#Lost City of Z

[typhlonectes]

Now the plot has taken a new twist, as scientists have discovered that ancient cities really did exist in the Amazon. And while urban ruins remain extremely difficult to find in thick, remote forests, a key technology has helped change the game. 

Perched in a helicopter some 650 feet up, scientists used light-based remote sensing technology (lidar) to digitally deforest the canopy and identify the ancient ruins of a vast urban settlement around Llanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amazon that was abandoned some 600 years ago. 

The new images reveal, in detail, a stronghold of the socially complex Casarabe Culture (500-1400 C.E.) with urban centers boasting monumental platform and pyramid architecture. Raised causeways connected a constellation of suburban-like settlements, which stretched for miles across a landscape that was shaped by a massive water control and distribution system with reservoirs and canals. 

The site, described this week in Nature, is the most striking discovery to suggest that the Amazon’s rainforest ‘wilderness’ was actually heavily populated, and in places quite urbanized, for many centuries before recorded history of the region began...

#amazon #lost city of z #archaeology #science #history #south america

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Western history is full of the daring feats of explorers—Lewis and Clark in North America, John Cabot in Canada, Marco Polo along the Silk Road, and the list goes on.

But what about the explorers who set out with the same optimism as these navigational celebrities, only to face mysterious adversity?

Here are five explorers who had all the advantages of their more successful counterparts, only not to reach their goals and leave very little trace of their true fates.

Franklin’s failed Northwest Passage quest

British explorer Sir John Franklin left England in 1845 with 129 crew members and officers in search of the Northwest Passage, a shipping route from the Atlantic to the Pacific through Canada.

They were expertly equipped with iron-sheathed ships, three years of food and drink, even an early daguerreotype camera.

Instead of finding the passage, however, the ships became trapped in the Canadian Arctic’s most treacherous, ice-choked corner, north of King William Island.

Twenty-four men died by April 1848, including the captain.

The new captain, Francis Crozier, apparently abandoned the ships and set out with the remaining crew over the icy terrain in a desperate attempt to reach land.

Inuit hunters reported seeing bedraggled crewmen dragging sleds across the ice.

A few bodies have since been found, along with deserted campsites and bits and pieces, including silver dessert spoons and cotton shirt fragments.

In 2014, the wreck of Erebus was located, followed by the Terror in 2016.

While the wrecks themselves did not solve the mystery of what killed the men, the recovered bones of some men bore knife marks, suggesting the crew was fending off starvation by cannibalism.

Fawcett’s Lost City of Z

British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett already had undertaken several expeditions into the Amazon early in the 20th century when he came across an irresistible Portuguese document at the National Library of Brazil.

Detailing the discovery of a “large, hidden, and very ancient city, without inhabitants, discovered in the year 1753,” it told of grand ruins hidden in the Mato Grosso jungle.

Fawcett instantly decided to find the ruins, which he named the Lost City of Z.

After one failed attempt to find this awesome site, Fawcett, his son Jack, his son’s friend Raleigh Rimell, and two local laborers departed into the Brazilian wilderness in April 1925.

They wrote their last dispatch home on May 20.

Their Brazilian helpers had left them, Fawcett noted, but “You need have no fear of failure.”

No one ever heard from the party again.

Their disappearance became an obsession, with adventurers over the next decades trying to retrace their steps.

A reporter who went after Fawcett in 1930 also disappeared, as did a Swiss hunter and his search party.

Unconfirmed reports filtered out from the jungle of pale-skinned prisoners and their young children, but Fawcett and his party have never been found.

Mallory’s ill-fated Everest summit

The hopes of the world, or at least of the world’s mountain-climbing community, were pinned on George Leigh Mallory when he began his third attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest in April 1924.

The handsome English climber had reached 27,235 feet, 1,800 feet below Everest’s peak, on a 1922 expedition.

This time, he intended to make it to the top.

On June 8, Mallory and his young companion, Sandy Irvine, set out on what they hoped would be the final sprint.

A fellow climber spotted them, two black spots, about 800 vertical feet below the summit. Then a snow squall closed in, and the climbers disappeared.

Mallory’s body was not recovered for 75 years.

In 1999, climber Conrad Anker discovered Mallory’s frozen corpse at 26,760 feet on the moun­tain’s north face. Irvine’s body has not been found.

Whether Mallory was on his way up to the sum­mit or was coming down from a successful ascent is unknown.

If he did reach the peak, he would have beaten Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand mountaineer who has been lauded for being the first man to reach the summit since his successful ascent in 1953.

But the world may never know.

