Throughout history, great civilisations have risen, flourished and then disappeared, leaving behind ruins, legends and a host of unanswered questions. From the jungles of Central America to the deserts of the Middle East, these lost worlds were once pinnacles of human achievement. Now they’ve vanished, and their enduring mysteries continue to captivate archaeologists and historians.
Click through this gallery to travel back in time and discover the amazing civilisations that are no longer with us...
The Indus Valley Civilisation coexisted with Ancient Egypt, and it was even larger than its better-known neighbour, stretching along the wide plain of the Indus River through modern-day Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. More than 1,400 towns and cities made up this Asian civilisation, the biggest of which boasted around 40,000 inhabitants. Many settlements showed signs of urban planning, with construction set out in a grid pattern and drains along the edges of streets to carry away wastewater.
Many aspects of life in the Indus Valley Civilisation remain a mystery to modern historians and archaeologists. Since we can’t decipher their pictographic system of writing, we don’t know what they called themselves or what language they spoke, how they were governed or how society was structured. What we do know is that the Indus people were skilled craftsmen who could create finely decorated pottery, intricate jewellery and children's toys.
The biggest puzzle of all is what caused the apparently peaceful and well-organised Indus civilisation to collapse over the course of 200 years. While most villages survived unscathed, its towns and cities fell into ruins and were forgotten as they crumbled into the ground.
Some believe that lucrative trade networks with Mesopotamia collapsed. Others have suggested that invaders came from the north, or that famine struck after climate change or geological movements. Whatever the cause, the Indus Valley Civilisation remained lost to time until its ruins were first excavated in the 19th century.
The Minoans flourished on the Mediterranean island of Crete, a location that made it a hub of maritime trade with Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece. The Minoan palace at Knossos was excavated first in the 1870s and then more thoroughly in 1900 by Sir Arthur Evans, who was convinced he'd found the home of the legendary King Minos – famous from the tale of Theseus and the minotaur.
Few now believe that to be the case, and some doubt that the Minoans had monarchs at all since there are no known depictions of Minoan rulers. That hasn’t stopped grand Minoan complexes like Knossos and Gournia (pictured), being known as palaces.
Although experts cannot decipher the Minoan writing system known as Linear A, archaeological evidence tells us a great deal about the civilisation. Building techniques were centuries ahead of the rest of Europe, with drainage, multi-storey buildings and running water, while colourful frescoes suggest that Minoan religion and ritual were heavily influenced by nature. Pictures and sculptures indicate that bull-leaping was an important tradition.
The Minoans entered a tailspin around 1450 BC, and the decline probably began with a powerful volcanic eruption on the nearby island of Thera (modern-day Santorini), which triggered tsunamis and years of famine. The Minoan palaces were overtaken or destroyed, possibly by Mycenaean invaders from the Greek mainland. By 1100 BC, the Minoans had been completely absorbed by the Mycenaean Greeks, but they're not forgotten – today, the Minoan palace of Knossos is a popular tourist destination.
In the 1840s, explorers stumbled across the ruins of an abandoned civilisation in the jungles of Central America. These spectacular palaces and pyramids were stuffed with works of art and evidence of writing, and it soon became clear that a great civilisation once stretched across what is now southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The Maya cultivated the region’s first crops and domesticated its wildlife before building its first cities, the most famous of which is Chichen Itza (pictured).
The Maya civilisation reached its height between AD 200 and 900. It’s during this period that the Maya refined their pyramid-like temples and palaces that were once bustling centres of culture and commerce, while artists decorated both with painted murals.
The Maya used a complex hieroglyphic script, understood advanced mathematical concepts and had one of the most accurate calendars of the ancient world. They also made time for leisure, playing one of the earliest known team sports – a speedy and violent ball game. A scoring post from the game is pictured here.
The slow decline of the Maya began in the 9th century AD, and the causes of the collapse remain debated. Some think that overpopulation strained food supplies, while others think that the effects of climate change were exacerbated by Mayan slash-and-burn farming techniques. Major cities were gradually abandoned and reclaimed by the jungle, leaving behind a rump of villages that existed for centuries until Spanish invaders arrived and swiftly conquered the once-great civilisation.
It’s thought that the name 'Nabataeans' derives from an ancient word meaning 'to shine brightly', and the Nabataeans did just that for four centuries. The Arab tribe became wealthy thanks to its location roughly in modern-day Jordan, at the centre of a trading network with the Greeks and Romans on one side, the Persians on the other and the Egyptians to the south. They built cities in strategic locations, nestled in rugged mountain passes and desert canyons.
