While Atlantis is perhaps one of the most famous mythological lost cities said to have existed on Earth, a number of other legendary cities make the list behind Atlantis.

The Lost City of Z is perhaps the most sought-after lost city in the history of mankind.

Countless expeditions have been organized to find the city, but despite this, no one has ever managed to find evidence of its existence.

The most famous to have searched for the Lost City of Z was a man called Percy Harrison Fawcett, a renowned explorer who tried discovering the long-lost city thought to remain hidden somewhere in the Amazon jungle.

In this article, we’ve gathered 25 of the most interesting things you should know about this legendary lost city.

The Lost City of Z—The remnants of an Atlantean city?

According to myths and legends, the lost City of Z would have been erected in very ancient times by the descendants of Atlantis.

The name Lost City of Z was given by Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett.

The ancient city is believed to have been located somewhere in the jungle of the Mato Grosso state of Brazil.

The lost city of Z was the product of Fawcett’s theories that in the distant past, an advanced ancient civilization once existed there, and the ruins of the city of Z may have belonged to that civilization.

Fawcett made eight expeditions searching for the lost city, disappearing in his last expedition, under strange circumstances.

The search for the Lost City of Z began after Col. Fawcett discovered an ancient document titled Manuscript 512, kept in the National Library of Brazil.

The document—Manuscript 512—is believed to have been authored by Portuguese Bandeirantes, João da Silva Guimarães. The document is believed to describe the Lost City of Z in detail.

João da Silva Guimarães claimed in the manuscript that he came across the ruins of an ancient city in ruins, containing arches, statues, and temples covered in hieroglyphs, deep in the Amazonian Jungle in 1753.

While Guimarães described the city in great detail, he failed to give off its location.

It is believed that Fawcett’s conviction was fed in part due to the rediscovery of the lost city of Machu Picchu in 1911.

In addition, during Fawcett’s numerous travels through the American Continent, Fawcett heard rumors of a secret ancient underground city located ‘somewhere’ in the jungles of Chile, which, according to tales, legends, and reports, was made of streets paved with silver and roofs of gold.

Fawcett imagined exactly what the City of Z may look like. He described his ideas in a letter written to his son Brian: “I expect the ruins to be monolithic in character, more ancient than the oldest Egyptian discoveries. Judging by inscriptions found in many parts of Brazil, the inhabitants used an alphabetical writing allied to many ancient European and Asian scripts. There are rumors, too, of a strange source of light in the buildings, a phenomenon that filled with terror the Indians who claimed to have seen it.  The central place I call “Z” — our main objective — is in a valley surmounted by lofty mountains. The valley is about ten miles wide, and the city is on an eminence in the middle of it, approached by a barreled roadway of stone. The houses are low and windowless, and there is a pyramidal temple. The inhabitants of the place are fairly numerous, they keep domestic animals, and they have well-developed mines in the surrounding hills. Not far away is a second town, but the people living in it are of an inferior order to those of “Z.” Farther to the south is another large city, half buried and completely destroyed.”

In 1921, the first expedition to find the Lost City of Z was assembled by Fawcett.  His search for Z culminated with his disappearance and the appearance of many myths and tales surrounding his faith.

Fawcett’s last expedition was set in March in April of 1925, this time financed by newspapers and societies such as the Royal Geographic Society and the Rockefellers. Fawcett was certain that his expedition would culminate with the discovery of the mythical city.

Fawcett’s beliefs were greatly influenced on what the Indians had told him about alleged Lost Cities spread across the Amazon jungle. Even his penultimate letter – nine days before he mysteriously vanished, mentions one such tale.

The Final written words of Col. Fawcett, sent to his wife were: “My dear Nina, The attempt to write is fraught with many difficulties, thanks to the legions of flies that pester one from dawn till dusk – and sometimes all through the night! The worst are the tiny ones that are smaller than a pinhead, almost invisible, but sting like a mosquito. Clouds of them are always present. Millions of bees add to the plague, and other bugs galore, stinging horrors that get all over one’s hands. Even the head nets won’t keep them out, and as for mosquito nets, the pests fly through them! It is quite maddening.
We hope to get through this region in a few days, and are camped here for a while to arrange for the return of the peons, who are anxious to get back, having had enough of it – and I don’t blame them. We go on with eight animals – three saddle mules, four cargo mules, and a madrinha, a leading animal which keeps the others together. Jack is well and fit, and getting stronger every day, even though he suffers a bit from insects. I myself am bitten or stung by ticks, and these piums, as they call the tiny ones, all over the body. It is Raleigh I am anxious about. He still has one leg in a bandage but won’t go back. So far we have plenty of food and no need to walk, but I am not sure how long this will last. There may be little for the animals to eat as we head further in. I cannot hope to stand up on this journey better than Jack or Raleigh – my extra years tell, though I do my best to make up for it with enthusiasm – but I had to do this. I calculate that I shall contact the Indians in about a week, perhaps ten days, when we should be able to reach the much-talked-about waterfall. Here we are at Dead Horse Camp, Lat. 110 43’ S and 540 35’ W, the spot where my horse died in 1920. Only his white bones remain. We can bathe ourselves here, but the insects make it a matter of great haste. Nevertheless, the season is good. It is very cold at night and fresh in the morning, but the insects and heat are out in full force to come mid-day, and from then until evening it is sheer misery in camp. You need have no fear of any failure…”

