I hope, you are enjoying your tour of the forgotten cities, which is a continuation of “Explore 25 Lost and Forgotten Cities of the World—Part 1.” Part 2 of this series has already been completed. and I am really thrilled that you have enjoyed reading it. Now we bring you the third part, which features those fabulous citrons that were once vibrant and thriving but are no longer so due to circumstances beyond one’s control. Let us, however, recollect and cherish the vast riches of the legacies.
Let’s start exploring!
15. The Mythical Aztec Capital of Aztlan Now Forgotten
The Aztec people started one of the most powerful empires in ancient America. It was based in what is now Mexico. Not as much is known about the origins of Aztec culture as is known about their kingdom, which was centered on the site of modern-day Mexico City. In the minds of many, the Aztecs’ migration to the Valley of Mexico from their original homeland, the forgotten island of Aztlan, marked the beginning of their civilization. Some others think it’s a made-up place, a mythological land like Atlantis or Camelot that only exists in stories and can’t be located in the real world. Others hold that it is a real, physical place that can be found.
The mythical island of Aztlan has been searched for from the western coast of Mexico to the dry plains of Utah. None of this has had any results, however, because nobody knows where Aztlan is or even if it exists. The ancient city was part of the Minoan civilization, which also did well on the nearby island of Crete. It was on the Greek island that used to be called Thira and was named after the island’s mythical king, Theras.
The “lost city of gold” has been sought after by explorers and scholars for centuries. People from all over the world are drawn to the prospect of finding a city rumored to be paved with gold and home to various forms of wealth, believing that doing People from all over the world are interested in finding a city that is said to have gold streets and other forms of wealth. They think that finding this city would be like finding the world’s greatest treasure and an ancient wonder. myth.
El Dorado was first described in stories told by the Muisca people. The Muisca people migrated to Colombia twice, once around 1270 B.C. and again between 800 and 500 B.C., settling in the Cundinamarca and Boyacá regions. As told in Juan Rodriguez Freyle’s “El Carnero,” the Muisca allegedly performed a ritual involving gold dust and other valuables for each newly appointed ruler.
There were a lot of ceremonies for the new king to go through after he was chosen. The new monarch would be escorted to Lake Guatavita, stripped to the waist, and sprinkled with gold dust during one of these ceremonies. A raft befitting a king would be decked out in gold and beautiful stones, and his servants and he would set sail. The king and his attendants would sail the raft to the lake’s center, where he would disembark and wash off the gold dust. The pieces of gold and precious stones would be thrown into the water.
The Muisca god of the Muisca was supposed to be appeased by this ceremony. The Muisca thought that “El Dorado,” which was also called “the Gilded One,” was not a place but rather the name of the king who led this ceremony. El Dorado used to mean “the Gilded One,” but now it can mean both the legendary city of gold and any other place where you can get rich quickly and easily.
Two Conquistadors, Lázaro Fonte and Hernán Perez de Quesada attempted to empty Lake Guatavita in 1545. While doing so, they began to find gold in its sediments, which led them to believe the lake held an abundance of wealth. They tried for three months with a human bucket chain to drain the lake, but they were not successful. Antonio de Sepulveda, an enterprising businessman, tried again to drain the lake in 1580. Again, bits of gold were found on the shore, but the real wealth of the lake was still down below. Even though it was said to hold as much as $300 million in gold, Lake Guatavita has been the target of many failed treasure hunts.
In 1965, the lake was made a protected area by the Colombian government. This meant that no more exploration could be done there. Even though Lake Guatavita cannot be explored at the moment, the search for El Dorado continues which was forgotten and erased from the world. The story of El Dorado, the lost city of gold, comes from old stories about the Muisca tribe, the Gilded One, and how they used to give away their wealth as part of a ritual.
16. The forgotten and Vanished Desert Cities of Dubai
Dubai tries to show itself as a modern city with cutting-edge architecture and a luxurious way of life. Even so, its deserts hide long-lost cities and a secret history that shows how the people who lived there before were able to adapt to and survive the harsh weather.
Julfar is one of the most well-known lost cities in Arabia. It is also one of the most intriguing because historians knew it existed because it was written down, but they couldn’t find it. For a thousand years, Julfar flourished, and it was from there that the famed Arabian sailor Ahmed ibn Majid set sail. In the stories, it is also where Sindbad the Sailor is said to have lived. During the Middle Ages, Julfar was the center of Arabic trade in the southern Gulf, setting it apart from other desert settlements.
