Percy Harrison Fawcett It is one of the most enigmatic and fascinating names in the history of exploration. Geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist and British expeditionary, his life is marked by a great adventurous spirit and by the obsessive search for a legendary lost city that he believed existed in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
He was born on August 18, 1867, in Torquay, Devon, England, and came from a family of renowned ancestry. His father, Edward Boyd Fawcett, was a member of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), and his older brother, Edward Douglas, stood out as an author of adventure books and philosophical works.
These first contacts with that world of wonders, epic feats and existential musings determined, from an early age, Percy’s personality.
Educated at Newton Abbot College, and later at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, He forged a solid military career. He was posted to various areas belonging to the British Empire, such as Hong Kong, Malta and Ceylon, and there he honed his skills in cartography and strategy.
In 1901, he joined the RGS to specialize in surveying, and thus He was able to combine a military career with his passion for exploration. In that same year, he married Nina Agnes Paterson, with whom he would have three children: Jack, Brian and Joan.
In 1906, Fawcett undertook his first expedition to South America under the sponsorship of the RGS, which sent him to the border between Bolivia and Brazil with the mission of mapping the region.
Fawcett, fascinated by the mysteries of the jungle, soon was enchanted by stories of lost cities and forgotten civilizations. Over the next two decades, he would undertake seven more expeditions, facing disease, wild animals, and the dangers of unknown territories.
Percy Fawcett and his controversial stories
One of his most controversial stories dates back to those trips, when he claimed to have shot down a 19 meter long anaconda snake. This earned him disqualification and ridicule from the scientific community, but Fawcett stood by his statements. He even added stories of encounters with strange creatures (such as a supposed “dog-feline”) that had not even been described by modern zoology.
Fawcett has always cultivated an obsession with find that lost city in the Amazon, which he called Z. Inspired by Manuscript 512, a Portuguese document that described the ruins of an ancient city in Brazil, the English explorer dedicated himself to theorizing about the existence of an advanced civilization in the Amazon region that predated the arrival of Europeans to the American continent. .
According to Fawcett, the site was located somewhere in Mato Grosso, and he was convinced that finding it would be the key to revealing the secrets of humanity.
After the First World War, where he served with distinction in the trenches of Flanders, he returned to South America with renewed determination. In 1920, he attempted to search for Z alone, but had to abandon the mission due to a severe fever he had contracted.
Percy Fawcett and his men in the jungle.Fawcett left clear instructions: if he did not return, no rescue party was to be sent.
Life for Z
Four years later and with the support of a group of London investors, Fawcett organized his last expedition. Accompanied by his son Jack and his friend Raleigh Rimell, he set out from Cuiabá, Brazil, with the aim of locating Z.
Equipped with scant provisions and guided by knowledge accumulated over years, Fawcett left clear instructions to those close to him: if he did not return, they should not send any rescue party, since the risks were too great.
Fawcett’s last trace of contact with the outside world is in a letter sent from the camp known as Dead Horse and dated May 29, 1925. In it, expressed his optimism for the journey he was about to undertake with his people. From that moment on, Fawcett, his son, and Rimell simply disappeared, giving rise to one of the biggest unknowns in the history of exploration.
Over the years, various theories have been proposed about the fate of the expedition members. Some suggest they were killed by hostile indigenous tribes, such as the Kalapalo, the last to sight the group. However, others claim that Fawcett enjoyed good relations with local tribes, making this hypothesis unlikely. It has also been speculated that they died of hunger or some disease in the vast and treacherous jungle.
Numerous rescue expeditions were organized to find Fawcett and his team, but all failed. Objects belonging to Fawcett, such as a compass and a dog tag, were occasionally found, but these discoveries shed no real light on his ultimate whereabouts.
Archaeologist Michael Heckenberger found a monumental civilization known as Kuhikugu, near where Fawcett was searching for Z.
The most recent hypotheses
In 2005, David Grann, writer of The New Yorkervisited the Kalapalo tribe, qwho preserve an oral history about Fawcett. According to this account, Fawcett and his troop stayed in his village before setting out east, ignoring warnings about the “fierce Indians” who dwelt in the territory where they were headed.
The Kalapalo watched the smoke from the campfire for five days, until it faded; they believe they were murdered for these warriors. Grann also mentions archaeologist Michael Heckenberger’s later discovery of a monumental civilization known as Kuhikugu, near where Fawcett was searching for Z.
The figure of Fawcett not only shone in a world that still harbored uncertainties about its geography and its inhabitants, at a time when still unexplored regions gave rise to fables and awakened mysteries to be deciphered. His life in constant motion and his abrupt disappearance remain a fascinating enigma today. to the point that they have inspired novels, films and documentaries. In 2009, Grann published the book The lost city Za work that was made into a film in 2016 by director James Gray.
The effort of the English adventurer to find the lost citadel, which leads him to leave his life in that enterprise, represents the eternal curiosity of human beings for the unknown, the impulse to go beyond the limits of civilization, the love for the knowledge, confidence in doubt and uncertainty (about humanity’s past) as a method of access to knowledge.
Despite never having found the city, the legacy of Fawcett, a tireless explorer and dreamer, remains valid, and his story continues to captivate generations of scientists and curious people from around the world. In addition to fueling the myth of Z, his disappearance became an emblem of the struggle of human beings to expand their understanding, to confront the unknown, to battle against the sublime.
Percy Harrison Fawcett is aligned among the archetypes of the great feats of humanity, which compromised one’s life and put one’s body to give effect to one’s convictions. Although his remains have never been found, the great adventurer of the Amazon remains latent in cultural memory as a living spark in the face of the unattainable.