Percy Harrison Fawcett DSO (18 August 1867 – disappeared 29 May 1925) was a British geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist and explorer of South America.

[4] During the 1880s, Percy Fawcett was schooled at Newton Abbot Proprietary College, alongside Bertram Fletcher Robinson, the future sportsman, journalist, writer and mutual friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

[11] Fawcett's first expedition to South America was launched in 1906 after the RGS sent him to Brazil to map an area of the jungle bordering Bolivia.

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, and the giant Apazauca spider, which was said to have poisoned a number of locals.

[18] Fawcett also found a document known as Manuscript 512, written after explorations made in the sertão of the state of Bahia, and housed at the National Library in Rio de Janeiro.

In Brazil, Fawcett carried a jade statue of a human figure with inscriptions on the chest and feet that he claimed had supernatural powers over the indigenous tribes of the Amazon.

Fawcett was a man with years of experience traveling and had taken equipment such as canned foods, powdered milk, guns, flares, a sextant and a chronometer.

The last communication from the expedition was on 29 May when Fawcett wrote, in a letter to his wife delivered by a native runner, that he was ready to go into unexplored territory with only Jack and Rimmel.

According to explorer John Hemming, Fawcett's party of three was too few to survive in the jungle and his expectation that his indigenous hosts would look after them was likely to have antagonized them by failing to bring any gifts to repay their generosity.

[32] A somewhat different version came from Orlando Villas-Bôas, who reported that Izarari had told him that he had killed all three men with his club the morning after Jack had allegedly consorted with one of his wives, when he claimed that Fawcett had slapped him in the face after the chief refused his demand for canoes and porters to continue his journey.

In June 1933, a theodolite compass belonging to Fawcett was found near the Baciary Indians of Mato Grosso by Colonel Aniceto Botelho.

[36] From Dead Horse Camp, he wrote to his wife about the hardships that he and his companions had faced, his coordinates, his doubts in Rimmel, and Fawcett's plans for the near future.

He concludes his message with, "You need have no fear of any failure..."[36] One question remaining about Dead Horse Camp concerns a discrepancy in the coordinates Fawcett gave for its location.

While a fictitious tale estimated that 100 would-be-rescuers died on several expeditions attempting to discover Fawcett's fate,[39] the actual toll was only one—a sole man who ventured after him alone.

After an emergency landing and living with the Bororo tribe for six weeks, Aloha and her husband Walter flew back to Brazil, with no luck.

In 1951, Orlando Villas-Bôas, activist for indigenous peoples, received what were claimed to be the actual remaining skeletal bones of Fawcett and had them analysed scientifically.

An elder of the Kalapalo, Vajuvi, claimed during a filmed BBC interview with Allen that the bones found by Villas-Bôas were not really Fawcett's.

The film concludes that Fawcett may have been looking for the ruins of El Dorado, a city built by more advanced people from the other side of the Andes, and that the expedition members were killed by an unknown primitive tribe that had no contact with modern civilization.

[47] On 21 March 2004, The Observer reported that television director Misha Williams, who had studied Fawcett's private papers, believed that he had not intended to return to Britain but rather meant to found a commune in the jungle, based on theosophical principles and the worship of his son Jack.

[49] In 2005, The New Yorker staff writer David Grann visited the Kalapalo and reported that it had apparently preserved an oral history about Fawcett, among the first Europeans the tribe had ever seen.

[18] The article also reports that a monumental civilisation known as Kuhikugu may have actually existed near where Fawcett was searching, as discovered recently by archaeologist Michael Heckenberger and others.

[51] Episode 133 of British horror podcast The Magnus Archives features a fictional account given by Fawcett describing the events which occurred on his final expedition.

In 2022, Vox released a 6 minute and 54 second long short documentary film onto YouTube as part of their 'Atlas' video series investigating Fawcett's journeys in the Amazon, discussing his mistakes, and the reality of the 'Lost Cities' through modern technology.