Colonel Percival Harrison Fawcett (18 August 1867 ? in or after 1925) was a British archaeologist and an explorer.
Along with his son, Fawcett disappeared under unknown circumstances in 1925 during an expedition to find "Z": his name for what he believed to be an ancient lost city in the uncharted jungles of Brazil.
Percy Fawcett was born on 18 August 1867 in Torquay, Devon, England to Edward B. and Myra Fawcett. He received his education at Newton Abbot Proprietary College. Percy's Indian-born father was a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. His elder brother Edward Douglas Fawcett (1866-1960) was a mountain climber, Eastern occultist and popular writer of adventure novels.
In 1886, Percy was given a commission in the Royal Artillery and he served in Trincomalee, Ceylon, where he also met his wife. Later, he worked for the British Secret Service in North Africa and learned the surveyor's craft. He was also a friend of authors H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle; the latter used Fawcett's Amazonian field reports as an inspiration for The Lost World.
Fawcett's first expedition to South America was in 1906 when he traveled to Brazil to map a jungle area at the border of Brazil and Bolivia at the behest of the Royal Geographic Society. The Society had been commissioned to map the area as a third party unbiased by local national interests. He arrived in La Paz in June. Whilst on the expedition in 1907, Fawcett claimed to have seen and shot a 62 feet long giant anaconda, for which he was widely ridiculed by the scientific community. He reported other mysterious animals unknown to zoology, such as a small cat-like dog about the size of a foxhound, which he claimed to have seen twice.
Fawcett made seven expeditions between 1906 and 1924. He mostly got along with the locals through gifts, patience and courteous behavior. In 1910 Fawcett made a trip to Heath River to find its source. Following his 1913 expedition, he supposedly claimed to have seen dogs with double noses. These may have been Double-nosed Andean tiger hounds. He returned to Britain for active service in the army during World War I, but after the war he returned to Brazil to study local wildlife and archaeology.
In 1925, with funding from a London-based group of financiers Fawcett returned to Brazil with his elder son Jack for an exploratory expedition. He had studied ancient legends and historical records and was convinced a lost city existed somewhere in the Mato Grosso region, a city Fawcett named "Z." Fawcett left behind instructions stating that if the expedition did not return, no rescue expedition should be sent lest the rescuers suffer his fate.
A man with years of experience traveling with all the handpicked necessities, things such as canned foods powdered milk, guns, flares and of course a sextant and a chronometer for gathering latitude and longitude. Also handpicked were his travel companions, both chosen for their heath, ability, and loyalty to each other; his oldest son Jack Fawcett and Jack's long time friend Raleigh Rimell. Fawcett chose only two companions, so they could travel lighter and so they would go more unnoticed with the tribes of the jungle; some being hostile towards explorers. And many tribes at the time still had not come into contact with white men.
The last sign of Fawcett was on 29 May 1925, when Fawcett telegraphed his wife that he was ready to go into unexplored territory with only Jack and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimell. They were reported to be crossing the Upper Xingu, a southeastern tributary of the Amazon River. Then nothing more was heard of them.
Many presumed that local Indians had killed them, several tribes being posited at the time?the Kalapalos, who last saw them, or the Arum?s, Suy?s, or Xavantes tribes whose territory they were entering. Both of the younger men were lame and ill when last seen, and there is no proof they were murdered. It is plausible that they died of natural causes in the Brazilian jungle.
In 1927, a nameplate of Fawcett was found with an Indian tribe. In June 1933, a theodolite compass belonging to Fawcett was found near the Baciary Indians of Mato Grosso by Colonel Aniceto Botelho.
During the following decades, various groups mounted several rescue expeditions without results. They heard only various rumors that could not be verified. In addition to reports that Fawcett had been killed by Indians or wild animals, there was a tale that Fawcett had lost his memory and lived out his life as the chief of a tribe of cannibals.
An estimated one hundred would-be-rescuers have died in more than 13 expeditions sent to uncover Fawcett's fate. One of the earliest was led by American explorer George Miller Dyott in 1927; he claimed to have found evidence of Fawcett's death at the hands of the Aloique Indians, but the strength of his story soon began to unravel. A 1951 expedition unearthed human bones that were later found to be unconnected to Fawcett or his companions. Kalapalo tribesmen captured a 1996 expedition, but released them days later when they gave up all their equipment.
Danish explorer Arne Falk-R?nne journeyed to the Mato Grosso in the 1960s. In a 1991 book, he wrote that he learned Fawcett's fate from Orlando Villas Boas, who had heard it from one of Fawcett's murderers. Apparently, Fawcett and his companions had a mishap on the river and lost most of the gifts they'd brought along for the Indian tribes. Continuing without gifts was a serious breach of protocol; since the expedition members were all more or less seriously ill at the time, the Kalapalo tribe they encountered decided to kill them. The bodies of Jack Fawcett and Raleigh Rimell were thrown into the river; Colonel Fawcett, considered an old man and therefore distinguished, received a proper burial. Falk-R?nne visited the Kalapalo tribe and reported that one of the tribesmen confirmed Villas Boas's story about how and why Fawcett had been killed.
In 1951, Orlando Villas Boas supposedly received the actual remaining skeletal bones of Fawcett and had them scientifically analyzed. The analysis allegedly confirmed the bones to be Fawcett's. But his son Brian Fawcett (1906-1984) refused to accept them. Villas Boas claimed that Brian was too interested in making money from books about his father's disappearance. Later scientific analysis confirmed that the bones were not Fawcett's. As of 1965, the bones reportedly rested in a box in the apartment of one of the Villas Boas brothers in S?o Paulo.
In 1998, English explorer Benedict Allen set out to talk to the Kalapalo Indians, said by Villas Boas to have confessed to having killed the three Fawcett expedition members. An elder of the Kalapalo, Vajuvi, claimed during a filmed BBC interview with Allen that the bones found by Villas Boas some 45 years before were not really Fawcett's. Vajuvi also denied that his tribe had had any part in the Fawcett's disappearance. No conclusive evidence supports either statement.
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