Each expedition mounted after the disappearance of Fawcett ended in the same fate.

Fawcett’s disappearance resulted in a total of 13 expeditions being mounted in which more than a hundred people lost their lives, attempting to find not only Fawcett but the Legendary Lost City of Z as well.

No one knows what exactly happened to Fawcett, his expedition, and to more than one hundred people that set out to search for him after he disappeared in the Amazon.

Many scholars believe that Fawcett and his team were killed by an Amazonian tribe.

Other theories state that Fawcett and his team either starved, drowned or suffered a disease.

There are some who also say that they may have been robbed and killed by bandits in the region.

The City was never found, and eventually, explorers, archeologists, and adventurers gave up looking for the city actively.

Despite the fact that no one managed to discover the Lost City of Z, a number of ancient cities are believed to remain hidden deep within the Amazonian rainforest.

The story of behind the Lost City of Z was so popular that books were written about it, and even a movie was filmed.

Featured Image Credit: Leon Tukker. Used with permission.

In Brief: “The Pushpaka Vimana that resembles the Sun and belongs to my brother was brought by the powerful Ravana; that aerial and excellent Vimana going everywhere at will … that chariot resembling a bright cloud in the sky … and the King [Rama] got in, and the excellent chariot at the command of the Raghira, rose up into the higher atmosphere.’”

Hindu mythology is filled with incredible tales, stories mythologies and most importantly written texts.

In previous articles, we covered the Mahabharata and the countless powerful weapons described in it.

According to Ancient Hindu history –one of the most extensive on the planet– their ancient sacred texts called the ‘Vedas’ speak of incredible flying ships that visited our planet over 6000 years ago.

In this article, we take a look at the Vimana, more specifically, the ancient Pushpaka Vimana, a powerful ancient flying vehicle described in Hindu texts and Sanskrit epics.

The Pushpaka Vimana of king Ravana (who captured the Vimana from Lord Kubera; and Rama returned it to Kubera) is the most quoted example of a vimana.

Vimanas are also mentioned in Jain texts—Jainism, an ancient Indian religion.

If we take a look at ancient Sanskrit and the etymology of the Vimana, we will find that it means “measuring out, traversing” or “having been measured out”.

Reference to the ancient Vimana can be found in the Mahabharata, which is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India:

“At Rama`s behest, the magnificent chariot rose up to a mountain of cloud with a tremendous din. Another passage reads: Bhima flew with his Vimana on an enormous ray which was as brilliant as the sun and made a noise like the thunder of a storm.

Author Monier Monier-Williams—the second Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University describes the Ancient Vimana as “a car or a chariot of the gods, any self-moving aerial car sometimes serving as a seat or throne, sometimes self-moving and carrying its occupant through the air; other descriptions make the Vimana more like a house or palace, and one kind is said to be seven stories high,” quoting the Pushpaka Vimana as one of the most worthy examples.

In modern languages, Vimana is usually translated to aircraft.

In many depictions of Vimana, we see these powerful, alleged machines, depicted as being as big as a temple.

The Vimana predecessor

In ancient Sanskrit Epics, the Vimana were the so-called flying chariots used by a number of different ancient Gods.

Various Vedic deities are described as using, flying, wheeled chariots to move from one place to another.

Some verses of ancient texts have been interpreted by different authors as evidence of ‘mechanical birds’.

In the Rigveda (an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns), for example, we find the following description:

“Dark the descent: the birds are golden-coloured; up to the heaven they fly robed in the waters. Again, descend they from the seat of Order, and all the earth is moistened with their fatness. Twelve are the fellies, and the wheel is single; three are the naves. What man hath understood it? Therein are set together spokes three hundred and sixty, which in nowise can be loosened.”—The Hymns of the Rigveda by Ralph Thomas Hotchkin Griffith.

