliration faucet Gran also saw a photo of Fawcet's gold signignette ring Back in nineteen seventy nine, a man named Brian Ridau, who was making a wildlife film in Brazil, heard that Fawcett's ring was in a pwn shop in Cubab. The shop owner died, but the man's wife found the ring It was the last concrete piece of evidence from the expedition And the ring ominously had dried blood on it Grand prepared to travel to the Amazon in the summer of two thousand five It was difficult for him to find someone willing to take him into the jungle also had ties to indigenous communities He found one is guided up being a fifty two year old man named Paulo Pinaj, a former professional samba dancer and theater director Pablo had previously worked for Funnai, the agency that succeeded the Indian Protection Service. Grant asked if he could penetrate the region faucethead, including part of what is now Shingu National Park, the first reservation in Brazil established in nineteen sixty one Apolo asked Gran for his medical records to test and he had no contagious or debilitating diseases. And then he began to approach various chiefs on his behalf None of the tribes officially agreed to a visit, but Pao seemed optimistic when he met Kran at theirport in Kuba Among the various documents, Gran had gathered was a crudely drawn map. A Notation on the map indicated Raleigh Ramel had sketched it contained his route, was given to his mother. Raleigh had made her a promise that she would destroy it or made her promise that, but she never did. These documents confirm that Fawcett, Jack and Raleigh went north to the territory of the Eie Indians From there they went to Dead Horse camp And then deep into what is today Jingu National Park. In the route that Fawcet gave in confidants to the RGS, he wrote that his party would turn due east around the eleventh parallel, south of the equator and continue past the river of Death. and the Aagu River until they reach the Atantic Ocean. a segment ofaleigh's route contradicted that th Rale indicated that at the Araguaya River, they would go north and would pass from Mato Grasso into the state of Para before exiting near the mountth of the Amazon River Gran thought that this had to be a mistake. Itntil he found a letter from Jack Tonina that said in part Next time I write will probably be from Parak Paolo picked up Pabolo's friend to Conni Bakari, a descendant of the Bakairri chief Connie acted as an ambassador for his tribe's political interests, he told them that in exchange for a gift of two tyires for a communal tractor, he would take them to his village the last place Faucet had been seen Gran agreed, Traveled down BR one hundred sixty three, one of the most dangerous roads in all of South America The road had been built in nineteen seventy by the government in an effort to further open the interior, and it extends more than one thousand miles from Kuba to the Amazon iver. However, most of the asphalt had been washed away during the rainy season Gran was surprised to see that the terrain looked like planes rather than a rainforest. Tukane pointed out a fleet of logging trucks that had destroyed the forest The deforestation efforts had transformed much of Monagrasso into farmland. Brazilian transransport ministry also declared that loggerers longong BR one hundred and sixty three employee quote the highest concentration of slave labor in the world This is from fucking two thousand five Indigenous people still frequently driven off their land today sometometimes enslaved or murdered The next morning, the group head headed up a small mountain to reach the Baka Eri Post More than eight hundred indndigenous people now lived in the area. The largest village held several dozen houses in a plaza. For some reason, when I first read this, my brain transformed plaza into pizza Pizza place, and I was like, no shit Pza place We out in the Amazon. good for them less pizz No J pla. However, the village did have a well tractor, some satellite dishes and electricity Tane told Gran that someone he wanted there was someone he wanted them to meet inside one of the houses was an elderly woman named Comeda Bakairri, the oldest member of the village, and she claimed she had once seen Fawcett in person She told her group through a translator, I don't know my exact age. But I was born around nineteen ten I was just a little girl when the three outsiders came to stay in our village I remember them because I had never seen people so white with such long beards My mother said, Look, the Christians are here. They set up camp in the villagage's new school, which was nicest building in the time. She remembered that they headed over the mountains. She said, people said there were no white people over those mountains But That is where they said they were going. We waited for them to come back, but they never did She didn't know of any cities beyond the mountains, but she did remember her ancestors speaking of a large and beautiful Bakca Eri house, or Bakca Eri houses from the past there granted his guide said that they then met with the chief of the Kalapalu tribe The ones who claimed responsibility for Fac's death, they met in Kanarana. A a small frontier town on the southern border of Jingu National Park where they do actually have a pizza place I checked. L looks fucking delicious actually. The chief there was a man named Bajuvi who asked Gran if he was a member of Fawcet's family ran said, no, he was not indicating he was not seeking revenge. Avajuvi seemed more accommodating and said he would tell the truth about the bones first you wanted five grand G grantnted we didn't have that kind of money And then the