BONUS: Down the Rabbit Hole: The Sunken City of Akakor

In the early 1970s Tatunca Nara, last Chieftain of the Ugha Mongulala, revealed the existence of his tribe’s greatest secret—the vast city of Akakor, hidden deep in the Amazon jungle. Several have died trying to find the lost city, but no Westerner has yet laid eyes on it. Why could that be?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Steve here. As we recently announced, we are
no longer producing new episodes of the podcast, but we
did have content that we have recorded that we had
not put into the regular feed for everybody to hear,
and we wanted to share that with you, of course.
So what you're hearing here is one of those episodes
of Down the Rabbit Hole that hadn't gone out into

(00:22):
the regular feed and had only previously been available through
the premium service. So enjoy and thanks a lot. This
episode is not brought to you by porcupines having a
tea party. Instead, it's brought to you by your local
pet shelter. Do you need a little furry friend like

(00:45):
a hamster or a bunny, or a cat or a dog?
Of course you do. You need a million of them.
Go down to your local pet shelter to pick one
up today. Or if you don't need to expand your
arsenal of pets that protect your home, then donate some
money or some time, because those little furry guys they
really need your help. Oh yeah, on birds too, thinking

(01:07):
sideways stories of things we simply don't know the answer to.
I don't know, down Joe, Hi, there, welcome to a

(01:40):
special bonus episode of Thinking Sideways Down the rabbit Hole.
Down the rabbit Hole. I am Joe, joined us always
by and Steve. And although I'm using a code name today, Yeah,
it's a laptop. I thought was Clu based on this story.
Just in honor of this story, I figured I would

(02:01):
go by a code name laptop. Okay. Yeah, And by
the way, we have a really kick ass story for
the for you this week. Uh. It is about the
sunken city of Akacre. Yes, a lost city. Whoa an
entire city. Like those things are big. They don't know
your pocket. You never know. Sometimes they run away to

(02:21):
join the circus chant your name, I mean, yeah, yeah,
but this one is this wasn't a really fascinating one.
This this the the story about this is among the
Indians along the Rio Negro River in northern Brazil. Then
there is a legend of an ancient lost city named Akacre.
It's kind of like El Dorado, which is in north Brazil.
Actually not that far away from this one. I guess

(02:43):
that's that's sort of in the north northern Brazil. The
as a way of the Guiana area, which one is
the lost city of z Lost city of z Is
in central Brazil. There's a whole bunch of these, so
I have time keeping them straight. Yeah, Brazil is as
big as some continents. This is a freaking big place,
and somehow they've lost all of their cities. You know.
Actually Brazilia is not yet lost, but I predict it

(03:05):
will be one of these days probably. You know what,
We've invented the weed eater. They're not going to lose
any more cities. That's really what the problem was. They
couldn't keep up with the weeds. Brazila would need a
mega weed eater, I think. But well, you know, we'll
put the best minds to work on that one. But
back to Acacre. This's the lost city of Akacara. If
you've never heard of it before, you actually probably have.

(03:26):
It gets mentioned in the last Indiana Jones movie. Remember
that one Indiana in the last sequel? Yeah, yeah, I
watched that piece of crab. Yeah it was a big letdown.
But the movie was called Actor in the movie, and
there's a t yeah with the t is as the
second k and the tribe that lives there is called
the Ugo Moyula, which is a little different from the

(03:48):
actual tribe that lives in Akacre suppose. But anyway, yeah,
but so anyway, you've sort of heard of it then,
But our our mystery is, well, is Acacore a myth
like Eldrado or z or you know, it wan't like
some of these places. It just hasn't been found yet
because I remember it was only recently, you know, comparatively speaking,
that the city of Troy it was believed by everybody

(04:09):
to be a myth, and actually it was found. So
who knows, Maybe Akacre is real Atlantis to maybe yeah,
they found it. Oh that's right, yeah, yeah, And so
you know, who knows. By the time this gets depressed,
maybe it will have been found and we'll have egg
on our face. But the question, of course is, you know,

