Well should be here
Merci was it right?
now
when I was a
schoolboy around 13
Absolutely, everybody knew about Colonel Percy awesome
because they're gone to look for a lost city in the Amazons and
He disappeared now that was enough for us. He was a hero and I hope that we are now going to go and find out
Where he went and why?
Perhaps perhaps what happened? Anyway, it's very exciting
Now that's what it
I
Was born in the wrong century
That's what my friends tell me and I'm afraid they're right. I
Should have lived in the 19th century when most of the world still had to be discovered. I
Should have been one of those brave men who left the safety and warmth of their homes to explore the blank areas on the globe
Those places where no white man had ever set foot
Without those men the world would not be as it is today
Ah
This is going to be a great trip
It's been 30 years since I last visited
Amazonia and the Brazilian jungle and these are places full of mystery and adventure
When I realized that Percy Fawcett spent years of his life here it makes me jealous
Especially in the early 1900s when Forsett lived here Brazil was a paradise for explorers
vast amounts of the rain forests were unvisited lots of indian tribes still lived completely isolated and
Colonel Percy Fawcett was convinced that somewhere in this jungle must be the remains of a lost city
the city of Zed as he courted with stone houses and even a Central Square with a statue
The longer he looked for it the more magical this place became
Fawcett thought this city might be linked to the lost world of Atlantis a highly advanced utopian
Civilization and if he could find it the discovery would change the world
No wonder the faucets story inspired many people even the greatest adventurer of cinema
Indiana Jones is modeled on Colonel Percy Fawcett
So yes, this is going to be fun
But before leaving for Brazil, I need to make some visits in the UK to prepare for this trip
It's my good old friend John hemming
I want to consult as the former director of the Royal Geographical Society
He should know all about getting lost in the rainforest
So good a long time yes
Just like Percy Fawcett
He has spent years of his life in the most remote parts of Brazil
as a young Explorer John hemming found tribes that had never ever seen white men before and
These expeditions were not without risk
John actually lost one of his best friends in an ambush Oh after we about five months and suddenly on
Our main trail the one-week cut
There was a rich Mason's body
with
40 arrows were arranged around its and 17 clubs
17 clubs. Yeah, and he he'd been ambushed and it could have been any one of us
and
Tapas. Hello
I've got one some of the errors to the arrows here. There's a lot of errors
With the side Rich's body Wow
I'm frayed and
It was about 40 of these areas in their language when they will find it contacted
Their word for a stranger was the same as their world for an enemy
So they were at war with everybody. Yes. Well when I was a prep school school boy for said
How fast he was he was a sort of hero collective hero and I suppose because he'd done something Wonder
We didn't know what but he disappeared in a jungle was the main thing about
Much to my surprise John hemming doesn't seem to be very fond of Fossett
but as the former director of the Royal Geographical Society, he knows a lot about
For it was this famous society that train Fossett as a surveyor and sent him on his first
expeditions in the Brazilian rainforest
anyway, Bolivia now had new boundaries with Brazil and
They they wrote through Royal Geographical Society saying could they send someone out to survey these boundaries?
