What does it mean to say that a city is “lost”? We know where to find the remains of most of the great ancient cities, and many places commonly considered lost were not unknown to regional societies.
What is often lost is not the location of a city, but its history, its contribution to the world. In busy streets, ancient cities and towns housed various cultural elements: rulers, workers, types of food, combat, markets, temples, children and pets. When cities disappear, human experiences also disappear.
The archaeologist's job is to reimagine these stories, brick by brick. Around the world, archaeologists continue to uncover vast urban centers that are evidence of the sophistication of early cultures. New discoveries made using Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology, a laser detection and measurement method, have revealed hundreds of Olmec and Aztec ceremonial centers in Mexico.
But challenges remain to preserve these ancient cities. Oil and gas extraction and drilling threaten the delicate archaeological sites of the Anasazi peoples in the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in the US state of New Mexico. This prompted President Joe Biden to announce a measure seeking a 20-year ban on drilling within a 10-mile radius of the settlement of enigmatic sandstone houses and stone-lined circular ceremonial moats.
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— Seikatsu⭐ Thu Jul 22 22:15:55 +0000 2021
“The Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a sacred site that has deep meaning for indigenous peoples. It is where your ancestors lived, worked and thrived in a high desert community,” said Deb Haaland, US Secretary of the Interior. “It is time to plan for more lasting protection measures for the park's rich landscape.”
Exploring the region in which the Chaco Culture National Historical Park and other ancient settlements in the Americas are located gives tourists a broader understanding of the past and demonstrates the importance of conserving these places. Here are three eminent cities in North and Central America that were hidden for a period, but are now on the maps of archaeologists, conservationists, and tourists.
Chaco Culture National Historical Park: Anasazi Culture, New Mexico
From approximately AD 800 to 1200, Anasazi peoples farmed, traded, and conducted religious ceremonies in the high desert that surrounds the Chaco Culture National Historical Park, in what is now the state of New Mexico. To irrigate their corn, squash, and bean crops, the region's inhabitants took advantage of the intermittent flow of local streams through canals and ditches. Traders carried exotic goods, such as scarlet macaws and cacao, from southern Mesoamerican peoples.
The Chaco civilization began to disperse around AD 1140, perhaps due to a series of severe droughts. By the end of the century, the region was completely abandoned. Although native peoples, such as the Ute and Shoshón, migrated to the area in later centuries, the first documented journey to the region where the park now stands was an expedition in 1823, in which men, under the command of the Mexican government, discovered the ancient ruins.