room soon got crowded with a bunch of other men who began intense negotiations Some of them became very hostile towards Gran and called him a liar Butajubi told Grant to talk to his chief in the U. S. and that they would talk again in a few hours. Two hours later, Pao managed to reach an agreem with them, but Juvy agreed to take them into Jingu National Park if they paid for transportation and several hundred dollars of supplies So he backed way the fuck off the initial five thousand dollars demand I'm five thousand dollars. It's five thousand dollars or nothing A couple hours theyater were like, how about I don't know, a couple hundred bucks of supplies and a drive Okay They were heading to the Kudaenna River, about sixty miles from the town a treacherous road with puddles that almost reached the floorboard to their flat bed truck, which at times threatened to tip over Vjuvil led the group to the to A Hollow village in the jungle The village had about one hundred and fifty residents According to Gran theill was highly stratified, chiefs descended from bloodlines, boys and girls secluded from each other at puberty, taught the rituals of adulthood Stict dietary taboos, which contradicted the notion that the indndigenous people lived under constant threat of starvation Gran asked A Juby whether he knew if the people of the region were descended from a larger civilization or if there were any ruin in the jungle. But we didn't. But he did recall a legend of a spirit who built giant moats in the area ui promised to take them to those bones, telling them there are many things about the Englishmen that only the Kalapalu people know. The following day, Vajubi took them up river. finally revealed that the bones that were reported to have been faucets were actually his grandfather U Mujica who was dead when Orlando Via Bois started to ask questions about fauccet Boas wanted to protect the tribe from the white people encroaching into the area and told them that if they found a tall skeleton, he would give them each a rifle jica was one of the tallest men in the village, so several people dug of his bones, buried them by the bank of the river, and claimed they were faucets. The Juby's father was away at the time was furious when he found out what happened, but the bones had already been taken ory made sense, especially when considering the fact that Brian Fawcett noted that many of the Kalapalu people told contradictory versions of how Fawcet's party been killed Some said they were clubbed to death Others said they were shot by arrows. Some said he was killed because he did not bring gifts and that he had slapped a young Kalapalu boy but that was highly out of character for Facet's interactions with indigenous people Grant also found an internal memo in the archives of the Royal Anthropological Institute in London that describes remains. quote The upper jaw provides the clearest possible evidence that these human remains were not Th those of Colon Foscet whose spare upper denture is fortunately available for comparison Colonnel fawet is stated to have been six feet, one and a half inches tall. The height of the man whose remains have been brought to England is estimated to be about five feet, seven inches yeah, just a bit off. As they ate together, Vajubi told them the real story of what happened as told him by his parents It is true that they were here. There were three of them And no one knew who No one knew who they were or why they had come. They had no animals and carried packs on their backs. One who was the chief was old, and the two others were young. They were hungry and tired from marching for so long and the people in the village gave them fish and bju. In return for their help, the Englishmen offered them fish hooks, which no one had seen before and knipes Finally, the old man said, we must be going now And the people ask them, whereere are you going And they said that way T the east We said, Nobody goes that way. That's where the hostile Indians are. They will kill you But the old man insisted. And so they went, in those days, nobody went that way For several days they could see campfire smoke above the trees but it disappeared on the fifth day a group of Kalaalu worried something that bad worried worried something bad had happened and they went out to search for them. But there was no trace of them R you be told, Grant, people always say the Kalu Palu killed Englishmen, but we did not. we tried to save them This oral history has been passed down across generations with consistency Back in nineteen thirty one, anthropologist Vincenzo Petrulu who was one of the first whites to enter the hinggu reported a similar account but few paid attention to it amidst the sensationalization of Faossa's disappearance years later, Ellen Bosso, another anthropologist recorded a detailed version of the story from a Paulu man named Kambe. who was just a boy when Fawcet's party arrived at the village She translated his account directly from the Kalapado language and the rhythm of the tribe's oral histories One of them remained by himself he's saying he played a musical instrument. His musical instrument worked like this, like this. He's saying and saying, he put his arm around me this way While he was playing, we watched the Christians. While he was playing, Father and the others. Then I'll have to be going, he said He also recounted seeing the fire in the distance, quote There's the Christiananss fire We said to one another. U That was going on as the sunset. The next day is the sunset, again, their fire rose up The following day again, just a little smoke spread out in the sky. On this day, their fire had