Wonderful, so he went and that was in I think
1907
And then he got this idea. He convinced himself that there was a hidden city somewhere in the Amazon
With lights that were perpetually lit and the Indians were scared of it and then one tower
Shaped like a mushroom where got all this earth and then he heard the war broken out and so he went back to England
He'd left the army, but he joined up again and and had a good war. He ended up as a colonel
Well might I'll have to report him with one station report him. Yes, and he was
Really my father's beautiful map of where all the German guns. Yeah, but they had to report to this colonel for city
He he'd get out his Ouija board and say oh my board tells me there's a German gun emplacement there and market on their Maps
Now we're talking life and death
and the Ouija board is to call the spirits as
He was marking and so big jump Allied bombardment of some
this lunacy could psychic
But that's not why it's like he's an arrogant nasty man
Good God my hero
An arrogant and nasty man with a Ouija board. I
Can hardly believe it when I learned that Percy force its granddaughter is still alive
I can't wait to meet her and to straighten things out about her grandfather
I
remember
and it's great fun to meet you because
Full said he was my school boy here with all the other skill but affected so I take my shoes off. Yes
He has this sort of arrogant pose doesn't he
Yes, of course they do yeah, this is my grandmother Nina
She was tough too, and she wanted to be follow him
Always be coming back always
And she did go to mediums
But yeah, she went to meet him, you know, well you can understand that rule
But my wife didn't when she was told I disappeared in the Amazon. She saw my car. That's not funny
Got over it really as you can see
That's already funny. I was very fond of it
Then rillette tells me that her grandfather
She was even worse than my wife
He cashed in his pension to fund his expedition and he even sold his wife's violin
took it without asking and he saw the
Faucet sold her Berlin
After the first world war
Percy Harrison Fawcett made several attempts to find his lost city
But these expeditions turned into disasters and the hardship in the jungle
Forced him twice to abandon his search
Then in 1925
Fossett set off for the last time and this time
He took his oldest son Jack and Jack's friend Riley Rimmel with him. They were only 18 years old
When they set off into the jungle and nothing has been heard of them since
Jack
You can't compare the times their number times that it's just not possible
I
Spend the whole afternoon looking at all the photographs and artwork that gun Fawcett made during his travels
Dozens of incredibly detailed drawings
Not at all how I imagined him think of the earthís tears of peaceful expert in
Shows me all the medals from the First World War
And even the gold medal he received from the Royal Geographical Society it's a real achievement to get one of these
Brunette that's preserved at all
And then she shows me the most stunning thing. That was pretty amazing actually
years ago
We had a phone call
from a man called Brian read out and
He knew of the existence of this ring it belonged to an Indian
and subra came here, and he said I
Don't really want to part with it, but I feel I have to offer it to you
So I said
Yeah, it's come home
And this his faucets rigged he would never have parted with it ever know therefore it was taken by force
He once it was his yes, yes
And what does it say here the family motto
Nick asked for up to rent it means they fear no obstacles
See, it's gotten bad. Kink. Yeah hit with a machete. Yeah. Yeah, who knows?
My sister had a friend who was very psychic
And
She took it in her hand and she dropped it
He said it's too much blood involved. I don't I don't want to have anything to do with it. Hmm
Do you think that meant
His blood when he was killed
Yes, but it's still quite powerful. You know, you can still feel the tingling like you know it yeah
Well, it's less the case now, but I remember
On numerous occasions the cat sitting on me and then suddenly would sit up with eyes like this and he looked behind me
Yeah, you know, I'm animals are much more psychic than we are
And it was someone tall because you would look up
a
cat seeing his apparition a
busted ring and my friend telling me my hero is a
lunatic I
Must say I'm a bit confused
For never before have I encountered such extreme mixed opinions about one of my heroes
But this one thing that Fawcett was after the lost city
Could it actually have existed or was he just chasing a dream?
Time to go to Brazil and find out what was real and what was fast
There's reason in the old saying
Syrio before you die, I
Know of no other place to compare with Rio de Janeiro and it is my hope to live there someday
if
financial success
rewards this exploration work
We shall build a family home on the slopes of the mountains overlooking that glorious Harbor. I
Like the people too
and if this dream comes true
I
Shall be grateful to be accepted as one of them
And nothing could please me more than to spend the rest of my life in the service of Brazil
Well, you could see what he meant
Now you really can
Lots of beautiful things to be see here in Rio
But the real reason I'm here is this mystical manuscript that inspired force it in his quest for a lost city
If I'm not mistaken, it's still where Fossett once founded national library of Brazil
Here we are menu splitters a library full of secrets
Anna you must be Anna. Thank you very much
Yeah, you got to meet you and
I'd love to see you a very famous manuscript number five. One two, it's all prepared for you. Please sit down. Yeah. Yes
Here it is, oh they're a little for you no, that's fine. It's fine. This is a manuscript
It's very old as you can see
Here here it is the sea begins here. Mm-hmm
Hella Sun historico Roma Oh Kota it grandpa Vasant which means the historical
account of a very old and hidden village that was discovered in the year of
1753 sixteen
Departure the ancient destined trader who is a so much value is so big
That's why
It's very difficult because of the way
He describes the
Orientation, but this was the first the real inspiration. Yes and here it's amazing to see them
These are the well the signs that he the signs are descriptions that the person who wrote this
found on stone and they copied all the
descriptions here
The interpretations are very very different some people says it was a sign that Romans went here and
colonizes order says it's a
Door that leads to a subterranean world. Yes, very convincing
I very very like to see someone coming in here and say I found it even though they didn't find
the place photos of a
Magnificent place but all it's a photo of an inscription that I can see
It's the same inscription that was there and something that could prove that this is true
There is something strange about the story of Percy Fawcett
But first one is ready to dismiss his adventures to find a lost city as foolish
enterprises
Attend his obsession crawls under your skin and after reading the manuscript five one
Two one starts to think what if he was right? What if there is a lost city hidden in the jungle?