The Nabataeans are best known for their stunning rock-cut architecture, especially in their capital city of Petra, where builders blended Greek, Roman and Arabian styles to create grand façades like the Treasury (pictured). Nabataean cities featured sophisticated water systems that made life sustainable in arid conditions. Inhabitants worshipped in temples and enjoyed performances at the theatre, and consumed a varied diet including crops grown nearby and fish from rivers.
The Nabataeans' wealth helped lead to their downfall: the greedy eyes of Roman emperors fell on the kingdom, and armies under Trajan annexed the region in AD 106. The former Nabataean kingdom became the Roman Empire’s southeastern frontier, but as trade routes shifted the region’s economic importance declined. The grand Nabataean cities were abandoned and remained unknown to the wider world until 19th-century explorers found vast desert tombs like this one.
The Mississippian Culture was not a single state, but a collection of Native American tribes that flourished across a vast area, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. It arose as hunter-gatherers began cultivating maize, which allowed them to give up their nomadic lives and settle in larger, permanent communities like Cahokia in modern-day Illinois. Archaeologists identify Mississippian sites by the presence of large, flat-topped mounds, and no pre-Columbian earthwork is bigger than Cahokia’s Monks Mound, pictured here.
The earthworks that feature at Mississippian settlements are thought to have been used as building platforms for wooden temples and houses, although the timbers have rotted and little evidence of them survives today. Archaeologists have discovered plenty of pottery, however, and Mississippian tribes had skilled ceramicists. Pieces like this beaver-shaped pot tend to contain a large proportion of shell fragments and feature decorations that evoke cosmology or nature.
The tribes of the Mississippian Culture went into decline in the 14th century, and it’s likely that climate change during the Little Ice Age sparked famine and warfare over scarce resources. The already-weakened people were dealt a fatal blow by the arrival of European explorers, who brought with them diseases to which the Mississippians had no immunity. Most large communities were abandoned, although many of their gigantic mounds remain today, including here at Etowah Mounds, Georgia.
The Khmer Empire was founded by Jayavarman II, after he united a patchwork of small kingdoms and territories in what is now Cambodia. Over the next few centuries, his successors extended the empire throughout Southeast Asia and built a grand capital at Angkor. At its height, Angkor may have been home to more than a million people, and it’s the site of one of the largest temples in the world, Angkor Wat (pictured).
Although the Khmer had a sophisticated bureaucracy and government, their detailed records were kept on paper made from leaf fibres, rice paper or vellum that decayed in Cambodia’s climate. This means that historians rely heavily on stone carvings found on temple walls and the accounts of foreign travellers. We do know that the Khmer had extensive trade links with China, valued silk and precious metals, and had a complex water management system controlled by the king.
The Khmer Empire began to decline around 1200, when grand construction projects began to tail off. Environmental factors may have played an important role: climate change during the Little Ice Age may have caused periods of drought interspersed with heavy, destructive monsoons, disrupting Angkor's all-important water system and rice farms. The empire’s last whimper came in 1431 when Thai invaders sacked Angkor, and the city was largely abandoned.
In AD 985, exiled Norse chieftain Erik the Red risked his life by returning to Iceland with huge news: he’d discovered new land in the west. A small fleet of longships soon set out to colonise the icy land he named Greenland, and over the next few centuries Erik and his successors maintained two main outposts there: one around the southern tip, the other on the western coast. Neither have left much evidence, however, beyond a few stone ruins.
Erik’s band of pioneers set up farms and hunted seals, while making money by trading valuable walrus tusk ivory. The Viking settlers ploughed their profits into luxuries, and their manor houses made use of imported stained glass. The last documented event was a high society wedding in Hvalsey Church in 1408, after which the Greenland Vikings seem to have packed up and left, in what appears to have been an orderly evacuation.
We’re still unsure exactly why the Viking settlements in Greenland were abandoned. The climate cooled through this period and the Black Death ravaged Europe, which could have caused a drop in trade and rendered life in this frozen frontier no longer viable. Modern-day explorers can still see the ruins of the Viking-built Garðar Cathedral in Igaliku, the well-preserved Hvalsey Church in Qaqortoq and even the farms from Erik the Red’s pioneering expedition in Qassiarsuk (pictured).
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