Satellite photo of upper Amazon deforestation for grazing reveals ancient ruins.
The Lost City of Z
just read "The Lost City of Z" by David Grann. It centers on the life of Colonel Percy Fawcett, and the terrible trials, even death that explorers faced in South America. Fawcett was obsessed with finding the lost city he'd read about in the old translated Portuguese explorer's manuscript. (I'd also read elsewhere that he hoped to prove that South America was the fabled Atlantis). Anyway, Fawcett's world famous expedition in 1925 with his son Jack and Jack's best friend Raleigh Rimell was a journey from which he and his two associates would never return.
David Grann's search hoping to shed light what became of the three explorers and perhaps find Fawcett's lost city he names "Z" was a little disappointing at the end. Why? Because he didn't include the ancient manuscript's translation about the lost city that was the incentive for Fawcett (left), Sir Richard Burton, and so many other explorers to risk their lives. According to the old Brazilian manuscript above, the city of "Z" might have been more like archaeologist Hiram Bingham's Machu Picchu (below) that he discovered in 1911, or the ancient ruins in Columbia at the bottom of this page.
Nit pickin' aside...The Lost City of Z is a wonderful reading adventure, and it looks like Brad Pitt might star in his own Indiana Jones style adventure film in the Lost City Of Z. Paramount Pictures has preemptively bought David Grann's manuscript with Brad Pitt to produce the feature adaptation that is supposed to be released some time this year.
As for Percy Fawcett wanting to prove that South America was Atlantis...A remarkable discovery was made by James Wilson in 1860, and earned him recognition by the Royal Geological Society. Wilson traced six terraces in going up from the sea through the province of Esmeraldas towards Quito, Ecuador. At various points along the coast he found ancient or fossil pottery, vessels, images and other manufactured articles all finely made. Some were made of gold, but most remarkable is the fact that they were taken from a stratum of ancient surface earth that was covered with a marine deposit six feet deep. The geological formation where these remains were found was as old as the drift strata of Europe and identical with that of Guayaquil in which the bones of the mastodons are found. The ancient surface earth, or vegetable mold, with the pottery, gold work and other relics of civilization was below the sea when the marine deposit was spread over it. Evidently the former civilized land sunk beneath the ocean long enough to accumulate the six feet of marine muck, and then rose again to its former position above sea level and was reforested long before the Spanish Conquistador's arrived. The ancient Atlantis legend speculates that it was an island continent that sank and would eventually rise again.
Ancient ruins in Columbia.
