City Z: Percy Fawcett Vanished, while Amazonia Was Treated as if It Had Never Held Cities

On 29 May 1925, from a place he called Dead Horse Camp in Brazil’s Mato Grosso, British explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett sent his last letter to his wife. He was travelling with his son Jack and Jack’s friend Raleigh Rimmell. After that letter, all three disappeared inside the Amazon basin and were never seen again.

Fawcett was not simply hunting treasure. He believed the South American interior once held a large civilisation with towns, roads, and writing. He named his main target Z. The idea grew from years of surveying the Bolivia–Brazil border, reports from Indigenous communities, and an old document kept by Brazil’s National Library: Manuscript 512.