All language subtitles for Historys.Greatest.Mysteries.S06E16.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

(tense music)

- Tonight, a lost city
deep in the Amazon jungle

and the man who vanished
trying to find it.

- In the 1920s,

Percy Fawcett was
one of the most

famous explorers in the world.

- He became obsessed with this
place he named the city of Z.

- He writes a letter from
his camp in the jungle,

and that's the last
we hear from him.

(dramatic music)

- Millions around the world

await the news of
Fawcett's fate,

inspiring numerous
missions to find him.

- At this point, he
begins to suspect

that not only did they
murder Fawcett and his men,

but they're the next ones
in line to be killed.

- If you die in the jungle,
in a few days,

your body can
completely disappear.

- Now, we'll explore the top

theory surrounding
Fawcett's disappearance

and the location of his
legendary lost city.

- Everyone knew
when he was coming

and vaguely where he was going,

so it wouldn't have been
very hard to follow him.

- Because the
jungle is so thick,

he might have reached Z

and walked right by it.

- They've only
uncovered maybe 10%

of this massive civilization.

This could be exactly
what Fawcett was seeking.

- What happened to Percy Fawcett

and where is the Lost City of Z?

(suspenseful music)

(suspenseful music continues)

(ominous music)

(tense music)

Around 1500,

Portuguese explorers
begin arriving on the coast

of a place they name

Vera Cruz,

which means true cross.

Today, we know it as Brazil.

- At the time, they
think it's an island.

They don't know yet that it's
part of this giant continent.

And what they find there

is this massive, massive river

emptying into the
Atlantic Ocean.

They name the river and the
rainforest that surrounds it

the Amazon,

and this is the largest
rainforest in the entire world.

It's over 2.3
million square miles.

That's over
half of the United States.

(dramatic music)

- It's still a
mostly unexplored frontier

because it's incredibly dense.

The canopy makes the
forest floor very dark,

so it's not like you
can grow a lot of food there.

There are several diseases.

It's full of
dangerous wild animals

like jaguars and anacondas,

so it's not easy to
survive there at all.

(dramatic music)

- Over the next
couple hundred years,

as people are exploring deeper
and deeper into the Amazon,

well, they're
constantly questioning

the local indigenous people,

and they're hearing stories
and rumors and myths

of these ancient
lost cities of gold

that are just beyond the horizon

or just beyond the mountain.

And these stories are spreading

all across Western
Europe at the time.

So by the 19th century,

printing presses have been built

on the backs of these stories

of European explorers going
off into the Amazon in search of

ancient lost cities
of gold and untold riches.

(dramatic music)

- [Laurence] One man
long intrigued by these tales

is British explorer
Percy Fawcett.

- Percy Fawcett attended the
Royal Geographical Society

to learn to be a
cartographer and make maps,

and he also served
as an artillery officer

in the British Army.

Those skills combined,

his military experience,

his cartography skills,

get him sent to the
newest frontier,

to the borders of Brazil

to start mapping
this dense, unknown area.

- He leaves the British Army

and basically becomes a
professional explorer.

And by 1911, his exploits
become very popular

his exploits become very popular

for the newspapers
back in England.

Stories like killing
poisonous snakes

or dealing with
extremely hostile tribes.

- So during his
time in the Amazon,

Fawcett begins to really
cultivate this obsession.

He's hearing stories
about these lost cities,

lost civilizations,

and he zeroes in on one
that he writes about

using just the letter Z.

(intense music)

- [Laurence] He even travels to

Brazil's capital city
to learn more.

And while researching at the

National Library
of Rio de Janeiro,

Fawcett uncovers a
mysterious 10-page document

now known as Manuscript 512.

- And this 10-page document

written by a Portuguese
explorer back in the 1750s

describes this lost city

as sitting directly
inside three archways

and opening up into a plaza

that had language
written on the wall

in what looked
like Ancient Greek.

For Percy Fawcett, this is the
confirmation that he needs.

