The epic of Percy Fawcett and the mysteries of the Serra del Roncador
The man who came closest to truly understanding the mysteries of South America was the Englishman Percy Harrison Fawcett, recognized by many as the greatest explorer of the 20th century, the quintessence of adventurers.
Fawcett, who was born in England in 1867, joined the kingdom's army at a very young age, at the age of 19. He was immediately sent to the island of Ceylon, which at that time belonged to the immense British Empire. He then traveled to North Africa, where he became part of the imperial secret services.
During those years, the desire to study ancient texts was born in him, especially those that describe the universal flood, such as the Bible or the epic of Gilgamesh, in order to gather information to lay the foundations for his theory: the existence of a great antediluvian civilization that had spread throughout the world and whose vestiges were hidden somewhere on Earth. But where to look? He realized that finding proof of the existence of such an ancient civilization would be complicated and almost impossible.
However, the coincidences of his life took him to South America. In 1906 he took part in an exploration trip in the border area between Bolivia and Brazil, with the aim of mapping the area on behalf of the British Geographical Society. Just in those years, Fawcett came across a document dating back to 1753 (today called manuscript 512), which describes the journey of the adventurer Francisco Raposo in the 18th century, who entered the jungle of central Brazil. Below is an excerpt from the document:
Francisco Raposo set out in command of 18 settlers, and after many adventures, beyond a huge muddy area, he had to cross rugged mountains. Once they managed to cross to the other side, they saw some clearings and in the distance, the virgin jungle. They sent a few natives to reconnoitre, and when they returned, they said they had found the ruins of a lost city.
In document 512 (which is still preserved today in the national library of Rio de Janeiro, manuscripts section, rare works), written by the religious J. Barbosa and addressed to the Viceroy of Brazil Luis Peregrino de Carvalho Menesez, it is also narrated that the Adventurers explored the lost city the next day. They entered in wonder into a great stone city with colossal walls similar to those of Sacsayhuamán. In the heart of the enigmatic city was a square in the center of which was a very tall black monolith, at the end of which was a statue of a man pointing north.
The entirety of document 512 was published in the journal of the Institute of Brazilian History and Geography in 1839.
Did Barbosa's story occur or was it a simple fruit of fantasy? For now we cannot answer this question with certainty, what is certain is that Fawcett became fascinated with the story and began to think about exploring the area that had initially been traveled by Raposo 163 years before.
Another of the clues that guided Fawcett towards central Brazil was a black basalt statuette that represented a priest showing a type of table with bas-relief signs, perhaps syllabic ones.
The statuette, which the writer Rider Haggard (author of King Solomon's Mines), gave to Fawcett, came from Brazil and not the old world. There are 22 signs in the table, as seen in photo N.10
From 1906 to 1925, Fawcett made six expeditions to the Bolivian and Brazilian jungles. In one of them, he went up the Heath River (border area between Bolivia and Peru, department of Puno), even transmitting detailed descriptions of the fauna found. He described several canids almost totally unknown at the time and large anacondas, one measuring approximately 20 meters. We do not know if such large snakes have ever existed (the largest anaconda in the world apparently measured 9 meters), the truth is that the environmental conditions in the Bolivian and Brazilian jungles a century ago were completely different from those of now.
During these exciting expeditions, Fawcett had contact with numerous native tribes and became convinced that the lost city (which he called Z, perhaps for brevity), had to be found in the Serra do Roncador, an immense mountainous and forested area, almost entirely unexplored, which extends for approximately 300 km from north to south between the Xingu and Araguaia rivers (tributary of the Tocantins). The name Roncador derives from the strange hums that the wind produces on the rocks in the area, as if it were whistling between them.
Fawcett decided to undertake an expedition in search of the lost city mentioned by Barbossa in document 512 and together with his son Jack (born in 1903) and his friend Raleigh Rimmel, he entered the virgin jungle with an unknown destination. The last trace left by Fawcett was a telegraphic message sent on May 29, 1925 to his wife, notifying her of his departure.