gone out. It looked as if the Englishman's fire was no longer alive, as it had been put out. What a shame Why did he keep insisting they go away? Before head into the jungle, Grant and his guide Palo stopped in a town called Baadu Garas near the Roncador mountains in the northeast of Maturasu Portuese is not fucking' easy for me. Brazilians had told them that religious cults had popped up in the area that worshhippped Fawcett as a go. They believe Fawcett had entered a network of tunnels and discovered that Z was a portal to another reality Uh huh, o I'd cool if's tr Grant speculated all the possibilities of what might have happened. Were they killed by indigenous people? If so, which ones did Jack ever question his father? Was heZ even real? Grant thought there was one man who might know something Michael Heckenberger. A University of Florida archaeologist currently lived In the Kikuru village north of the Kalapalu settlement Heckenberger had spent so much time in the Jingu region that he had been formally adopted by the tribe But Juvi acted as their guide along the Kuluenna River At one point, Gron and Paolo were separated and he feared he was lost in the Amazon But eventually he was rescued and guided to the village to meet the chief Aful Kaka Uh, when Green when Well, Jesus Christ, when Grant asked him about faucets Afu Kaka said, fuck my life. I fucking I don't know how to speak the shit either. No he said, The fierce Indians must have killed. As they were talking, Michael Heckenberger appeared. He told Gran that he'd been doing research in the region on and off for thirteen years. and that he had a home next to the chief Peckenberger wanted to show them something. This is actually really cool. He led them in the forest, show them how the ground sloped downward, then tilt it up again like a large ditch Heeenberg explained that this was a moat almost nine hundred years ago The moat had originally measured between twelve and sixteen feet deep, thirty feet wide, and was a mile in diameter The Kukuos were aware of the moats, but didn't know how their ancestors had built them Teckenberger had excavated part of the moat. The exposed earth was so dark it was almost black Using radiocarbon dating, Heckenberger dated it to twelve hundred CE, indicated a ditch within the moat that was formerly a palisade wall also pointed out shards of broken pottery throughout the site. He explained that they were standing in the middle of an ancient settlement that was in the region where Fawcett believed it would be as far as Z But Fawcett might not have been able to visualize it That was because there was not much stone in the jungle, and settlements were built out of wood and other organic material. which, you know, destroys easily over time Heeenberger showed out grand evidence of three moats arranged in concentric circles There was a large plaza, not a pizza place, and sprawling neighborhoods as evidenced by black soil enriched by human waste The settlement also had roads, causeways, canals, even bridges In total Heckenberger had found twenty pre Colombian settlements in the Jingu occupied between eight hundred and sixteen hundred CE The settlements were two to three miles apart, connected by roads. These roads were laid out from east to west, positioned at the same angles, not accidental all the settlements carefully planned with math and engineering Heckenberger said, before the population was decimated by European arrival, the settlements were likely home to up to five thousand people For a thousand years, inhabitants of the JXingu region had maintained artistic and cultural traditions from an ancient civilizations. He explained, these people had a cultural aesthetic of monumentality They likely excuse me, they like to have beautiful roads and plazas and bridges. Their monuments were not pyramids, which is why they were so hard to find They were horizontal features, but they were no less extraordinary Anthropologists made the mistake of coming into the Amazon in the twentieth century and seeing only small tribes and saying, well, that's all there is The problem is that by then, many Indian populations had already been wiped out by what was essentially a Holocaust from European context That's why the first Europeans in the Amazon described such massive settlements that later No one could ever find sounds good to me Fawcett in a way had not been misguided after all Gram went to publish the Losocity of Z in February of two thousand nine After its first week of publication, it debuted on the New York Times best seller list at number four, later reached number one And then in twenty sixteen, an American film of the same name was released starring Charlie Hunum as Percy Fawcett Haven't seen it even though it didn't do well at the box office, critics loved it And now Let's finally Get out of this time Good job, soldier. You've made it back. B Yeah, before I wrap up, sorry again about some pronunciation and difficulties. It is tricky down there because you're dealing with Spanish, Portuguese, and literally fucking hundreds of indigenous languages that do not relate to Portuguese or Spanish at all So all the pronunciations like there's There was no consistent rhythm to the words when you're combining them all into one essay, essentially. Anyway, the question remains Does a lost and magnificent city like Zee or El Dorado even exist somethingomething that would rival the pyrids of the Mayans, the ruins of Machu Picu, if not even grander According to author David Gran. The ancient city with its network of roads and bridges and temples was believed to be hidden in the Amazon, the largest jungle in the world In an