The stories that he's heard
from the indigenous tribe

are now matching up with a
manuscript in the library,

and he knows it's now his time
to find the Lost City of Z.

(intense music)

- Based on the descriptions
in Manuscript 512,

Fawcett decides
to focus his search,

on the area between two rivers,

the Tapajos and the Xingu River.

There were previous explorers

that had tried to
penetrate the area,

including Theodore Roosevelt,

but no Westerner had
ever fully penetrated

the thick jungle in
that area before.

So Fawcett decides that this is

where the Lost City of Z
has to be located,

and he decides he's going
to be the one to explore it.

(intense music)

- So in 1920, Fawcett
mounts an expedition,

and it is a total disaster.

Everything goes wrong,

he gets sick, the ox dies,

he has to shoot his own horse.

He basically ends up going home

with his tail tucked
between his legs.

And of course after that,

no one's really interested
in funding a follow up.

So this is where
Fawcett's self-promotion

really serves him well.

He gets funding from
a group of publishers

who he promises an ongoing
story of his adventures,

where, along the
way as he travels,

runners are going to be carrying

regular updates to the media

(tense music)

(suspenseful music)

- [Laurence] Fawcett's second
expedition in search of Z

launches on April 20th, 1925.

He's joined by his
21-year-old son, Jack,

Jack's friend, Raleigh Rimell,

two Brazilian laborers,

and a team of pack animals.

- Everyone seems to
be in good spirits.

For the last month,
he and his party

have been hacking their
way through the forest,

and on May 29th, 1925, he's at a
camp called Dead Horse Camp

which is unfortunately
where he had to shoot his horse

on his last expedition.

And he writes to
his wife telling her

that he's now going
to be leaving behind

his local indigenous guides

as well as their pack mules

and going totally on foot

because he wants to be able
to move quickly, stealthily

into unknown dangerous
territory of the Mato Grosso,

one of the most formidable
regions of the Amazon.

And the word Mato Grosso
means thick forest.

It's extremely treacherous
territory just to navigate,

let alone the wide plethora of

dangers that
await you in the Amazon.

(dramatic booming sound)

- Going into the jungle,
Percy knows he's on his own

and there's gonna be no way
to get any information out

or, frankly, no way
to ask for help.

So, he warns his wife
in advance, he tells her,

"It might be a year
before you hear from me."

(ominous music)

- [Laurence] This is
the last communication

ever received from
Percy Fawcett.

(intense music)

- By the spring of 1927,

Fawcett has been
gone for two years

and the newspapers haven't
heard any more from him.

There's absolutely no word.

At this point,

Fawcett's wife, Nina,
and his younger son, Brian,

believe that Fawcett is
still alive in the rainforest

somewhere, and this is one
of the reasons why they support

sending somebody after him.

- But that's complicated
by a number of things.

One, the same thing it's
complicated by for Fawcett,

the density and harshness
of the jungle environment.

But it's complicated
by another thing too,

and that's that Fawcett
tried to keep secret

the exact location
of where he was headed.

He could have been
doing that for safety,

not wanting other people
to follow in his footsteps

or to come looking for him
and risk their own lives,

but he was probably
also doing it for

the sake of keeping
the secret for himself.

He didn't want anyone
else following his path

and getting there first.

(intense music)

- So by 1928,

countless expeditions
are being launched

and people are even
funding their own trips

to go and try to find some
remnants of Percy Fawcett

left in the jungles of
the Mato Grosso region.

But Fawcett's worries about
people trying to follow him

were totally correct.

And estimates range

that even as many as
a hundred explorers

looking for Percy Fawcett

never returned from
the Mato Grosso region.

(dramatic music)

- [Laurence] To date,
no one has found him or

hard evidence of his death.

There's now a centuries
worth of speculation

on what became of Percy Fawcett.

- The region that
Fawcett was exploring

is beset with dangers.

