In part three of our mini-series on "mystery", we'll uncover the myths and mysteries of legendary lost cities and civilisations.
Atlantis, El Dorado, and the City of Z have captivated explorers for centuries.
Are these stories fact or fiction, or is the truth somewhere in between?
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “mystery”.
[00:00:28] In case you missed them, in part one we talked about secret societies, from Skull & Bones at Yale University through to the Knights Templar.
[00:00:38] In part two, we talked about espionage and the history of spying.
[00:00:43] And today, in our final episode, we are going to take a look at some legendary lost cities and civilisations that have puzzled, fascinated, and eluded explorers for centuries.
[00:00:56] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:02] In the early 2000s, one of the founders of Google, Larry Page, had a crazy idea: to create a 360-degree map of the world.
[00:01:15] In 2004, he brought a few Google engineers together and got them working on a prototype. They fixed a camera onto a van and off it set, taking pictures of everything around it as it drove around the city.
[00:01:32] Fast forward to today, and this vision is Google Streetview, or rather, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Streetview all rolled into one.
[00:01:44] As of the last public update, there are more than 15 million kilometers of road mapped with Streetview, and high-definition satellite imagery in Google Earth covers 98% of the world’s surface.
[00:01:59] It's probably quite a bit more now, as this last public update was back in 2019, six years ago.
[00:02:08] And with this incredible technology, it can feel like there’s no part of the world left to discover.
[00:02:16] Every mountain peak, every island, every jungle seems just a click or a swipe away.
[00:02:23] It’s easy to believe that humanity has left no stone unturned.
[00:02:29] But what if there is something lurking in that 2% of unmapped territory, underwater, deep in the jungle, or hidden in the rainforest?
[00:02:41] Cities or entire civilisations lost to time.
[00:02:46] This will be the subject of today’s episode, places spoken of in hushed tones, places that, in the case of all three examples we’ll look at today, have become more legend than reality.
[00:03:01] The first one we will talk about is a name that will probably be familiar to you: Atlantis.
[00:03:08] The word Atlantis probably conjures up images of an ancient city under the sea, its only residents now brightly-coloured fish and the occasional crab scuttling across a formerly magnificent ruined arch.
[00:03:22] It is the quintessential “lost city” and has become almost a byword for a mysterious civilisation that simply disappeared from the face of the earth.
[00:03:35] So, what is Atlantis, where is it, supposedly, and is there any truth to its existence?
[00:03:43] Well, let’s start with where the story of Atlantis comes from.
[00:03:48] The first and most significant reference to Atlantis comes from the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, in two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, written around 360 BC.
[00:04:03] In these texts, Plato describes Atlantis as a powerful and advanced civilisation located beyond the “Pillars of Hercules,” which sounds mythical and exotic, but we now know he simply meant the Strait of Gibraltar, where southern Spain meets northern Africa, Morocco to be precise.
[00:04:27] According to Plato, Atlantis was a utopian society blessed with great wealth, advanced technology, and a strong naval power.
[00:04:38] Its people lived in harmony, ruled by just kings, and their city was a marvel of engineering—a series of concentric rings of land and water with a grand temple to Poseidon at its centre.
[00:04:54] But then, as the story goes, the people of Atlantis became greedy, corrupt, and power-hungry. They tried to conquer their neighbours, only to be defeated by the virtuous Athenians. As punishment for their hubris, the gods unleashed a series of catastrophic earthquakes and floods that sank Atlantis beneath the sea in a single day and night.
[00:05:21] It’s an extraordinary tale, but was it meant to be taken literally?
[00:05:27] No, almost certainly, it was not.
[00:05:30] Most historians believe that Plato invented Atlantis as a moral allegory—a way to warn against the dangers of arrogance and unchecked ambition.
[00:05:41] It was a cautionary tale, not a historical account.
[00:05:45] There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for anything resembling Atlantis, and it's pretty clear that Plato used it as an allegorical device in his story.
[00:05:56] So given this, why does the world Atlantis conjure up images of great temples on the sea bed, why are hit TV shows on Netflix suggesting that there are hidden underwater civilisations, such as Atlantis, that we simply don’t know about?
[00:06:12] Well, like many myths, over time, people have been inspired by its story and written their own versions, and it has evolved into something many believe to be true.
[00:06:26] To put a number on this, according to one recent survey, 57% of Americans believe that Atlantis or other ancient civilisations existed.
[00:06:39] To this, the natural question is, “If they existed, where are they now?”.
[00:06:45] Over the centuries, countless theories have emerged about where Atlantis might have been.
[00:06:52] There’s one theory that Atlantis was actually based on the Minoans, who lived more than 1000 years before Plato was born.
[00:07:01] The Minoans lived in Crete and later in Santorini, in the eastern Mediterranean. They were an advanced society, known for their impressive palaces, intricate art, and thriving trade networks.
[00:07:14] But their civilisation was dealt a devastating blow by a massive volcanic eruption around 1600 BCE. This eruption all but wiped out the Minoans on Santorini, leaving their settlements buried under ash and their culture in decline.
[00:07:33] Some believe this catastrophe may have inspired the legend of Atlantis.
[00:07:39] It’s a plausible explanation: a flourishing civilisation destroyed suddenly and dramatically, leaving echoes of its memory to shape later myths.
[00:07:50] But for many, this theory isn’t thrilling enough. A mere volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean doesn’t quite capture the imagination.
[00:08:00] Instead, people have pointed to locations as far-flung as the Azores, Antarctica, or even beneath the Atlantic Ocean itself.
[00:08:11] And while these theories make for great stories, they lack evidence.
[00:08:17] To date, no trace of Atlantis has ever been found, and virtually no serious archaeologist or classicist believes it ever existed.
[00:08:27] The legend, it seems, is destined to remain just that—a legend.
[00:08:33] Next, let’s move from a city supposedly lost beneath the waves to one said to be hidden deep in the jungles of South America: the legendary El Dorado.
[00:08:44] El Dorado, “the golden one”, in Spanish.
