TERRA INCOGNITA

I just read an article in the New Yorker, "The Lost City of Z," which completely fascinated me. This larger-than-life explorer, Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett (see above), entered the Amazon jungle in 1927 to find a somewhat mythological city, which he deemed Z. He was never heard from again. Countless failed search expeditions followed his disappearance. What is so fascinating about all of this is that while Z may have been a myth - an illusion based on nothing other than our need for transcendence, or gold, or scientific knowledge - the idea that a vast and highly advanced city once existed deep within the Mato Grosso region of Brazil is somewhat undoubtedly true.

There are these circular moats or ditches that enclose parts of Mato Grosso. In these moats, which are very noticeable even after 700 years of jungle wear and tear, are these funnel shapes. One of the obvious conclusions is that a fence once surrounded these areas, some call it the 'paradise wall.' When looked at aerially, these circular moats form a pattern, when taken together with the roads and canals and causeways, not to mention the evidence of bridges, suggest that a culture much like the mythological city of Z, as advanced as Europe, did once exist in Mato Grosso.

The problem so many explorers like Fawcett had was they were overlooking, literally overstepping, the evidence. The jungle spreads. It spreads so much that if not macheted or simply lived in, it will engulf anything it touches, bringing all into itself. The jungle vows to make everything a jungle. So you have this vast city within the Mato Grosso, with elaborate road systems and highly decorative cultural traditions, with it's own creation story and sense of right and wrong and what happens? How does it just disappear? First you take into consideration what these buildings would have been made with - the earth. Pick any patch of soil in the Mato Grosso region and, if you dig deep enough, you will find broken pottery; broken pottery that bears an unmistakable resemblance to the pottery adorning the huts of those who lives in the region today. Culture begets culture. Some of this pottery, some of the black dirt, are the remnants of the buildings that made up this paradisiacal city, now overwrought with jungle-trees. But where did the large population of people go? What made them leave or die off, so that the jungle could have its epidemical way, leaving a people in its wake with little knowledge of the origin of their own culture? The problem is vast populations of Brazilians were wiped out by what was basically a holocaust from European contact - diseases or war. That would explain why the first European explorers of the Amazon described such vast settlements that, later - especially today - no one could ever find. Fascinating.

Three books I plan to get from the library today: David H. Childress' Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries of South America, Micheal Heckenberger's The Ecology of Power, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.