LOOKING FOR LOST CITIES How do cities get lost It is a good question Think of one of the world’s many modern-day cities such as Los Angeles London or Tokyo and it is difficult to imagine how they could ever be lost Ancient cities were of course many times smaller than our modern-day mega-cities And over the centuries many of them have been abandoned and forgotten
Mohenjo-Daro in modern-day Pakistan was one of the world earliest cities It was abandoned in around 1800 BCE
WHAT HAPPENED There are many reasons why a city can become lost In some cases a natural disaster such as an earthquake a volcanic eruption or flooding can simply overwhelm a city This is what happened to Pompeii in Italy when the volcano Vesuvius erupted violently You can find out more about the swift and terrifying destruction of Pompeii on pages 24 to 33 Other cities were abandoned by their inhabitants because of war In some places the food or water supply seems to have been disrupted forcing a city’s residents to move elsewhere But sometimes we just do not know why a place that had once been bustling and busy was deserted by the people who lived there In 1250 CE on the floodplain of the Mississippi River in present day Illinois there stood one of the biggest cities in the world At that time the city of Cahokia covered nearly 6 square miles 15 square kilometers and was home to up to 20,000 people as big as London or Paris at the time Yet by 1400 it had been abandoned Today the only reminders of this city are more than 100 earth mounds see the photo below
LOST AND FOUND Most lost cities are not absolutely lost Local people often know something about the mysterious ruins that lie deep in a jungle or are covered by desert sands But it is only when an outsider comes along to investigate that people realize what these ruins really are This is what happened to the American historian and explorer Hiram Bingham high in the Andes Mountains in 1911 Bingham was looking for the lost cities of the Inca people He was amazed when a local guide led him to some spectacular ruins high on a mountaintop Although Bingham was not the first to find the ruins he was the first person to bring them to the attention of the wider world You can find out more about Bingham’s discovery on pages 34 to 41
