Percy Fawcett — Explorer Vanishes in Amazon Searching for Ancient Lost City Z

In 1925, British Lieutenant Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, a respected cartographer and explorer who had mapped vast tracts of South America, set out into the Brazilian Amazon with his son Jack and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimell on a self-funded expedition in search of what he called "the Lost City of Z" — an advanced pre-Columbian civilization he believed existed in the uncharted interior of Mato Grosso. Fawcett had made seven previous successful expeditions to South America and had earned the confidence of the Royal Geographical Society. He insisted on entering the jungle with a small team to avoid antagonizing indigenous tribes he believed had killed previous expeditions. His last communication was a telegram in May 1925 from a location he called Dead Horse Camp. He, Jack, and Raleigh were never seen or heard from again. The disappearance spawned decades of rescue expeditions, all of which failed to find Fawcett or evidence of his fate. Some expeditions themselves suffered casualties. Numerous individuals over the years claimed to have met or had information about Fawcett's fate — including accounts of capture by hostile tribes, voluntary adoption of indigenous life, and founding a jungle community. DNA evidence and historical research in the 21st century finally identified a likely tribe — the Kalapalo — as having encountered and possibly killed Fawcett's party after they continued onward against the Kalapalo's advice into territory controlled by more hostile groups. Lidar surveys of the Mato Grosso region have revealed extensive pre-Columbian earthworks suggesting that Fawcett's instinct about ancient civilization in the region was not wrong.