[00:08:47] The very name conjures images of untold wealth, glittering gold, and the promise of paradise hidden deep within the jungle.
[00:08:57] But unlike Atlantis, El Dorado wasn’t a city at all—at least, not at first.
[00:09:04] It started as a man.
[00:09:07] Now, it’s difficult to trace exactly where this legend came from, but it is believed to have been started by the Muisca people of present-day Colombia.
[00:09:18] According to the legend, when a new ruler, or zipa, was crowned, they would perform a sacred ceremony at Lake Guatavita.
[00:09:28] The zipa would cover his body in gold dust and sail to the centre of the lake on a raft made of reeds. Surrounded by priests, he would then offer gold and precious treasures to the gods by throwing them into the water.
[00:09:45] This ritual, recounted to early Spanish explorers in the 16th century, sparked the idea of El Hombre Dorado—the Golden Man.
[00:09:56] But as the story spread among European adventurers, it evolved.
[00:10:02] El Dorado was no longer just a man; it became a mythical city, then an entire kingdom, said to be overflowing with unimaginable riches.
[00:10:12] A king so rich that he covered himself in gold every morning and would wash it off at night, so plentiful were the gold reserves that it would simply be discarded, washed away.
[00:10:25] For the Spanish conquistadors, who were already hungry for gold after plundering the Aztec and Inca empires, the promise of El Dorado was irresistible.
[00:10:37] Explorers like Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and Francisco de Orellana ventured deep into the Amazon in search of this golden city.
[00:10:47] These expeditions were perilous, often ending in death from disease, starvation, or clashes with indigenous tribes.
[00:10:57] And it wasn’t just the Spanish who were tempted by the mystery of El Dorado.
[00:11:02] One of the most famous searches for El Dorado was led by Sir Walter Raleigh, the English explorer and favourite of Queen Elizabeth I.
[00:11:12] Not only was he tempted, but he believed he had discovered exactly where it was.
[00:11:19] Raleigh believed El Dorado was located along the Orinoco River in present-day Venezuela.
[00:11:27] In 1595, 50 years after the first written record of El Dorado, the Englishman set out with high hopes, only to return empty-handed.
[00:11:39] Undeterred, he launched a second expedition years later, but it too ended in failure—and ultimately contributed to his downfall and subsequent execution.
[00:11:51] For many explorers, the search for El Dorado wasn’t just a quest for riches—it was an obsession.
[00:11:59] Men risked everything, losing fortunes, reputations, and even their lives, chasing what might have been nothing more than a dream.
[00:12:10] Despite the futility of these expeditions, the legend of El Dorado refused to die.
[00:12:16] It became a symbol of human greed and obsession, the idea that somewhere out there lay a treasure so vast it could change the fate of nations.
[00:12:27] But was there any truth to the story, is there any truth to the story?
[00:12:33] While the idea of a single golden city may be a myth, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of sophisticated ancient civilisations in the Amazon.
[00:12:44] These societies, which were once dismissed as primitive, built large interconnected settlements with intricate road systems, canals, and advanced agricultural practices.
[00:12:55] They may not have been the glittering city of legend, but they were impressive civilisations in their own right.
[00:13:03] And this brings us to our final story, one that’s less about gold and more about obsession: The City of Z.
[00:13:14] The City of Z is a legend that captivated one man so completely that he was willing to risk everything to find it.
[00:13:24] That man’s name was Percy Harrison Fawcett.
[00:13:28] He was an adventurer in the classic sense.
[00:13:32] He was born in 1867, in England, and after working as a spy in North Africa, he spent much of his career mapping uncharted regions of South America for the Royal Geographical Society.
[00:13:47] And his stories and reputation were legendary.
[00:13:51] He claimed to have seen dogs with two noses, to have shot and killed a 20-metre-long snake, and it seemed that he was practically immune to all of the tropical diseases that would often kill his fellow Europeans within days of arriving in the rainforest.
[00:14:10] Unlike other European explorers, he appeared to approach his exploration without any sense of superiority, he didn’t think that he was the great European conqueror who was there to teach and subdue the local tribes; he was known for treating anyone he met as his equal.
[00:14:29] He had, of course, heard about the legend of El Dorado, but during his expeditions into the Amazon, he heard stories from indigenous tribes, stories that sounded a little like El Dorado, but were perhaps even more intriguing.
[00:14:47] These stories were of ancient ruins hidden deep within the jungle.
[00:14:52] These weren’t just abandoned villages—they were said to be the remnants of a sophisticated civilisation, complete with monumental architecture, advanced knowledge, and a thriving culture.
[00:15:05] In Fawcett’s mind, this lost civilisation became Z, the name he gave to the city he believed would prove that the Amazon was once home to highly advanced societies.
[00:15:19] His conviction was fueled by reports of strange artefacts—like elaborately carved pottery—and accounts of European explorers who claimed to have seen vast settlements deep in the rainforest during searches for El Dorado.
[00:15:35] Before he could set out to look for Z, he was called back to Europe to fight in World War One. And it was on the battlefields of the Somme that he had something of a revelation.
[00:15:49] He was in his late 40s, and seeing these young men, many of whom were only 17 or 18, being sent over the top, only to be mown down by machine gun fire seconds later, something changed in him.
[00:16:06] To Fawcett, the futility, the meaningless of it all, was a wake-up call.
[00:16:13] Was the West and “advanced” society really so much more sophisticated if this was all it resulted in?
[00:16:21] In those wet, muddy, bloody trenches of northern France, he became even more convinced that he had to find this lost civilisation.
[00:16:32] But Fawcett’s desire to find Z wasn’t just a hunt for ruins—it was a quest to redefine what we know about human civilisation.
[00:16:42] However, finding Z was no simple task.
[00:16:46] The Amazon is one of the most hostile environments on Earth, filled with dangerous wildlife, treacherous terrain, tribes that are fiercely protective of their territory and diseases that can kill you within days.
[00:17:01] And 100 years ago, it was even more dangerous. Explorers had none of the life-saving technologies or medical assistance that they would today.
