LOSTCITIESgreat lost cities of the ancient world

LOSTCITIES

2 | Lost Cities

LOST CITY is a term that is generally considered to refer to a well-populated area which fell into terminal decline,

became extensively or completely uninhabited, and whose location has been forgotten. Some lost cities whose locations have been redis-

covered have been 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 the Americas, Africa and in Southeast Asia from the 15th century onwards eventually led to the development of archaeology.

Lost cities generally fall into two broad categories:1. No knowledge of the city existed until the time of its rediscovery

2. Location has been lost but knowledge of its existence has been retained in myths, legends, or historical records.

Cities become lost for a variety of reasons including natural disas-ters, economic or social upheaval, or war. With the develop-

ment of archaeology and the application of modern techniques, many previously lost cities have been

rediscovered.

What is alost city?

Table of Contents | 3

Explore4|

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Angkor Wat,cambodia

Pompeii,Italy

World MapWhere in the world? Machu Picchu,Peru

AtlantisFact or Fiction?

4 | Lost Cities

ANgkOR WAT

Ankgor Wat | 5

The

Immortal Temples

Built between roughly A.D. 1113 and 1150, and encompassing an area of about 500 acres (200 hectares), Angkor Wat is one of the largest religious monuments ever constructed. Its name means “temple city.”

Originally built as a Hindu temple dedi-cated to the god Vishnu, it was converted into a Buddhist temple in the 14th century, and statues of Buddha were added to its already rich artwork.

Its 213-foot-tall (65 meters) central tower is surrounded by four smaller towers and a series of enclosure walls, a layout that recreates the image of Mount Meru, a legendary place in Hindu mythology that is said to lie beyond the Himalayas and be the home of the gods.

The city where the temple was built, An-gkor, is located in modern-day Cambodia and was once the capital of the Khmer Empire. This urban center contains hun-dreds of temples and a population that has been estimated to be as high as 1 million people. It was easily the largest city in the world until the industrial revolution.

The LayoutThe temple is surrounded by a 650-foot-wide (200 meters) moat that encompasses a perimeter of more than 3 miles (5 km). This moat is 13 feet deep (4 meters) and would have helped stabilize the temple’s foundation, preventing groundwater from rising too high or falling too low.

In the thick jungle under-growth of Indochina, there are lost ruins—giant blocks of carved stone choked by vines and trampled on by the giant roots of giant trees.

•cambodia

6 | Lost Cities

Angkor Wat’s main entrance was to the west (a direction associated with Vishnu) across a stone causeway, with guardian lions marking the way. To the east of the temple was a second, more modest, entrance.

The heart of the temple was the central tower, entered by way of a steep staircase, a statue of Vishnu at top. This tower “was at once the symbolic center of the nation and the actual center where secular and sacred power joined forces,” writes researcher Eleanor Mannikka in the book “Angkor: Celestial Temples of the Khmer Empire” (Abbeville Press, 2002). “From that unpar-alleled space, Vishnu and the king ruled over the Khmer people.” •

“At Ongcor, there are ...ruins of such gran-deur... that, at the first view, one is filled with profound admiration, and cannot but ask what has become of this powerful race, so civilized, so en-lightened, the authors of these gigantic works?”

Henri MouhotExplorer

Angkor Bayon Khmer Statues

Pompeii | 7

POMPEI IPOMPEI IPOMPEI I

8 | Lost Cities

The city of Pompeii was an ancient Ro-man town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Pompeii along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area, were mostly de-stroyed and buried un-der 4 to 6 m (13 to 20 ft) of ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Pompeii was lost for about 1500 years until its initial redis-covery in 1599 and broader rediscovery almost 150 years later by the Spanish engineer, Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre in 1748. The objects that lay beneath the city have been well preserved for thou-sands of years because of the lack of air and moisture. These artifacts provide an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life

of a city during the Pax Romana. During the excavation, plaster was used to fill in the voids between the ash layers that once held human bodies. This allowed one to see the exact position the person was in when they died. Pompeii has been a tourist destination for over 250 years and today, the UNESCO World Heritage Site is one

of the most popular tourist attractions of Italy, with approximately 2.5

million visitors every year.

The AccountIt is mainly thanks to the vivid eye-witness account of the younger Pliny (a Roman administrator and poet,

whose many vivid letters have been preserved), that

we have some understand-ing of what happened. And it is

through him that we can gain insight into the reactions and feelings of the people caught up in the drama of this natural catastrophe.