It's easy to get lost,
to become disoriented,

to lose one sense of direction,

to fall prey to one of the
many dangers of the Amazon.

- You would think that a jungle

would have plenty of
food and plenty of water,

but, in fact, there are
so many competing species

that live in a jungle.

Finding food is
actually difficult.

- You think, "Oh, it's the
most diverse of species,"

but you don't see
a single thing.

You only hear these things

'cause it's like
walking into a closet.

It's black.

They all see you

and they're all hunting you,

but you're just
blind in the jungle.

(dramatic music)

(graphic whooshing)
(suspenseful music)

- On one of Percy Fawcett's
previous expeditions,

he himself as well as
the rest of the crew

almost starved to death.

There's even a point where he
seizes the guns from his men

to prevent them from
cannibalizing each other.

- And in the Amazon,

exhaustion,
starvation, dehydration,

those are not the only
things that could kill you.

There are a lot of
other things as well.

There's insects.

There's tiny little bees
that are called 'eye lickers'

that can work their way
into your tear ducts.

There's a small
species of eel fish

that's known to
swim up people's urethras

and inhabit their bodies.

(drmatic booming sound)
(bugs chirping and buzzing)

- There are venomous spiders

that can kill a human
being with a single bite.

There are anacondas
that can easily kill a human.

In fact, Fawcett
had shot an anaconda

that had attacked him

during a previous
trip into the Amazon,

so this is not a safe place.

- If something
dies in the desert,

you can find that skeleton
for hundreds of years.

Whereas in the jungle,

it is so rich with
everything trying to live,

and turn the next
thing into fertilizer,

if you die there, in a few days,

your body can
completely disappear.

(tense rhythmic music)

- [Laurence] But by 1925,

Percy Fawcett has faced
these dangers numerous times

and survived.

- So, in many people's mind,

if there is anyone that could
still be surviving somewhere

deep within the Amazon,
it was Percy Fawcett.

He was notorious for escaping
the most perilous situations and

somehow making it
out on the other side.

- He's experienced starvation.

He's walked for
days without food.

He fought off a giant anaconda

and lived to tell the story.

So if the jungle
didn't kill him,

it's possible
that something else did.

- [Laurence] In
the spring of 1927,

2 years after explorer,

Percy Fawcett, sent his last
message, from the remote Amazon,

he's officially
declared missing.

- At this point,

Fawcett and his team
have been missing so long

most people think they're dead.

So, George Dyott

is an acquaintance of Fawcetts,

he's a wealthy businessman,

and he decides that,

he's going to
mount an expedition

to do exactly what Percy Fawcett
didn't want anyone to do,

which is follow in his
footsteps and find him.

- George Dyott is considered
an extreme daredevil.

He was a test pilot shortly
after the Wright Brothers.

He was one of the first
people to fly at night.

He'd gone to the Amazon before,

got captured by locals,

and barely escapes.

So he's pretty
experienced in this realm.

- George Dyott
advertises in newspapers

looking for a partner
for his expedition

to find or to at least
solve the mystery

of Percy Fawcett's
disappearance.

- [Laurence] Some
20,000 individuals, from

all over the world respond.

(tense music)

- He puts together
a team of 26 people,

including indigenous guides,

and also brings
with him a film crew

because he wants to document
this whole thing for posterity.

He has three tons
of gear and supplies

to help his team survive.

- By June 1928,

George Dyott reaches
the region of Mato Grosso,

that area where Percy Fawcett

sent his last
letter to his family from.

And he has a huge stroke of luck

because he makes camp
in a native settlement, where

he meets this guy Bernardino,
who claims that he was the guide

for Percy Fawcett back in 1925.

- Bernardino leads Dyott
and some of the others

to this place,
where he had guided Fawcett,

down on Fawcett's
previous expedition.

And he shows them these trees

that have these markings
of Ys in their bark.

And Dyott posits that
Fawcett had made these marks

so that he would be able
to find his way back out

after he discovered
the Lost City of Z.

