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There's a lost town in the Humber Estuary. Can't remember its name. It was described in a serious book I had called 'The Lost Villages of England' or similar - I lent it out and have never seen it again. The book, I mean.
 
There's a lost town in the Humber Estuary. Can't remember its name. It was described in a serious book I had called 'The Lost Villages of England' or similar - I lent it out and have never seen it again. The book, I mean.

My first guess would be that the book referred to Ravenser Odd ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenser_Odd
http://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/02/ravenserodd-lost-towns-yorkshire-coast.html

The Wikipedia article (cited above) includes a map of multiple lost towns / villages in that immediate area.
 
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Recent and ongoing digs in Kansas have (re-)located Etzanoa - believed to have been the second-largest Native American settlement in North America (after Cahokia).

In Rural Kansas, the Lost City of Etzanoa Comes to Light
... Anyone who says the study of the humanities is a waste of time should consider what was discovered in southern Kansas.

A Native American lost city called Etzanoa has been found in and around Arkansas City, and you can visit the exhibit.

Donald Blakeslee, an archaeology and anthropology professor at Wichita State University, helped uncover a major piece of Midwestern history.

Blakeslee said the site, which was home to possibly 20,000 people between the 1450s and the 1700s, is thought to be the second-largest native American settlement in North America after ancient Cahokia, IL.

As of the 2010 census, the population of Arkansas City was 12,400, just more than half of the lost city of Etzanoa.

Thanks to advances in scholarship, he knew where to look.

Scholars at the University of California at Berkeley in 2013 provided more refined translations of records from Spanish explorers who traveled through what is now Kansas ...

"I wanted to see if the archaeology fit their descriptions," he said. "Every single detail matched this place," he told the Times.

Etzanoa, home to a Wichita tribe, was visited by the founder of New Mexico, Don Juan de Onate, in 1601.

Considered the last Spanish conquistador, he came to the area in search of riches - the fabled "Seven Cities of Gold." He didn't find them.

But his visit would pay off in other ways, providing descriptions of the city. The Spanish also forced a captive to draw a map. ...

By the time Europeans visited the area again, in the 1700s, the city was gone, possibly ravaged by European diseases introduced by the Spaniards ...

FULL STORY: http://www.wlbt.com/story/38926602/in-rural-kansas-the-lost-city-of-etzanoa-comes-to-light

SEE ALSO: https://etzanoa.com/etzanoa/
 
For those who are interested, the author of the worst genocide in North American history was the conquistador Hernando De Soto, who had read the accounts of the effects of smallpox on the Aztecs during the campaign of Cortez and brought along a smallpox infected slave deliberately. De Soto wandered extensively in North America and waged war indiscriminately on all the peoples he met. He also introduced smallpox, measles, and chicken pox to the native populations which had the effect of nearly wiping them out. So total was the catastrophe that the descendants of the Mississippi Mound Builder culture had no notion of who had built the mounds, as all the intellectuals of that society had been wiped out, and there was no-one to recall the truth, save modern archaeologists many centuries later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto
 
Meanwhile, in China ... A newly published report describes excavations at a previously-unrecognized city dating back over 4,000 years and featuring a massive stepped pyramid that was more than a dedicated ceremonial site. The city's name is unknown, and the site is called Shimao - a more modern label for the place.

I find it interesting that the site was somewhat overlooked because it was originally presumed to be associated with a nearby section of the Great Wall.

Massive Pyramid, Lost City and Ancient Human Sacrifices Unearthed in China
A 4,300-year-old city, which has a massive step pyramid that is at least 230 feet (70 meters) high and spans 59 acres (24 hectares) at its base, has been excavated in China, archaeologists reported in the August issue of the journal Antiquity.

The pyramid was decorated with eye symbols and "anthropomorphic," or part-human, part-animal faces. Those figures "may have endowed the stepped pyramid with special religious power and further strengthened the general visual impression on its large audience," the archaeologists wrote in the article. ...