Amelia Earhart’s strange disappearance

Amelia Earhart was world famous. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and the first person to fly from Hawaii to California.

Her round-the-world flight in 1937 was her final challenge.

Accompanying her when she took off from Miami on 1 June 1937 was an experienced navigator, Fred­erick Noonan.

The first legs of the 29,000-mile trip were ardu­ous, but the 2,556-mile Pacific leg from New Guinea to tiny Howland Island was the toughest of all.

From the air, Earhart radioed she couldn’t see the island and was running low on fuel. Then silence.

Recent forensic analysis suggest that bones found in 1940 on the Pacific island of Nikumaroro were those of the avia­tor.

Dimensions of Earhart’s body accord­ing to photos and clothing matched measurements recorded of the bones.

Unfortunately, the bones themselves were lost—so DNA testing cannot be done.

Researchers are still following every lead, from a skull fragment found in a museum to underwater fragments possibly from her plane, but so far, her disappearance remains a mystery.

Ambrose Bierce’s baffling Mexican quest

Ambrose Bierce isn’t the typical explorer. A Civil War veteran, he was also a journalist and poet, known for his cynical and misanthropic writings.

One such entry in his Devil’s Dictionary, for example, reads, “Fidelity: A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.”

In 1913, with his family dead and his career waning, the 71-year-old Bierce headed out to visit Civil War battlefields, including Missionary Ridge and Chickamauga, and onward to Mexico.

“I am going to Mexico with a pretty definite purpose, which is not at all presently disclosable,” he wrote to his secretary.

He may have joined up with Pancho Villa’s rebel army and traveled with it to Chihuahua.

Reports from one of Villa’s battles told of an “old gringo” killed in the fighting.

Could that have been Bierce? Or did he live on in Mexico, California, France, or Brazil, where reports have placed him over the years?

#Sir John Franklin #Northwest Passage #King William Island #Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett #Amazon #Lost City of Z #Mato Grosso #George Leigh Mallory #Sandy Irvine #Mt. Everest #Conrad Anker #Amelia Earhart #Fred­erick Noonan #Nikumaroro #Ambrose Bierce #Mexico #explorers #missing explorers #mystery #disappearance

[comeandsee]

Tom Holland in Lost City of Z

#lost city of z #tom holland

[afro-hispwriter]

I watched the Lost City of Z and AHHHHHH HENRY COSTIN HAS MY HEART as i watched the movie I planned out something to write for him that I think is adorable😊

#henry costin x reader #robert pattinson x reader #x spanish reader #lost city of z #henry costin

[texaschainsawmascara]

Charlie Hunnam, Papillon

#charlie hunnam #papillon #jax teller #sons of anarchy #soa #movie #film #crimson peak #pacific rim #raleigh becket #nicholas nikleby #the lost city of z #king arthur #king arthur legend of the sword #queer as folk #the gentlemen #triple frontier #cold mountain #children of men #william miller

[tygerland]

#charlie hunnam #sons of anarchy #king arthur #film #crimson peak #cinema #rebel moon #lifestyle #cosplay #fashion #style #2010s #actor #the lost city of z #celebs #male model #queer as folk #photos #people #❌

[shootihavetopickablognameuhhhhhh]

shout out to gen z bc when i showed my nonfandom friends the kotlc guidebook they - ALL of them - asked if they could fuck the goblins

#gen z culture #fandom #non fandom #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc #Especially Sandor #Sandor kotlc

[tzthrowbacks]

what picture of him eating fries?

#that facial hair is 👎 #lost city of z you'll never be watched by me im sorry

[lucyshypemaster]

jensi. JENSI. JEN SI. GEN SI. GEN Z.

#jen z is so girlypop #im sorry idk what this is #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #jensi babblos #kotlc jensi #nav's kotlc thoughts

[barstoolblues]

so many of you on here are scared of bush its not even funny. you see a picture of a manicured landing strip and go wild its BUSH not LAWN throw those clippers AWAY

#ideally bush should be so thick that you have to find the pussy like the lost city of z

[comeandsee]

Lost City of Z (2016)

#lost city of z #tom holland #film screenshots

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

#tumblr polls #marvel #mcu #spiderman #peter parker #tom holland #arvin russell #todd hewitt #danny sullivan #in the heart of the sea #the current war #cherry 2021 #nathan drake #pilgrimage #the lost city of z #edge of winter #the impossible #wolf hall #marvel multiverse #mcu multiverse #Tom Holland filmography

[feelingsofaithless]

If we may find a city, where one was considered impossible to exist, it may well write a whole new chapter in human history. The Lost City of Z (2016)

#The Lost City of Z #perioddramaedit #tlcozedit #movies #gifs #pd*

[readerbookclub]

Hello everyone! A new month is coming, which means we're going to start a new book. This time, I've collected a list of books that are all about nature. As always, please remember to vote for your favourite using the link at the end of the post. And now onto the books!