(soft tense music)

- One of the things
that makes Dyott's team

a little bit different
from Fawcett's team before

is that they're using radio

to relay messages
back to the home base.

Amateur radio operators are
picking up Dyott's messages

and relaying them back
to the rest of the world.

(intense music)

- [Laurence] Shortly after
arriving in Mato Grosso,

Dyott's expedition

takes a dark turn.

- Despite all the people
and supplies that Dyott brings

with him, he left out
one really key necessity:

a translator.

(dramatic music)

This becomes really problematic.

When they run into
a local tribe,

the Nahukua,

they have only basic pantomime

to understand what
they're trying to say

about the final fate
of Percy Fawcett.

- He thinks that the
Nahukua are telling him

that Fawcett and his
men were murdered

by another indigenous
group known as the Suyas

because the Nahukua keeps
saying, "Suyas! Suyas!"

and then falling
over as though dead.

(tense music)

(whooshing sound)
(dramatic rhythmic music)

- Dyott is aware of
how dangerous it can be

to survive in the jungle.

Dozens of tribes
live in the region

and it's known that they have
terrible, gruesome fights

between different tribes
or with the outsiders.

And there is a
story, for example,

about this one tribe
that attacked a village,

killed almost everybody in it,

and then they spent three days

dancing and making music

among the rotten corpses.

- [Laurence] But
Dyott starts to wonder

if this is a
deliberate misdirect.

- As Dyott is negotiating
with the Nahukua,

in one of the huts,
he sees a small girl

who's wearing what
looks like a necklace

and it's actually a name plate

that says WS Silver Company.

Dyott knows that
Fawcett had purchased

a lot of his gear from that
company, So he's thinking,

Fawcett's been here,

this girl has this nameplate,

how did it get there?

- At this point, Dyott
begins to suspect

that not only did the Nahukua
murder Fawcett and his men,

but that he and his men

are the next ones in
line to be killed.

Many of his
men are sick and starving.

They have been
infected by diseases

like malaria and yellow fever.

Things are not
going well for him at all.

(tense rhythmic music)

- At this point, Dyott and his
team are pretty dispirited.

And then one night at camp,

rumors start to go around
that the chief of the Nahukua

is planning to kill them all
like they killed Fawcett.

- [Laurence] The next morning,

the Nahukua men
are nowhere to be found.

- Until suddenly,
the entire party is surrounded,

not just by the Nahukua,

but by lots of different tribes

all pointing weapons at them.

(dramatic music)

- Dyott decides that his
only choice here is to pacify

the Nahukua, with as
many gifts as they still have.

After a little while,

the conversation is
completely breaking down

and they start to decide

it might be time for us to
figure out a way out of here.

Dyott decides my
best chance is to promise

more gifts in the morning.

(intense music)

- So at night, they
decide to escape.

They sneak out from
the camp, very, very quietly,

they go to their boats,

and they drift off making no
sound,

going away with the current.

The indigenous people
chase after them,

but they manage to escape.

(dramatic music)

(intense music)

- Remarkably, after six months

of originally landing in Brazil,

George Dyott surfaces
from the jungle

with an amazing story to tell.

He hasn't found Percy Fawcett,

but he's found some evidence

that Fawcett was
with the Nahukua,

and he says that the
Nahukua killed Fawcett.

(dramatic music)

- People find that
pretty plausible,

but it's also clear that Dyott
really likes the attention.

He stars in a B movie about his

own expedition into the Amazon.

And there's others
who think that Fawcett

wouldn't have been
quite so socially inept.

He'd had interactions with
the indigenous people of the

Amazon before and none
of them had gone that far south.

- Many people don't
believe the story

that Fawcett was murdered
by indigenous people

because they had confidence
in his diplomatic skills.

He had always had a very fine
ability to make peace, with the

people that he came into contact
with, and they find it hard

to believe that his diplomatic
skills would fail him.