(04:31):
how did the western world learn of Accacre? I mean obviously,
you know, the Indians of northern Brazil knew all about
it for centuries, but we lost it. Yeah, I know,
they made it, they lost it. I know I had it.
Where is it come on? Man like glasses? Oh? Well, anyway,
we learned about it from an Indian named Tatunka Nera

(04:54):
Tatukas people who were called the Uga Mongool Mongolo La
now mango mango la la. Yeah, it's a hard one.
They are a hidden tribe and I'm much reduced hidden
tribe by the way, but they battle for centuries against
the incurasions of the Europeans into their sacred homeland as

(05:15):
they came further and further into the interior Brazil, search
of resources, et cetera. By the late nineteen sixties, Totunka
was the last chief. He had just been made the
chief of this tribe because his father had died and
he had decided by this time that the only realistic
hope of survival for his people was for them to
make peace with the white man. This is his story,

(05:37):
by the way. Yeah, this is yeah, what you're telling
right now is the story that I'm telling, This story
of Totunka and how he came in contact with I
just want to make sure that people understand. This is
what he says. This is his part of the story. Yeah,
this is kind of what he says. Well, he did well,
he met with people, and so you know. But anyway,
so he left Akakora in the year twelve thousand four

(05:58):
or fifty one, which was by their calendar, by our calendar,
that's nineteen seventy and he discovered Bill Bottom's Terrible TV
and Afro. Whoa, it's a pretty awful time to be
introduced to the West world. You think about it. Yeah,
I hadn't thought about that, but you're right. But in

(06:19):
nineteen seven he went among the what they call the
white Barbarians to try to save his people. Yeah. While
there he met with various government officials, et cetera, had
you know, some hopeful promises which were mostly broken. The yuda,
YadA YadA, you know how that goes. But then Tattuka
met a man named Carl Brugger in March nineteen seventy two.
Carl Bruger was a German TV journalist, and Tattuka thought

(06:42):
that well he could help to tell the story of
his tribe to the rest of the world. Of course,
as you know, their time went back to the year
zero or ten thousand forty one, because you already know
I quoted that that year of twelve thousand, four fifty
one just a few minutes ago. For you want BC
or BC by our calendar. Yeah, I mean, I guess

(07:04):
that should go without saying. But I don't know how
long the podcast might still be out there and and
BC will be totally just know in ten thousand, for
what was it ten there will be there will be
files of us on the spaceships going into the depths
of Yeah, I'm just saying, got to clarify, you don't
know that's true. I can imagine all these spacefarers listen
to antique episodes of thinking sideways. That'll be great, Hi guys, Okay,

(07:30):
don't crash the ship. If that will be the hipsters
of the thirty seventh century, probably, Yeah, I'll listen to
these antique audio only recordings. Oh my god. But here, okay,
we got back to We gotta hustle through this. So
back to our tribe. Here do you got Mongola Over

(07:51):
the centuries have built a vast civilization which includes a
few sites that we know today such as Cuzco and
Machu Pichu and Peru. Uh. Many of the cities were
connected by a network of underground tunnels. Um. It was
quite the project. Yeah, and the tribe was helped on
this project. They believed by their sky gods who rode
around in golden ships that floated in the sky. Aliens. Well,

(08:14):
some people think so, Um, that's what got some people
actually interested in this story about ancient aliens. Of course,
you know, that could just be part of their their
foundational tail. And this is all just sort of you know,
like kind of all the stories we're reading, you know,
and other you know, like the Greek the Greek gods,
and some people would say some of the stuff that
appears in our own Bible is a little bit alien

(08:35):
apocryphal or paper possibly, like I say, alien, Yeah, so
it could be aliens, uh AlSi okay, But most of
the city is unfortunately were destroyed or abandoned by the
late twentieth century and overtaken by the jungle. And by
the way, if you want to read the complete account
of this, the Chronicle of Akacre, it's actually available on