[00:17:12] Now, Fawcett had explored extensively through the Amazon, so he was about as prepared as anyone could be.
[00:17:20] But he was now 57 years old; he was no spring chicken.
[00:17:26] In 1925, he embarked on what would be his final expedition, taking with him his son Jack and Jack’s best friend, Raleigh Rimell.
[00:17:37] And fascinatingly, we do have quite a lot of evidence for the details of their trip. Every few days, he would write an update, which would be passed to a local runner, who would take it back to a settlement where it could be typed up and sent via telegraph.
[00:17:55] So it was possible to follow the group’s movements in real-time, or at least, in real-time, but a few weeks delayed.
[00:18:05] In his last letter, which was written just after a month into the expedition, he described how the group was going to embark into uncharted territory.
[00:18:15] There was nothing particularly unusual about this; practically all the Amazon was uncharted at this point, and Fawcett was somewhat used to it, so it’s probably the equivalent of you or I saying, “I’m just going to the supermarket to get some milk”.
[00:18:31] In this letter, Fawcett wrote to his wife, “you have no fear of any failure”.
[00:18:38] Unfortunately, this is the last anyone has ever heard from them.
[00:18:44] Fawcett, his son and his friend vanished without a trace, never to be seen again.
[00:18:52] To many watching this expedition, it seemed very strange.
[00:18:57] Fawcett was a seasoned explorer, he had done this many times before. Despite the extreme difficulties of Amazonian exploration, Fawcett seemed practically invincible.
[00:19:10] What could have happened to him?
[00:19:11] Countless explorers have set off deep into the Amazon, trying to retrace Fawcett’s path and find some evidence of his fate.
[00:19:20] Many died in the search, so many in fact that the Brazilian government issued a decree in 1934 banning search parties for Fawcett.
[00:19:30] Tens of thousands of people have gone looking, but no evidence has been found.
[00:19:37] Over the years, countless theories have emerged about what happened to them, ranging from plausible to somewhat fantastical.
[00:19:46] Some say they were killed by hostile tribes; others say they succumbed to starvation or disease.
[00:19:53] There’s even speculation that Fawcett chose to disappear, perhaps integrating himself into a remote community in the jungle, or he got amnesia and believed himself to be a member of a local tribe.
[00:20:07] Or that he found Z, it wasn’t a lost ancient civilisation but one that was still flourishing, some kind of rainforest eutopia, so he decided to stay there forever.
[00:20:20] It seems we will never know.
[00:20:23] No remains of his body have ever been found, but most historians believe the most probable explanation is that he was killed by a local tribe. There are oral histories from Amazonian tribes that describe a man matching Fawcett’s description, at about the time that he disappeared, being killed.
[00:20:42] And as far as Z is concerned, there is some evidence that Fawcett might have been right, or at least onto something with his theory of an ancient civilisation hidden beneath the rainforest canopy.
[00:20:56] Since then, explorers have returned from the Amazon with remarkable findings: evidence of vast, interconnected settlements and advanced agricultural techniques that challenged the stereotype of the Amazon as a “green desert.”
[00:21:11] So, while he never found Z, or at least if he did, he never returned to tell the tale, his intuition about advanced Amazonian civilisations was certainly ahead of its time.
[00:21:23] Okay, then there we have it. we’ve reached the end of our journey into legendary lost cities.
[00:21:28] Atlantis, El Dorado, and the City of Z might be very different stories, but they share a common thread: the idea that somewhere out there—hidden beneath the waves, buried in the jungle, or simply forgotten by time—there are mysteries waiting to be uncovered.
[00:21:45] So, are these stories fact or fiction?
[00:21:49] The sceptic would say pure fiction, the pragmatist might say fiction but with a smattering of fact, and the true believer might say we just haven’t looked in the right places.
[00:22:02] OK then, that is it for this exploration of the mysterious world of legendary lost cities and civilisations, and with that concludes this three-part mini-series on the very loose theme of “mystery”.
[00:22:15] The thing about a mystery, or a secret, is that if it really is a secret then nobody really knows about it, but I hope this was a fun exploration through some secret themes, from secret societies to spycraft to secret lost cities.
[00:22:30] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:35] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “mystery”.
[00:00:28] In case you missed them, in part one we talked about secret societies, from Skull & Bones at Yale University through to the Knights Templar.
[00:00:38] In part two, we talked about espionage and the history of spying.
[00:00:43] And today, in our final episode, we are going to take a look at some legendary lost cities and civilisations that have puzzled, fascinated, and eluded explorers for centuries.
[00:00:56] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:02] In the early 2000s, one of the founders of Google, Larry Page, had a crazy idea: to create a 360-degree map of the world.
[00:01:15] In 2004, he brought a few Google engineers together and got them working on a prototype. They fixed a camera onto a van and off it set, taking pictures of everything around it as it drove around the city.
[00:01:32] Fast forward to today, and this vision is Google Streetview, or rather, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Streetview all rolled into one.
[00:01:44] As of the last public update, there are more than 15 million kilometers of road mapped with Streetview, and high-definition satellite imagery in Google Earth covers 98% of the world’s surface.
[00:01:59] It's probably quite a bit more now, as this last public update was back in 2019, six years ago.
[00:02:08] And with this incredible technology, it can feel like there’s no part of the world left to discover.
[00:02:16] Every mountain peak, every island, every jungle seems just a click or a swipe away.
[00:02:23] It’s easy to believe that humanity has left no stone unturned.
[00:02:29] But what if there is something lurking in that 2% of unmapped territory, underwater, deep in the jungle, or hidden in the rainforest?
[00:02:41] Cities or entire civilisations lost to time.
[00:02:46] This will be the subject of today’s episode, places spoken of in hushed tones, places that, in the case of all three examples we’ll look at today, have become more legend than reality.
[00:03:01] The first one we will talk about is a name that will probably be familiar to you: Atlantis.
[00:03:08] The word Atlantis probably conjures up images of an ancient city under the sea, its only residents now brightly-coloured fish and the occasional crab scuttling across a formerly magnificent ruined arch.
