Fawcett, Percy Harrison (1867-1925?), was an Englishman who explored the jungles of Brazil. Fawcett was born on Aug. 18, 1867, in Torquay, Devon, England. He was an officer in the British Army and a trained surveyor. In 1906, the Royal Geographical Society, a British organization that sponsors scientific expeditions, invited Fawcett to survey part of the frontier between Brazil and Bolivia. He spent 18 months in the jungle, in the Mato Grosso area, where he learned much about the peoples of the jungle.
After World War I (1914-1918), Fawcett returned to Brazil. He was fascinated by stories of a magnificent city in the Amazon jungle. Historians believe he may have heard of this hidden city from a document known as Manuscript 512, written by Portuguese explorers in the late 1700’s. The document describes the ruins of an ancient city built of stone in the jungles of Brazil. However, the document does not specify the city’s location. Fawcett planned an expedition into the interior Amazon Basin to discover this lost city, which he called “Z.” In 1925, with his son Jack and a friend of Jack’s, he departed into the jungle. Nothing was heard of the party again.
Many scholars believe Fawcett and his team were killed by hostile natives or perhaps died of disease or starvation as they searched for the “Lost City of Z.” In the years since Fawcett vanished, several expeditions have attempted to find him, and as many as 100 people have died while searching for traces of the expedition. The fate of the Fawcett expedition remains an unsolved mystery today. Percy Fawcett’s younger son, Brian, wrote of the expedition in Exploration Fawcett (1953).
