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