[00:03:22] It is the quintessential “lost city” and has become almost a byword for a mysterious civilisation that simply disappeared from the face of the earth.
[00:03:35] So, what is Atlantis, where is it, supposedly, and is there any truth to its existence?
[00:03:43] Well, let’s start with where the story of Atlantis comes from.
[00:03:48] The first and most significant reference to Atlantis comes from the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, in two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, written around 360 BC.
[00:04:03] In these texts, Plato describes Atlantis as a powerful and advanced civilisation located beyond the “Pillars of Hercules,” which sounds mythical and exotic, but we now know he simply meant the Strait of Gibraltar, where southern Spain meets northern Africa, Morocco to be precise.
[00:04:27] According to Plato, Atlantis was a utopian society blessed with great wealth, advanced technology, and a strong naval power.
[00:04:38] Its people lived in harmony, ruled by just kings, and their city was a marvel of engineering—a series of concentric rings of land and water with a grand temple to Poseidon at its centre.
[00:04:54] But then, as the story goes, the people of Atlantis became greedy, corrupt, and power-hungry. They tried to conquer their neighbours, only to be defeated by the virtuous Athenians. As punishment for their hubris, the gods unleashed a series of catastrophic earthquakes and floods that sank Atlantis beneath the sea in a single day and night.
[00:05:21] It’s an extraordinary tale, but was it meant to be taken literally?
[00:05:27] No, almost certainly, it was not.
[00:05:30] Most historians believe that Plato invented Atlantis as a moral allegory—a way to warn against the dangers of arrogance and unchecked ambition.
[00:05:41] It was a cautionary tale, not a historical account.
[00:05:45] There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for anything resembling Atlantis, and it's pretty clear that Plato used it as an allegorical device in his story.
[00:05:56] So given this, why does the world Atlantis conjure up images of great temples on the sea bed, why are hit TV shows on Netflix suggesting that there are hidden underwater civilisations, such as Atlantis, that we simply don’t know about?
[00:06:12] Well, like many myths, over time, people have been inspired by its story and written their own versions, and it has evolved into something many believe to be true.
[00:06:26] To put a number on this, according to one recent survey, 57% of Americans believe that Atlantis or other ancient civilisations existed.
[00:06:39] To this, the natural question is, “If they existed, where are they now?”.
[00:06:45] Over the centuries, countless theories have emerged about where Atlantis might have been.
[00:06:52] There’s one theory that Atlantis was actually based on the Minoans, who lived more than 1000 years before Plato was born.
[00:07:01] The Minoans lived in Crete and later in Santorini, in the eastern Mediterranean. They were an advanced society, known for their impressive palaces, intricate art, and thriving trade networks.
[00:07:14] But their civilisation was dealt a devastating blow by a massive volcanic eruption around 1600 BCE. This eruption all but wiped out the Minoans on Santorini, leaving their settlements buried under ash and their culture in decline.
[00:07:33] Some believe this catastrophe may have inspired the legend of Atlantis.
[00:07:39] It’s a plausible explanation: a flourishing civilisation destroyed suddenly and dramatically, leaving echoes of its memory to shape later myths.
[00:07:50] But for many, this theory isn’t thrilling enough. A mere volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean doesn’t quite capture the imagination.
[00:08:00] Instead, people have pointed to locations as far-flung as the Azores, Antarctica, or even beneath the Atlantic Ocean itself.
[00:08:11] And while these theories make for great stories, they lack evidence.
[00:08:17] To date, no trace of Atlantis has ever been found, and virtually no serious archaeologist or classicist believes it ever existed.
[00:08:27] The legend, it seems, is destined to remain just that—a legend.
[00:08:33] Next, let’s move from a city supposedly lost beneath the waves to one said to be hidden deep in the jungles of South America: the legendary El Dorado.
[00:08:44] El Dorado, “the golden one”, in Spanish.
[00:08:47] The very name conjures images of untold wealth, glittering gold, and the promise of paradise hidden deep within the jungle.
[00:08:57] But unlike Atlantis, El Dorado wasn’t a city at all—at least, not at first.
[00:09:04] It started as a man.
[00:09:07] Now, it’s difficult to trace exactly where this legend came from, but it is believed to have been started by the Muisca people of present-day Colombia.
[00:09:18] According to the legend, when a new ruler, or zipa, was crowned, they would perform a sacred ceremony at Lake Guatavita.
[00:09:28] The zipa would cover his body in gold dust and sail to the centre of the lake on a raft made of reeds. Surrounded by priests, he would then offer gold and precious treasures to the gods by throwing them into the water.
[00:09:45] This ritual, recounted to early Spanish explorers in the 16th century, sparked the idea of El Hombre Dorado—the Golden Man.
[00:09:56] But as the story spread among European adventurers, it evolved.
[00:10:02] El Dorado was no longer just a man; it became a mythical city, then an entire kingdom, said to be overflowing with unimaginable riches.
[00:10:12] A king so rich that he covered himself in gold every morning and would wash it off at night, so plentiful were the gold reserves that it would simply be discarded, washed away.
[00:10:25] For the Spanish conquistadors, who were already hungry for gold after plundering the Aztec and Inca empires, the promise of El Dorado was irresistible.
[00:10:37] Explorers like Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and Francisco de Orellana ventured deep into the Amazon in search of this golden city.
[00:10:47] These expeditions were perilous, often ending in death from disease, starvation, or clashes with indigenous tribes.
[00:10:57] And it wasn’t just the Spanish who were tempted by the mystery of El Dorado.
[00:11:02] One of the most famous searches for El Dorado was led by Sir Walter Raleigh, the English explorer and favourite of Queen Elizabeth I.
[00:11:12] Not only was he tempted, but he believed he had discovered exactly where it was.
[00:11:19] Raleigh believed El Dorado was located along the Orinoco River in present-day Venezuela.
[00:11:27] In 1595, 50 years after the first written record of El Dorado, the Englishman set out with high hopes, only to return empty-handed.