The explorers left Cuiabá and walked towards the Xingu River in a northwesterly direction. After approximately 8 days of walking, they reached a point called “dead horse camp” (11 degrees 43' South-54 degrees 35' West), where they separated from the guides.
After that, nothing more was ever heard of Fawcett or the other two participants of the expedition.
Initially it was thought that the adventurers had died at the hands of Kalapalos natives or natives of other tribes that still live today in the vicinity of the Xingu River: Arumas, Suyas, Xavantes. Someone proposed that the explorers had died from severe malaria or from wild animals (bears and jaguars), but the strange thing was that the bodies were never found.
The first real expedition in the area to try to reveal the mystery of Fawcett's alleged death took place in 1928 and was guided by the American George Dyott.
It is said that he was taken prisoner by some indigenous people, then managed to escape in an incredible way. According to him, Fawcett was killed by the chief of the Nahukwa tribe, named Aloique.
In 1930, the American Albert Winton entered the Roncador jungle, but never returned.
In 1932, the Swiss Stefan Rattin, together with the journalist Horacio Fusoni, organized an expedition led by 14 Brazilian and Paraguayan men. None ever returned.
In 1937, the explorer Willi Aureli said that some Carajá natives referred to a great white chief who lived with the Xavantes deep in the jungle. The researcher Henry Vernes also began to tell that Percy Fawcett was alive and that he had decided to live far from the so-called civilization, commanding a tribe of indigenous people who guarded the mysteries of an ancient civilization, now extinct.
In 1951, the Brazilian anthropologist Orlando Villas Boas traveled several times to the Roncador area trying to follow the route followed by the English explorer. He had contact with many Indians and came to the conclusion that Fawcett and the other two members of the expedition were murdered by some Kalapalo Indians. According to these testimonies, the bodies of Jack Fawcett and Raleigh Rimmel's son were thrown into a river, while Fawcett's remains were buried in a secret location. Orlando Villas Boas also found human remains (bones), which were initially attributed to Fawcett, but which later turned out not to belong to the Englishman.
In 1996, René Delmotte and James Linch entered the Roncador jungle, but 12 of the 16 participants in the expedition were taken prisoner by the Kalapalos natives and later released in exchange for some material goods.
Two years later, the English explorer Benedict Allen managed to enter the territory of the Kalapalos and interview an indigenous elder named Vajuvi. The native categorically denied that men from his tribe had killed Fawcett and maintained that the bones found by Villas Boas did not belong to the English adventurer.
Also in the early years of the current century there were several attempts to reveal the mystery of Fawcett's death, for example, in 2005, the writer David Grann visited the Kalapalos tribe and was assured that, according to the oral traditions of the area, Fawcett spent a few days in the town, but then headed east, to an area considered dangerous and inhabited by warlike natives.
Here are the facts. The mystery of how the English explorer died and, above all, what the Sierra del Roncador hides remains hidden.
In my opinion, two main theories can be analyzed to try to explain what Fawcett was really after and to know if he came close to what he was after. The first hypothesis is mystical and the second, more probable, is the theory of the ancient lost Xingu civilization, recently discovered and studied by the American archaeologist Heckemberger.
According to the mystical and esoteric vision, which began with Fawcett's other son, Brian (1906-1984) and with the explorer's nephew, Timothy Paterson (1935-2004), the Sierra do Roncador would be one of the sacred places in the world, a kind of access door to an underground world unknown to humans.
The so-called intraterrestrials would live in the famous Temple of Ibez where the descendants of Atlantis would have retired, shortly after the universal flood.
Paterson was convinced that his uncle had found the secret entrance that would lead him to Ibez, a kind of El Dorado Atlante, where the mystery of our remote past and perhaps the key to our uncertain future would be hidden. In 1978, on one of his exploration trips in the lands surrounding the Xingu River, he had contact with an old man who assured him that the mysterious city sought by Fawcett (where the basalt statuette, collected by Haggard near the archaeologist's body, came from) Marple White, the only Westerner who would have entered city Z), was nothing more than Manoa (although many Amazonian legends place the legendary Manoa much further north of Roncador, in the current Brazilian State of Roraima).
