Finding the Lost Cities

by Rebecca Stefoff

The idea of "lost cities" appeals to our love of mystery and our thirst for knowledge. The discovery itself--whether the result of a long and patient search, or a sudden and surprising accident--is a first-class adventure. But discovery is only the beginning of the the site must then be
investigated and studied before it yields up its secrets. A lost city may hold many clues to ancient religious beliefs, the origins and decline of cities, or patterns of trade and warfare among our ancestors.
Finding the Lost Cities leads the eader through the sites of 12 buried and rediscovered cities. Each chapter focuses on one legendary What do we know about it? How was it lost? Who searched for it and failed? Who finally succeeded in finding and reopening it to the rest of the world? What has
the newly refound city told us about the past?
Cities covered
Troy, the fabled city of Homer's epics, thought by many to be no more than a myth until German-born Heinrich Schliemann, using the Iliad and the Odyssey as his guide, unearthed the city's stone walls and hauled off a fortune in gold and silver.
Great Zimbabwe, the remnants of an ancient African civilization uncovered in 1871 by German explorer Karl Mauch.
Angkor, the ruins of an ancient civilization buried in the dense jungle of Cambodia and rediscovered by French-born naturalist Henri Mouhot in 1860.
Gournia, a Minoan settlement on the island of Crete and the first lost city to be discovered by a woman--Harriet Boyd, a graduate of Smith College.
Machu Picchu, the mountaintop citadel of the Incas, discovered in 1911 in Peru by a real-life Indiana Jones, Hiram Bingham, professor of Latin American history at Yale and a future U.S. senator.
Ubar, a city buried by the sands of the Arabian peninsula more than a thousand years ago and unearthed in 1991 by a team of scientists using the most advanced satellite technology available.
Other cities featured are Petra, Nineveh, Hattusha, Copán, Chaco Canyon, Knossos, and Ur.
Each chapter is lavishly illustrated with photographs of dig sites and discovered treasures--many in full color--as well as detailed, newly commissioned maps pinpointing the location of the site. A chronology, suggestions for further reading, and a detailed index round out this unique book. There
is no resource for the study of geography and the customs of ancient civilizations that is richer or more satisfying. Finding the Lost Cities is a wonderful way to stimulate a young archaeologist's imagination and curiosity.

191 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 1997

Reviews

[Jim Razinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little find in the clearance section of a used book store. Aimed at young people (describing the two hundred sixteen faces of the Buddha on the Bayon at Angkor Thom, "Many of the faces are taller than a tall person."), adults would enjoy it. Ms. Stefoff descibes twelve "lost" cities, though a few weren't really lost and she notes that in the text: Petra, Ninevah, Hattusha (I miss my rare book on the Hittites), Copán, Chaco Canyon, Angkor, Troy, Zimbabwe, Knossos, Gournia, Machu Picchu, Ur, and a bonus: the Ubar. Large format, gray-scale and full color photos of the sites and artefacts, images of drawings from journals and books. Ms. Stefoff talks about the legends, histories, explorers and archeologists - amateur and professional, the opportunists and profiteers, and others involved in the discovery/rediscovery of some famed and some less well-known cities. Some tragedies with looting (for museums and also private gain), some tragedies from careless removal of artefacts with poor to no documentation, some misguided attempts at restoration...this is also a brief survey of the evolution of archeology. Her last city, Ur, was the best treated (maybe Machu Picchu was as well) because C. Leonard Woolley took painstaking care to excavate and document, contributing techniques to the science such as pouring wax over finds so that the bits and pieces could be removed as found within the wax encasement and examined properly later. Painstaking... he took five years after the discovery of a cemetery to begin excavating it because he wanted to be able to date it accurately.

Not all discoverers were snatch and grab. Henri Mouhot on stumbling across and exploring Angkor Wat during three weeks in January 1860:

What strikes the observer with not less admiration than the grandeur, regularity, and beauty of these majestic buildings, is the the immense size and prodigious number of the blocks of stone of which they are constructed. In this temple alone are as many as 1532 columns. What means of transport, what a multitude of workmen, must this have required, seeing that the mountain out of which the stone was hewn is thirty miles distant!

Serendipitous happenstance that I stopped in that section and found this.

[Carmen Tudor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great 'lost kingdom' book that covers the rediscoveries of Petra, Nineveh, Hattusha, Copan, Chaco Canyon, Angkor, Troy, Zimbabwe, Knossos, Gournia, Machu Picchu, Ur and Ubar. The entries are fairly concise -- I read the entire book in less than a day -- but maintain an interesting tone throughout. The only downside is that it could have done with more photos.

[Roxanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great book about finding lost cities all around the world. Loved it.