1. Percy Fawcett and the Royal Geographic Society
The Lost City of Z
Percy Fawcett and the Royal Geographic Society

2. The Lost City of Z There are three big ideas in this film-
England tried to dominate the entire globe starting during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and by the 1900s you could literally say “the sun never sets on the British Empire”
European, but mostly British society, was superior in manners, intelligence and religion to the rest of the world.
Europeans felt entitled to go anywhere and exploit the natural resources there.

3. Royal Geographical Society
The British were obsessed with exploration and discovery.
The tradition went all the way back to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587.
He later went on an expedition to look for the “Lost City of El Dorado”, which was rumored to have streets paved with gold.

4. El Dorado
The Spanish conquest of the Americas in the 16th century was brutal and motivated by the “Three Gs”- Gold Glory and G-d.
The Spanish wanted to spread Catholicism, gain land and find gold.
Gonzalo Pizaro and Francisco Orellana were certain they would find this city of immeasurable riches in the Amazon.
Their voyages in 1540 and 1541 were dangerous and they lost most of their men. They did find two cities and “fields of cinnamon”

5. El Dorado
Sir Walter Raleigh went looking for it in He went to Guyana and did sail the Orinoco River, but did not find El Dorado.
He watched one of his men being eaten alive by a crocodile, and got sick from the heat and mosquitoes, but other than that, he got home relatively unscathed. (But without gold)

6. British exploration
The English have been seriously pursuing exploration as a way to get richer and expand their Empire since Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
Sir Francis Drake and Henry Hudson created a fever for exploration in England.

7. Other great English Explorers
Sir James Cook
Started poor, rose through the ranks of society
He went to Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii.
David Livingstone explored Africa
And found the source of the Nile River.
He met tribes that had never seen white people and mapped parts of Africa previously unknown to Europe.

8. The Royal Geographical Society
Founded in 1830
Sponsored voyages and recorded research and information from the voyages
Was a source of legitimacy and recognition for the work of these men.
Charles Darwin
David Livingstone
William Ogilvie
Robert Falcon Scott
Richard Burton
George Hayward
Ernest Shackleton
Edmund Hillary

9. Percy Fawcett
One of the young men attracted to the adventure and fame was a young soldier in the British Army, Percy Fawcett.
His father was also an officer in the army, and in the RGS, but had tarnished the family reputation by wasting his fortune, his wife’s fortune, and being a drunk.

10. Percy Fawcett
He was in the Royal Army, serving in Ceylon, as part of the forces that managed the British control of India.
He met his wife Nina, there as well.
He was interested in exploring for the RGS and went to North Africa to learn about surveying and mapping.

11. Percy Fawcett
He was invited to go to the Amazon to survey for the British government, that was trying to mediate a dispute between Brazil and Bolivia over border lines.
The area was full of rubber trees and there was a great rush to exploit the resource.
The rubber boom occurred largely between 1879 and in this area- driven by the need for rubber materials for the new Industrial Revolution.

12. Industrial Revolution

13. Percy Fawcett He went on 8 different expeditions to the Amazon.
While surveying on the first in 1906 to settle the border dispute he discovered evidence of ancient settlements and that was something that people had never thought could exist in the jungles.

14. Percy Fawcett
He becomes obsessed with finding the city, and fights all the naysayers who don’t believe his discovery.
He becomes a world wide exploration hero and the model for Indiana Jones and other adventurers in the movies and books.