That means that it's
possible that something else

was responsible for his demise.

- [Laurence] Some experts
believe Percy Fawcett's 1925

quest for the Lost City of Z

ended with his murder
by an indigenous tribe.

But these weren't
the only dangerous people

lurking in the
Amazon rainforest.

- In 1924, just before
Fawcett arrived,

there was an attempted
military coup in Brazil,

which was put down.

The rebels dispersed
throughout the country.

A large number of them
settling in the Cuiaba region

in the Mato Grosso

right about the time that
Percy Fawcett arrived.

These rebels were armed,

they were dangerous,

they were known to
attack any foreigners

who were in the region.

They not only would rob them,

but they sometimes

just murdered them.

(dramatic music)

- These Brazilian rebels,

they knew who Percy Fawcett was.

He was a celebrity
in these areas.

Everyone knew when he was coming

and vaguely where he was going,

so it wouldn't have been very
hard to follow him.

All you have to do is wait
until his local Brazilian guides

return and send Percy off down
the jungle, and then follow

the trail that they had cut, and
thus you have Percy Fawcett,

his son, and his son's friend

sitting in the
jungle by themselves

waiting to be ambushed.

- [Laurence] There's little hard
evidence to prove this theory

until a surprising discovery

over 50 years after
Percy Fawcett's disappearance.

- In 1979,

this British biologist
is in the Amazon

making a wildlife film.

And he hears about
this interesting ring

at a local pawn shop in Cuiaba.

When he goes to check it out,

the owner is long since dead,

but his wife is still there,

and she hands him a ring

with a motto written
on it in Latin,

and the translation is
'difficulties be damned.'

The Fawcett family motto.

- Fawcett's family confirms
without doubt that, that was the

very ring that Percy Fawcett
took on the expedition.

It's possible that
he was murdered

and that ring was
sold at the pawn shop.

It's also possible that Fawcett
used this ring as a gift

to get either food, or guidance,

or something to help
him along the way.

So the existence of this signet
ring in the pawn shop doesn't

necessarily mean
that Fawcett was killed

or it doesn't even mean
the end of the story.

- [Laurence] In the early 2000s,

some old evidence is uncovered

that suggests a different fate.

- TV writer and
director Misha Williams

reaches out to Fawcett's family

and in return, he
gets an entire trunk

of materials of Fawcetts

not previously
released to the public,

and what he finds
is a lot of material

gathered by
Fawcett's son, Brian.

The one who didn't go with him,

who basically spent
his entire life

until he died in the 1980s

researching his own father.

(intense music)

- According to his son, Brian,

Percy Fawcett isn't just
looking for the Lost City of Z

just to say he found it.

He thinks if he
can find this city,

he'll be able to
find lost science

and, possibly,
unheard of technology

to set up his own civilization

in the middle of the
Amazonian jungle.

(lound deep tone)

(graphic whooshing)
(inquisitive upbeat music)

- According to Brian Fawcett,

his father, Percy,

thought that the Lost City of Z

could have been a refuge

for people escaping

the lost city of Atlantis.

He believed that Atlantis may
have been located in the

Atlantic Ocean,
and then when it famously

was lost under the water,

people leaving that place

sought refuge in the
Amazon Forest and established

that civilized utopian community

in the Lost City of Z.

(mysterious music)

- And as farfetched as a
lost Atlantian continent

somewhere off the coast
of South America may seem,

in 2013, the Brazilian
geology service actually

located a huge
sunken landmass continent

off the coast of South America.

- Fawcett's goal might have
been to create a utopian society

with the technological advances

from the lost city of
Atlantis, and I have to say,

there's something intriguing
to me about that theory.

After Fawcett
experienced World War I,

he was incredibly disillusioned

with what humanity
was capable of.

He spent so much
time in the Amazon

seeing tribal peoples
live in a kind of harmony

with the natural world.