[00:11:39] Undeterred, he launched a second expedition years later, but it too ended in failure—and ultimately contributed to his downfall and subsequent execution.
[00:11:51] For many explorers, the search for El Dorado wasn’t just a quest for riches—it was an obsession.
[00:11:59] Men risked everything, losing fortunes, reputations, and even their lives, chasing what might have been nothing more than a dream.
[00:12:10] Despite the futility of these expeditions, the legend of El Dorado refused to die.
[00:12:16] It became a symbol of human greed and obsession, the idea that somewhere out there lay a treasure so vast it could change the fate of nations.
[00:12:27] But was there any truth to the story, is there any truth to the story?
[00:12:33] While the idea of a single golden city may be a myth, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of sophisticated ancient civilisations in the Amazon.
[00:12:44] These societies, which were once dismissed as primitive, built large interconnected settlements with intricate road systems, canals, and advanced agricultural practices.
[00:12:55] They may not have been the glittering city of legend, but they were impressive civilisations in their own right.
[00:13:03] And this brings us to our final story, one that’s less about gold and more about obsession: The City of Z.
[00:13:14] The City of Z is a legend that captivated one man so completely that he was willing to risk everything to find it.
[00:13:24] That man’s name was Percy Harrison Fawcett.
[00:13:28] He was an adventurer in the classic sense.
[00:13:32] He was born in 1867, in England, and after working as a spy in North Africa, he spent much of his career mapping uncharted regions of South America for the Royal Geographical Society.
[00:13:47] And his stories and reputation were legendary.
[00:13:51] He claimed to have seen dogs with two noses, to have shot and killed a 20-metre-long snake, and it seemed that he was practically immune to all of the tropical diseases that would often kill his fellow Europeans within days of arriving in the rainforest.
[00:14:10] Unlike other European explorers, he appeared to approach his exploration without any sense of superiority, he didn’t think that he was the great European conqueror who was there to teach and subdue the local tribes; he was known for treating anyone he met as his equal.
[00:14:29] He had, of course, heard about the legend of El Dorado, but during his expeditions into the Amazon, he heard stories from indigenous tribes, stories that sounded a little like El Dorado, but were perhaps even more intriguing.
[00:14:47] These stories were of ancient ruins hidden deep within the jungle.
[00:14:52] These weren’t just abandoned villages—they were said to be the remnants of a sophisticated civilisation, complete with monumental architecture, advanced knowledge, and a thriving culture.
[00:15:05] In Fawcett’s mind, this lost civilisation became Z, the name he gave to the city he believed would prove that the Amazon was once home to highly advanced societies.
[00:15:19] His conviction was fueled by reports of strange artefacts—like elaborately carved pottery—and accounts of European explorers who claimed to have seen vast settlements deep in the rainforest during searches for El Dorado.
[00:15:35] Before he could set out to look for Z, he was called back to Europe to fight in World War One. And it was on the battlefields of the Somme that he had something of a revelation.
[00:15:49] He was in his late 40s, and seeing these young men, many of whom were only 17 or 18, being sent over the top, only to be mown down by machine gun fire seconds later, something changed in him.
[00:16:06] To Fawcett, the futility, the meaningless of it all, was a wake-up call.
[00:16:13] Was the West and “advanced” society really so much more sophisticated if this was all it resulted in?
[00:16:21] In those wet, muddy, bloody trenches of northern France, he became even more convinced that he had to find this lost civilisation.
[00:16:32] But Fawcett’s desire to find Z wasn’t just a hunt for ruins—it was a quest to redefine what we know about human civilisation.
[00:16:42] However, finding Z was no simple task.
[00:16:46] The Amazon is one of the most hostile environments on Earth, filled with dangerous wildlife, treacherous terrain, tribes that are fiercely protective of their territory and diseases that can kill you within days.
[00:17:01] And 100 years ago, it was even more dangerous. Explorers had none of the life-saving technologies or medical assistance that they would today.
[00:17:12] Now, Fawcett had explored extensively through the Amazon, so he was about as prepared as anyone could be.
[00:17:20] But he was now 57 years old; he was no spring chicken.
[00:17:26] In 1925, he embarked on what would be his final expedition, taking with him his son Jack and Jack’s best friend, Raleigh Rimell.
[00:17:37] And fascinatingly, we do have quite a lot of evidence for the details of their trip. Every few days, he would write an update, which would be passed to a local runner, who would take it back to a settlement where it could be typed up and sent via telegraph.
[00:17:55] So it was possible to follow the group’s movements in real-time, or at least, in real-time, but a few weeks delayed.
[00:18:05] In his last letter, which was written just after a month into the expedition, he described how the group was going to embark into uncharted territory.
[00:18:15] There was nothing particularly unusual about this; practically all the Amazon was uncharted at this point, and Fawcett was somewhat used to it, so it’s probably the equivalent of you or I saying, “I’m just going to the supermarket to get some milk”.
[00:18:31] In this letter, Fawcett wrote to his wife, “you have no fear of any failure”.
[00:18:38] Unfortunately, this is the last anyone has ever heard from them.
[00:18:44] Fawcett, his son and his friend vanished without a trace, never to be seen again.
[00:18:52] To many watching this expedition, it seemed very strange.
[00:18:57] Fawcett was a seasoned explorer, he had done this many times before. Despite the extreme difficulties of Amazonian exploration, Fawcett seemed practically invincible.
[00:19:10] What could have happened to him?
[00:19:11] Countless explorers have set off deep into the Amazon, trying to retrace Fawcett’s path and find some evidence of his fate.
[00:19:20] Many died in the search, so many in fact that the Brazilian government issued a decree in 1934 banning search parties for Fawcett.
[00:19:30] Tens of thousands of people have gone looking, but no evidence has been found.
[00:19:37] Over the years, countless theories have emerged about what happened to them, ranging from plausible to somewhat fantastical.
[00:19:46] Some say they were killed by hostile tribes; others say they succumbed to starvation or disease.
