Lost City

A lost city is an urban settlement that fell into terminal decline and became extensively or completely uninhabited, with the consequence that the site's former significance was no longer known to the wider world. The locations of many lost cities have been forgotten, but some have been rediscovered and studied extensively by scientists. Recently abandoned cities or cities whose location was never in question might be referred to as ruins or ghost towns. The search for such lost cities by European explorers and adventurers in Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia from the 15th century onwards eventually led to the development of archaeology.

Lost cities generally fall into two broad categories: those where all knowledge of the city's existence was forgotten before it was rediscovered, and those whose memory was preserved in myth, legend, or historical records but whose location was lost or at least no longer widely recognized.

How cities are lost

Cities may become lost for a variety of reasons including natural disasters, economic or social upheaval, or war.

The Incan capital city of Vilcabamba was destroyed and depopulated during the Spanish conquest of Peru in 1572. The Spanish did not rebuild the city, and the location went unrecorded and was forgotten until it was rediscovered through a detailed examination of period letters and documents.

Troy was a city located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey. It is best known for being the focus of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle and especially in the ''Iliad'', one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. Repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, the city slowly declined and was abandoned in the Byzantine era. Buried by time, the city was consigned to the realm of legend until the location was first excavated in the 1860s.

Other settlements are lost with few or no clues to their abandonment. For example, Malden Island, in the central Pacific, was deserted when first visited by Europeans in 1825, but the remains of temples and other structures on the island indicate that a population of Polynesians had lived there for perhaps several generations in the past. Typically this lack of information is due to a lack of surviving written or oral histories and a lack of archaeological data as in the case of the remote and fairly unknown Malden Island.

Rediscovery

With the development of archaeology and the application of modern techniques, many previously lost cities have been rediscovered.

Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian Inca site situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru. Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is perhaps the most familiar icon of the Inca World. Machu Picchu was built around 1450, at the height of the Inca Empire. It was abandoned just over 100 years later, in 1572, as a belated result of the Spanish Conquest. It is possible that most of its inhabitants died from smallpox introduced by travelers before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the area. In 1911, Melchor Arteaga led the explorer Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu, which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley.

Helike was an ancient Greek city that sank at night in the winter of 373 BCE. The city was located in Achaea, Northern Peloponnesos, two kilometres (12 stadia) from the Corinthian Gulf. The city was thought to be legend until 2001, when it was rediscovered in the Helike Delta. In 1988, the Greek archaeologist Dora Katsonopoulou launched the Helike Project to locate the site of the lost city. In 1994, in collaboration with the University of Patras, a magnetometer survey was carried out in the midplain of the delta, which revealed the outlines of a buried building. In 1995, this target was excavated (now known as the Klonis site), and a large Roman building with standing walls was brought to light. The city was rediscovered in 2001, buried in an ancient lagoon.

Lost cities by continent

Africa

Rediscovered

= Egypt

=
* Akhetaten – Capital during the reign of 18th Dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten. Later abandoned and almost totally destroyed. Modern day Amarna.
* Avaris – capital city of the Hyksos in the Nile Delta.
* Canopus – Located on the now-dry Canopic branch of the Nile, east of Alexandria.
* Memphis – Administrative capital of ancient Egypt. Little remains. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
* Pi-Ramesses – Imperial city of Rameses the Great, now thought to exist beneath Qantir
* Tanis – Capital during the 21st and 22nd Dynasties, in the Delta region.

= The Maghrib, including Libya

=
* Carthage – Initially a Phoenician city in Tunisia, destroyed and then rebuilt by Rome. Later served as the capital of the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa, before being destroyed by the Arabs after its capture in 697 CE. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
* Dougga, Tunisia – Roman city located in present-day Tunisia. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
* Leptis Magna – Roman city located in present-day Libya. It was the birthplace of Emperor Septimius Severus, who lavished an extensive public works programme on the city, including diverting the course of a nearby river. The river later returned to its original course, burying much of the city in silt and sand. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
* Timgad, Algeria – Roman city founded by the emperor Trajan around 100 CE, covered by the sand at 7th century. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

= Horn of Africa

=
* Adulis, Eritrea – a port city of the Adulian kingdom built between 500 and 300 BC.
* Qohaito, Eritrea – 1000 BC city of the land of Punt, D'mt kingdom and kingdom of Axum.
* Metera, Eritrea – 800 BC lost town.
* Keskese, Eritrea – 700 BC lost city.
* Kubar, Eritrea – a lost major city of the Habesha land or Alhabesh
* Hubat, Ethiopia – capital of Harla Kingdom

= Subsaharan Africa

=
* Aoudaghost, Mauritania – Wealthy Berber city in medieval Ghana.
* Great Zimbabwe – Built between the 11th and the 14th century, this city is the namesake of modern-day Zimbabwe. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
* Niani – lost capital of the Mali Empire

Uncertain or disputed

* Lost City of the Kalahari – possibly invented

Undiscovered

* Itjtawy, Egypt – Capital during the 12th Dynasty. Exact location still unknown, but it is believed to lie near the modern town of el-Lisht.
* Thinis, Egypt – Undiscovered city and centre of the Thinite Confederacy, the leader of which, Menes, united Upper and Lower Egypt and was the first pharaoh.

Asia

Central Asia

= Rediscovered

=
* Karakorum – Capital of the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan.
* Loulan

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