Before leaving Rio I decide to spend the afternoon on Copacabana to empty my mind
but even there I
seem to be haunted by an apparition of
Colonel forces
Before it gets really
Spooky we travel to sell powder now. This is a city
You can't imagine ever getting lost all those skyscrapers seem to have formed a jungle of their own. I
Have a lunch appointment in a typical suburban bar of southbound what we're about to meet
Hürmüz, Leal who wrote this book?
Colonel faucet or the real Indiana Jones and it was a runaway bestseller in Brazil
this is a manuscript called 512
 
The first thing that layer pulls out of his bag is a microfilm of the exact same
Manuscript that we studied in the library in Rio the other day and he knows it by heart
when Fawcett learned that there was a possibility of having a lost city in Brazil
when he was still in his research in Peru
he made a connection of the possibility of a lost city with this one
he connected things, he said it could be this city, what happens is that Fawcett was in Peru when Machu Picchu was discovered
and he was nearby, and he thought if there is a lost city in Peru
why doesn't there exist one in Brazil too? I think Machu Picchu has awakened in him
the possibility of looking for a city in Brazil
at the time that Machu Picchu was discovered, he was close to Machu Picchu very close, he was already in the region
he could have discovered Machu Picchu
Well that makes perfect sense. Of course when Hiram Bingham in 1911
Staggered into the Lost Inca City Machu Picchu Percy Fawcett must have been wild with jealousy
Especially because he was actually in the close neighborhood when Bingham made his great discovery
It explains why force it thought his lost city of said was real
Rayul tells me he actually tried to find the remains of faucet fifteen years ago
an expedition that turned into a drama
They'll puts us in touch with his travel companion of that tragic
Disappearance
James
Expedition to the point force. It was thought to have disappeared
dad, he said this
helicopter for us to
Traffic for hours
James Lynch was the driving force behind an expedition in the 90s that followed the last footsteps of Percy Fawcett
But after three days the whole expedition turned into a nightmare
When bandits from an Indian tribe kidnapped the crew and forced them to abandon all their equipment
Hi James, Lynch. Yeah
Thank you, it was a traumatic experience
That made one thing very clear to James that it is very difficult not to die and disappear
In the region where force it was last seen
Where Fossett
Disappeared is a little to the right of this map. So hold that door and it's it's a place to this day
is quite fascinating there are there different groups of religious people that believe that
everything from flying saucers UFOs
being there so
there's a very
spiritual
Underpinning to everything in the Salamanca do it
And I think Fawcett if we go back, you know into 1920s
This region was
Almost unexplored and it it's still quite exotic to this day. Although you know, a lot of it's turned into farmland
The great news is James wants to join us on our trip to the region where Forsett disappeared
The location that we're going to start out at at Salamanca door is up here in this area
One of the the high points that you'll see is a finger that points to the sky
But now
In Ganges profit would be better for my spitzer
ankle scan Jamie steadies
I've found
one of the principal radar stations in
Brazil these up here on the top of the mountain. I've been up there
Talking to the guys who?
Man, the radars and said, you know these stories about UFOs and so forth
Have you ever picked up anything on on your radar screen? That's strange?
