We have history, we do. That’s what happens when time passes. And it does. But the very instant a second ticks by, we have more history. It’s happening right now.
At any rate, throughout our world history, we’ve seen some weird things come and go. And one of those things is The Lost City. I don’t know how many there are in total, but I recently happened upon five of them. Cities that have been lost and never been found. (The Lost City of Aztlan; The Lost City of Lyonesse; El Dorado; The Lost Desert Cities of Dubai; The Lost City of Z)
One that caught my interest involves Percy Fawcett and the Lost City of Z.
It started when those Europeans first arrived in the New World. It was mysterious. And with that came the wondering of what might be on those newly “found” shores. Like. There were stories of a legendary jungle city of gold, sometimes referred to as El Dorado. Probably the first guy to seek it out was Spanish Conquistador Francisco de Orellana back around 1535 or so. He ventured along the Rio Negro in search of this fabled city of gold.
Plenty of others came and went after him.
But this story beings much later. It began in 1925 with a guy named Percy. At the age of 58, explorer Percy Fawcett headed into the jungles of Brazil to find a mysterious lost city he called “Z.” Did he find it? We’ll never know. He and his team would vanish without a trace, and the story would turn out to be one of the biggest news stories of his day. Despite countless rescue missions, Fawcett was never found.
The story of this began some 20 years earlier for Percy. In 1906, the Royal Geographical Society (a British organization that sponsored scientific expeditions) invited Fawcett to survey a certain area between Brazil and Bolivia. He spent 18 months in what is called the Mato Grosso area. While he was there, our pal Percy became obsessed with the idea of lost civilizations in this area.
Then, in 1920, Perry was doing some light reading at the library. Specifically, the National Library of Rio De Janeiro. It was then that he found a document called Manuscript 512. It was written by a Portuguese explorer in 1753. The explorer claimed that he found a walled city deep in the Mato Grosso region. The explorer said it reminded him of ancient Greece and that this “lost city” was laden with silver and “multi-storied buildings, soaring stone arches, wide streets,” and on and on. Fawcett called this the Lost City of Z. The librarian had to wipe the drool off the table after Percy left.
So, he decided he was going to find this place. I for one, don’t think hacking around in the Amazon jungle would be any fun at all. But, in 1921, Percy set out on his first of many expeditions to find the Lost City of Z.
His various teams were frequently hindered by the “hardships” of the jungle. I call them terrors. That place is filled with dangerous animals and terrible diseases. I’ve seen the movie Anaconda. And heaven only knows how many people have died of malaria. Heck, even today, 290 million people get malaria each year.
Anyway. As I mentioned before, things didn’t work out so great for Percy. At least, we don’t think so. Percy’s final search for the Lost City of Z culminated in his complete disappearance. In April 1925, he attempted one last time to find Z. He even had better chances, as several newspapers and societies, including the Royal Geographic Society and the Rockefellers, financed him.
But then, just like that, he and his crew disappeared. During the expedition, he sent a letter home via a team member. It was a message to his wife, Nina. In it, he said, “We hope to get through this region in a few days… You need have no fear of any failure.”
And that was to be the last anyone would ever hear from them again.
Perry Fawcett’s lost city of Z has never been found. But despite that, numerous ancient cities and remains of religious sites have been uncovered in recent years in the jungles of Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia and Honduras. Scanning technology has helped this. So maybe one day, Z will be found.
Books have been written about him. And even a movie was made in 2016.
But no Greek-ish Silver City has ever turned up.
Another mystery of the deep Amazon. Another mystery of this Earth.
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All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
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You can’t know what you don’t know. You can’t know about things you have yet to discover.
— Jonathan Raymond
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The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
— Edmund Burke
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Lost cities. Lost time. Lost everything. Zzzzzz.