(08:57):
the interwebs. I'll tell you how to find it later.
But you can read this in much much, much more
more detail. Yeah, yeah you can. Uh So, most of
these cities have been uh basically were gone, but the
three most important cities remained, and they were Aka kor
Akanus and Akaheem, which all of which have been hidden
by the tribe because Tatunka became aware of it through

(09:20):
his contact with the European Necesary. He became aware of
the existence of the airplane, and so he had his
people hide those cities so that they would not be
spotted from the air, clever thinking, although it makes them
a little harder to find now, Yeah, unfortunately, when did
they figure out that airplanes were around? Well, that was
for him, and that was probably in the late sixties
when he sort of figured it out. Or maybe it's

(09:41):
funny because airplanes have been flying around for much Okay,
any they weren't necessarily flying over all of the Sorry, yeah,
I want to poke a bunch of holes in the
sky story, And I just I don't know why i'd
want to do that. That's it's a pretty incontestable story.
And by the way, these actually cities weren't that hard
to hide anyway, because were mostly underground. Also, of course,

(10:02):
another one outside the tribe knew how to find them, unless,
of course, he used a plane, and if they weren't
disguised cleverly from below. Uh so a contests, Remember that's
one of the three cities was apparently somewhere in Central America.
Akacor was in a high mountain valley somewhere near the
Peru Brazil border, and Ocaheen was near the Brazil Venezuela border,

(10:23):
and it was most closely linked with Akacor and Uh
and it's still around apparently, at least according to Tatunka
it is. It's abandoned and lost in the Jungeral of course.
But Acacor was the most important of the three because
it was the biggest, and it had a great temple
of the sun in the center of it that contained
a library that had documents and maps and star charts

(10:46):
that basically told the whole history of the earth. So
this is kind of like the Library of Alexandria crossed
with an Aztec temple, kind of like that, except underground. Yeah, probably, yeah,
and prehistoric. Yeah, I mean yeah, I think that they
had their own according to him, as people had their
own alphabet that will contain fourteen hundred characters. Yeah, and

(11:10):
which actually is in South America or even all of
North and South America. I think written alphabet is kind
of unknown. So that's that of itself is pretty remarkable. Yeah,
I mean I think an alphabet like that. It wouldn't
surprise me if they had an alphabet. No, it's not
not prolific. Perhaps that's actually not that that crazy of

(11:33):
a big number. Though, if you think of like Asian languages,
you know, Chinese or Korean or any of those, where
is it we're so used to in the West, We're
so used to English because it's A is always a
letter A, and it's interchangeably used in all these words.
But that's the genius of English. I'm not tiding your

(11:53):
language just the way it was created. But these other
languages a symbol or a character reper since x, and
that's pretty much all it is to learn to write
the language. You have to learn all of those individual
ones to be able to perceive them. So that's I
don't think that numbers all that small, because I think
Chinese and Korean greatly outnumbered. Yeah, Stephen has her phonder

(12:18):
in hand, though it is looking at me like I'm
going to blow you out of the water. According to
the Internet, the language that has the most letters and
it's alphabet is a Cambodian language that has seventy four
letters in its alphabet. Well, I think about Chinese is
that they're basically two. There are two Chinese alphabets. One
is there is the more traditional one that's got infinite

(12:40):
numbers of similar I mean Japanese is similar. They have
three different written languages, but they're different written languages. But
I guess what you're saying is an alphabet, and I'm
saying there's characters, because the characters represent individual things. That's
the only difference. It's it doesn't matter, we can get
it doesn't really academic at that point. That's I think

(13:00):
this is a huge number of characters. It is a
vast number of characters. It really is m But you know, again,
you know, maybe efficiency was not their watchword apparently. Yeah.
So Carl Brugger, our journalist friend, recorded all of his
conversations with Tatunka, the chief of the dying Ugat Manga
Mango La La tribe, and he also wanted an expedition

(13:22):
with Tatuka to try to find a lost city of Okaheem.
This happened in September nineteen seventy two, and they spent
about six weeks out in the jungle apparent, you know,
beating the brush. It did not manage to find it, unfortunately,
and then they came back to civilization and Bruger went
back to Germany and wrote a book and published in
nineteen seventy six. Uh it was called The Chronicle of Akacor,