He said yeah, we have a lot of UFOs not identified on the on the radar screen
I said, you know
what do you mean do you think they're flying saucers the other day zip around real fast and stuff face another they're just
Unidentified and they're probably drug runners
in planes
You know, I find that an easier explanation to swallow
little green men
Well, it's a little green women that would interest me
Change it is
Aparecida Biaggio poutine to da serra da da da cidade
apetito
Astrias GG. Oh
Hey, listen, he's panning for gold, huh?
I've never seen that before terrible to heaven
To go down
Hey, can I come and join you? Would that be okay. It's the way that ran the air?
in that direction with the wire fence
thank you
play attention
take the gravel from the deepest part
here I already organized the gravel
the water
gravity came here, everything heavy is here
I will need a big mountain, to get 1 gram of gold, to make a ring
this movement
the body has to move like a tango
a tango ? yes
you dance with the audience, nice
yes
all day long, the sun is rising and i'm here dancing
understand ? yes
like this
this
So this is the reason for 90% of all expeditions gold and precious stones
And maybe even for sit hope to find this in his lost city
But god, this is heavy
well, I think
you deserve any gold you can find that's your
wait, I'll show you something
this is a rock
that I found making a hole in the gravel
it is a tool
from another civilization that came through here
it is a tool
so for me it's worth more than gold
today is worth much more than gold
it's a record that I'm not the only one who came here
but a lot of people
Wow, that's amazing
Our tango dancing go bigger found a stone axe
I know it's by no means a lost city, but it's proof of a very old
civilization
But according to James there is more proof to be found in this region
He knows a local guy called Morrow who can lead us to a place up the mountain where we could find carvings
similar to the ones described in manuscript 5 1 2
The only thing is it's boiling hot and humid here
The tracks are steep and there are insects everywhere. I
Hope James doesn't notice I'm about to collapse when I pretend to admire the landscape
Joseph
This plane out here in the 1920s
Try to see it the way it was. It was dense forest
It's turned into cattle ranching farms right now, but previously it was very dense for us very difficult to get through the home Cutler mountains
their long range
That you have the Xingu River
has
Various branches
And over here you have the Ottawa River
With its various ranches and the coast of Brazil is over here. So you have water and you have Bayou
His first expedition came in this way
The last expedition he went from cuiabá to Buck ID post
To Deadhorse camp where he wrote the last note to his wife saying, you know
No, it's just the three of us Jack and Raleigh and I and we're going in and we're gonna find Z
If he continued on east he would run in to the set of the honk at door
Question is did he ever make it here?
Have you found one that looks same as faucets this this one here actually seems very close to
This one right here. You can see it's sort of a cross with a
Curve to it on the on the bottom
Yeah, very very similar
It's interesting and there's this one here that sort of looks like a leaf that
Might be similar to this one. There's there's one up above here that he said that is exactly like this one
They said the the shuffling tea Indians say it's the it's the big river in the sky
Which I presume they're talking about the Milky Way. It's it's a curved
Like this and then it has some some down pointing lines to it. That is the drawing that they have up there which is identical
To this one
You know the skeptic in me says
Did somebody come by come by, you know 20 years ago and sort of graffiti it you know
Or or is this all Indian graffiti? Does it mean anything?
Well, I'm glad James brings it up to me
This doesn't look really convincing to be honest
These carvings don't look a bit like the drawings in the manuscript besides are they authentic?
Someone might have carved these signs in the wall last summer. Who knows?
