Lost cities countdown

[Guest Celt]

10 Lost Cities Of The World Not many suprises here but if you're looking for a quick list, you could do worse.

[Escafarc]

Re: Lost cities countdown

 

Thanks. Must spread peanut but.....oh wait I meant repp.

[Shadow Hawk]

Re: Lost cities countdown

 

I think that if we know where they are, the ain't lost. "Formerly Lost Cities that are now Found".

[Guest Celt]

Re: Lost cities countdown

 

Ya, it's not an inspiring list. Pompeii was never really lost for example, everyone knew where it was and it was a cautionary tale for centuries. Nobody ever lost Memphis either, even if Giza gets more press and postcards. But if you had to come up with a list of places for a world-hopping scenario to fetch the separated doo-hickeys of Jobey-Whatsit, it's ready-made.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Lost cities countdown

 

Okay, try this. First, Atlantis, Tartessos, and Ys are off the list. They're so mainstream, they have Club Meds. (Ooh, lost Club Meds....) So are Lost Lands. No Erik the Red's Land here, thank you very much.

 

1) Akkad. Sargon, King of Kish, conquered the four quarters of the Earth, and then built a new capital there. Or so the scribes say. Maybe it turned out differently. But the more we know about the Akkadian Empire, the more we suspect that this was a spectacular, monumental city. Too bad that it's probably buried deep under Baghdad.

2) Itjtawy. Again, we have some idea of where it might be, but it hasn't been excavated, even though it was the capital of the Twelfth Dynasty, renowned in literature, triumphant abroad, and the glory of the Middle Kingdom. Also important because of its location at the outlet to the flood catchment overflow basin of Lake Moersis, and testifying to the first major step in land reclamation by the Egyptian state. It is also near the original Labyrinth. (Put that in your New Age pipe and smoke it!)

3) Washukanni: Unlike the cities above, which would be great to find, but may not yield much to the excavator, it is very likely that the capital of the Late Bronze Age Kingdom of Mitanni is waiting to be discovered under one of the many, many unexcavated tells in eastern Syria and northern Iraq. Chances are, it will have an archive that will transform our understanding of Late Bronze Age history, perhaps shed light on the systemic causes of the Late Bronze Age collapse, and ground historical linguistics a little more securely in fact.

4)Xiang, Xing, Ao, Bi, and Bo: The capitals of the Shang Dynasty prior to Yinxu (Anyang) are presumably as impressive as Erlitou before fhem and Yinxu (Anyang) after them. In particular, the discovery of Erlitou-style ceremonial bronze vessels with Shang-style writing would revolutionise our understanding of early China. Not that I expect that to happen.

5) Avaris : The Hyksos capital has probably been identified, but some people think it hasn't. If so, we might learn rather more about the supposed "Hyksos" invasion of Egypt from the authentic site.

6) Pteria: Herodotus described this great walled city near the Halys river as the capital of the Medes, conquered by Croesus of Lydia in 595BC. The most likely candidate is Kerkenes, which has sent Classical historians into a tizzy, because Kerkenes was clearly a "Phrygian" city. While there is nothing unlikely about an ethnic group/state of this era being known by two or more names, the identification gets in the way of a certain breed of old fashioned scholar who is determined to maintain a distinction between manly, Scientific!1!, democratic Westerners like the Greeks and Phrygians and effeminate, superstitious, despotic Asiatics like the Medes. Good.

7) Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham: Technically, we know where the "Resthouse of the Mother of the Vulture" is: 20km west of Mersa Matruh on the coast of Egypt not far from the Libyan border. Ramesses II's great Libyan-quelling fortress city has been partially excavated. The problem is that he built it to secure the maritime trade following the leg of the Eastern Mediterranean Great Circle route from Crete to Egypt, and possibly the counter-circle trade from Egypt to Crete. (There being no particular reason that there could not have been such a trade, but those classical historians tend to find the idea of Egyptians in Greece this early a little squicky. What if they interbred with the superior Aryan manhood of the Achaeans? Ooh. And yet --sexy.) So the thing is, we'd like for the excavators to find the harbour and warehouse facilities.

8) Pataliputra: Supposedly, we know exactly where the capital of the ancient Mauryan Empire was: at modern Patna. In reality, the very idea of a "Mauryan Empire" is a problem of nationalist myth-making. There really was a powerful Indian capital city that was visited by a Greek ambassador, but it was certainly not in Bihar State, but rather in the far northwest, probably near Kandahar. If we find it, hopefully we will find more ancient texts like the hair-raisingly ancient Gandharan Scrolls.

9) Srivijaya: Probably built on low-lying land in a tropical jungle, so there wouldn't be much left of the capital city of this early empire, which might be buried under modern Palembang. But once we have time machines, that won't be a problem!

10) Norumbega: Is there a lost city under Boston? Nineteenth-Century New England historians rather spoiled this legend by turning it over to an even more legendary people, the Greenland Vikings. No, there were no Vikings in New England, any more than on Ellesmere Island. Enough with the crazy pills, folks! If Norumbega existed, it was more likely the home of a mixed community of Indians and European "renegades" in the decades immediately preceding the arrival of the Pilgrims/Puritans. Why did they disappear? They didn't! Many of the ancestors of the prim and proper New England Yankee of later times were probably mixed-race Norumbegites! (Norumbegitians?)

[Old Man]

Re: Lost cities countdown

 

Iram aka Ubar

 

Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, Zoar

 

Muziris and other, less lost, Indian cities

[Old Man]

Re: Lost cities countdown

 

And another one today! http://gizmodo.com/#!5796404/lost-mayan-city-found-hidden-under-the-jungle

[Escafarc]

Re: Lost cities countdown

 

Here's another:

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Lost cities countdown

 

Leaving the crazy aside, Göbekli Tepe is a very cool site. A major built structure predating agriculture, and also settlement. This is big, because the current thinking is that the Middle Eastern agricultural complex emerges from the rise of an ideology of the "domus," that is, that the domestication of humans precedes the (final) domestication of plants and animals.

So what's it for? The current thinking is that it was involved with the formalisation of excarnation, the practice of exposing dead bodies. (Because it is so hard to bury bodies with stone tools, excarnation was widespread before modern burial and cremation practices.) To wrest more meaning from this process, our ancestors began to build excarnation sites that intruded into the otherworldly realm of the dead, signifying this intrusion with standing stone enclosures.

 

Or possibly also standing timber enclosures? This is the predominant explanation for, for example, Seahenge and Woodhenge. But see here. The wooden circles of England, and also perhaps elsewhere, reimagined as enormous wooden palaces!

[Gaming Tonic]

Re: Lost cities countdown

 

10 Lost Cities Of The World Not many suprises here but if you're looking for a quick list' date=' you could do worse.[/quote']

 

Thank you for providing this. It is very useful and I appreciate it. I hope the few who were kind of "so nothing new here" realize you didn't have to take time out of your day to post this. Gamers helping Gamers, who would have thunk it.

[Old Man]

Re: Lost cities countdown

 

But see here. The wooden circles of England' date=' and also perhaps elsewhere, reimagined as enormous wooden palaces![/quote']

 

That is a fantastic link. Repped if I can.