In 1925, Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, a real-life Indiana Jones, started his last journey in the darkest part of Amazon. He was searching for the remains of a lost ancient civilization, what he named it the City of Z. Fawcett was a middle age retired imperial British officer, working as a Royal Geographical Society explorer in the tropical jungles. He had an extraordinary skill in surviving situations that for others seemed beyond impossible; however, in 1927, Fawcett was officially declared missing. There were reports that he was taken hostage by indigenous Amazonians. While other reports indicating he was murdered by aggressive tribes, lack of any evidences about his destiny inspired some occultists in mid 20th century to claim that Fawcett has found a portal to a metaphysical world!
Since 1928 many expeditions have tried to find Fawcett or his described city, but these efforts have been futile, and in the most cases the destiny of the searchers has not been different form the Fawcett’s. Fawcett had a very conservative attitude about revealing his expedition routs, mainly because he was reluctant to end up with the same fate of the other British explorer, Captain Scott in Antarctica.
After about 80 years, David Grann, a staff writer of the New Yorker magazine has tried to discover what Fawcett gambled his life on. The outcome of his quest is narrated in a very fascinating article in Sept. 19th issue of the magazine. It was a great delight for me to read this fairly long essay, in which not only the destiny of Fawcett and the City of Z are tried to be discovered, but also very exciting anthropological observations, and interesting comparison between today’s and the 80 years ago Amazon are elaborately depicted. If you like Indiana Jones, you cannot stop reading this article!