(13:45):
and actually it was fairly widely read. Uh. I wouldn't
say it was a national, you know, number one international bestseller,
but it was widely read by a lot of you know,
by a lot of people. Well that is that's the
same isn't that the same time frame as O God?
What's that giant ancient alien cherry to the God? But
Derrick von Donan did that come out about early seventies? Yeah, so,

(14:08):
I mean it was kind of it was about that
time where he was he was kind of following the
very mainstream thread of topic at the time. Yeah, it's
like true crime podcast today. They are all the freaking
race exactly. At that point, it was write books about
old aliens. Yeah, and so this one actually so naturally
caught on with a lot of people. A lot of

(14:29):
people came, you know, actually became a little obsessed with
finding you know, this lost city of Akkakor. People even
managed to go all the way to Brazil because some
people even tracked down Tatunka himself ask for called Brugger.
He was murdered in re Auditionario in unfortunately a stranger
walked up to him in Epanema Beach and shot him

(14:49):
dead and he walked away. The stranger that was never
caught and the motive is unknown, So that's an unsolved
mystery as well. That is a mystery, you know, and
it does it doesn't make this are a little more
intriguing because, I mean, what had he done to get murdered. Well,
he did publish this book. He also was pan in

(15:10):
a country where Europeans that weren't always viewed with the
best regard because colonialism is a problem. I mean, you
can you can be a white guy and somebody has
a problem, you know what, I hate you white people,
Well kill you, you know. Or it could have been
something else. I don't know, I mean, and it always
got a fairly high murder rate people. Yeah, he could
have He could have been hitting on somebody's girlfriend. Could

(15:33):
have been as simple as that. Or he somebody out
of drugs in a drug deal. God knows. I kind
of doubted. I think he was murdered because he published
this book. Okay, so that's the ancient alien theory. But
even though he was murdered, that didn't diminish the excitement
over Acacorp. Even though yeah, it looked like poking around
this ledgure might be a bit of a dangerous business,

(15:54):
but people still did it. Uh. Tattoonka took three different
people into the jungle to look for a city. Apparently, Uh,
can I ask a question, Yeah, he he knows where
the city is, but he took them into the jungle
to look for the city the expedition to find it.
And actually he knew where the city was, but apparently
from from the closest you can get by by river

(16:16):
car whatever you had to hike, you know, or you
had to hike, take take a canoe a certain distance.
I guess what I'm pointing out is I just realized
that everywhere it is described that he is taking it on,
taking these people on an expedition of exploration to try
and find it. But he's always said he knows where
the hell it is, So why is he telling like

(16:38):
you see what do you see the contradiction in terminology
that uses I It strikes me as a little off.
Has a lot of things about this guy. Well, it
might be that he actually said, let's we'll go to
the city. I'll take you there and I know the way,
And these people told their friend as well We're gonna
go try to find a city. I mean, we don't know.
I mean, he might have said, very confidently, Yeah, I

(16:59):
know exactly where it is. I know exactly you know
how to get there? Yeah, and so I don't know.
But there were three three incidents. So when he left
in nineteen eighty on an expedition to Accacore with an
American named John Reid, who was never seen again. Yeah,
I know. Uh. In three, Tunka took a Swiss explorer
named Herbert Vaughner into the rainforest, and Vaughner was never

(17:21):
seen again, although his his skull and a few bones
and his sneaker were found a year year two later.
Skull right, he did have a bullet hole in his head,
which is suspicious. Well, no, it can be. Actually if
your skulls sitting there and some other people come along
drinking beer and shooting John as they decided to use
your skull as a target, you know that happens a lot. Actually. Yeah.

