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. Smaller settlements may be referred to as abandoned villages. The search for such lost cities by European explorers and adventurers in Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia from the 15th century onward 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.

Reasons for loss

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 no 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. Nevertheless, Peruvian explorer and farmer Agustín Lizárraga predated this discovery by 9 years, having found the Inca site on 14 July 1902. He left a charcoal inscription bearing the words "A. Lizárraga 1902".
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 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, and a large Roman building with standing walls was brought to light.

Lost cities by continent

Africa

Rediscovered

Egypt

Uncertain or disputed

Undiscovered

Asia

Central Asia

Rediscovered

East Asia

Rediscovered

Undiscovered

South Asia

India
Rediscovered
Rediscovered
Rediscovered

Southeast Asia

Rediscovered

Western Asia

Rediscovered

Europe

Austria

  • Noreia – the capital of the ancient Celtic kingdom of Noricum. Possibly in southern Austria or Slovenia.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bulgaria

  • Perperikon – the megalith complex had been laid in ruins and re-erected many times in history – from the Bronze Age until Middle Ages.
  • Seuthopolis – an ancient Thracian city, discovered and excavated in 1948. It was founded by king Seuthes III around 325 BC. Its ruins are now located at the bottom of the Koprinka Reservoir near the city of Kazanlak.

Croatia

  • Heraclea somewhere in the Adriatic on the Croatian coast. Exact location unknown.

Denmark

Finland

France

  • Quentovic – In 842, the ancient port of Quentovicus was destroyed by a Viking fleet.
  • Thérouanne – In 1553, the city was razed, the roads broken up and the fields ploughed and salted by command of Charles V.

Germany

Greece

  • Akrotiri – on the island of Thera, Greece.
  • Chryse Island – in the Aegean, reputed site of an ancient temple still visible on the sea floor.
  • Helike – sunk by an earthquake in the 4th century BC and rediscovered in the 1990s.
  • Mycenae
  • Pavlopetri – underwater off the coast of southern Laconia in Peloponnese, is about 5,000 years old, and is the oldest submerged archaeological town site.

Hungary

  • Avar Ring – central stronghold of the Avars, it is believed to have been in the wide plain between the Danube and the Tisza.

Iceland

Italy

  • Acerrae Vatriae – a town of the Sarranates mentioned by Pliny the Elder as having been situated in an unknown location in Umbria.
  • Castro – a city in Lazio, capital of a Duchy ruled by the Farnese family. It was destroyed by a Papal army in 1649.
  • Luni
  • Paestum – Greek and Roman city south of Naples; three famous Greek temples.
  • Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae – all buried during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD and rediscovered in the 18th century.
  • Sybaris, Italy – ancient Greek colonial city of unsurpassed wealth utterly destroyed by its arch-rival Crotona in 510 BC.
  • Tripergole – ancient Roman spa village on the eastern shores of the Lucrine Lake in the Campi Flegrei. The village and most of the lake were buried by tephra in 1538 during the volcanic eruption that created Monte Nuovo. The exact location of the village and its associated hot springs can no longer be identified.

Lithuania

Netherlands

Norway

  • Kaupang – In Viksfjord near Larvik, Norway. Largest trading city around the Oslo Fjord during the Viking age. As sea levels retreated the city was no longer accessible from the ocean and was abandoned.

Poland

Portugal

Romania

Russia

Serbia

Slovakia

  • Myšia Hôrka – 3500 years old town and archaeological site.

Spain

  • Amaya – either the capital or one of the most important cities of the Cantabri. Probably located in what nowadays is called "Amaya Peak" in Burgos, northern Spain.
  • Cypsela – drowned Ibero-Greek settlement in the Catalan shore, Spain. Mentioned by Greek, Roman and Medieval chroniclers.
  • Reccopolis – one of the capital cities founded in Hispania by the Visigoths. The site was incrementally abandoned in the 10th century.
  • Tartessos – a harbor city or an economical complex of small harbors and trade routes set on the mouth of the Guadalquivir river, in modern Andalusia, Spain. Tartessos is believed to be either the seat of an independent kingdom or a community of palatial cities devoted to exporting the mineral resources of the Hispanic mainland to the sea, to meet the Phoenician and Greek traders. Its destruction is still a matter of debate among historians, and one modern tendency tends to believe that Tartessos was never a city, but a culture complex.

Sweden

United Kingdom

Ukraine

North America

Canada

Rediscovered

Caribbean

Rediscovered

Mexico and Central America

Maya cities
''Incomplete list – for further information, see Maya civilization''
Rediscovered
  • Calakmul – One of two superpowers in the classic Maya period. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  • Chichen Itza – This ancient place of pilgrimage is still the most visited Maya ruin. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  • Coba
  • Copán – In modern Honduras. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  • Naachtun – Rediscovered in 1922, it remains one of the most remote and least visited Maya sites. Located south-south-east of Calakmul, and north of Tikal, it is believed to have had strategic importance to, and been vulnerable to military attacks by, both neighbours. Its ancient name was identified in the mid-1990s as Masuul.
  • Palenque – in the Mexican state of Chiapas, known for its beautiful art and architecture. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  • Tikal – One of two major powers in the classic Maya period. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  • Tulum – Mayan coastal city.
    Olmec cities
Rediscovered
Rediscovered
  • Teotihuacan – Pre-Aztec Mexico. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
    Other
Rediscovered
  • Izapa – Chief city of the Izapa civilization, whose territory extended from the Gulf Coast across to the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, in present-day Mexico, and Guatemala.
  • Guayabo – In Costa Rica. It is believed that the site was inhabited from 1500 BCE to 1400 CE, and had at its peak a population of around 10,000.

United States

Rediscovered

South America

Inca cities

Rediscovered

Other

Rediscovered

Undiscovered and fictional lost cities

Legendary

That some cities are considered legendary does not mean they did not in fact exist. Some that were once considered legendary are now known to have existed, such as Troy and Bjarmaland.

Fictional