Lost cities of India. Ancient cities of India: Green Fort Mirjan Ancient cities in the jungle of India

While enjoying the amazing nature and cultural wealth of India, one should not forget about the lost cities. Despite the fact that these cities fell as a result of wars and natural disasters, their majesty has survived to this day, thanks to the surviving temples, museums and galleries, which display surviving objects of art. Let's enjoy time travel together.

The dynasties of the princes Harihara and Bukka Raya founded Vijayanagara in 1336. This mighty city was the capital of the empire. The golden years of this Indian region fell on the years 1509-1529. The city was surrounded by hills on three sides, and the Tungabhadra river flowed on the fourth. Like many other powerful empires, the empire eventually fell to the onslaught of the Sultan Dean in 1565. Agricultural wealth brought great material benefits to the empire through international trade. The ruins of the city are now World Heritage Sites and surround modern Hampi in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.

A tree in the courtyard of the Vittala temple:

Puhar

The seven-tiered building pictured is now the Sillappathikar Art Gallery. Puhar is a city in the Nagapattinami region, in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu. In ancient times, this city was called the thriving capital of kings. Located at the mouth of the Kaveri River, the city served as a large trade center where goods brought from afar were unloaded. The legendary city is mentioned in many songs, in poetry, in the heroic epic. The history of the city is well described in the epics Silapathikaram and Manimekalai. Scientists believe that the tsunami caused the destruction of the city.

Muziris

Muziris is the Greco-Roman name for an ancient port city located on the Malabar coast (South India). Excavations in 2004 proved that the port was used to conduct trade with Western Asia, the Middle East and Europe. It is believed that the city was destroyed by an earthquake in the 13th century AD.

Lothal

The ancient city of Lothal, or rather its remains, can be found in the state of Gujatat. Known since 2400 BC, this lost city is one of India's most important archaeological treasures. It was discovered in 1954 and excavated between 1955 and 1960. The city was also a major commercial port.

Calibangan

Kalibangan is located on the southern bank of the Ghaggar in the Rajasthan region. It is known as the site of the earliest system of plowing agricultural fields (c. 2800 BC). Scientists concluded that the city was destroyed by an earthquake in 2600 BC, but after that the 2nd stage of the settlement took place, which was unsuccessful due to the gradual and irrevocable drying up of the river.

Surkotada

Surkotada is located in the Kache district of Gujarat. The ancient mound is surrounded by sandy hills and red soil, giving the entire area a reddish-brown color. The Lost City was discovered in 1964. Among the sights of India, these lost cities are far from the last.

Pattadakal. Pattadakala temple

Pattadakal is a city located on the banks of the Malaprabha River in the northern state of Karnataka. The group of ten monuments from the 8th century AD includes majestic temples, a monolithic stone pillar, and a Jain sanctuary.

There is a document in the National Library in Rio de Janeiro called Manuscript 512, which tells the story of a group of treasure hunters who discovered a lost city in the jungle of Brazil in 1753.

The text is something like a diary in Portuguese and is in rather poor condition. Nevertheless, its content inspires no generation of explorers and amateurs - treasure hunters - to search.

Manuscript 512 is perhaps the most famous document of the National Library of Rio de Janeiro and, from the point of view of modern Brazilian historiography, is "the basis of the greatest myth of national archeology." In the XIX-XX centuries. the lost city described in Manuscript 512 has been the subject of heated debate, as well as a relentless quest by adventurers, scientists, and explorers.

The document is written in Portuguese and is entitled "Historical Relation of an Unknown and Large Settlement, Ancient, Without Residents, Which Was Discovered in the Year 1753" ("Relação histórica de uma occulta e grande povoação antiguissima sem moradores, que se descopiu no anno de 1753" ). The document has 10 pages and is written in the form of a forwarding report; at the same time, taking into account the nature of the relationship between the author and the addressee, it can also be characterized as a personal letter.

Percival Harrison Fawcett was one of the most heroic personalities of the 20th century. The outstanding British archaeologist became famous for his expeditions to Latin America. Perhaps not everyone is able to spend most of their almost sixty years of life in wanderings and in military service.

Fawcett set out on an expedition in 1925 in search of this city (he called it the lost city "Z"), which he believed was the capital of an ancient civilization created by the Atlanteans.

Others, such as Barry Fell, believed that the strange symbols seen in the city were the work of the Egyptians from the time of Ptolemy. In addition, the city has a lot of evidence from the times of the Roman Empire: the Arch of Constantine, the statue of Augustine. The following are excerpts from this document.

The entire Fawcett expedition did not return, and her fate remained a mystery forever, which soon overshadowed the very secret of the lost city.