Paterson stated that his uncle lived in Ibez until 1957, the actual date of his death.
According to Paterson, the 22 sacred signs that were incised on the statuette that disappeared with Fawcett were nothing other than the characters of the archaic alphabet of Atlantis, from which that of the Phoenicians and the Hebrews would later derive. The Italian scholar Pincherle also analyzed the drawing of the supposed alphabet that was printed on the statuette and came to the conclusion that these were actually unknown antediluvian characters. Pincherle also interpreted the incision placed at the foot of the statuette as UT NAISFM, very similar to the Babylonian UT NAPHISTIM, that is, Noah. According to the two scholars, the name Manoa, very indicated as the seat of the archaic city recognized as the true El Dorado, would also mean Noah's Port, or, the place where Noah would have docked after the flood and where he would have founded a prodigious civilization.
One of the most famous mystics who lived for a long time in the Serra do Roncador area was the Bavarian Udo Oscar Luckner (1925-1986). According to this esoteric scholar, who came to the area attracted by the legends that had been formed about the end of Fawcett, in the Roncador region there is a secret door that would lead to the kingdom of the underworld, inhabited precisely by intraterrestrials. Luckner, also called the hierophant or pope of Roncador, was the founder of the Theurgical Monastery of Roncador, which had many followers, worshipers of the temple of Ibez. In his mystical-esoteric book Misterios do Roncador, he narrates his journey in the underground caverns located in the subsoil of the Sierra do Roncador, where the temple of Ibez would be located.
According to some legends spread among the Borro and on the feet and with enormous skulls, disproportionate to the slender body.
Even today you can see several footprints with three, four and six toes in the Gruta dos Pezinhos (near the city of Barra do Garcas).
While there is no definitive evidence to shed light on the beliefs of Paterson and Luckner, I believe that the mystical world of some sentient beings (such as even Daniel Ruzo or Edgar Cayce), should be taken into consideration, both because our knowledge about the powers of the mind are still approximate, as because the intuitions of sensitive beings can reveal to us the correct path that we must follow to unravel some mysteries.
Analyzing the second theory to explain what Fawcett was looking for and perhaps what Raposo found on his voyage in 1753, the latest studies by American archaeologist Michael Heckemberger must be considered.
Starting in 1993, Heckemberger carried out research and field work in the Xingu National Park, near the Kuikuro villages. Initially, the tribe chief named Afukaka took him to a site considered sacred and important called Nokugu, where the soul of a jaguar is believed to be. Nearby, after several excavations that lasted for months, remains of streets and old canals were found.
Soon the vestiges of a large town began to be outlined, built in a circular shape where, from a central square, several streets emerged that connected the town with other villages, as if in a network. The name of this ancient settlement is Kuhikugu. It is thought that it was the ancestors of the Kuikuro who built the pre-Columbian town. Probably around the 18th century, Kuhikugu was in full activity and the surrounding forest area was much denser and more intricate than today.
Heckemberger found that the built areas were enormous, each approximately 250 square kilometers.
It follows, therefore, that the total population of the area must have been several thousand people, if not much more. After deep archaeological excavations, various ceramic materials were found, in addition to several stone mortars used to work cassava. From carbon 14 dating it is inferred that this ancient Amazonian civilization dates back to 500 AD. According to Heckemberger, the English explorer Percy Fawcett could have crossed these networks of towns, which probably a century ago were still traveled by natives. Then, everything was lost, there were surely epidemics (smallpox), brought by the Brazilian colonizers and many villages were abandoned.
The last word on the end of Fawcett and on the enigmas of the Serra do Roncador has not yet been spoken.
There is still much to study and verify in the field, so that we can get closer to the truth of one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.
YURI LEVERATTO
