are there any historical lost cities

[Darth Yan]

I was going to try to write a fanfic or original novella that involved a lost city in earth (real ones such as Iresh, a city confirmed to have existed at some point). I know of Iresh the city of columns, but I wanted to know if there were other lost cities (in say south america for instance?) that are suitably mysterious that a good story can be spun around them.

[Thanas]

Sure there are. A great number of Roman and greek cities are lost, for example (together with some spanish cities).

In the americas I would bet good money on some lost Maya cities.

[Darth Yan]

can you please name a few. I don't want to do bad research and get shit wrong.

[Thanas]

Looks to me like you don't want to do any research at all. As for names, I do not read Maya.

[Darth Yan]

you mentioned roman cities. I know pompeii and herculanium, but what others were lost (i'm not asking for story purposes i'm just curious.)

[Isolder74]

Troy for starters.

Guatemala is dotted with them. So is Mexico and the rest of Central America. The orignal Alexandria, Carthage, mythical Atlantis, Nicaea, Cesarea. The list is more or less endless.

[Thanas]

Troy for starters.

Not lost.

The orignal Alexandria, Carthage, mythical Atlantis, Nicaea, Cesarea. The list is more or less endless.

One of those did not exist ever and the others are not lost.


Plenty of cities from the Roman occupation of Germany are lost. We only found one of them so far - Waldgirmes. However, that does not mean that they are accessible. It means they are buried under mounds of earth.

[Isolder74]

Troy for starters.

Not lost.

Just because something has been found later doesn't make it not lost I reference the already mentioned Pompeii.

[Thanas]

Troy for starters.

Not lost.

Just because something has been found later doesn't make it not lost I reference the already mentioned Pompeii.

Of course it does. To be lost, it has to be of unknown location.

[Sea Skimmer]

Egypt has a number of lost cities I recall learning about and then forgetting about, they could be rather easily swallowed up by the desert as once abandon it could take only under 50 years to bury major buildings at many locations, or even less if major dunes were already encroaching. Quick check of the interweb names Itjtawy as one of them. Some missing cities also exist in Mesopotamia and may have been buried or completely obliterated by centuries of flooding and shifting marshland. Its also believed that one or two may in fact be known spots but ones who's history is simply too muddled in different civilizations and eras to identify clearly.

South America had a whole lost civilization in the western amazon basin, one actually thought to be just a legend as it was known only from tales told to the Spanish, but then satellites went and found the earthworks they left behind in 2010. I was just looking around for it but it looks like it still hasn't even been named yet. Of course the further back in history you go the smaller and smaller of settlements people are willing to call cities until you're down to less then several thousand people... at which point I mean, in the last hundred years its almost routine to wipe out towns and settlements that size and then totally reshape the landscape until nothing is left to make room for industrial parks, malls and planned communities. East Asia loves doing this; does that count as lost?

[K. A. Pital]

Seconding Sea Skimmer. Egypt is one of your best bets. Pi-Ramesesses was technically a lost city for a very, very long time. And that city was damn huge.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Here's a Wikipedia list of Lost Cities. It should at least be a good starting point for your research, and its broken down geographically.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Here's a Wikipedia list of Lost Cities. It should at least be a good starting point for your research, and its broken down geographically.

It includes "buried cities", the location of which is nonetheless known, and cities which have already been found some time ago, for example Hattusa and Petra.

[Simon_Jester]

A lot of this depends on what Yan wants from his lost city. Does he simply want there to be a place where lots of people lived in ancient times, but which is now uninhabited and forgotten?

Or does he want it to have nice convenient aboveground nearly-intact ruins to play around in?

There are plenty of examples of the former. Not many of the latter; a ruined and uninhabited city that is conveniently located aboveground, with intact ruins, isn't likely to stay lost. It's more likely to get harvested for building stone by the local population, since it's perfectly obvious where it's located.

[RazorOutlaw]

Wouldn't it be easier to have a story where there was such an intact city but the local populations were wiped out as well, leaving the city untouched?

If you do that, with your story, you're either drastically altering our earth's history to suit the need of your lost city or inventing a new world with an intact "lost" city. If you're going to spin a yarn about a lost city I don't think altering the details a bit with history would hurt too much, but then I'd probably go the route of using a historical lost city (or harvested one) for inspiration and to hell with the rest.

[CaptainChewbacca]

It includes "buried cities", the location of which is nonetheless known, and cities which have already been found some time ago, for example Hattusa and Petra.

Yeah, I have no idea what KIND of 'lost city' he's looking for, so I gave him a list with as many different types as I could find.

[ComradeClaus]

Egypt has a number of lost cities I recall learning about and then forgetting about, they could be rather easily swallowed up by the desert as once abandon it could take only under 50 years to bury major buildings at many locations, or even less if major dunes were already encroaching. Quick check of the interweb names Itjtawy as one of them. Some missing cities also exist in Mesopotamia and may have been buried or completely obliterated by centuries of flooding and shifting marshland. Its also believed that one or two may in fact be known spots but ones who's history is simply too muddled in different civilizations and eras to identify clearly.

Does the Sahara desert have sand dunes large enough to conceal ruins of settlements? I've alwys wondered how much of the sand there came from the stones than made up such cities wearing away from erosion. Like the Romans razed Carthage to the ground right?

South America had a whole lost civilization in the western amazon basin, one actually thought to be just a legend as it was known only from tales told to the Spanish, but then satellites went and found the earthworks they left behind in 2010. I was just looking around for it but it looks like it still hasn't even been named yet. Of course the further back in history you go the smaller and smaller of settlements people are willing to call cities until you're down to less then several thousand people...

I read something about that in a book called Lost & Never Found 2, which had a chapter dedicarted to the explorers lost trying to find that city. It was in the Mata Grosso Plateau IIRC.

Sometimes I think of the day when we finally strip away all the mists of time & there's nothing left to discover. Makes me wistfull at times. Theres still spavce, but w/ the way NASA dragged itself down w/ the Shuttle program rather than blasting to Mars, I won't live to see the day of sustained manned space exploration/settlement. & even Mr Rutan is taking his sweet time w/ the current SpaceShip3 rather than using the existing SpaceShipOne for initial tourist flights

[Thanas]

Egypt has a number of lost cities I recall learning about and then forgetting about, they could be rather easily swallowed up by the desert as once abandon it could take only under 50 years to bury major buildings at many locations, or even less if major dunes were already encroaching. Quick check of the interweb names Itjtawy as one of them. Some missing cities also exist in Mesopotamia and may have been buried or completely obliterated by centuries of flooding and shifting marshland. Its also believed that one or two may in fact be known spots but ones who's history is simply too muddled in different civilizations and eras to identify clearly.

Does the Sahara desert have sand dunes large enough to conceal ruins of settlements?

Yes, complete Roman cities were swallowed by the sand. It might surprise you that for over 200-300 years Roman Africa was the most densely populated area on earth, even moreso than Italy.

I've alwys wondered how much of the sand there came from the stones than made up such cities wearing away from erosion. Like the Romans razed Carthage to the ground right?

Well, if you call a typical destruction and then rebuilding "razed to the ground", yes.

*snipped pointless chatter*

[Darth Fanboy]

Yan you're writing a story, has it ever occurred that you can just make one up? :p

What you are specifically asking for is something that you could fabricate and fit in to a real world scenario fine enough, then you pick your setting and decide based on historical examples of other ancient cities that dont even need to be "lost" if accuracy is that important.