Lost Cities

February 26, 2007 12:20 PM

Lost Cities.
posted by Wolfdog (27 comments total)

Bonus link about nothing.
posted by Wolfdog at 12:21 PM on February 26, 2007

This is neat, thanks. And, as a self-reference, you may want to see my old post on the subject of lost cities.
posted by blahblahblah at 12:23 PM on February 26, 2007

Thanks for the NSFW link. Hoo, boy, I got some 'splainin' to do.

Seriously, a great set of pics. I wanna go there, NOW!
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:23 PM on February 26, 2007

Beautiful.
posted by substrate at 12:24 PM on February 26, 2007

Hey, cool, I've actually been to six of those places. I want to collect the full set.
posted by gurple at 12:29 PM on February 26, 2007

Interesting, as far as it goes, but unless I'm looking wrong, there isn't all that much there about each of these cities. Flickr has more than 16,000 photos from Tikal. Here are mine.
posted by muckster at 12:33 PM on February 26, 2007

Cool - thanks.
posted by taliaferro at 12:40 PM on February 26, 2007

Hmph. I don't consider them truly lost unless the word "Crotoan" is found carved on a tree near their ruins.
posted by Midnight Creeper at 12:44 PM on February 26, 2007

baby got back.
three on one!
sloppy.. fourths?
wait, what? HORSE FUCKING?

more like lust cities amirite?
posted by sergeant sandwich at 12:56 PM on February 26, 2007

seriously, this is the coolest fucking thing i've seen in a long time. thanks for the link!
posted by sergeant sandwich at 12:58 PM on February 26, 2007

Great post. I wish the photos were in a slideshow or gallery format, and had some sort of description so I knew why this group of rocks is different from that group of rocks. But, given that most of these appear to be scans of 35mm photos, still really cool.

Up next, Camden and Detroit.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 1:04 PM on February 26, 2007

Lost Cities, Tikal.

I may have a problem ;p
posted by fFish at 1:21 PM on February 26, 2007

There's a lot of good stuff on this site. Thanks, Wolfdog.
posted by homunculus at 1:41 PM on February 26, 2007

I can't imagine when sites such as Athens got "lost", but cool photos. These are my photos of Maya sites. These are my photos of Angkor.

Most Maya sites can be visited in a day or less. Tikal takes two. Angkor took six. The scale of Angkor is amazing.
posted by Xoc at 1:45 PM on February 26, 2007

seargant sandwich: Looking through Olin Shivers' homepage (he of famously intemperate acknowledgments page in an scsh manual) I found that there exist explicit temple carvings elsewhere, in this case Nepal.

Excellent post, Wolfdog, and the link about the oldest known zero is also wonderful.
posted by Kattullus at 1:53 PM on February 26, 2007

The pictures of Monte Alban are pretty striking. Thanks for the link.
posted by pardonyou? at 1:57 PM on February 26, 2007

Very nice (though I'd say "ruined" would be a better description than "lost"—places like Corinth and Delphi have never been in any sense lost). I've been to a number of these, too, and the pictures make me want to go back. I particularly recommend the Ionian cities, if any of you get to Turkey and have some spare time: looking down from Priene on its hillside across what used to be a bay to the site of Miletus is quite something (especially if you can use your imagination).
posted by languagehat at 1:58 PM on February 26, 2007

Neat stuff. I liked the writing.
posted by freebird at 1:59 PM on February 26, 2007

And those are both excellent games, fFish. Tikal in particular is underrated.
posted by Midnight Creeper at 2:31 PM on February 26, 2007

I'm fairly certain that at least two of those sites listed aren't cities at all, but reliquaries. Still, really, really cool. Nice post.
posted by lekvar at 2:40 PM on February 26, 2007

Who loses a city, honestly?
Those things are HUGE!
posted by SilverTail at 2:54 PM on February 26, 2007

Yay!

My personal list of places visited from the link:

Sarnath, Khajuraho, Sanchi, Memphis, Thebes, Abu Simbel, Troy, Ephesus, Palmyra, Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Teotihuacan, Tikal, Monte Alban, Badami, Ajanta, Ellora, Vijananagar, Almora (altho the pic looks more like Jageshwar), Patna.

But yeh, many were never lost, and many were never really cities. Sanchi is really nothing more than a stupa, Abu Simbel was just a monument in the middle of nowhere (guarding the northern navigable reaches of the Nile in Nubia), and Ajanta & Ellora are little more a bunch of cave temples & monasteries - more hermit-like retreats from the world than cities.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:33 PM on February 26, 2007

Can we rename this post Places That Would Be Really Awesome To Visit?
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 4:21 PM on February 26, 2007

It's hard to imagine that the ruins of today's cities will be anywhere near as nice, when the time comes.
posted by jfuller at 4:33 PM on February 26, 2007

Not 100% sure what the selection methodology is for the site, but there are some standout omissions, like Angkor in Cambodia, Bam in Iran (tragically, mostly destroyed in a recent earthquake), Persepolis (also Iran), Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro (Indus Valley, Pakistan), a couple of dozen places in Turkey - not only the Greco-Roman ones on the Aegean & Ionian coasts, but also the underground cities in Cappadocia, as well as some incredibly ancient Anatolian cities. You might also thrown in Aksum in Ethiopia, and any number of sites in Mesopotamia.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:09 PM on February 26, 2007

Very cool. The oldest (and just about only) Mayan ruins I've been to are at Altun Ha, when Elizard and I went to Belize. She stayed on to go see the city of Tikal.
"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!", indeed.
posted by Zack_Replica at 9:09 PM on February 26, 2007

there are some standout omissions

Bagan/Pagan is staggering, and bared paid any attention.
posted by dreamsign at 12:07 AM on February 27, 2007