For five centuries, a city flourished around the pyramid. At one time, the city encompassed an area of 988 acres (400 hectares), making it one of the largest in the world, the archaeologists wrote. Today, the ruins of the city are called "Shimao," but its name in ancient times is unknown.

The pyramid contains 11 steps, each of which was lined with stone. On the topmost step, there "were extensive palaces built of rammed earth, with wooden pillars and roofing tiles, a gigantic water reservoir, and domestic remains related to daily life," the researchers wrote.

The city's rulers lived in these palaces, and art and craft production were carried out nearby. "Evidence so far suggests that the stepped pyramid complex functioned not only as a residential space for ruling Shimao elites, but also as a space for artisanal or industrial craft production," the archaeologists wrote.

A series of stone walls with ramparts and gates was built around the pyramid and the city. "At the entrance to the stepped pyramid were sophisticated bulwarks [defensive walls] whose design suggests that they were intended to provide both defense and highly restricted access," the archaeologists wrote.

The remains of numerous human sacrifices have been discovered at Shimao. "In the outer gateway of the eastern gate on the outer rampart alone, six pits containing decapitated human heads have been found," the archaeologists wrote. ...

Additionally, jade artifacts were inserted into spaces between the blocks in all of Shimao's structures. "The jade objects and human sacrifice may have imbued the very walls of Shimao with ritual and religious potency," the archaeologists wrote.

While archaeologists have known about Shimao for many years, it was once thought to be part of the Great Wall of China, a section of which is located nearby. It wasn't until excavations were carried out in recent years that archaeologists realized that Shimao is far older than the Great Wall, which was built between 2,700 and 400 years ago.

FULL STORY (With Photos): https://www.livescience.com/63406-massive-shimao-pyramid-unearthed-china.html
 
Here's the publication data and abstract for the Antiquity article describing the Shimao discoveries.

Antiquity
Volume 92, Issue 364 August 2018 , pp. 1008-1022

When peripheries were centres: a preliminary study of the Shimao-centred polity in the loess highland, China
Li Jaang (a1), Zhouyong Sun (a2), Jing Shao (a2) and Min Li (a3)

https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.31 Published online: 22 August 2018

Abstract
Chinese civilisation has long been assumed to have developed in the Central Plains in the mid to late second millennium BC. Recent archaeological discoveries at the Bronze Age site of Shimao, however, fundamentally challenge traditional understanding of ‘peripheries’ and ‘centres’, and the emergence of Chinese civilisation. This research reveals that by 2000 BC, the loess highland was home to a complex society representing the political and economic heartland of China. Significantly, it was found that Later Bronze Age core symbols associated with Central Plains civilisations were, in fact, created much earlier at Shimao. This study provides important new perspectives on narratives of state formation and the emergence of civilisation worldwide.

SOURCE: https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...ghland-china/EA48B7FEF5512D41D615DC3480DE0DDC
 
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Could you put a space between .31 and Published? It defaults to an error page as it is.

Thanks - I hadn't noticed that's how it had pasted (formatting transfer failure). I fixed it.
 
Here's news of a historic city in South Africa whose size is now recognized as being much larger than supposed ...
Lost City in South Africa Discovered Hiding Beneath Thick Vegetation
Billions of laser scans have revealed a lost city that was once a bustling epicenter in what is now South Africa's Suikerbosrand Nature Reserve, new research finds.

The newly discovered city, called Kweneng, was once a thriving capital that existed from the 1400s until it was destroyed and abandoned, likely because of civil wars, in the 1820s, said Karim Sadr, a professor of archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa.