It would not surprise
me completely

if he wanted to
escape into the jungle

and live out the rest
of his days, in this kind of

resurrection of
the lost city of Atlantis.

- The question still remains,

did Fawcett ever find
what he was looking for?

And if he did, or if
he created, his own enlightened

civilization in the
middle of the forest,

why hasn't anyone else
found it yet?

It seems clear to
some researchers

that if we wanna
answer these questions

about Percy Fawcett,

what we need to do is find
the Lost City of Z itself.

- Whether explorer
Percy Fawcett was killed,

succumbed to the elements,

or simply chose to stay
in the Amazon jungle,

one thing is clear:

he never came back.

It's one of the great puzzles

in the history of archeology.

Since the 1920s, there have been

countless attempts to figure out

exactly what happened to him.

Some believe that the best
way to try and find him

is to try and find the place
he was supposedly looking for:

the Lost City of Z.

(rhythmic music)

- It's hard to say that there

could ever be a silver lining

to the fact that the rainforest

is regularly and
consistently shrinking.

But since the 1920s,
it's gotten a lot easier

to search around that region

because of that very fact:

the rainforest
is getting smaller.

(suspenseful music)

- The last few decades
have been really compelling

in terms of what
we are uncovering in

the Amazon rainforest.

Significantly, a researcher
from the University of Florida

named Michael Heckenberger

published a book in 2005
called "The Ecology of Power"

that chronicles his research

and some of his
expeditions in the region

very near where
Percy Fawcett was looking.

- [Laurence] Heckenberger
makes a jaw dropping discovery.

- The Xingu River travels all
the way through the Amazon,

but at the
headwaters of it, Heckenberger

found evidence of over

20 cities,

an entire population

that had been overgrown
by the jungle.

These villages
are pre-Columbian,

dating back possibly
as far as 800 CE.

- However, we don't know

the ancient indigenous
name of this site.

The only name that
we have for it

is an adoption of a local
Brazilian site called Kuhikugu.

This site lines up almost
perfectly with Fawcett's idea

of what his Lost City of
Z would've looked like,

with massive monumental
architecture,

wide open plazas,

as well as geometrically
aligned monuments

and highways that extend
often in the jungle

that connect to
other settlements,

as well as aqueducts
running underneath the city

as far exceeding anything
that existed in Europe

at the same time.

- Researchers estimate
that they've only uncovered

maybe 10% of this
massive civilization,

which means there's even
more yet to be found.

This could be exactly
what Fawcett was seeking.

(whooshing sound)
(dramatic music)

(ominous tone)

- Kuhikugu is similar
to some of the things

that Percy Fawcett believed
about the Lost City of Z.

There is the broad road.

There are bridges and moats

and sophisticated
architectural features.

It is more or less in

the area where Fawcett thought

that the Lost City of Z
might be located.

- [Laurence] But if these ruins
match Fawcett's description of Z

and they're located
where he was looking,

why didn't he find them?

- It took Michael Heckenberger

13 years

of living right next
to these archeological sites

before he even discovered them

due to the fact that
they have been covered up

by centuries upon
centuries of jungle growth.

Even if Percy Fawcett did
discover the site of Kuhikugu,

his expedition could
have been thwarted by the

extremely fierce and
dangerous tribes, who live in

that area even today.

(suspenseful music)

- It's entirely possible

that Percy Fawcett could
have walked right by Kuhikugu

and never seen it.

The jungle could have
completely obscured

any clue that he
could have found

to the existence
of this civilization.

- Explorers continue to
find this out the hard way

as recently as 1996.

- In 1996, the
explorer James Lynch

leads a party
looking for Fawcett

into the Amazon rainforest,

accompanied, among other people,

by his 16-year-old son.

They run into
some indigenous people

who are very upset
about seeing them there.

- Lynch and his
crew were kidnapped

and held hostage for three days,

and they were threatened with
a horrible and painful death.