But it wasn’t until archaeologists found Julfar’s exact location in the 1960s, far north of Dubai on the coast of the Persian Gulf, that the city was rediscovered. In the sixth century, people started living there, and by that time, they were trading with places as far away as India and the Far East.
Between the 10th and 14th centuries, when Arab navigators often sailed halfway around the world, Julfar and long-distance Arab trade and navigation were at their peaks. Before the Europeans crossed the Indian Ocean and reached the Persian Gulf, for instance, the Arabs had already sailed into European waterways. Julfar was the most important and populated city in the southern Gulf for more than a thousand years. It was the starting point for many trade routes and expeditions. Arab traders often made the long, 18-month trip by sea to China, where they traded almost anything you can think of.
This forgotten trade hub’s significance meant that it was constantly monitored by competing nations. By the time the Portuguese came to Julfar in the 1600s, it was a big city with about 70,000 people. A hundred years later, the Persians took it over, but in 1750, the Qawasim tribe of Sharjah took it back. The Qawasim tribe moved next door to Ras al-Khaimah, where they remain in control to this day. To this day, most of Julfar is probably still buried by the vast dunes that can be found to the north of Ras al-Khaimah. To be courteous, Millar and David
17. El Dorado- the forgotten Golden City
Explorers and scholars have been looking for El Dorado, the “lost city of gold,” for hundreds of years. People from all over the world are interested in finding a city that is said to have gold streets and other forms of wealth. They think that finding this city would be like finding the world’s greatest treasure and an ancient wonder. The city of gold has been the focus of many expeditions in Latin America, but no physical proof of its existence has ever been found. This means that it is just a myth.
El Dorado was first described in stories told by the Muisca people. The Muisca people migrated to Colombia twice, once around 1270 B.C. and again between 800 and 500 B.C., settling in the Cundinamarca and Boyacá regions. As told in Juan Rodriguez Freyle’s “El Carnero,” the Muisca allegedly performed a ritual involving gold dust and other valuables for each newly appointed ruler.
There were a lot of ceremonies for the new king to go through after he was chosen. The new monarch would be escorted to Lake Guatavita, stripped to the waist, and sprinkled with gold dust during one of these ceremonies. A raft befitting a king would be decked out in gold and beautiful stones, and his servants and he would set sail. The king and his attendants would sail the raft to the lake’s center, where he would disembark and wash off the gold dust. The pieces of gold and precious stones would be thrown into the water.
The Muisca god was supposed to be appeased by this ceremony. The Muisca thought that “El Dorado,” which was also called “the Gilded One,” was not a place but rather the name of the king who led this ceremony. El Dorado used to mean “the Gilded One,” but now it can mean both the legendary city of gold and any other place where you can get rich quickly and easily.
Two Conquistadors, Lázaro Fonte and Hernán Perez de Quesada attempted to empty Lake Guatavita in 1545. While doing so, they began to find gold in its sediments, which led them to believe the lake held an abundance of wealth. They tried for three months with a human bucket chain to drain the lake, but they were not successful. Antonio de Sepulveda, an enterprising businessman, tried again to drain the lake in 1580.
Again, bits of gold were found on the shore, but the real wealth of the lake was still down below. Even though it was said to hold as much as $300 million in gold, Lake Guatavita has been the target of many failed treasure hunts. In 1965, the lake was made a protected area by the Colombian government. This meant that no more exploration could be done there.
Even though Lake Guatavita cannot be explored at the moment, the search for El Dorado continues. The story of El Dorado, the lost city of gold, comes from old stories about the Muisca tribe, the Gilded One, and how they used to give away their wealth as part of a ritual.
18. Babylon- the forgotten city of Iraq
Babylon, located in modern-day Iraq, was founded around 2500 BCE. When Hammurabi, the first king of the Babylonian empire, made it the capital 500 years later, it became a major center of the Mesopotamian world which is now almost extinct and forgotten. The Assyrians destroyed it in the sixth century BCE, and it was left to rot in the second century BC after Alexander the Great died.
The ruins of Babylon, including the great Tower of Babel and the beautiful hanging gardens, evoke images of a biblical past. There’s also a disco song that won’t leave your head… The city is located about 53 miles (85 kilometers) south of Baghdad. None of the world’s forgotten cities can compete with Babylon in terms of evocative splendor, age, or mystery. So much human history began on the desert plains 60 miles south of Baghdad, where the sun turns horizons into flashing pools of mercury.
