Lost City of Z
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The Lost City of Z is the name given by Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett, a British surveyor, to a city that he allegedly saw in the jungle of the Mato Grosso region of Brazil.
This mysterious city is referenced in the Royal Archives of Portugal by a man who said that he visited the city in the mid-1700s. The city was described in great detail, but no firm location was given except the Mato Grosso.
Fawcett allegedly heard about this city in the early 1900s and went to Lisbon to learn more, and came across the earlier report. He was about to go in search of the city when World War I intervened.
In 1925, Fawcett and his son Jack disappeared in the Mato Grosso.
[edit] Lost City Found?
A story in The New Yorker magazine in 2005 reported that an archaeologist, Michael Heckenberger, may have found the city[1]. He had discovered clusters of settlements (20 settlements in all) with each cluster containing up to 5000 people and said "All these settlements were laid out with a complicated plan, with a sense of engineering and mathematics that rivalled anything that was happening in much of Europe at the time"[2]
[edit] Sources
- Fawcett, Percy and Brian Fawcett. - Lost Trails, Lost Cities Funk & Wagnalls (1953)
- Furneaux, Rupert. The World's Strangest Mysteries. Ace Books. New York. 1961.
- The Guardian: Veil lifts on jungle mystery of the colonel who vanished. 21 March 2004, URL accessed 19 May 2007.
- Smith, Warren. Lost Cities of the Ancients-Unearthed!. Zebra Books. New York. 1976.
- Time: Fawcett of the Mato Grosso. 25 May 1953, URL accessed 18 May 2007.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/09/19/050919fa_fact_grann David Grann, A Reporter at Large, "The Lost City of Z," The New Yorker, September 19, 2005
- ^ Robert-Goldwater-Library: September 2005