According to Swami Dayananda Saraswati— a renowned scholar of the Vedic lore and Sanskrit language—the ancient Vimana were powerful spacecraft:

“jumping into space speedily with a craft using fire and water … containing twelve stamghas (pillars), one wheel, three machines, 300 pivots, and 60 instruments.”—A critical study of the work “vymanika shastra”.

The Pushpaka Vimana

The Pushpaka Vimana is usually described as a mythological flying palace or chariot.

In the Ramayana, we find another extraordinary description of the Vimana, more specifically the Pushpaka Vimana:

“The Pushpaka Vimana that resembles the Sun and belongs to my brother was brought by the powerful Ravana; that aerial and excellent Vimana going everywhere at will … that chariot resembling a bright cloud in the sky … and the King [Rama] got in, and the excellent chariot at the command of the Raghira, rose up into the higher atmosphere.’”

The Pushpaka Vimana appears as the first flying vimana mentioned in existing Hindu texts. The powerful Pushpaka Vimana was built e by Vishwakarma for Brahma, the Hindu god of creation. This Vimana was later given by Brahma to Kubera, the God of wealth. Eventually, the Pushpaka Vimana was stolen, along with Lanka, by his half-brother, king Ravana.

Featured Image Credit: Leon Tukker

While there are countless weapons mentioned in Hindu mythology and the Mahabharata, two (better said three) specific weapons caught my attention mostly because of their ancient descriptions, and what they seem to resemble to, in modern times.

Belonging to the group of the so-called Brahma weapons are the Brahmastra, and its variants the Brahmashirsha Astra and the Brahmanda Astra. All of these weapons are mention in ancient Sanskrit writings, and all of them were considered supernatural weapons.

One of them—the Brahmashirsha astra—perhaps the second most powerful of them all, was described as a weapon that could destroy the world. In Mahabharata, it is explained that when the Brahmashirsha astra is invoked, “It blazes up with terrible flames within a huge sphere of fire. Numerous peals of thunder were heard, thousands of meteors fell and all living creatures became terrified with great dread. The entire sky seemed to be filled with noise and assumed a terrible aspect with flames of fire. The whole earth with her mountains and waters and trees trembled.” When it strikes an area it will cause complete destruction and nothing will ever grow, not even a blade of grass for the next 12 years. It will not rain for 12 years in that area and everything including metal and earth becomes poisoned.

The Brahmastra, in turn, was a weapon that according to ancient Sanskrit writing, was capable of destroying the entire universe.

Depending on which ancient writing you look at, the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Puranas, the three weapons are commonly called Brahmastra.

In the Purana, for example, the Bramhastra is considered one of the most powerful supernatural weapons to have ever existed.

Descriptions of the Brahmastra suggest that this mighty weapon never missed its mark, and had to be used with a very specific intent against an army, as its target would be completely destroyed.

Furthermore, Sanskrit writings suggest that the Brahmastra is invoked by a key phrase or invocation, that is given to its user when the weapon is given to him. This is something I find very interesting as it sort of reminds me of Nuclear weapons and nuclear lunch codes belonging to countries. You can’t have one without the other.

The target, when hit by a Brahmastra, would be completely annihilated.

The Brahmashirsha Astra—Brahma’s head missile—was often described as the fifth head of Brahma. This is a weapon that is said to manifests with the fifth head of Brahma at its tip.

According to the Mahabharata, Arjuna and Ashwatthama used the Astra against each other at the end of the Kurukshetra war.

We find the description of the weapons power in the book Ānanda Bhāratī: Dr. K. Krishnamoorthy Felicitation Volume, where we read that the Brahmastra is considered a fiery weapon, that once used, created a massive fireball that threatened the entire world with destruction.

Furthermore, after the weapon was used, the Earth would see decreased rainfall and the soil would develop cracks, like what happens with a drought.

In numerous epics and Vedas, the Brahamastra is considered a weapon of last resort, that must be avoided at all costs in combat.

The best description of the power of this weapon can be found in the Mahabharata where the Brahmastra is defined as a weapon which is said to be a single projective, that contains the power of the universe. It was a mighty weapon. A Powerful Weapon. A weapon of last resort. A weapon that could bring complete annihilation to the world.

“It blazes up with terrible flames within a huge sphere of fire. Numerous peals of thunder were heard, thousands of meteors fell and all living creatures became terrified with great dread. The entire sky seemed to be filled with noise and assumed a terrible aspect with flames of fire. The whole earth with her mountains and waters and trees trembled.”

The Brahmastra was used to destroy inferior divine weapons or counter them. It was described as being as heavy as a mountain but could travel as fast as the wind nevertheless. The Brahmastra was painful as poison and as energetic as fire.