Spanish conquistadors traveled to the Amazon in the 1500s searching for the legendary golden city of El Dorado, though they found no treasures. In the early 1900s, Lieutenant Colonel Percy Fawcett of the Royal Geographic Society embarked on expeditions to find lost cities in the Amazon, but mysteriously disappeared in 1925. Archaeological evidence like ceramics has shown that large, settled societies lived in the areas around Marajo Island and the Xingu River over 500 years ago, despite the regions being very remote and isolated.