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The Lost City of Z is the name given by Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, a British surveyor of the early 20th century, to an indigenous city that he believed had existed in the jungle of the Mato Grosso state of Brazil. Based on early histories of South America and his own explorations of the Amazon River region, Fawcett theorized that a complex civilization had once existed there, and that isolated ruins may have survived.[1] Fawcett and two companions disappeared during an expedition to find evidence of the hypothesized civilization in 1925.
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Fawcett found a document known as Manuscript 512, held at the National Library of Brazil, believed to have been written by Portuguese bandeirantes João da Silva Guimarães. According to the document, in 1753, a group of bandeirantes discovered the ruins of an ancient city that contained arches, a statue, and a temple with hieroglyphs. He described the city ruins in great detail without giving its location.[citation needed]
Manuscript 512 was written after explorations made in the sertão of the province of Bahia.[2][page needed] Fawcett intended to pursue finding this city as a secondary goal after "Z". He was preparing an expedition to find "Z" when World War I broke out and the British government suspended its support. Fawcett returned to Britain and served on the Western Front during the war.
After the war ended, in 1920, Fawcett undertook a personal expedition to find the city but withdrew after suffering from fever and having to shoot his pack animal.[1] On a second expedition in 1925, Fawcett, his son Jack, and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimmel disappeared in the Mato Grosso jungle.
Researchers believe that Fawcett may have been influenced in his thinking by information obtained from indigenous people about the archaeological site of Kuhikugu, near the headwaters of the Xingu River.[3][page needed] In 2022, the remains of settlements near Llanos de Moxos were surveyed using lidar. The sites contain the ruins of pyramids, causeways, and other infrastructure, supporting Fawcett's theory about ancient settlements in the Amazon.[4][5]
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The city is the focus of the 1991 novel Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils.
In 2005, the American journalist David Grann published an article in The New Yorker on Fawcett's expeditions and findings, titled "The Lost City of Z".[1] In 2009 he developed it into a book of the same title, and in 2016 it was adapted by writer-director James Gray into a film of the same name starring Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, and Sienna Miller.[6]
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