5 Ancient lost civilisations

Could they be real?

The thing about ancient lost civilizations is that they are still lost, so we don’t have any proof that they ever existed. The reason people believe there to be so many cities and civilizations that we haven’t found yet is because of mentions throughout historical texts or partial ancient maps showing places that no longer exist.

The chances of there being somewhere like Atlantis are very slim, but many places around the world would have been above sea level up until a few thousand years ago, and people seem to discover new settlements and temples across the world every few years. Looking at the more realistic possibilities for ancient lost civilizations, here are the 5 most likely to actually exist and what life would possibly be like there.

Aztlán

This is the name given to the mythical homeland of the Aztec people before they settled in their known location of modern-day Mexico. The name Aztec comes from the Nahuatl word Aztecah which means “people from Aztlán” and has been mentioned in various historical texts from the colonial period, though none of them mention its location. The people who formed the settlement of Aztlán are believed to have come from a place called Chicomoztoc, which means “the places of the seven caves”, and all spoke a similar dialect.

As their populations grew they formed into one large tribe and moved to a new homeland, which they named Aztlán. This settlement was said to have been built on an island, but due to the boat technology they would have had, it is more likely that it was land in between two rivers instead of an off-shore territory. The tribes lived here for an unknown amount of time, but they moved to their known current-day location during the early 1300s, lasting until the Spanish came and conquered the territory in the 1500s.

Is Aztlán possible?

Not only is it possible that a settlement existed, but it’s actually highly likely, though it wouldn’t be anything like people would imagine. When people think of ancient places related to tribes like this, they normally picture huge cities of gold and lost temples in the jungle, but Aztlán would be closer to something like a small Stone Age settlement. The only usable metal they could have discovered by that stage was copper, and their homes would be nothing more than mud and clay stick-framed homes. It’s highly unlikely they created any stoneworks, and after the settlement was abandoned for so long, none of the things they left behind would have survived, not that anyone knows where it was anyway.

Doggerland

During the last ice age, the sea levels around the world were much lower and there were millions of square miles of land that are now deep below the ocean. One of these such lands was a huge mass between southeast England and France that connected the two countries and spread northeast around the coast. At the peak of the ice age, the British Isles and mainland Europe were connected, but during the thawing years, the sea levels rose by an estimated 2 meters every century, slowly cutting the huge chunk of land into smaller islands. The two last pieces of land to go under the waves were the land bridge between southeast England and France, a small strip of land several miles wide, and Doggerland itself.

The name Doggerland is given to the last inhabited island to become flooded before presumably killing everyone there. It’s estimated that it became completely submerged around 6,000 BCE, which was still firmly in the Stone Age and gave people little chance to make boats capable of making it to the mainland. Various stone tools and carved items have been found in the nets of trawlers who work in the region, and several sets of footprints were found preserved in the mud during a dive, but it’s still unclear exactly where any settlements were and at the moment we have nothing more than a good guess as to where the island actually was.

Is Doggerland possible?

It’s well known that the sea levels were much lower thousands of years ago, and we know people have been in the British Isles and the areas of mainland Europe that surround Doggerland for tens of thousands of years, so it is almost impossible that people weren’t in the area. From what we know of the sea floor through sonar scans, we can see the high points of land and the last areas that would have been flooded, and it’s highly possible that people would have been trapped here when it happened. As for the settlement, it would be nothing more than stick huts covered in animal skins and stone tools, with no castles, temples, or anything that would last being built.

Paititi

Sitting somewhere between the border of Bolivia and Brazil is the ancient lost Inca city of Paititi, or so the stories say. This city was said to be the last refuge of the Inca people but there are two versions of why it was the last place they could go. One version talks about how a local hero named Inkarri went to Paititi as his retirement city after founding two other cities in the region, and the other talks about how it was the last place the Incas could go after being defeated by the Spanish.

(The Inca city of Machu Picchu high up in the Andes mountain range, When the Spanish found the city it was completely abandoned and all its wealth and inhabitants had gone elsewhere, never to be seen again) 

The Spanish not only won most of the battles against the Incas but also brought with them several diseases like smallpox and the flu that caused many thousands of deaths around the continent. With their numbers too low to face the Spanish directly, the only choice they had was to run, and the entire remaining population is said to have gone to Paititi, a city that no one has found to this day.

Is Paititi possible?

Records of this city come from a paper written during the early 1600s that was found in Rome, and talks about a traveler who went to the city and claimed it was filled with gold and silver decorations, with a staggering amount of wealth spread throughout. After this, there are plenty of records from the Spanish and Portuguese who mention locals in the area claiming they have been to or know of the city, but none of them mention a location or were able to take people there.

There have been many lost settlements and temples found in the Amazon over the years, and it is entirely possible that the Incas built another city to escape to, but that doesn’t explain their disappearance. The most likely explanation would be they retreated to Paititi and then succumbed to one of the many illnesses brought over by the invaders.

The lost city of Z

This is the name given to an ancient lost city in the Amazon by the man who was obsessed with finding it, and his second and last attempt to do so cost him his own life and that of his son. An explorer named Col. Percy Fawcett found an old document in a library in Brazil called Manuscript 512 that claimed how a group of explorers went to the city in 1753 and saw huge temples, statues, and stoneworks, all of which they described in great detail but didn’t once mention the location of the city.

(Could there be an ancient lost city hidden within the tree’s, or was it just the wishful thinking of one man)

Is the lost city of Z possible?

Probably not, as this one seems to be the obsession of someone who could easily have made a mistake. There are many stories of lost cities across the Amazon, and some of these have been found over the years but don’t come close to the huge golden cities that people imagine. As for Z, it’s likely Fawcett thought that snippets of information about the various lost places were all about the city of Z, and his obsessions led him to look for something that probably never existed.

The Lost City of Kalahari

The story of this city comes from an American explorer named William Leonard Hunt who traveled to the Kalahari desert on an expedition with his son in 1885. At some point during the crossing of the desert, he claimed to have found a huge series of carved stone works that seemed to form the large outer wall of something. He claims that the ruins he found ran for more than a mile and would often break into the foundations of circular structures, though there was nothing more than the base of the walls remaining.

(The constantly shifting sands of the Kalahari desert could easily hide a few small stone foundations, but were they even there to begin with)

He claimed there was no evidence of a writing system on any of the stones and no signs of symbols, but he did mention how some of the stones in the wall were held together with what appeared to be cement. The claims of this city have been enough to send hundreds of people into the desert to try and find it, and in 1932 alone, there were 25 expeditions to find the city which included aerial reconnaissance and hundreds of people on the ground, but not a single sign of the city was found.

Could there be a lost city in the Kalahari?

This is the least likely one on the list because of the nature of the desert and the complete lack of water sources big enough to support a large population and their crops. He also mentioned that the stones were held together with some kind of cement and one wall ran for over a mile. Both of these things would be highly unlikely as something of this size wouldn’t have the water and farmland to support itself, and there were very few uses of lime mortar in sub-Saharan Africa hundreds of years ago.

If he did find a huge wall and the foundations of other buildings in the way he described, it would explain why no one has found them again because he did mention the stone works were mostly buried in the sand. With so many people looking for the city over the years without finding any sign of it combined with the unlikely nature there was one built in such a dry place to begin with makes this one highly unlikely.