Percy Fawcett was an incredible character. He was the real life inspiration for Indiana Jones and he was close friends with Arthur Conan Doyle - his talks with whom helped provide inspiration for Doyle's famous book The Lost World. Fawcett was an archaeologist and adventurer, his sudden disappearence in the Amazonion jungle in South America went on to cause the deaths of over 100 people in over 13 failed expeditions to find his remains.

Born in 1867 in Torquay, UK, he went on to become a colonel in the military, serve in World War 1 and work for the Secret Service in North Africa. He later returned to studying archaeology and wildlife and continue his South American expeditions.

In the 1920s Fawcett had convinced himself through the research of historical records and ancient tribal legends that somewhere in Brazil there was a hidden lost city that Fawcett referred to in his papers as "Z". In 1925 Fawcett and his son set out to find the lost city, receiving funds from a London group of financiers known as The Glove. Fawcett and his son left instructions stating that if they did not return, nobody should go in search of them lest they suffer the same fate.

May 29th, 1925 was the last time they were heard from. Fawcett had sent a telegraph to his wife explaining that they were about to enter unexplored territory and cross a section of the Amazon River. They were never heard from again. In the following decades there were many attempted searches for the traces left of Fawcett and his expedition. All that remained to be found were unverifiable rumours of his disappearance - rumours ranging from the plausible to the bizarre. Rumours that Fawcett had been killed by wild animals, disease or natives abounded but none had any strong root in evidence. One outlandish rumour went that Fawcett had lost his memory and become the leader of his own tribe of cannibals. Over 13 expeditions have since been sent to recover his remains, and over the course of these expeditions, over 100 people have perished.

A Danish explorer, Arne Falk-Ronne, travelled to the Mato Grosso region, the area of jungle where Fawcett disappeared, in the 60's. He wrote in a book he published in 1991 in which he wrote that he had discovered Fawcett's fate from a man who had heard it from one of Fawcett's murderers. The story goes that Fawcett and his companions lost all their gifts for the native tribes whilst travelling along the Amazon. Continuing without gifts was considered by the tribes a "serious breach of protocol" and when found to be all seriously ill by Kalapalo tribesmen, the tribesmen decided to kill them. Colonel Fawcett, considered by the tribe to be an old man, received a proper burial; the others were simply thrown into the river. Falk-Ronne travelled to the Kalapalo and reported that one of the members confirmed the story he had been told.

There is no evidence to support any theory of Fawcett's disappearance, but Falk-Ronne's seems a likely candidate. Whatever the truth is, it's a damned interesting story.

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