The lost Amazon

The Lost Amazon chronicles the journeys of legendary explorer, botanist, and counter-culture icon, Richard Evans Schultes.

Regarded as the father of ethnobotany and described by his protégé Wade Davis as “the last of the great plant explorers in the Victorian tradition,” Schultes revealed the botanical identity of teonanacatl, the sacred hallucinogenic mushroom known to the Aztecs as the “flesh of the gods.” Soon after, in 1941, he left Harvard for the Amazon, intending to be gone for only a semester. Instead, he disappeared into the rain forest and spent the next twelve years in pursuit of its mysteries. He lived among dozens of local tribes, mapped unknown rivers, sought out sources of rubber for the U.S. government during World War II, and discovered over 300 new plant species.

As gifted a photographer as he was a scientist, Schultes’s exquisite images capture the lush landscapes of his journey and his deep empathy with the peoples he lived among. The Lost Amazon is the story of one man’s astonishing journey and an unrivaled anthropological record of a way of life that can never be recaptured.

História do Brasil