However, it's not clear if this conflict immediately sounded the city's death knell. That's because some of the remaining structures date to between 1825 and 1875, "in what we call the terminal phase" of Kweneng ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/64694-lost-african-city-lidar.html
 
Well, I think it's fair that I issue a Spoiler Alert: if you never read David Gann's book or want to watch the film, please skip the next lines and don't spoil your pleasure in reading/watching"The Lost City Of Z".
This said, I find it interesting that while Gann's book present the Amazonian earthworks and its significance as the climax of the story, in Chales Mann's book (1491), they are there since the introduction, as a sign of the fact that we know very few about the life and the people of the Americas before 1492.
By the way, there is a Brazilian book, "Fawcett", written by Hermes Leal, that casts its own conclusions about Z, Fawcett and the lost cities in the jungle. It's far from the attractive style of Gann's book but it presents a counterpoint to his conclusions.
Just a last comment: back in the XVIIIth century it would be unlikely that a Portuguese expedition reaches Mato Grosso. If the document 502 is credible, it would be the "sertao" of Bahia, next the Goias border. By the time the story is suppose to happen this area would still be Spanish territory (Tordesillas, the Borgias, you know...).
I just watched The Lost City of Z, and I'm happy that someone thought to make a movie of it. The story has fascinated me for a long time, and if memory serves, I first remember reading about Col. Fawcett in one of Rupert Furneaux's books when I was a teenager. So, it has been about fifty years since I first heard of the story. Nobody knows for certain what happened to Fawcett, who disappeared in 1925, but there are some indications that he was not all wet. Discoveries have come to light that show that there were cities built in the Amazon, although not of the type that Fawcett envisioned.
 
I just watched The Lost City of Z, and I'm happy that someone thought to make a movie of it. The story has fascinated me for a long time, and if memory serves, I first remember reading about Col. Fawcett in one of Rupert Furneaux's books when I was a teenager. So, it has been about fifty years since I first heard of the story. Nobody knows for certain what happened to Fawcett, who disappeared in 1925, but there are some indications that he was not all wet. Discoveries have come to light that show that there were cities built in the Amazon, although not of the type that Fawcett envisioned.

Good film, my review:

The Lost City of Z: So they do make films like that anymore. Plenty of derring-do and stiff upper lips but Colonel Percival Fawcett was no imperialist or racist and admired the Amazon natives and publicised how they were exploited. The film covers his life from 1905 in ireland to his disappearance in the Amazon Jungle in 1925.

No giant snakes but Fortean touches include Fawcett and his sidekicks encountering an Opera production on a rubber plantation and a fortune teller predicting Fawcett's future at the Somme Front in 1916. His obsession was The Lost City of Z and it cost him and his eldest son their lives in 1925. The film suggests a possible, even likely explanation for their disappearance.

Fawcett's defence of the theory of Ancient Civilisations in the Amazon led to mockery at the Royal Geographical Society but Fawcett had the last laugh when ruins and geoglyphs were found in the Amazon Rainforest over the last ten years. Some archaeological sites were in the area suggested by Fawcett as the location for the City of Z. 8/10.
 
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There's a lost town in the Humber Estuary. Can't remember its name. It was described in a serious book I had called 'The Lost Villages of England' or similar - I lent it out and have never seen it again. The book, I mean.

anything further @Cochise ? this is fascinating. Goes along with Dynchurch.
 
From Wiki :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenser_Odd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenspurn

I'm not sure which was in the book - I lost the book 30 years ago! But it stuck in my mind because it was no minor village but a busy port city. I had remembered the name as a single word, but that seems to be an alternate spelling...

You might be referring to Nigel Pennick's book, Lost Lands and Sunken Cities.

A quick scan of the relevant chapter suggests that Ravernspurn was the name given to a piece of land, and Ravenser Odd, the settlement that grew in its lee. However, it's a bit confusing, as chroniclers appear to have used these, and other names, interchangeably. Pennick refers to the cross pictured in the second Wiki reference as the Ravenser, rather than Ravenspur Cross - and also states that its original location was known as Ravenscrosbourne.

Ravenser Odd is not the only lost settlement in that vicinity. Nearby were Old Ravenser (apparently a different site), Birstall Chapel, Frismarsh and Pensthorpe.

Edit: On rereading, seems Birstall Chapel was just that - an ecclesiatical site, rather than a settlement.
 
This new hypothesis would make Troy even more lost.