age of airplanes and satellites, the area remains onene of the last blank spaces on the map For hundreds of years, it has haunted geographers, archeologists, empire builders, treasure hunters and philosophers When Europeans first arrived in South America, around the turn of the sixteenth century They were convinced that the jungle contained the glittering kingdom of El Dorado Environmentalists often portray the Amazon as a virgin forest, untouched by humanity In recent decades, scientists concluded that no complex civilization could survive in the hostile Amazon These experts believe in the theory of environmental determinism which I referenced earlier As written by David Gran, according to this theory, Even if some early humans eked out an existence in the harshest conditions on the planet, they rarely advance beyond a few primitive tribes. Society, in other words, is a captive of geography. And so if Z was found in such a seemingly uninhabitable environment It would more It would be more than a repository of golden treasure. More than an intellectual curiosity, it would, as one newspaper declared in nineteen thirty five, write a new chapter of human history Betty Megers from the Smithsonian Institution, one of the most influential archaeologists of the Amazon Coin the term counterfeit paradise about all this in nineteen seventy one. Despite being rich in flor and fauna, she has said that the Amazon is wildly hostile to human life With its extreme rains and floods, heat, nutrient poor soil, agriculture will be essentially impossible and only small tribes could survive according to this theory Even if tribes had managed to overcome starvation and disease, they still had to come up with methods of population control, such as infanticide, abandoning the sick or injured in the woods or warfare However Some anthropologists have challenges view that no advanced society could survive in the Amazon. They've argued that the traditionalist ideas carry inherently racist biases. One important anthropologist who has helped change historic views of the Amazon is Michael Heckenberger, who we just met earlier. spent years, right? wororking in Brazil's Xinggu region, living amongst the indndigenous people there But even he has never heard of some city that sounds quite like the Locity of Z or El Dorado Percy. exactly what happened to Fawcett and his team will likely never be known. But his work and beliefs were not in vain. Scientists and archaeologists excuse me, have found countless evidence hidden deep in the jungle that does support Fawcett's belief, frequently panned during his lifetime that advanced ancient civilizations, even if they maybe didn't look quite like what he thought they were going to look like did once thrive in the Amazon and more on that in our fifth takeaway Time suuck, top five takeaways. Number one, although Percy Fawcett came from a family with a noble history They were far from wealth by the time he reached adulood Despite his fame, Fawett struggled financially for most of his life in pursuit of glory Unlike other explorers who largely came from money and had funding to buy the latest technology, Fawcett was like a real life Indiana Jones. He had to fight for every dollar towards the end of his career, did not have access to the latest technology of his time And Percy, by the way, is one of the explorers Indiana Jones is based off of. Nber two, Fosa once acted as a spy for the British Empire. He was sent to Morocco and instructed to observe people in places. He managed to get into the Sultan's rooyal court and report on the King's activities. This was the only time he ever acted as a spy in any official capacity but rumors that he was still a spy persistence throughout his life Number three, FSa gained worldwide fame for his exploration and mapping of uncharted territory in South America During his numerous expeditions, Fawet interacted with countless indigenous tribes who lived in the Amazon. Those interactions challengeed commonly held beliefs at the time that the people of the Amazon were far simpler than they in fact are Number four throughout his expeditions. Fawett did find some evidence of ancient civilization in the Amazons such as remnants of pottery and ancient paintings study and documents written by the original Spanish explorers He came to believe that there was a lost city called Z hidden deep in the Brazilian Amazon He was highly secretive about his exact location, but he believed it was in the JXingu region Fossa became obsess with the idea of Z But he consume his entire life Ultimately, his pursuit of Z led to his death and the untimely death of his son Jack and Jack's friend Raleigh as well. Number five, new ino modern mapping technology can detect urban structures in the Amazon further supporting the belief that indigenous people of the past did have sophisticated cities and cultures. in twenty twenty two. Scientists use light based remote sensing technology, LIDAR digitally deforest the canopy. And they found ancient ruins of a large urban settlement around Jianos de Maxos in the Bolivian Amazon that was abandoned about six hundred years ago It was a stronghold of the Hasarabe culture. urban centers that featured platform and pyramid architecture a raised causeway, connected suburban settlements to stretch for miles. The settlement was shaped by a water control and distribution system with reservoirs and canals. Michael Heckenberger was not involved in this research, but noted that elements of the settlement like moats, causeways, parklands, work and fores and fish farms have been seen at other sites in the ancient Amazon. likeike the ones we read about him