[00:19:53] There’s even speculation that Fawcett chose to disappear, perhaps integrating himself into a remote community in the jungle, or he got amnesia and believed himself to be a member of a local tribe.
[00:20:07] Or that he found Z, it wasn’t a lost ancient civilisation but one that was still flourishing, some kind of rainforest eutopia, so he decided to stay there forever.
[00:20:20] It seems we will never know.
[00:20:23] No remains of his body have ever been found, but most historians believe the most probable explanation is that he was killed by a local tribe. There are oral histories from Amazonian tribes that describe a man matching Fawcett’s description, at about the time that he disappeared, being killed.
[00:20:42] And as far as Z is concerned, there is some evidence that Fawcett might have been right, or at least onto something with his theory of an ancient civilisation hidden beneath the rainforest canopy.
[00:20:56] Since then, explorers have returned from the Amazon with remarkable findings: evidence of vast, interconnected settlements and advanced agricultural techniques that challenged the stereotype of the Amazon as a “green desert.”
[00:21:11] So, while he never found Z, or at least if he did, he never returned to tell the tale, his intuition about advanced Amazonian civilisations was certainly ahead of its time.
[00:21:23] Okay, then there we have it. we’ve reached the end of our journey into legendary lost cities.
[00:21:28] Atlantis, El Dorado, and the City of Z might be very different stories, but they share a common thread: the idea that somewhere out there—hidden beneath the waves, buried in the jungle, or simply forgotten by time—there are mysteries waiting to be uncovered.
[00:21:45] So, are these stories fact or fiction?
[00:21:49] The sceptic would say pure fiction, the pragmatist might say fiction but with a smattering of fact, and the true believer might say we just haven’t looked in the right places.
[00:22:02] OK then, that is it for this exploration of the mysterious world of legendary lost cities and civilisations, and with that concludes this three-part mini-series on the very loose theme of “mystery”.
[00:22:15] The thing about a mystery, or a secret, is that if it really is a secret then nobody really knows about it, but I hope this was a fun exploration through some secret themes, from secret societies to spycraft to secret lost cities.
[00:22:30] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:35] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “mystery”.
[00:00:28] In case you missed them, in part one we talked about secret societies, from Skull & Bones at Yale University through to the Knights Templar.
[00:00:38] In part two, we talked about espionage and the history of spying.
[00:00:43] And today, in our final episode, we are going to take a look at some legendary lost cities and civilisations that have puzzled, fascinated, and eluded explorers for centuries.
[00:00:56] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:02] In the early 2000s, one of the founders of Google, Larry Page, had a crazy idea: to create a 360-degree map of the world.
[00:01:15] In 2004, he brought a few Google engineers together and got them working on a prototype. They fixed a camera onto a van and off it set, taking pictures of everything around it as it drove around the city.
[00:01:32] Fast forward to today, and this vision is Google Streetview, or rather, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Streetview all rolled into one.
[00:01:44] As of the last public update, there are more than 15 million kilometers of road mapped with Streetview, and high-definition satellite imagery in Google Earth covers 98% of the world’s surface.
[00:01:59] It's probably quite a bit more now, as this last public update was back in 2019, six years ago.
[00:02:08] And with this incredible technology, it can feel like there’s no part of the world left to discover.
[00:02:16] Every mountain peak, every island, every jungle seems just a click or a swipe away.
[00:02:23] It’s easy to believe that humanity has left no stone unturned.
[00:02:29] But what if there is something lurking in that 2% of unmapped territory, underwater, deep in the jungle, or hidden in the rainforest?
[00:02:41] Cities or entire civilisations lost to time.
[00:02:46] This will be the subject of today’s episode, places spoken of in hushed tones, places that, in the case of all three examples we’ll look at today, have become more legend than reality.
[00:03:01] The first one we will talk about is a name that will probably be familiar to you: Atlantis.
[00:03:08] The word Atlantis probably conjures up images of an ancient city under the sea, its only residents now brightly-coloured fish and the occasional crab scuttling across a formerly magnificent ruined arch.
[00:03:22] It is the quintessential “lost city” and has become almost a byword for a mysterious civilisation that simply disappeared from the face of the earth.
[00:03:35] So, what is Atlantis, where is it, supposedly, and is there any truth to its existence?
[00:03:43] Well, let’s start with where the story of Atlantis comes from.
[00:03:48] The first and most significant reference to Atlantis comes from the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, in two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, written around 360 BC.
[00:04:03] In these texts, Plato describes Atlantis as a powerful and advanced civilisation located beyond the “Pillars of Hercules,” which sounds mythical and exotic, but we now know he simply meant the Strait of Gibraltar, where southern Spain meets northern Africa, Morocco to be precise.
[00:04:27] According to Plato, Atlantis was a utopian society blessed with great wealth, advanced technology, and a strong naval power.
[00:04:38] Its people lived in harmony, ruled by just kings, and their city was a marvel of engineering—a series of concentric rings of land and water with a grand temple to Poseidon at its centre.
[00:04:54] But then, as the story goes, the people of Atlantis became greedy, corrupt, and power-hungry. They tried to conquer their neighbours, only to be defeated by the virtuous Athenians. As punishment for their hubris, the gods unleashed a series of catastrophic earthquakes and floods that sank Atlantis beneath the sea in a single day and night.
[00:05:21] It’s an extraordinary tale, but was it meant to be taken literally?
[00:05:27] No, almost certainly, it was not.
[00:05:30] Most historians believe that Plato invented Atlantis as a moral allegory—a way to warn against the dangers of arrogance and unchecked ambition.
[00:05:41] It was a cautionary tale, not a historical account.
[00:05:45] There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for anything resembling Atlantis, and it's pretty clear that Plato used it as an allegorical device in his story.
[00:05:56] So given this, why does the world Atlantis conjure up images of great temples on the sea bed, why are hit TV shows on Netflix suggesting that there are hidden underwater civilisations, such as Atlantis, that we simply don’t know about?