Pliny’s account leaves no doubt that ev-eryone was caught unprepared. His uncle, known as Pliny the Elder, was stationed

Cityin the

Ashes•

italy

“Darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a dark room,”

Pompeii | 9

in command of the imperial naval base at Misenum, on the north-west extremity of the Bay of Naples. He was not only the senior military officer in the district, but possibly the most well informed living Roman on matters of natural science. His 37-volume Natural History is the longest work on science in Latin that has survived from antiquity.

But for all his science and his seniority, his nephew tells us that the elder Pliny was relaxing, after a bath and lunch, when Vesuvius started to erupt. And the sighting of a column of smoke ‘like an umbrella pine’ on the far side of the Bay triggered a response more of curiosity than of alarm in him. He and his companions were evident-ly not anticipating such an event.

The same account reveals, however, that the signs were there. Pliny’s casual refer-ence to earth tremors ‘which were not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania’ reveals the Roman’s comprehensive ignorance of the link be-tween seismic activity (earth tremors) and volcanic activity. •

From the House of Terentius Neo, Pompeii. AD 50 to 79

10 | Lost Cities

World Map

Machu Picchu

Peru, South America15th Centuryincan

World Map | 11

Angkor Wat

Pompei i

Angkor, Cambodia12th CenturyKhmer Empire

Naples, Italy7th Cent BC-1st Cent ADAncient Rome

12 | Lost Cities

Citadelof the

Clouds•

Peru

Machu Picchu (“Old Peak”) is a 15th-century Inca site located 2,430 metres (7,970 ft) above sea level. Machu Pic-chu is located in the Cusco Region of Peru, South America. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Val-ley in Peru, which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cusco and through which the

Urubamba River flows. Most archaeolo-gists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often referred to as the “City of the Incas”, it is perhaps the most familiar icon of Inca civilization.

DiscoveryThe Incas built the estate around 1450, but abandoned it as an official site for the Inca rulers a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to interna-tional attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham. Since then,

A citadel of cut stone fit together without mortar, the ruins lie on a high ridge, surrounded on three sides by the windy, turbulent Urubam-ba River some 2,000 feet (610 meters) below.

Machu Picchu | 13

MAchuPicchu

14 | Lost Cities

“Surprise followed sur-prise until there came the realization that we were in the midst of as wonderful ruins as any ever found in Peru...It is possible that not even the conquistadors ever saw this wonderful place.”

Hiram Bingham IIIExplorer

Machu Picchu has become an important tourist attraction. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like. By 1976, thirty percent of Machu Picchu had been restored. The restoration work continues to this day.

Since the site was not known to the Spanish during their conquest, it is highly significant as a relatively intact cultural site. Machu Picchu was declared a Peru-vian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a

UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll.

StructureMachu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Inti-huatana (Hitching post of the Sun), the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. These are located in what is known by archaeologists as the Sacred District of Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu is vulnerable to threats from a variety of sources. While natural phenomena like earthquakes and weather systems can play havoc with access, the site also suffers from the pressures of too many tourists. In addition, preservation of the area’s cultural and archaeological heritage is an ongoing concern. Most notably, the removal of cultural artifacts by the Bing-ham expeditions in the early 20th century gave rise to a long-term dispute between the government of Peru and the custodian of the artifacts, Yale University. •

Alpacas on the hillside

Atlantis | 15

Fact Or

FIction

AtlantisAtlantis (in Greek, “island of Atlas") is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC. According to Plato, Atlantis was a naval power lying “in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune".

Scholars dispute whether and how much Plato’s story or account was inspired by older traditions. In Critias, Plato claims that his accounts of ancient Athens and Atlantis stem from a visit to Egypt by the legendary Athenian lawgiver Solon in the 6th century BC. In Egypt, Solon met a priest of Sais, who translated the history of ancient Athens and Atlantis, recorded on papyri in Egyptian hieroglyphs, into Greek. Some scholars argue Plato drew upon memories of past events such as the Thera eruption or the Trojan War, while others insist that he took inspiration from contemporary events like the destruction of Helike in 373 BC or the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC.

The possible existence of a genuine Atlantis was discussed throughout classical antiquity, but it was usually rejected and occasionally parodied by later authors. Alan Cameron states: “It is only in modern times that people have taken the Atlantis story seriously; no one did so in antiquity". The Timaeus remained known in a Latin rendition by Calcidius through the Middle Ages, and the allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up by Human-ists in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis and Thomas More’s Utopia. Atlantis inspires today’s literature, from science fiction to comic books to films. Its name has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations. •

Janelle Wen2013