finding According to Smithsonian magazine Qote, the new research unveils something quite new Previous examples of urbanism in the Amazon include the upper Jingu region and the Brazilian. Amazon, where Heckenberger works with the Quikoru nation. Such settlements might be described as groups of villages networked together. They aren't technically urban, some experts have argued, because they lack clearly defined larger centers, with monumental architecture like platform mounds and U shaped temples those urban centers can be found. at Janos de de Mxos. Heckenberger told the Smithsonian This is in my mind, the clearest case of a fully urbanized Amazonian landscape It is a marvelous piece of work It shows a really remarkable range of things that humans did in the past to work with their landscapes and to work with larger and larger populations Previous archeological work revealed hundreds of isolated sites across more than seven thousand hundred square miles of the Anostimaxos region, including settlements inhabited year round by the Casarabe Logistical challenges of mapping these settlements in the tropical rainforests hampered efforts to see how they related That's where LidAark comes in that type of new mapping The research team mapped six different areas ranging in size from four square miles to thirty two square miles, identifying the heartland the Kasarabe culture between five hundred and fourteen hundred CE A LIDAar system works by firing down a grid of hundreds of thousands of infrared beams per second. When each beam strikes something, it bounces back with a measure of distance. This produces a cloud of data points that can be fed into computer software to create high resolution images to digitally deorce the Amazon show the surface and any archaeological features In this case, the images showed twenty six unique sites, including eleven that were previously unknown. There were two large urban centers called Landivar and Katoa These sites were already known, but the new mapping detailed their complexity in size, one point two zo five square miles Each tenner was surrounded by rings of moats and rampart fortifications They featured terraces, large platform buildings, conical pyramids over seventy feet tall All of the civic and ceremonial buildings were oriented to the north Northwest, reflecting a cosmological worldview observed at other ancient sites in the Amazon There are also a network of regional settlements connected by causeways that radiate out from urban centers, stretching several miles. The problem is that the architecture was made from mud bricks not stone So it didn't survive like other ancient structures have to the Casabe people remains a mysty Occupation of the sites ended around the year fourteen hundred, just prior to European arrival. They might have left the area due to drought Paleoc climate studies have suggested that much of the Amazon is younger than suspected And the large areas were open savannah environments shortly before colonization, which would have facilitated landscape engineering Heckenberger also identified dozens of garden cities with homes, plazas, and palisade walls These sites were connected by roads, bridges, and canals all situated in large engineered landscapes of fields and fish farms This cluster of suburban communities thrived in the region where Faucet went missing Percy might have unknowingly hiked directly over the biggest of these cities He might have slept atop What was once a major temple In twenty eighteen, scientists used satellite imes using satellite images, reported that large areas of the Amazon in the Brazilian state of Montte Gasso, once thought to have been sparsely inhabited, were dotted with villages and earthworks called geoglyphs. Hundreds of villages could have been homed up to a million people between twelve fifty and fifteen hundreds each There were even larger urban centers and these populated sites They have not yet been identified, but might be someday. Archaeologist Stehven Rustain told the BBC in twenty twenty four You know nothing because the history that we think we know is wrong It's a history made by so called chroniclers that rarely saw what they described. It's a history of lies We know a little bit from colonial times, but it's a story of exploitation of land, torture and slavery. It's not a beautiful history W this, the discovery of a vast urban cradle lets us better understand the first actors of this history. the indndigenous people. It forces us to rethink the entire human past of the Amazon. Rustin and his team recently published the results of a study that took thirty years to complete In the nineteen seventies, a local priest named Jan Batasso found a mount built on top of a platform in the Opano Valley. Soon afterwards, he was visited by another priest from Qitau named Pedro Paras And and Batasso showed him the mound Haras, organized an excavation, publishes findings in an Ecuadorian paper The site was forgotten about for about fifteen years until Rustain who've been excavating a Maya site in Guatemala in the eighties And he found the publication and went to Ecuador to investigate He began excavating the mounds in nineteen ninety six. colleague abandoned the project two years later, but Rosseain continued He returned to Ecuador in twenty eleven to live there And in twenty fifteen, Ecuador's National Institute for Cultural Heritage funded an aerial survey of the valley with Lidar Using LidDar, Rustin and his colleagues discovered a long lost network of cities extending across three hundred square kilometers or hundred and sixteen square miles in the Ecuador and Amazon featuring plauses Sadly, still not pizza