[00:06:12] Well, like many myths, over time, people have been inspired by its story and written their own versions, and it has evolved into something many believe to be true.
[00:06:26] To put a number on this, according to one recent survey, 57% of Americans believe that Atlantis or other ancient civilisations existed.
[00:06:39] To this, the natural question is, “If they existed, where are they now?”.
[00:06:45] Over the centuries, countless theories have emerged about where Atlantis might have been.
[00:06:52] There’s one theory that Atlantis was actually based on the Minoans, who lived more than 1000 years before Plato was born.
[00:07:01] The Minoans lived in Crete and later in Santorini, in the eastern Mediterranean. They were an advanced society, known for their impressive palaces, intricate art, and thriving trade networks.
[00:07:14] But their civilisation was dealt a devastating blow by a massive volcanic eruption around 1600 BCE. This eruption all but wiped out the Minoans on Santorini, leaving their settlements buried under ash and their culture in decline.
[00:07:33] Some believe this catastrophe may have inspired the legend of Atlantis.
[00:07:39] It’s a plausible explanation: a flourishing civilisation destroyed suddenly and dramatically, leaving echoes of its memory to shape later myths.
[00:07:50] But for many, this theory isn’t thrilling enough. A mere volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean doesn’t quite capture the imagination.
[00:08:00] Instead, people have pointed to locations as far-flung as the Azores, Antarctica, or even beneath the Atlantic Ocean itself.
[00:08:11] And while these theories make for great stories, they lack evidence.
[00:08:17] To date, no trace of Atlantis has ever been found, and virtually no serious archaeologist or classicist believes it ever existed.
[00:08:27] The legend, it seems, is destined to remain just that—a legend.
[00:08:33] Next, let’s move from a city supposedly lost beneath the waves to one said to be hidden deep in the jungles of South America: the legendary El Dorado.
[00:08:44] El Dorado, “the golden one”, in Spanish.
[00:08:47] The very name conjures images of untold wealth, glittering gold, and the promise of paradise hidden deep within the jungle.
[00:08:57] But unlike Atlantis, El Dorado wasn’t a city at all—at least, not at first.
[00:09:04] It started as a man.
[00:09:07] Now, it’s difficult to trace exactly where this legend came from, but it is believed to have been started by the Muisca people of present-day Colombia.
[00:09:18] According to the legend, when a new ruler, or zipa, was crowned, they would perform a sacred ceremony at Lake Guatavita.
[00:09:28] The zipa would cover his body in gold dust and sail to the centre of the lake on a raft made of reeds. Surrounded by priests, he would then offer gold and precious treasures to the gods by throwing them into the water.
[00:09:45] This ritual, recounted to early Spanish explorers in the 16th century, sparked the idea of El Hombre Dorado—the Golden Man.
[00:09:56] But as the story spread among European adventurers, it evolved.
[00:10:02] El Dorado was no longer just a man; it became a mythical city, then an entire kingdom, said to be overflowing with unimaginable riches.
[00:10:12] A king so rich that he covered himself in gold every morning and would wash it off at night, so plentiful were the gold reserves that it would simply be discarded, washed away.
[00:10:25] For the Spanish conquistadors, who were already hungry for gold after plundering the Aztec and Inca empires, the promise of El Dorado was irresistible.
[00:10:37] Explorers like Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and Francisco de Orellana ventured deep into the Amazon in search of this golden city.
[00:10:47] These expeditions were perilous, often ending in death from disease, starvation, or clashes with indigenous tribes.
[00:10:57] And it wasn’t just the Spanish who were tempted by the mystery of El Dorado.
[00:11:02] One of the most famous searches for El Dorado was led by Sir Walter Raleigh, the English explorer and favourite of Queen Elizabeth I.
[00:11:12] Not only was he tempted, but he believed he had discovered exactly where it was.
[00:11:19] Raleigh believed El Dorado was located along the Orinoco River in present-day Venezuela.
[00:11:27] In 1595, 50 years after the first written record of El Dorado, the Englishman set out with high hopes, only to return empty-handed.
[00:11:39] Undeterred, he launched a second expedition years later, but it too ended in failure—and ultimately contributed to his downfall and subsequent execution.
[00:11:51] For many explorers, the search for El Dorado wasn’t just a quest for riches—it was an obsession.
[00:11:59] Men risked everything, losing fortunes, reputations, and even their lives, chasing what might have been nothing more than a dream.
[00:12:10] Despite the futility of these expeditions, the legend of El Dorado refused to die.
[00:12:16] It became a symbol of human greed and obsession, the idea that somewhere out there lay a treasure so vast it could change the fate of nations.
[00:12:27] But was there any truth to the story, is there any truth to the story?
[00:12:33] While the idea of a single golden city may be a myth, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of sophisticated ancient civilisations in the Amazon.
[00:12:44] These societies, which were once dismissed as primitive, built large interconnected settlements with intricate road systems, canals, and advanced agricultural practices.
[00:12:55] They may not have been the glittering city of legend, but they were impressive civilisations in their own right.
[00:13:03] And this brings us to our final story, one that’s less about gold and more about obsession: The City of Z.
[00:13:14] The City of Z is a legend that captivated one man so completely that he was willing to risk everything to find it.
[00:13:24] That man’s name was Percy Harrison Fawcett.
[00:13:28] He was an adventurer in the classic sense.
[00:13:32] He was born in 1867, in England, and after working as a spy in North Africa, he spent much of his career mapping uncharted regions of South America for the Royal Geographical Society.
[00:13:47] And his stories and reputation were legendary.
[00:13:51] He claimed to have seen dogs with two noses, to have shot and killed a 20-metre-long snake, and it seemed that he was practically immune to all of the tropical diseases that would often kill his fellow Europeans within days of arriving in the rainforest.
[00:14:10] Unlike other European explorers, he appeared to approach his exploration without any sense of superiority, he didn’t think that he was the great European conqueror who was there to teach and subdue the local tribes; he was known for treating anyone he met as his equal.
