Xingu Indigenous Park notable. He sought a city which Europeans had heard rumor of since their early 16th-century colonial contact, and he disappeared in the jungle in 1925. David Grann wrote an article about his exploration, followed by an expanded book, "The Lost City of Z" (2009) on the same subject and with the same title. It documents those early explorations. It also explores archeological evidence found since the late 20th century of large-scale indigenous civilizations that pre-date Spanish and Portuguese contacts and colonization. Xingu Indigenous Park The Xingu Indigenous Park (, pronounced ) is an indigenous territory of Brazil, first created in
Xingu peoples number had been reduced by foreign epidemic diseases such as flu, measles, smallpox and malaria to less than 1,000. Only an estimated 500 Xingu peoples were alive in the 1950s. The Brazilian Villas-Bôas brothers visited the area beginning in 1946, and pushed for the creation of the Parque Indígena do Xingu, eventually established in 1961. Their story is told in a film, "Xingu". The number of Xingu living there in 32 settlements has risen again to over 3000 inhabitants, half of them younger than 15 years. The Xingu living in this region have similar habits and social systems, despite different