Percy Fawcett

Percy Fawcett was a British army officer, surveyor and explorer who mapped parts of South America for the Royal Geographical Society. He became convinced that evidence pointed to a sophisticated lost civilisation in the Amazon, which he called ‘Z’.

Fawcett spent years surveying disputed frontiers in South America and became convinced that the Amazon region could have supported complex pre-Columbian societies. In 1925 he entered the Mato Grosso with his son Jack and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimell while searching for a settlement he called 'Z'. The party disappeared after sending messages from the interior, and no conclusive evidence has established their fate.

In David Grann’s The Lost City of Z, British surveyor and explorer Percy Fawcett spent years mapping disputed frontiers in South America and became convinced that the Amazon had once supported a substantial civilisation he called “Z”.