They say, "If you don't
give us everything we want,

we will tie you over the river

and dip you into the water

while piranhas chew
away your flesh.

Alternatively, we will

slather you completely
from head to toe with honey

and lay you on the ground

and let the bees
sting you to death."

- They only escape because
he basically hands over

all of his belongings,

all his equipment and his boats,

and that's when they
finally let him leave.

So it's clear that Fawcett
might even have found this city

and still wasn't
able to explore it.

Excavation is
ongoing at Kuhikugu,

and it's going to
take a lot more work

to really uncover
the full extent

of what there is
to be found there.

New sites are being discovered
in the Amazon regularly,

and they're not just in Brazil.

- [Laurence] Percy Fawcett's
1925 expedition, and subsequent

missions to find him,

all focused on
the Brazilian Amazon,

but the entire rainforest
covers 5.5 million square miles

and eight countries,

leading some to look
for the city of Z

far beyond Brazil.

- One of the ongoing
obstacles to exploration of

the Amazon rainforest
is its density.

It's hard to move through

and it's also hard
to see through.

Even when we can
fly planes over it

and take pictures,

the canopy is so dense

that light doesn't
even make it through.

So pictures certainly aren't
going to help.

Over the last few decades,

new technology has
been able to use LiDAR,

light detection and ranging,

to actually see
through the canopy

to what lies below.

- So LiDAR technology has
really revolutionized archeology

because it allows
archeologists to get a picture

of what is under
the ground in an area in

a way that you couldn't

if you went in with machetes

and hacked your way through.

Basically, they fly
over an area in a plane,

they shoot these
infrared lasers down

onto the ground
in a grid format,

and then that grid
reveals things

that exist underneath the earth.

LiDAR technology tells us

when there are
things under the ground that

merit archeological attention.

(dramatic music)

- Scientists quickly
latched onto this technology

because it allows them
to map large areas

in these archeological sites.

And in the Amazon jungle,

it's extremely important

because they can
not only map them,

but it gives them a perfect

three dimensional model,
if you will, to see

what lies below the jungle

with the vegetation removed,

and it allows them to zoom in

and actually see
very fine detail.

(tense music)

- In 2018, a team of
German researchers

use LiDAR in Northern Bolivia

and discover a massive
urban settlement

in a region known
as Llanos de Mojos.

The digital images reveal this
massive network of structures

that they think dates back
anywhere from 500 to 1400 CE.

Compared to the sites in Brazil,

this site in Bolivia might
actually be a better match

for Fawcett's Lost City of Z.

If that's the case,

then Fawcett was about a
thousand miles off target.

(whooshing sound)
(tense music)

(whooshing sound)
(rhythmic music)

- Llanos de Mojos is one of
the largest archeological sites

ever discovered in the Amazon.

It is complete with
colossal step pyramid,

large, wide, open plazas

that are oriented to
astronomical bodies in the sky

and geometrically
aligned to one another,

with aqueducts
used to funnel water

from the local
rivers into the city

and large highway systems
extending off into the Amazon

likely to connect
to other cities

that are in arguable size,

somewhere that we haven't
even discovered yet.

And the estimated
population of Llanos de Mojos

is over 1 million people.

To put that in perspective,
the estimated population size of

Ancient Rome, at its height,
was also 1 million people.

(intense music)

- Llanos de Mojos might
be a better fit than Kuhikugu

for something like

the Lost City of Z
because it is massive.

Remember, Kuhikugu is a series

of interconnected settlements.

There's about 20
interconnected settlements.

But Llanos de Mojos is a
huge city of a million people

with monumental
architecture and pyramids.

It's massive.

Attesting to sophisticated

civilizations that
existed in the new world

long before European contact.

(suspenseful music)

- Archeological evidence
does point towards the fact

that the Amazon was much, much
more densely inhabited than

anybody has previously
thought over the last 500 years,

and it's very likely that

cities as big or bigger are
still waiting to be rediscovered

somewhere deep in
the heart of the Amazon.

