The Real Lost City of Z
Explorer Percy Fawcett vanished in 1925 searching for a lost city in the Amazon. Archaeologists later found that something like it had existed.
What was reported
In 1925, the British explorer Percy Fawcett set off into the Mato Grosso to find a lost city he called 'Z', and was never seen again. For decades, the idea of a great Amazon civilisation was dismissed: the rainforest, scientists said, could never have supported large populations.
Working with the Kuikuro people of the Upper Xingu, the archaeologist Michael Heckenberger studied the area for years.
Explanations offered
In 2008, Heckenberger and colleagues published evidence of a network of large settlements in the Upper Xingu, linked by wide roads, with plazas, bridges, moats and farmland, home to many thousands of people between about 1250 and 1650. It was not a city of stone, but it was a real lost civilisation, much as Fawcett imagined.
- When
- Settled from about 1250 to 1650
- Where
- Upper Xingu, Mato Grosso, Brazil
- Witnesses
- Explorers, the Kuikuro people and archaeologists
- Status
- Partly confirmed
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.