5 cities the ancients might have built

Ancient cultures all over the world have built some incredibly things that showed their civilization was far beyond all others. From the Egyptian pyramids and Aztec temples to the Roman Colosseum and the Great Wall of China, all of which were put in plain view and intended to show the sheer power and greatness of the people who built them. Because so many things were built so long ago, there’s a chance that many of them have been forgotten in time until the point where we aren’t even sure if they existed in the first place. Here are five of the most mysterious ancient lost cities our ancestors might have built.

1) The Aztec City of Aztlan

Everyone has heard of the Aztecs and most are familiar with the type of civilization they were, but few seem to have heard of the ancient lost city of Aztlan. The story goes that the current location of the Aztecs wasn’t always where they lived, and before they even formed into the people known as Aztecs, they were a collection of smaller tribes that came together and built a city called Aztlan. The original birthplace of their people was a location called Chicomoztoc, which means land of the seven caves, and was an area where seven tribes lived in presumably a mountainous region or large valley and each had their own cave network. Because the tribes had a similar dialect they were able to communicate and eventually came together into one big tribe, leaving their caves behind and moving to a new location they called Aztlan.

It was said to be an island, but whether this meant over the sea or a piece of land surrounded by a river is unclear, but on this location they built their city before their population grew too large, and they relocated to their known location of modern day Mexico. To this day no one has found the city and there isn’t any evidence that it exists, only stories that were passed down through the Aztec culture, but there’s the very real chance it could be true. If the city did exist it would probably be on a land location that was, at the time, surrounded by a river, but it wouldn’t be the golden glowing city people may picture. At the time it would have been built, the population would likely still be in the Stone Age and the buildings would consist of nothing more than mud huts and homes made from sticks and thatch, materials that wouldn’t have lasted more than a few years.

2) The Inca city of Paititi

The story of this city is often confused with the myth about El Dorado which many think is a city made of gold. The El Dorado story refers to lake Guatavita in Colombia that involved a priest throwing gold artifacts into the lake to please their gods, but the tale of the city of gold is actually referring to Paititi, a lost Inca city hidden somewhere in the jungle. Paititi is thought to have been the last Inca city that the Spanish were never able to find, and presumably is the site of the Incas lost treasure.

During the 1500s, the Spanish invaded South America and in 1572 managed to capture the last Inca stronghold in the Vilcabamba valley, but when they entered the settlement, it was completely empty and all the treasure and been removed. Over the years they were in the country, the Spanish invaders heard there was a hidden Inca city and even met some locals that claimed they had been there before, but non were able to give directions. So far no one has been able to find the city but the chances of it being ruined and hidden by the jungle are very high, plus it would also make sense for the Incas to create a secret fallback point in the event the Spanish won, and on top of that the Spanish reported finding the last known Inca stronghold completely void of treasure, suggesting it had been taken to a hidden place.

3) The city of Z

This lost city is named as such because no one has any indication of its real name, and no hard evidence its even real, but what little evidence there is seems to be enough to have sent hundreds of people looking for it over the years. The tale begins with a British surveyor called Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett who found a very old manuscript in a Brazilian library that was written by a man named João da Silva Guimarães, a settler and explorer of the region. Da Silva claimed that in 1753 he found the ruins of a huge settlement somewhere in the modern day Mato Grosso state of Brazil that included many large and elaborate buildings, together with wells and ornamental stone works. In 1920, Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett set off on an expedition to find the city, but caught a fever and had to turn back. Five years later he tried again with two companions, but all three never returned and are believed to have died in the attempt. Since then several dozen others have died in expeditions to find the city, but to this day it remains hidden.

4) The Egyptian city of Thinis

Someone finding an ancient artifact in Egypt seems to happen every few years, with a new piece of stone works or an isolated temple being dug up from the ground, but the real prize would be finding one of the lost cities thought to be beneath the sands. The city of Thinis is considered the biggest Ancient Egyptian settlement that could actually exist that no one has found yet. The story of Thinis comes from an ancient Egyptian historian named Manetho who wrote about three cities along the Nile who were all at war, the cities were Nekhen, Thinis and Naqada. After Thinis won the war it became the capital of the region, but after a long period of calm and national growth under a ruler called Menes, the power center of the country moved to Memphis and Thinis slowly withered over time. Eventually the city was abandoned and never inhabited again, leaving it to fade away into the sand.

5) The city of Lyonesse

This city is mentioned in Arthurian legend, which might immediately make it sound like nothing more than a story, but it also gets mentioned in ancient Celtic and Breton mythology. The city was said to be somewhere off the west coast of either south-west England or south Wales, but only a few miles offshore. The city sank around the year 1100 AD due to rising sea levels and the lack of a way to secure the low laying land from flooding, which it apparently did quite quickly and everyone there drowned. It is indeed true that sea levels around the UK were much lower hundreds of years ago, and today you can still see the remains of petrified tree stumps off the coast of Penzance during a very low tide, but whether a city was in place at the same level is anyone’s guess. There are some claims that trawler ships have found carved pieces of stone in the area between lands-end in Cornwall and the Scilly isles, but these don’t seem to have been confirmed. The most claimed, and the most likely location for the city would be the raised area of seabed shown on a picture of Google Maps below, but as with all the other cities on this list, there’s no hard evidence it existed in the first place.