(17:45):
And then in six he had another curious European came along.
This was Christine Hoisier from Spaden, Sweden. For you, other
people uh left with Tattooka on an expedition and vanished
without a trace, or at least as far as we
next had actually contacted Tatuka and was hanging out with him.
Apparently she saw I was Yeah, she was a little

(18:06):
fan girly with the guy. Yeah. Uh. And Tatuka said,
he has no idea what happened to any of these people? Yeah,
so did they head off into the jungle part ways
and head back into civilization and and just get killed
on the way. And Tatuka came back by his own,
you know, his own way, and just had no idea
what had happened to them. I don't know. I mean,

(18:27):
I really don't know. Or did he murder them? Um,
I really don't know. There's been a lot of suspicions
there were. There was a Brazilian investigation and an investigation
by another government as well, and basically they dropped had
to drop the case due to lack of evidence. So
nobody really knows. His friends of people that know him,

(18:47):
friends and family say without hesitation, he did not kill anybody.
Of course. Yeah, I don't mean that in any accusatory way,
but of course they do. Yeah, they're not objective obvious,
you know. Yeah. Yeah, But as far as I know,
nobody else since n has died looking for acacor as

(19:07):
far as I know, nobody else that we know of
it's gone looking for it. Though, um you know, I
I don't know, but you know, it might be that
people have. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me, but nobody's
gone out and really publicized it hugely, you know, and
gone out and done And so people somebody or another
might have gone out and done it and just quietly
expired in the jungle. Or maybe maybe they went out

(19:29):
and wasted a month's time and came back and said, well,
I grant money and I found nothing. Yeah, that could
be it. Yeah, but our city, Aacre, is needless to say,
still lost. And so that is essentially at the Suncon
city of Akacre in a nutshell. That's that is very brief.
Like I said, there's a lot more detail in Bruger's book,

(19:49):
The Chronicle of Akacre, which you can find on Amazon,
and actually I found a PDF copy of it on
the interwebs also, so you don't even need to buy it.
You can read the whole thing right on the web.
To do enough clicking and searching, it's not hard to
find it. Look type in Acre or chronicle of a
type of chronicle of acacrea, and you will find it,
but don't don't catch the don't try to go there.

(20:11):
It sounds like a dangerous place, alright, dangerous jungle. Okay,
So if that's the entire story, then before we get
into theories, we should probably take a real quick break.
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(20:32):
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(20:54):
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(23:38):
I gotta go hit the showers and get cleaned up
after that slow walk around the block. Okay, we're back,
go for it. Our mry, of course, doesn't exist. So
we got three basically three possibilities here, which is it's
it's real, or it's kind of real but little exaggerated,

(23:58):
or it's just a mess. Okay, So let's start with
the first one, which is it's real, so of course
it is haters, of course it's real. Yeah, I know, man,
it's it's only messing like. It's like I said before,
it disappeared to start a new life, and they renamed
itself Cincinnati. Yeah, yeah, Troy, Troy, that's a good one. Yeah.

(24:21):
Or it's missing as a drunk that maybe the jungle
just grew all over it made it disappear, which is
which is totally believable. Actually that's more like a murder though,
isn't it. Yeah. Well, but the the whole jungle growing everything,
I mean, you guys know is I was in Cambodia
and I went to um oh god, the anchor Yeah.
I went to Anchor Wat, which is a five acre

(24:42):
complex and it was in a huge, freaking giant hundreds
of feet tall, structures, and the thing was completely and
totally overgrown by the jungle for century, Yeah, for centuries,
until they founded and then started trying to scrape at
all the jungle away from it. So it's it's not

(25:04):
it's not hard to imagine that if the society that
is running the place dies off or drops in population, Yeah,
it gets overtaken, of course. Yeah, because the jungle is
it does not dink around. It will come in and
take things right back. Well, it will. Actually, there's not
even the jungle. I mean there's been there's some photographer,
actually more than one. It's done just the photographs of

(25:26):
urban landscapes have fallen into decay where where like freeways
or roads or whatever are actually over in Florida that
never got moved into. Yeah, they get they get a
little moss like on the on the on the road,
and the next thing, you know is moss grows on that.
Next thing, you know, weeds growing that, and then trees
grow in that. I mean, oh my god, I heard
somewhere that it was like six years or something that

(25:49):
it only takes six years of no human habitation for
something to just like complete. Probably that would surprise me
even even Yeah, even the small human contingent would wouldn't
slow that down hardly at all, because it's just walking
through it. Yeah, the exception probably would be the desert.