The Fertile Crescent land, bounded by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, was successively ruled by Sumer and Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, and Iraq. It is said that Adam and Eve’s Garden of Eden was nearby. Babylon is the firstborn child of Mesopotamia, the cradle of urban civilization. It was first mentioned in the 23rd century BC, but it becomes more prominent in records around 1792 BC, at the start of Hammurabi’s reign.
Babylon’s second most famous king is remembered for his uncompromising code of laws, many of which end with the ominous phrase “He shall be put to death,” and which now sit on an eight-foot carved black diorite stela in the Louvre. Hammurabi was the first to make Babylon the capital of a kingdom that included southern Mesopotamia and a portion of Assyria in northern Iraq.
But it is the city of that Old Testament anti-hero, the Jew-slaying, temple-smashing, gold-loving despot Nebuchadnezzar II, who succeeded to the throne in 605 BC, that piques the interest of anyone with a passing interest in history.
Following a whirlwind of military conquest in Egypt and Syria, Nebuchadnezzar embarked on a massive construction project that resulted in the largest and most glorious city of the ancient world. According to the Greek geographer Strabo, it was a dazzling urban vista of towering temples, shrines, and palaces clad in blue-glazed tiles and resplendent in gold, silver, and bronze; all encircled by city walls so massive that two chariots, each drawn by four horses, could pass each other with ease on the road that ran atop them.
19. Mangolia’s forgotten Ancient city of Xanadu
Xanadu is a cultural melting pot where nomads and agricultural societies from northern Asia clashed and assimilated. It was the first capital of Kublai Khan (1263–1273) and the summer capital of the Yuan Dynasty (1274–1364). It is at the southeastern end of the Mongolian steppe. According to the rules of traditional Chinese feng shui, the city and the tombs connected to it are on a grassy steppe with mountains to the north and a river to the south.
Kublai Khan’s mounted troops unified China’s agrarian civilizations from Xanadu, partially adopting Chinese culture as their own and expanding the Yuan empire across North Asia. The layout of Xanadu is a great example of how different cultures came together. It has the Palace and Imperial cities, which are surrounded by the Outer City, which has remnants of nomadic camps and the royal hunting area.
The ruins of the Tiefan’gan Canal show that a lot of water control systems were built to protect the city. Tibet enjoys legendary status abroad as the origin of Tibetan Buddhism, the site of Kublai Khan’s rise to power and religious disputes, and the host of foreign travelers whose writings have provided inspiration for centuries.
The site of Xanadu has parts of both Han Chinese culture and Mongolian culture. There is evidence of successful racial and cultural integration in the city’s urban planning. Using the best of both the Mongolian and Han intellectual traditions, the Yuan Dynasty was able to gain control over a large part of the world. As a rare case of multiethnic city planning, the site of Xanadu stands out.
The Site of Xanadu is an amazing reminder of how cruel the Yuan ruler Kublai Khan was, how he adopted the culture and political system of the defeated, and how he worked hard to keep and honor the native traditions of the people he took captive.
The layout of Xanadu shows that both nomadic and agricultural ways of life existed and mixed at the site of the city. Xanadu is a great example of urban planning because it combines the style of a Han city with the gardens and scenery that the Mongolian culture of the Yuan dynasty needed.
The city of Xanadu, which was built and lived in between the 13th and 14th centuries, has been kept in its entirety on an archaeological site that is now mostly grassland unvisited and forgotten. Mounds that point to palace and temple buildings, some of which have been dug up, recorded, and reburied, are easy to see, as are the wall lines of the Palace City, Imperial City, and Outer City, which show how central China’s cities used to be planned and how Mongolian tribes met and went hunting. What’s left of the neighborhoods beyond the walls, the Tiefan’gan canal, and the cemeteries, all as they existed in the wild and in history?
This wall protects the mountains to the north and the water to the south. It also protects the four types of grassland, especially the Xar Tala Globeflower Plain, which is connected to the river marshes and is an important part of the city’s location. You may make out Xanadu’s site in the scenery.
Note: In this episode, you’ve visited five more great cities that have since been lost to us, and we can only now see the ruins and marvel at how magnificent our forefathers were. We now look forward to seeing you in our concluding part to complete the sequel of the “Explore 25 Lost And Forgotten Cities Of The World,” as our upcoming episode will take you through six more incredible sites that have vanished.
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