Pronunciation ChallengeHow The "Lost Cities" of The Amazon Were Finally Found

[Transcript]

Hey folks, Ken here. More mysteries today as we take you to the lost cities of the Amazon rainforest. In 1925, British explorer Percy Fawcett was on his eighth expedition in the Amazon and he had one objective: to find the ruins of a lost city that he called “Z”. The idea was based on rumors that had circulated for centuries that there were once large cities filled with people deep in the Amazon. However, Fawcett never found Z or any other city and for decades after his disappearance, experts believe that this rainforest was simply too hostile and too remote to ever have supported any city.

Today, archaeologists think they finally know the answer to that ancient mystery, where the lost cities are located, Cuzco. In the 16th century, European colonizers poured into Central and South America, bringing soldiers and diseases wherever they went while planning on conquering the territories. They encountered many groups of indigenous people, some of whom had long ago built huge cities like Tenochtitlan founded by the Mexican people Around 1325 A.D., and Cuzco founded by the Incas around 1200 A.D. These cities were constructed with stone and featured well-planned roads and neighborhoods, which were both taken over by the Europeans.

By the middle of the 16th century, the Europeans heard rumors of another mysterious city that is filled with gold, and this rumor later became the legend of El Dorado. And yes, you’ve guessed it, many Europeans set off in search of Eldorado, but they all failed, most ended in starvation, disease and death. Remember our protagonist Percy Fawcett? Modern research estimates that around Fawcett's time, only a couple of 100,000 people lived in the entire Amazon rainforest. But Fawcett was determined to prove that the cities did exist and in the final letter he wrote to his wife, Faucet assured her by writing “You need have no fear of any failure”, then he left his camp and was never seen again. (Poof! disappeared.)

In the 1990s, a team of American archeologists made a remarkable discovery. Working with the local indigenous people, they found remnants of carefully designed walls centered around a plaza and some were roads that lead to more settlements. These were the lost cities of the Amazon and there were many more. All these discoveries are leading experts to form a new consensus that the lost cities of the Amazon were once home to at least millions of people. Once lost, now found, and more could be unearthed in the near future. Fawcett would be proud.

[Sentence of the day]

Over the past few decades, experts have uncovered evidence of large settlements all over the Amazon.

[Vocabulary words]

1. decade
a period of ten years

i.e. Meryl Streep’s acting career spanned almost 5 decades.

2. uncover
to discover something secret or hidden

i.e. The investigation uncovered evidence of a large-scale illegal trade in wild birds.

3. settlement
a place where people come to live or the process of settling in such a place

i.e. A large Roman settlement has been discovered just outside the French town.


Alright, that’s all we have time for today.
Leave me a comment down below and tell me what topics you’d like to hear.
This is Ken Miao. I’ll see you again next week.