New Book Claims Homer's Iliad Proves Troy Was a Celtic City in Northern Europe
5/22/2019

To promote the release of his self-published book The Discovery of Troy and Its Lost History, historical researcher Bernard Jones published an article in Ancient Origins highlighting the book’s central claim, that the ancient city of Troy (Ilium) was not located in Asia Minor as has been assumed since ancient times but instead was located in the Celtic world. His evidence is Homer’s Iliad, whose poetic descriptions he takes as literal depictions of a voyage to the New World.

In the Iliad, a coalition of Bronze Age Mycenaean chieftains, the Achaeans, travel from Greece to Troy in order to demand the return of Helen, the wife of Menelaus, whom the Trojan prince Paris had kidnapped. Jones believes that Homer’s use of the adjective “salty” and description of the see as “wine-dark” and stormy means that it better describes the Atlantic Ocean than the Aegean Sea. This is a matter of opinion, of course; the Mediterranean, of which the Aegean is an arm, is salt-water, and how tumultuous you find the open water is probably more a function of how big your boat is and how far you travel by sail than it is an objective measurement of wave height. Jones claims that the “wine-dark” sea refers to the gray color of the Atlantic, but the issue of “wine-dark” water has been debated in scholarly circles for ages now, and I’ve never heard it discussed as gray. Instead, one common theory is that the Greeks had no word for blue and therefore did not distinguish between blue waters and purple wine. I don’t really believe that since the Greeks used blue in their wall paintings, but it shows you that Jones’s assumptions are speculative at best.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/n...ves-troy-was-a-celtic-city-in-northern-europe
 
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Any relation to the bloke who thought the Bible took place in the British Isles? Maybe he was inspired by his, er, insight?
 
This new hypothesis would make Troy even more lost.

New Book Claims Homer's Iliad Proves Troy Was a Celtic City in Northern Europe
5/22/2019

To promote the release of his self-published book The Discovery of Troy and Its Lost History, historical researcher Bernard Jones published an article in Ancient Origins highlighting the book’s central claim, that the ancient city of Troy (Ilium) was not located in Asia Minor as has been assumed since ancient times but instead was located in the Celtic world. His evidence is Homer’s Iliad, whose poetic descriptions he takes as literal depictions of a voyage to the New World.

In the Iliad, a coalition of Bronze Age Mycenaean chieftains, the Achaeans, travel from Greece to Troy in order to demand the return of Helen, the wife of Menelaus, whom the Trojan prince Paris had kidnapped. Jones believes that Homer’s use of the adjective “salty” and description of the see as “wine-dark” and stormy means that it better describes the Atlantic Ocean than the Aegean Sea. This is a matter of opinion, of course; the Mediterranean, of which the Aegean is an arm, is salt-water, and how tumultuous you find the open water is probably more a function of how big your boat is and how far you travel by sail than it is an objective measurement of wave height. Jones claims that the “wine-dark” sea refers to the gray color of the Atlantic, but the issue of “wine-dark” water has been debated in scholarly circles for ages now, and I’ve never heard it discussed as gray. Instead, one common theory is that the Greeks had no word for blue and therefore did not distinguish between blue waters and purple wine. I don’t really believe that since the Greeks used blue in their wall paintings, but it shows you that Jones’s assumptions are speculative at best.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/n...ves-troy-was-a-celtic-city-in-northern-europe
Haha! This is well timed to coincide with the launch of my book proving that Atlantis was actually in the Pacific, Stonehenge was a wall of death for early parkour championships, and Yggdrasil was probably a mushroom.

The "wine dark sea" thing is interesting. I've heard many explanations including the rather fanciful idea that the Greeks had no word for "blue" despite it being the colour of the sky and the sea for much of the time.

To me, the important thing is the word "dark". Homer is simply saying that the primary characteristic of the sea that he wanted to highlight at that moment was its darkness, which was similar in intensity to the darkness of wine. He makes no comment about its colour, only its darkness.