places, but also ceremonial sites, drainage canals and roads. They also identified more than six thousand rectangular earthen platforms, believed to be homes and communal buildings in fifteen urban centers surrounded by terrorist agricultural fields city's streets were engineered to be perfectly straight. cononnecting at right angles, linking different cities. The largest were ten meters or thirty two feet wide This network of cities is believed to be more than a thousand years older than any other known complex Amazonian site. and its size and level of sophistication suggest a highly structured society larger than well known Mayan cities in Mexico and Central America Beginning in roughly five hundred BCE, the Kilamope and Upano cultures began building homes on raised platforms organized around plazas. The size of the early city covers an area comparable to Egypt's Giza pllateau. These societies expanded for about a thousand years until they were abandoned between three hundred and six hundred CE for unknown reasons Archeologist Antwan Dorrison, a co author, estimated that the city was once home to up to thirty thousand people Other estimates suggest the population was possibly in the hundreds of thousands Rustain told the BBC This discovery has proven that there was an equivalent of Rome in Abazonia The peopleeople living in these societies were not semi nomadic people lost in the rainforest looking for food. They were not the small tribes of the Amazon we know today. They were highly specialized people, earth movers, engineers, farmers, fishermen, priests, chiefs, and kings It was a stratified society, a specialized society So there is certainly something of Rome. Lasting evidence of urbanism has been difficult to find in the Amazon, but LIDAar technology is speeding up future discoveries by allowing researchers to see things not visible from the ground Many ancient sites have remained undisturbed for hundreds of years, another big advantage for researchers. However, continuous deforestation threatens efforts to find and properly excavate and understand these ancient sites One of which really could be Percy Fawetts Lost city. of Z Time suuck, T five takeaways Finding the lost city of Z Percy Fawet's suuicide mission has been sucked Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for helping making time suck. Thank you to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindseay Cummins. to Logan Keith, helping to publish this episode, D designing Merch for the store at badmagicproductions d. comot A big thank you to Olivia Lee again for some more great research Fastinine story Easier to read to speak, but fascinating story my God Yeah, what are they going to find down there, wouldn't Also, thanks to the All seen eyes, moderating the cult of the Curious private Facebook page still after all these years The modod squad, making sure disiscord keeps running smooth and everybody over on the timee suck and bad Magic starredits And now Time for this week's Time sucker updates Updes, get your time First up, it's fucking Millerime. This long time sweet sucker sent an email to Bo Jangles at Tesuckpodcast. com with the subject line of fuck the rainforest None that we think Hello, Sck Master General I hope you are well. I'll just dive right in. Number one, off the bat, thank you for all you do about talking about mental health and better help. I recently had my first session and' looking forward to more of them It really has already helped me get through some personal stuff. That's awesome Number two, holy shit camp was so much fun. I know I may have gotten after pretty hard on the first night I remember, But not many people can say their favorite comediian started his set with a drunk story about them. All of the activities at camp, the community cannot say enough good things about it and I hope I can get to go this year. yeah, hope so too On the good side of things, I quit Amazon after I was offered a job with a huge paint company as a DOT driver Over the years, you have said things that really resonate with me about believing in yourself, making sure you get what you're worth. I've been having the worst time with the rainforest T technically a third partyvendor, a company that delivers Amazon packages Some things were not in their control, like not having any sort of upward mobility or just, you know, a reason to do your best I had a constant follow up about health carere coverage issues with them and the company that they used, and it got to a point where I decided to find a job that had a future I landed a job with Sherwin William. that not only have a four hundred one K, but a pension, which most companies do not Thanks for inspiring Mat Sax all over to do their best. Also the Nightmare Fuel Resurrection series should be a fucking series. Make it happen D Cumins AK John K making half. Also, if you read this both, be my girlfriend and Amanda just accepted job offers within the same week and are killing it lately Also shout outs to my brother Jack and my brother from another mother, John I could go on and on, but thank you, Lindseay Logan, all the bad Madded crew from the bottom of my butt Hail Nimrod Mer Heiight U, man, Miller, I love you, man. Thanks for being here since day one. Always being so positive, pushing through struggles, coming out on the other side stronger Yeah, I know you had some rough times in the past few years, but now you're fucking killing it. You didn't give up didn't give in to your struggles. kept pushing like a perscy fucking fauccet And look at you now, man Thanks for sharing that. Congrat on all the good stuff And if you do make it to camp Comebine, grab a hug