(26:11):
That the little town of the desert can probably last
a long time, except for it gets all the sand
in it and stuff. Well it does, but I mean,
it's not gonna get overgrown, and because it's dry, it's
not gonna rot. And you know, like like anything any
ghost town right here in this part of Oregon, and
they are out there, they've all rotted and fallen down,
you know, but out there in the eastern Oregon they haven't.
But yeah, it does seem like somebody from the tribe

(26:34):
would still know where this place was though, you would think,
And you know, even though it was a dying tribe,
there were far fewer a number of them at the
time Tatunka came out of the jungle to make peace
with the white man, there still were some around and
there still are something today, I'm sure. So you know,
it could be real, but you know, and it does
look like considering that people who go looking forward or

(26:54):
who write books about it have a way of disappearing
and or dying, it seems like somebody's trying to keep
this a secret. Yeah, but you could say that about
El Dorado and the Lost City of z All these
people went trying to find it and they didn't find
it and a bucket load of them die. Well, maybe
that's pretty To find a lost city is a bad

(27:16):
idea in general, and it has nothing to do with
a gricre. Yeah. Maybe it's maybe the loss because they're
just in a really bad neighborhood and they're hiding. Yeah,
and it's not not to insult the Brazilians or anything,
but the Amazonian rainforest does strike me in a sense
a really bad neighborhood. Yeah. You know, it's just really
dangerous and unexplored everything. Everything they're either it wants to

(27:38):
kill you or it wants to infect you with a
nasty little parasite. You know. That's it. That is the food,
That is that. That is a freaking jungle. Yeah, everything
there wants to Yeah. That's the theory, which is that
it could be it could be that it's something that
was started out kind of real, but it's been sort
of built up over the centuries, being passed down from

(27:59):
generation in the generation of local tribes and so who knows,
and you know, maybe Akakar is real, but maybe it's
just kind of a little humble sun temple in an
outhouse and it's just grown into this vast metropolis over
the centuries people have talked about it. So one thing
that I have a problem with with the story of Akakar,

(28:20):
and I know this is very generic, but it's it's
a subterranean city. There are not very many of those
in in general, in the world that you know of.
And you know, I mean, well, if you think about
Vietnam when during the Vietnam War there was entire cities
and complexes in China and in Um in Germany they

(28:41):
did it for a while. There's tons of tunnels in Europe, right,
but there was these tunnels in towns that were underground.
But if it's a thousand years old, well that's going
to have collapsed more than likely. So then that makes
me lean towards the Okay, it was a story of
these crazy people who lived underground, but eventually the earth

(29:03):
collapsed and the city disappeared, and that's why they couldn't
find that's the possibility. Well, you know, although I don't
know how they did this. According to tattooka. The city
was made of stone, so it sounds to me like
what they did is they found like a depression in
the ground, basically Milton and built a stone, built their
city and then maybe covered out with you know, some
shrubberies and stuff. Listen. I saw that movie Raiders Have

(29:24):
Lost Ark, and it was a lot of exposed dirt
and very few stones, so obviously that's what it was. Yeah, okay, okay, yeah,
Raiders Have Lost Ark or do you mean any Indiana
Jones and Lost Arc is much better than the last
Crystal Skull movie. I gotta say the Intent series, you know,
the first one was one of the most awesome movies
of all time, and Raiders was, and just about all

(29:47):
the sequels have disappointed. I actually liked the one with
Sean Connery, was like Sean because he's fun. That was
definitely the best. He's a counterpoint and I like Sean Connery.
But but that one, but even that was not really
as good as the first movie, I'm sorry to say. Okay, so,
so the Sean Connery theory has been killed with Okay,
no Sean Connery, so so okay, maybe maybe maybe, although

(30:09):
at the same time, I guess that means it doesn't exist.
Because if it's something that actually existed but it was
a humble little place and it's grown into this huge
lost to it's actually worth finding. Well, I guess Occacret
really doesn't exist, does it. That's the story. Yeah. Yeah,
So our next one is, well, it's maybe just a legend,