When we make our way back to the base camp we run into a surprise
For many years. We are feeling that this place mounting AutoCAD wall
Has a special meaning for us
We don't know if it's because
the shape of the rocks or some kind of inner feeling let me feel
but
Exactly at this place that we are now
We can feel some kind of
communication or resonance with the mountain
If you have a profound state of meditation
We can communicate with these rocks and these mountains so deeply so deeply and we believe that you can
Go further and go into the rocks you
Can go into some kind of tunnel
But for some reason until now we are not able to find
And maybe maybe faucet could have found some of some kind of these ones. I
Believe he found a not a lost seat, but I found silly
you know a
city that have
Much more
Much more respect or a much more real connection to the earth
Yesterday we were here for the first time in this right place and we
Realized that this side of the rock
Behind me yes this side had
a little much more
Capability to connect with us that the other side. Mmm. I don't know what but
you can put one hand or both hands in the rock and
In a few seconds, you can feel some kind of wave
That you will feel something like this a small movement to the right and to the left
if the rock and you
Could for a moment be just as one
Okay
You don't have to worry about the plants or little animals or insects or any kind of just
What am I doing here, I mean true
Description on faucets ring said they fear no obstacles, but it didn't say they walk through walls
No
It's spiritual in the ways, but I really didn't feel any energy. We may just not be spiritually. Yeah
before we leave our
Meditating friends tell me that in daily life. They are medical doctors in a regular hospital
James knows that since Fawcett's
Disappearance many many people have hoped to find a lost world of some sort here and in recent years
Spiritual tourism is booming
I'm excited and intrigued by the Anthropology of it and I asked James what he thinks happened to force it
the four versions that exist
That I know of there may be more versions. But the first one being that the kala Paulo Indians actually clubbed him
Killed him buried him. This was a story that went was the version of what happened to Fawcett for years and years
More recently the kala Paulo have said no that they really didn't kill them
They are not
Blamed for Fawcett's disappearance and that he actually walked off into the forest and disappeared and they never heard from him again. So
That's one. The other one is that in fact, he did find what he was looking for
He found this this lost city that has not yet been discovered
I find that very hard to believe nowadays was satellite imagery and and with all the deforestation
That's gone on
Something would have been found from a physical sense. And then there's the benefical
metaphysical version that in fact he did
pass on
But passed on as a living being into another dimension and that in fact, he's still there. I
Support the more practical version that he got him horrors head the Indians did not kill him he moved on and
died in the jungle
Well, I can imagine he died in the jungle
I'm exhausted after only one long day of climbing
imagine doing that for months in a row with no shelter at night with mosquitoes and black flies and ants and
Jaguars around you and without even knowing if you're going to find what you're looking for
All night long I have these confusing dreams of a tall man appearing and disappearing
in the distance of the jungle
Next day we decide to travel on and say goodbye to James Lynch who stays behind to enjoy a bit more of the
spiritual environment
Secretly I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't find any evidence for Fawcett City
The same disappointment that force its only remaining son Brian must have felt when he visited this place in the 50s
In a footnote Brian writes the following about his father
The area where he believes Zedd to lie has in recent years been regularly flown over
By domestic airlines and no trace of an ancient city has been reported
It is true that remains of incalculable age have been found there about but no city
So no city
But does that mean that my hero had it all wrong? I
Can hardly believe it for when we look at his art? For instance? He must have been a great observer
And he was a surveyor. He had to be meticulous
So somewhere his suppositions must be valid
When I reread his whole work I noticed there is one striking observation I
Am probably the only one who knows the secret and I obtained it in the half school of forest experience
nevertheless
both native and foreign scholars of considerable a tradition in Brazil
agree that an old and forgotten civilization
Can be the only key to the riddle of the remarkable pottery and inscriptions that have been discovered
Pottery and inscriptions that might be the key to the riddle maybe force it wasn't as foolish as some say
I'm going to meet a journalist called Charles Mann who recently published a
magnificent book that might shed a whole new light on this matter
He was kind of right about what he was looking for and
A lot of the sort of serious sober people who in the past, you know denigrated him
Were wrong
They're wrong for the right reasons and he was right for the wrong reasons
And so it's sort of fascinating to see somebody for completely crazy reasons coming up with something
That's a little closer to reality than what the sort of good solid. People are thinking and
This very famous
Archaeologist from the u.s. Betty maegor's effectively suggested that you couldn't have a society larger than about a thousand people in the Amazon
Because you would just destroy itself
The reason was that the climate and the soil of the Amazon make it so that if you cut down the trees
Which you need to have for agriculture, which you need to have for large-scale
Society you'll wreck the land and reduct wreck your productive base. And so you can't have large-scale
sophisticated societies in the Amazon only very small groups can live there and
So the idea that of course that you could have these cities these sophisticated places in there. That was anathema. That was impossible
Ecologically impossible and what's happened in the last decade or so, is that a researcher named Michael Hickman burger in particular?