The Overstory, by Richard Powers

The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

Greenwood, by Michael Christie

It's 2034 and Jake Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests.

It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion.

It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.

It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades.

And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance, by Ruth Emmie Lang

Orphaned, raised by wolves, and the proud owner of a horned pig named Merlin, Weylyn Grey knew he wasn’t like other people. But when he single-handedly stopped that tornado on a stormy Christmas day in Oklahoma, he realized just how different he actually was.

That tornado was the first of many strange events that seem to follow Weylyn from town to town, although he doesn’t like to take credit. As amazing as these powers may appear, they tend to manifest themselves at inopportune times and places. From freak storms to trees that appear to grow over night, Weylyn’s unique abilities are a curiosity at best and at worst, a danger to himself and the woman he loves. But Mary doesn’t care. Since Weylyn saved her from an angry wolf on her eleventh birthday, she’s known that a relationship with him isn’t without its risks, but as anyone who’s met Weylyn will tell you, once he wanders into your life, you’ll wish he’d never leave.

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance tells the story of Weylyn Grey’s life from the perspectives of the people who knew him, loved him, and even a few who thought he was just plain weird. Although he doesn’t stay in any of their lives for long, he leaves each of them with a story to tell. Stories about a boy who lives with wolves, great storms that evaporate into thin air, fireflies that make phosphorescent honey, and a house filled with spider webs and the strange man who inhabits it.

There is one story, however, that Weylyn wishes he could change: his own. But first he has to muster enough courage to knock on Mary’s front door.

The Lost City of Z, by David Grann

After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve "the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century": What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett & his quest for the Lost City of Z?

In 1925, Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, hoping to make one of the most important discoveries in history. For centuries Europeans believed the world's largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many scientists convinced that the Amazon was truly inimical to humans. But Fawcett, whose daring expeditions inspired Conan Doyle's The Lost World, had spent years building his scientific case. Captivating the imagination of millions round the globe, Fawcett embarked with his 21-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilisation--which he dubbed Z--existed. Then his expedition vanished. Fawcett's fate, & the tantalizing clues he left behind about Z, became an obsession for hundreds who followed him into the uncharted wilderness.

For decades scientists & adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett's party & the lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes or gone mad. As Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett's quest, & the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, being irresistibly drawn into the jungle's green hell. His quest for the truth & discoveries about Fawcett's fate & Z form the heart of this complexly enthralling narrative.

Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingslover

It is summer in the Appalachian mountains and love, desire and attraction are in the air. From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes. She is caught off guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and interrupts her solitary life.

On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly feuding neighbours tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected. Over the course of one humid summer, these characters find their connections of love to one another and to the surrounding nature with which they share a place.

Please vote for our next book here.

#books #booklr #book list #book club #nature #the overstory #greenwood #beasts of extraordinary circumstance #the lost city of z #prodigal summer

[raurquiz]

#HappyBirthday #ianmcdiarmid #actor #EmperorPalpatine #DarthSidious #starwars #ThePhantomMenace #AttackoftheClones #RevengeoftheSith #Rebels #TheCloneWars #TheBadBatch #ObiWanKenobi #ReturnoftheJedi #TheRiseofSkywalker #Dragonslayer #GorkyPark #SleepyHollow #TheLostCityofZ

#happybirthday #ian mcdiarmid #actor #emperor palpatine #darth sidious #starwars #the phantom menace #attack of the clones #revenge of the sith #rebels #the clone wars #the bad batch #obi wan kenobi #return of the jedi #the rise of skywalker #dragonslayer #gorky park #sleepy hollow #the lost city of z #macbeth #utopia #britannia

[synonymroll648]

kotlc where everything is the same except in order to get sophie to confess her Big Secret, fitz makes a deal that she’ll tell him what it is only when he can pronounce everything in some stupid alphabet book where none of the words that start with a letter start with traditional sounds (ex: m is for mnemonic) 

#'z is for... sophie how in the world am i supposed to say z-h-i-v-a-g-o' #putting fitz in difficult situations because he's not a polyglot and english is his second language is just fun ok #if anyone wants the stupid book it's literally called 'p is for pterodactyl: the worst alphabet book ever' #iirc #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #fitz vacker #sophie foster #could be interpreted as sophitz