(30:29):
maybe just bs okay the subject, but could somebody make
something like this up? No, definitely not. I mean you can't.
I mean you know, I mean that's a huge thing
to make up a whole network of lost cities and something.
You usually make up stories about how you lost your
homework or something like that. And so yeah, I've never
heard of the entire place being made up before. No, like,

(30:52):
that's not fictional writing at all. No, I mean it
never happens. That's not a thing. Yeah. No, with my grandma,
it's like to say, bullshit just can't be piled out high. Yeah,
you just can't do it, ye do it? Yeah, but
some people think it can believe it or not. There's
a German explorer named Ruger Naberg who met Tatunka in

(31:14):
the late nineteen eighties. He had read the Chronicle of
Okkakor and found and it did a little research on Tattunka,
and uh he discovered that Tatunka, whose name, by the way,
means big water snake in the language of his people.
That means that things a little detail for you there,
um yeah, never mind. Yeah, but he uh didn't he

(31:36):
discovered that Tatunka was not actually an Indian. Uh. Tattunka
was actually a German guy named Hancy Richard Gunther Hawk
from Bavaria. Yeah. Apparently he skipped out of Germany in
nineteen sixties six because he wasn't making his child support
payments and he was looking at maybe getting prosecuted, maybe
a little maybe even a little jail time, so he

(31:56):
left town. Yeah. Eventually he found his way to Brazil,
where he started learning Portuguese and began working on his
Deep Deep Tan. I've seen pictures of this guy and
he is dark. I mean, he looks kind of his
features are kind of European, but he is really really dark.
But he does not, to me anyway, look like he
could be mistaken as a local. Oh no, not really

(32:20):
having which is why like Bruger Burger, that's like it
really makes me. I mean, I get that people look
different everywhere. The World Cup is going on right now,
is we're recording, and you see all of these different
countries and you see the fans, and they could be
from anywhere USA. But the point is this guy did

(32:40):
not look like he was a native of the area. Well,
that's the benefit of claiming you're from some tribe that
that's a lost, hidden tribe that nobody's really ever encountered,
is that you could look totally different, and that would
explain it. He's ever seen this tribe before. So well,
now here's the deal. Here's how he explained is it's
kind of your And he explained not his his fine

(33:00):
European features, but also the fact that he spoke perfect
German and rather kind of lousy Portuguese. Uh yeah. And
you'll find this if you read the Chronicle of Akakar,
which I had not read the entirety of it. I
read some excerpts from it. And what happened is back
in the nineteen thirties, an expedition of Germans went up

(33:20):
the Amazon and the Rio Negro in u boats. Eventually,
you know, from there, got into smaller boats and made
their way up into it. Basically Tatunica's homeland and established
an alliance with this tribe and they worked, they all
worked together, and that they were they were best buds
and everything like that. That's where they shuttled Hitler at
the end of the war. Maybe possibly, there's no there's

(33:42):
no talk about that. But but apparently Tautunica was actually
the child of an Indian and the Germans. One of
the German soldiers that came there, and so that's why
he looks kind of European anyway. But anyway, so yeah,
but it turns out he's from Germany. Uh, he's from Germany,
and he's wider than all of us than three Um

(34:05):
so does this mean the legend of Akkacoras bs kind of? Maybe? Probably, Well,
I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about all the
new ages from the seventies and eighties. Yeah, and asked

(34:27):
for gunther Hawk. Apparently he's still alive Tatuka. That is
a reporter named Alexander's small Zick from Der Spiegel It's
a German magazine tracked him down in fourteen. Uh and
Uh Tatuka a k gunther Hawk admitted that much of
what Bruger had written in Chronicle of akkakoras Bs. But
he blamed that more on Bruger than on him. Yeah

(34:48):
he did, and then and then and then right after
that he offered to take small small zick the reporter
to El Dorado. Yeah, and to which the reporter said, no,
thank you. Thing is that his behavior. I couldn't tell
if he was suffering from senility, or if he just
always liked to make tall tales, or if he was

