The Amazon rainforest has been one of the largest enduring mysteries in the natural
world.
It’s dense, sprawling, dangerous...
it’s a black box for adventure.
For explorers outside looking in, the Amazon has held a promise of riches, a test of manhood,
and a fulfillment of legend.
And it’s introduced some of those same explorers to a unique brand of wild, primordial hell.
Western exploration of the Amazon dates all the way back to the 1500’s.
Back then, rumors swirled in Spain of a South American king dubbed El Dorado, or “the
Golden One”.
Rumor had it that El Dorado presided over untold fortunes of gold, much of which was
sunk in a lake called Guatavita.
This kickstarted a frenzy of Spanish expeditions into South America.
Explorers did find lake Guatavita, and some even tried to drain it to reach its treasures.
None were successful.
For centuries after those first campaigns, the Amazon remained a magnet for explorers...often
with disastrous results.
In 1617 British adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh led his own trip to find El Dorado’s city.
He failed utterly, returned home to England, and was promptly beheaded for picking fights
with the Spanish during the trip.
In 1913 former US president Teddy Roosevelt led an expedition to map one of the Amazon’s
tributaries.
He did succeed, but not before one of his comrades had murdered another, and he himself
had almost died from an infected wound.
And, maybe most famously, in 1925 a British explorer named Percy Fawcett careened into
the jungle once again in search of a lost city he called Z...and vanished.
To this day his fate is unknown...and by one estimate,100 explorers have since died trying
to solve the mystery.
Now, if exploring the Amazon sounds like a fool’s errand, that’s because for most
outsiders, it is.
Anyone trying to penetrate the jungle must contend with blood-sucking gnats, mosquitoes,
flies, ticks, worms, and tiny bees that clog your eyes; venomous snakes and poisonous frogs;
crippling diseases like malaria and yellow fever; and enough foliage, rain, and mud to
slow foot travel down to a half-mile per day.
Explorers often called jungles like the Amazon “green hell.”
Given those conditions, it’s no surprise that for European explorers, the central mystery
of the Amazon was whether or not it could support an advanced native civilization.
But there was a built-in irony to that question: in searching for El Dorado, or Z, most explorers
dismissed the natives they did meet as savages.
It didn’t help that within the first hundred years of contact, 90% of the natives in the
area were dead from western diseases.
And many of those left were run off their land or enslaved in rubber and sugarcane plantations.
In short, Europeans spent centuries looking for a civilization to match their fables...and
in the process, they blithely destroyed the civilization that was there all along.
Today, we still have a lot to learn about how ancient peoples lived in the Amazon rainforest...and
even more about who and what lives there now.
It’s estimated that 10% of all known species on the planet live in the Amazon, and new
species are discovered there all the time.
What’s more, around 80 uncontacted groups of people live in the jungle...though today
there’s a much greater effort to respect those tribes’ sovereignty and customs.
The point is, we’re nowhere close to finishing the work that all those explorers started
some 500 years ago.
We’re just approaching that work, and the Amazon itself, with a little more humility.
So, we actually got started on all these crazy adventure stories because of our sponsor,
Toyota.
They want to get the word out about their new Toyota Rav4 Hybrid.
The Rav4 let’s your sense of wonder lead the way and drives your passions further.
The new Rav4 Hybrid model is a compact SUV gives you 34 miles to the gallon in the city
as estimated by the EPA.
Choose the Toyota Rav4 Hybrid for your next adventure.
And for another extreme trip to one of the farther-flung places on the planet, check
out this video on a photo dubbed “the crack at
the edge of the world”.