The site contains the ruins of an estimated twenty towns and villages in which as many as 50,000 people might once have lived. After Fawcett's presumed death in the jungle, Kuhikugu was discovered by Westerners in 1925. Researchers believe that Fawcett may have been influenced in his thinking by information obtained from indigenous people about the archaeological site of Kuhikugu, near the headwaters of the Xingu River. On a second expedition five years later Fawcett, his son Jack and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimell disappeared in the Mato Grosso jungle. In 1920 Fawcett undertook a personal expedition to find the city but withdrew after suffering from fever and having to shoot his pack animal. Fawcett returned to Britain and served on the Western Front during the war. He was preparing an expedition to find "Z" when World War I broke out and the British government suspended its support. Fawcett intended to pursue finding this city as a secondary goal after "Z". Manuscript 512 was written after explorations made in the sertão of the province of Bahia. He described the city ruins in great detail without giving its location. According to the document, in 1753, a group of bandeirantes discovered the ruins of an ancient city that contained arches, a statue and a temple with hieroglyphs. The British surveyor Percy Fawcett in 1911, who believed an indigenous city, which he called "the Lost City of Z", had existed in the Brazilian jungle.įawcett found a document known as Manuscript 512, held at the National Library of Brazil, believed to have been written by Portuguese bandeirante João da Silva Guimarães.