(35:10):
if he had some form of a mental disorder like
schizophrenia or something where he's what's the guy from a
beautiful mind? Yeah? Yeah, you know, he like that guy
lived in an altered reality and he would interact with people.
And I understand this is a Hollywood version of things,
but I'm just trying to use that as a simple,
simple foil. But this guy could have been doing the

(35:32):
same things he's He's like flips back into that weird
little world that he was in, and then his family
is like no, no, no, no, remember we don't do
that anymore. Oh yeah, no, I can't take you there. Oh.
I think he was just a con man. You think
just pure died in the world con man totally, I mean, realistically, right.

(35:53):
The the reason that I say that is because, to
go back to what Joe said, the whole reason this
man is even in Brazil in the first place is
because he's kind of a jerk and child and wanted
to like flee that. So already I feel like he's
maybe not a great guy, not the most honestly, you know,

(36:14):
looking for a reason or a way to get people
to give them his money. And then a bunch of
people he took out into the forest somehow mysteriously died.
I disappeared, fairness, but he was probably just a con man.
I get the hinkiest feeling from the fact that the
lady disappeared, Like you, I don't know what it is
about a woman following a guy into the jungle that

(36:36):
always makes me just think like, oh, that had to
been just a terrible end, rather than just some stupid
European dude who follows him in and gets eating my
alligators or whatever. Like the fact that he took some
lady into the jungle and cheek quote unquote never returned.
It always just gives me the he jeeves. Yeah, you know, Frankly,

(36:57):
if I was one of those guys, I would want
would want to be one of the eyes. Have Paulow
had been to the jungle either, None of them. I
don't think any of them met a pleasant ending. Yeah,
I'm not really sure about this guy. It seems to
me that there's uh, you know, I think I kind
of agree that he's just a con man. The guy
is just a bullshit artist, you know, a total huge
I mean, that's that's just life. But I almost tend

(37:17):
to tend to think too that. I mean, because it's
reported that his his family said even back in Germany,
that he spun all sorts of weird tall tales and
all the time. Yeah, all the time, And so it
sounds like it sounds like he was in a in
a serious way, like not purely a con artist, but
he really wanted to believe this stuff. Yeah, it wasn't

(37:37):
just for pregame. He just really really wanted to believe it.
I want to believe. Yeah. Yeah, But what's uh, what's
what's the music about the whole thing is that, you know,
I mean, we all have met connors, bsp bs artists
all the time. Guys you meet in bars and stuff
like this, and lunatics and con artists live all over
the place. People spin tall tales and I hear this

(38:00):
one guy. This is what's amazing to me about this story.
Living in an obscure, tiny little town of the Jungles
of Brazil manages to have what pretty outsized impact on
the world. Yeah, I mean just by he ran into
this German journalist. By the way, they met in a
bar in some ramshack, a little town in the jungle.
And yeah, I mean that's that's just where that's where

(38:23):
I go to get my historic information from, is some
half drunk guy in a bar. But so much for
journalistic standards, right, But yeah, the impact that this this
crazy guy, this crazy faux Indian had is quite amazing
when you think about it. Yeah, an amazing story. This
this is really an interesting, weird little story. And so

(38:44):
sad to say that. Yeah, it does appear that docta
core is not true, as much as I wish that
it were. Yeah, I know, alright, people, so sorry for
the letdown there, but at least we solved the mystery, right, Yeah,
totally did that was all us? Yeah, happy internet lifting.
Yeah yeah, okay, and uh so that's about it. We're
not going to give you your email address or nothing different.

(39:05):
Just good buye special thanks to our Stitcher Premium listeners,
and until next time for thinking sideways tolu. Bye guys.
So I would like to show you this very fancy
thing that I bought at the antique market, which is
a crystal skull. Thank your Core Core than you would

(39:26):
you like to buy a cor Cor Core from me?
I will trade you a monkey's paw for it. Deal. Yeah,
alright bye