Has found I think very compelling evidence that these kinds of cities did exist
In the in in the Amazon he's you know plotted their traces
he's found I think compelling evidence for their existence and
Oddly enough and it's not that far from where Percy Fawcett was looking for them totally for these mystical reasons
He's actually looking for cities where he now think that there actually were cities
So the were cities not just one calls ed but faucets intuition was right
Charles Mann tells us there is a research crew working right in the middle of the rainforest
They have found
Spectacular evidence for these revolutionary ideas. I
Want to see it for myself?
But before we go there we have to take some precautionary measures
We're not going into the jungle for four months or six months
It's just a few days, but on the other hand you can get covered in black fly bite
so you go black in two days easily now you want to
stuck your trousers into your socks, very simple procedures and
always wear at least two pairs and
you put this in here and then put this stuff on your face because
They like that too and you can't defend yourself
Round the back of the neck and in your hair, it's very important but not on you for it
that's the SAS told me never put it on your forehead leg runs into your eyes and they itch and the earth and you can't
See the enemy so don't do that
On the boat we meet the lovely young archaeologist Helen edema
She is the head of scientific research at the excavation site and she is fascinated
By Fawcett's conviction of a lost city
Well, we have to take the shoes off to go inside
So here I am standing in my socks in the middle of the rainforest in a hole like a mass grave with
Forces disappearance in mind that is rather scary
But in this hole lies the solid scientific proof that force its observations were right
You can find
ceramic shirts ceramic remains
this is
totally indicating human presence
Massive presence here in the area. It's very very dirty, but there are drawings
On it
Straight line there
Spooky yeah, I think somebody doing that
Must have been a lot of swearing going on there. I mean a lot of parts are broken. Yes
These ones here we have collected the previews days. That's huge. Yes
minus one
excuse to be a
small plate
Believe it or not these tiny bits of pottery mean a revolution in the way
We have to think about the population of the rainforest and what makes it even better
Is that these pieces of pottery are found in a thick layer of black?
fertile ground that could only have been evolved by long-term human agriculture
But Helena has got more to show you're gonna notice there are carvings
Yeah
There's plenty of them. They have different designs besides they're all faces
It looks like human faces. Some of them are triangles. Some of them are circular some
Finally some tangible proof and although these Stone Age Smiley's here
Don't look a bit like the carvings from the manuscript in Rio
I feel I am as close to the city of Z as I can get
some of the ceramic
Assemblage the ceramic shirts we collected at the excavation unit. They have exactly the same
Face we find here on the better live
These two blocks they were covered by this sediment and
They are
carving
So it indicates that they were
human worked before the river brought all this layer of sediment
By dating this deposition. We can have a minimum age of
When the carvings were made
So we don't know yet how old these carvings actually are that?
They definitely were not made yesterday and they probably date from way before
Columbus and I want you to show us
Exactly where we are this this is where Fawcett was looking for his lost city of zared in roncador somewhere around here
Indicating
massive human presence in this area prior to the European conquest in the pre-colonial times so people for
2,000 miles. Yes a blast our plan. Maybe a hundred million maybe
Wow some city
Yeah, so even though he was looking for his Eldorado somewhere in mato grosso
I believe the other other all throughout. Yeah. Yeah Eldorado was so long. Yes
Well, what a wonderful conclusion to a mystery
Mm-hmm
On the journey back it is with completely different eyes that I look at the rain forest
We travel through it's a great thought that all this jungle might once have been a big garden
Tended by millions of people
So Colonel Percy Fawcett was right after all
sort of
It's just not a city of Zed, but an immense
Gardens
a
great 19th century British writer once wrote to believe in the heroic makes heroes and
I think he is right
when ever possible
one should always believe in me to Road and
Nurture one's mind with great thoughts about great men
Even if they bog it off into the jungle and never returned
Thank you for watching
For more on this subject take a look at the playlist. You can also watch this recommended video
Don't forget to subscribe to our Channel and we'll keep you updated on our documentaries