(suspenseful music)
(whooshing sound)

- [Laurence] Some Percy Fawcett
researchers believe locating the

actual Lost City of Z

could shed light
on the explorer's fate.

Others contend that finding
it is highly unlikely.

- This takes us back to
Manuscript 512.

This is the document

that sets Fawcett

on his journey,
and it's been verified

as coming from the 1700s,

but we still don't know
who authored it or why.

(intense music)

- We'll never know
if the original document

that sent Percy
Fawcett in the jungle,

Manuscript 512, was
actually factual.

This could have
been an earlier explorer

using his imagination,
to help raise money.

- When explorers were making
inroads into the Americas,

they went to great lengths
to convince their funders

to give them money.

They promised them
endless amounts of gold

and other precious metals

in order to entice them to
support these expeditions.

(dramatic music)

- Percy Fawcett did this
himself.

When he needed funding,

he sold his story of
adventure to the news.

That could be what's
happening here.

Manuscript 512 could
basically be a sales pitch

looking for someone to be
willing to fund the exploration.

- So maybe Fawcett
devoted his entire life

to something that
wasn't even real.

(whooshing sound)
(dramatic booming sound)

(whooshing sound)
(intense music)

- Another issue is that
there were many civilizations

hidden in the jungle
as we know now.

So how do we
know that this document

was describing not one city,

but many other
civilizations or cities

that somebody encountered

and it was just
a mixture of them?

(water rushing)
(suspenseful music)

- We know that Hernan Cortez

found Tenochtitlan, the
Aztec capital.

We know that Francisco
Pizarro found Cuzco,

a city that at one point housed

potentially 10 million people.

The realities of places
like this fuel the rumors

of places like
the Lost City of Z.

(tense music fading)

(dramatic booming sound)

- [Laurence] Details from
the Fawcett family papers

have convinced some historians

that the Lost City of Z

is more of an idea
than an actual place.

- Fawcett's youngest son, Brian,

spends his whole
life trying to figure out

what happened to his
father and older brother.

He goes through
reams of documents,

does lots of
historical research,

even travels to the Amazon

to try to find out the truth.

And at the end,
he begins to suspect

that the Lost City of Z

was more of a spiritual
or metaphysical quest

than a quest for gold and ruins.

(booming sound)
(soft high-pitch note)

- We know from his
family's explanations

that he was leaning
heavily into mysticism.

He was using Ouija boards

and psychic mediums

as part of his journey of
discovery, and it may be that

his goal in the
end wasn't to find

the Lost City of Z.

His goal may have
been to found his own city.

- [Laurence] Percy Fawcett
and the Lost City of Z

remains one of the
biggest puzzles

in the history of exploration.

- [Sabina] Percy Fawcett feeds
into our fantasies of

what an explorer is like

because of his
bravery and character.

I think whenever
you have a mystery,

whenever you have
someone who disappears

and is never heard from again,

whenever you don't
have an answer,

that creates fodder
for uncertainty,

and out of uncertainty
come legends

and rumors and attempts
to solve the mystery.

So I think that
the Percy Fawcett story

is one of these
that will always inspire

more speculation, more stories.

- All of these finds,
Heckenberger's,

this German research
teams in Northern Bolivia,

I think they're just the tip of

of what we're going
to begin finding, and it's

really turning on its head the

beliefs that people have
held for a really long time,

that there were never
large populations

of people living in
the Amazonian Basin.

That whole notion is
being completely upended

by these finds.

The suggestion to me is
that time will reveal more

cities, more lost cities,

and very likely

the Lost City of Z.

(tense music)

- Whatever Percy Fawcett
was searching for,

he didn't find it,

at least as far as we know.

The city itself may be waiting

for someone else to locate it,

and that means a new generation

of explorers are likely to

continue to search for Fawcett

and the infamous Lost City of Z.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching,

"History's Greatest Mysteries."

(tense music)