Lost City - How Cities Are Lost

How Cities Are Lost

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

The Arabian city of Ubar (Iram of the Pillars) was abandoned after much of the desert city and its primary water source collapsed into a sinkhole. Once wealthy from trade, the region became lost to modern history and was thought to be only a figment of mythical tales. The city was rediscovered in 1992 when satellite photography revealed traces of the ancient trade routes leading to it.

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 decline. Malden Island, in the central Pacific, was deserted when first visited by Europeans in 1825, but the unsuspected presence of ruined temples and the remains of other structures found on the island indicate that a population of Polynesians had lived there for perhaps several generations some centuries earlier. Prolonged drought seems the most likely explanation for their demise and the remote nature of the island meant few visitors.