[00:14:29] He had, of course, heard about the legend of El Dorado, but during his expeditions into the Amazon, he heard stories from indigenous tribes, stories that sounded a little like El Dorado, but were perhaps even more intriguing.
[00:14:47] These stories were of ancient ruins hidden deep within the jungle.
[00:14:52] These weren’t just abandoned villages—they were said to be the remnants of a sophisticated civilisation, complete with monumental architecture, advanced knowledge, and a thriving culture.
[00:15:05] In Fawcett’s mind, this lost civilisation became Z, the name he gave to the city he believed would prove that the Amazon was once home to highly advanced societies.
[00:15:19] His conviction was fueled by reports of strange artefacts—like elaborately carved pottery—and accounts of European explorers who claimed to have seen vast settlements deep in the rainforest during searches for El Dorado.
[00:15:35] Before he could set out to look for Z, he was called back to Europe to fight in World War One. And it was on the battlefields of the Somme that he had something of a revelation.
[00:15:49] He was in his late 40s, and seeing these young men, many of whom were only 17 or 18, being sent over the top, only to be mown down by machine gun fire seconds later, something changed in him.
[00:16:06] To Fawcett, the futility, the meaningless of it all, was a wake-up call.
[00:16:13] Was the West and “advanced” society really so much more sophisticated if this was all it resulted in?
[00:16:21] In those wet, muddy, bloody trenches of northern France, he became even more convinced that he had to find this lost civilisation.
[00:16:32] But Fawcett’s desire to find Z wasn’t just a hunt for ruins—it was a quest to redefine what we know about human civilisation.
[00:16:42] However, finding Z was no simple task.
[00:16:46] The Amazon is one of the most hostile environments on Earth, filled with dangerous wildlife, treacherous terrain, tribes that are fiercely protective of their territory and diseases that can kill you within days.
[00:17:01] And 100 years ago, it was even more dangerous. Explorers had none of the life-saving technologies or medical assistance that they would today.
[00:17:12] Now, Fawcett had explored extensively through the Amazon, so he was about as prepared as anyone could be.
[00:17:20] But he was now 57 years old; he was no spring chicken.
[00:17:26] In 1925, he embarked on what would be his final expedition, taking with him his son Jack and Jack’s best friend, Raleigh Rimell.
[00:17:37] And fascinatingly, we do have quite a lot of evidence for the details of their trip. Every few days, he would write an update, which would be passed to a local runner, who would take it back to a settlement where it could be typed up and sent via telegraph.
[00:17:55] So it was possible to follow the group’s movements in real-time, or at least, in real-time, but a few weeks delayed.
[00:18:05] In his last letter, which was written just after a month into the expedition, he described how the group was going to embark into uncharted territory.
[00:18:15] There was nothing particularly unusual about this; practically all the Amazon was uncharted at this point, and Fawcett was somewhat used to it, so it’s probably the equivalent of you or I saying, “I’m just going to the supermarket to get some milk”.
[00:18:31] In this letter, Fawcett wrote to his wife, “you have no fear of any failure”.
[00:18:38] Unfortunately, this is the last anyone has ever heard from them.
[00:18:44] Fawcett, his son and his friend vanished without a trace, never to be seen again.
[00:18:52] To many watching this expedition, it seemed very strange.
[00:18:57] Fawcett was a seasoned explorer, he had done this many times before. Despite the extreme difficulties of Amazonian exploration, Fawcett seemed practically invincible.
[00:19:10] What could have happened to him?
[00:19:11] Countless explorers have set off deep into the Amazon, trying to retrace Fawcett’s path and find some evidence of his fate.
[00:19:20] Many died in the search, so many in fact that the Brazilian government issued a decree in 1934 banning search parties for Fawcett.
[00:19:30] Tens of thousands of people have gone looking, but no evidence has been found.
[00:19:37] Over the years, countless theories have emerged about what happened to them, ranging from plausible to somewhat fantastical.
[00:19:46] Some say they were killed by hostile tribes; others say they succumbed to starvation or disease.
[00:19:53] There’s even speculation that Fawcett chose to disappear, perhaps integrating himself into a remote community in the jungle, or he got amnesia and believed himself to be a member of a local tribe.
[00:20:07] Or that he found Z, it wasn’t a lost ancient civilisation but one that was still flourishing, some kind of rainforest eutopia, so he decided to stay there forever.
[00:20:20] It seems we will never know.
[00:20:23] No remains of his body have ever been found, but most historians believe the most probable explanation is that he was killed by a local tribe. There are oral histories from Amazonian tribes that describe a man matching Fawcett’s description, at about the time that he disappeared, being killed.
[00:20:42] And as far as Z is concerned, there is some evidence that Fawcett might have been right, or at least onto something with his theory of an ancient civilisation hidden beneath the rainforest canopy.
[00:20:56] Since then, explorers have returned from the Amazon with remarkable findings: evidence of vast, interconnected settlements and advanced agricultural techniques that challenged the stereotype of the Amazon as a “green desert.”
[00:21:11] So, while he never found Z, or at least if he did, he never returned to tell the tale, his intuition about advanced Amazonian civilisations was certainly ahead of its time.
[00:21:23] Okay, then there we have it. we’ve reached the end of our journey into legendary lost cities.
[00:21:28] Atlantis, El Dorado, and the City of Z might be very different stories, but they share a common thread: the idea that somewhere out there—hidden beneath the waves, buried in the jungle, or simply forgotten by time—there are mysteries waiting to be uncovered.
[00:21:45] So, are these stories fact or fiction?
[00:21:49] The sceptic would say pure fiction, the pragmatist might say fiction but with a smattering of fact, and the true believer might say we just haven’t looked in the right places.
[00:22:02] OK then, that is it for this exploration of the mysterious world of legendary lost cities and civilisations, and with that concludes this three-part mini-series on the very loose theme of “mystery”.
[00:22:15] The thing about a mystery, or a secret, is that if it really is a secret then nobody really knows about it, but I hope this was a fun exploration through some secret themes, from secret societies to spycraft to secret lost cities.
[00:22:30] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:35] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
