The Kuikuro are likely the descendants of the people who built the settlements known to archaeologists as Kuhikugu, located at the headwaters of the Xingu River.

[1][2] Stories of Kuhikugu may have inspired the British explorer Percy Fawcett on his ill-fated expedition looking for the "Lost City of Z" in the 1920s.

Tribal leaders and men most often know Portuguese, and it is rarer for women to know it, but this has been changing in recent years.

An orthography has been developed for Kuikuro and other Upper Xingu languages for training native teachers and creating educational materials.

[4] According to archaeological research, the history of the ancestors of the Kuikuros began around a thousand years ago.

[citation needed] One of the first contact of the Kuikuros with Europeans was with the German Karl von den Steinen’s 1884 expedition.