From the description in the article, it seems that the author came up with a theory then selected and distorted his facts to fit it.
 
Haha! This is well timed to coincide with the launch of my book proving that Atlantis was actually in the Pacific, Stonehenge was a wall of death for early parkour championships, and Yggdrasil was probably a mushroom.

The "wine dark sea" thing is interesting. I've heard many explanations including the rather fanciful idea that the Greeks had no word for "blue" despite it being the colour of the sky and the sea for much of the time.

To me, the important thing is the word "dark". Homer is simply saying that the primary characteristic of the sea that he wanted to highlight at that moment was its darkness, which was similar in intensity to the darkness of wine. He makes no comment about its colour, only its darkness.

From the description in the article, it seems that the author came up with a theory then selected and distorted his facts to fit it.
Unfortunately this happens far too often. I think that this could be what the German writer Karl Brugger did when he wrote of the city of Akkakor (Akkator in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Chrystal Skull), or far more likely, he could have just made it out of whole cloth.
 
Unfortunately this happens far too often. I think that this could be what the German writer Karl Brugger did when he wrote of the city of Akkakor (Akkator in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Chrystal Skull), or far more likely, he could have just made it out of whole cloth.
"Wine dark sea" doesn't have to do with color, I think, but rather the opacity of wine with sediment in it being similar to the darkness of deep sea water. The ancients certainly new the color blue as apart from black; the Egyptians used "Egyptian Blue" and carbon for black, and knew the difference, and the Greeks probably did too.
 
Here is an interesting youtube video on Iram, also known as 'The City of the Pillars'. It is said to be located in the Empty Quarter of Sa'udi Arabia or perhaps in Oman.

 
There's a lost town in the Humber Estuary. Can't remember its name. It was described in a serious book I had called 'The Lost Villages of England' or similar - I lent it out and have never seen it again. The book, I mean.

My first guess would be that the book referred to Ravenser Odd ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenser_Odd
http://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/02/ravenserodd-lost-towns-yorkshire-coast.html

The Wikipedia article (cited above) includes a map of multiple lost towns / villages in that immediate area.

I can add a site that gives the titles of some of the original books on lost towns on the Humber Estuary

http://www.hullgeolsoc.co.uk/gordon.htm
 
Drowned palace https://uk.yahoo.com/news/ancient-palace-emerges-iraqi-reservoir-water-levels-fall-122800699.html

An ancient palace has emerged from an Iraqi reservoir after water levels dropped precipitously because of a drought.

A lack of rain and the release of water through the Mosul Dam to relieve dry conditions has led to the Mittani Empire site being revealed.

The site was flooded when the Mosul Dam was built in the mid-1980s before archaeologists were able to examine it.

Because of the conditions, a team from Germany and Iraqi Kurdistan have been able to perform an archaeological dig - discovering several rooms, inscribed clay tablets and wall paintings.

Cuneiform writing on one of the tablets indicates the palace site, called Kemune, dates to the Middle Bronze Age, about 1800 BC.
 
Substantial Neolithic site currently being excavated in Israel. "Very large buildings", sculptures and jewellery found.
At an estimated 9,000 years old, this is not quite as old (or indeed dramatic) a find as Göbekli Tepe, but is still illustrative of surprisingly advanced civilisation existing in the Neolithic.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-49002046
 
Substantial Neolithic site currently being excavated in Israel. "Very large buildings", sculptures and jewellery found.
At an estimated 9,000 years old, this is not quite as old (or indeed dramatic) a find as Göbekli Tepe, but is still illustrative of surprisingly advanced civilisation existing in the Neolithic.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-49002046


A follow on:- Ancient 'New York': 5,000-year-old city discovered in Israel

housands of pieces of tools, jewellery, figurines, seeds and other objects have been found at the site of a huge 9,000-year-old settlement from the Neolithic period uncovered in Israel. Archaeologists believe that the site, located near Motza Junction, 5km (3 miles) west of Jerusalem, was once a city housing as many as 3,000 residents.
(c)BBC. '19.
 
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