Mount Roraima, the Lost World
The account
The mountain is said to be the trunk of a mythical tree felled by Makunaimã, and today some speak of portals and lights on its summit.
What investigators found
The mountain is a tepui made of rock more than a billion years old, shaped by erosion. There is no scientific record of anomalous phenomena.
The story
Mount Roraima is a flat-topped mountain on the border of Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana. For the Indigenous peoples of the region, such as the Macuxi and the Pemón, it is sacred: tradition says a great tree bearing all the fruits of the world once stood there until Makunaimã cut it down, and the mountain is what remains of it. Its isolated landscape inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write The Lost World, in 1912.
In recent decades, tourists and mystical groups have come to associate the summit with energies, portals and lights. Geologists explain that the mountain is a very old sandstone tepui, isolated by erosion, with plants and animals found nowhere else. It is a truly extraordinary place, with no need for extraterrestrial explanations.