The subtitle of the document says that a group of Bandeirants ("Indian hunters") spent 10 years wandering around the interior unexplored regions of Brazil (sertans) in order to find the legendary "lost mines of Moribeki".

The document tells how the detachment saw mountains sparkling with numerous crystals, which caused the amazement and admiration of the people. However, at first they were unable to locate the mountain pass, and they camped at the foot of the mountain range. Then one negro, a member of the detachment, chasing a white deer, accidentally discovered a paved road passing through the mountains.

Ascending to the top, the Bandeyrants saw from above a large settlement, which at first glance was mistaken for one of the cities on the coast of Brazil. Having descended into the valley, they sent scouts to learn more about the settlement and its inhabitants, and waited for them for two days; an interesting detail is that at this time they heard the crowing of roosters, and this made them think that the city was inhabited.

Meanwhile, the scouts returned with the news that there were no people in the city. Since the others were still not sure of this, one Indian volunteered to go on reconnaissance alone and returned with the same message, which after the third reconnaissance was already confirmed by the entire reconnaissance detachment.

At dusk, they marched into the city, weapons at the ready. Nobody got caught by them or tried to block the way. It turned out that the road was the only way to get to the city. The entrance to the city was a huge arch, on the sides of which there were smaller arches. On the top of the main arch was an inscription that was impossible to read due to the height of the arch.

Behind the arch was a street with large houses, the entrances of which were made of stone, on which there were many different images that had darkened with time. With caution they entered some houses, which did not have traces of furniture or other traces of a person.

In the center of the city there was a huge square in the middle of which stood a tall column of black granite, on top of which stood a statue of a man pointing with his hand to the North.

At the corners of the square there were obelisks, similar to Roman ones, which had significant damage. On the right side of the square stood a majestic building, apparently the master's palace. On the left side were the ruins of a temple. The surviving walls were painted with frescoes decorated with gilding, reflecting the life of the gods. Most of the houses behind the temple were destroyed.

Ahead of the ruins of the palace ran a wide and deep river with a beautiful embankment, which in many places was littered with logs and trees brought by the flood. From the river, there were canals and fields overgrown with beautiful flowers and plants, including rice paddies, on which large flocks of geese were found.

After leaving the city, they three days downstream, until they came to a huge waterfall, the sound of the water of which could be heard for many kilometers. Here they found a lot of ore containing silver and apparently brought from the mine.

To the east of the waterfall there were many large and small caves and pits, from which, apparently, ore was mined. In other places, there were quarries with large cut stones, some of them were engraved with inscriptions similar to the inscriptions on the ruins of a palace and a temple.

A cannon shot in the middle of the field was a farmhouse about 60 meters long with a large porch and a staircase made of beautiful colored stones leading to a large hall and 15 smaller rooms decorated with beautiful frescoes and a pool inside.

After several days of travel, the expedition split into two groups. One of them downstream met two white men in a canoe. They had long hair and were dressed in European style. One of them, named Joao Antonio, showed them a gold coin found in the ruins of a farmhouse.

The coin was quite large and showed the figure of a man kneeling, with a bow and arrow and a crown on the other side. According to Antonio, he found the coin in the ruins of a house, which was apparently destroyed by an earthquake, which forced the residents to leave the city and the surrounding area.

Some of the pages of the manuscript cannot be read at all, including a description of how to get to this city due to the poor condition of the sheets of Manuscript 512. The author of this diary swears that he will keep it secret and especially information about the location of abandoned silver and gold mines and gold-bearing veins on the river.

The text contains four inscriptions copied by the Bandeyrants, executed in unknown letters or hieroglyphs: 1) from the portico of the main street; 2) from the portico of the temple; 3) from a stone slab that covered the entrance to the cave near the waterfall; 4) from the colonnade in a country house.

At the very end of the document, there is also an image of nine signs on stone slabs (as you might guess, at the entrance to the caves; this part of the manuscript was also damaged). As noted by the researchers, the given signs most of all resemble the letters of the Greek or Phoenician alphabet (in some places also Arabic numerals).

The Lost City You Must See.

Hampi is one of the oldest cities on earth. It was one of the centers of Hindu civilization 4 thousand years ago. But Hampi reached its greatest prosperity around the end of the 15th century - not long before India was occupied by Muslims from the north.

This place is often mentioned in the Ramayana. It was here that events unfolded, as the legend says, between the gods Lakshman, Hanuman, Sita, Rama, Sugriva and Bali. Where the citadel of Anegodi was, the monkey kingdom now spreads.

Hemakunta Hill, located south of the Virupaksha temple and clearly visible from the Hampi bazaar, has preserved the remains of early Jain temples and the largest monolithic sculpture in Hampi, Narasimha, one of the forms of God Vishnu, now it stands alone.

Also in the Bazaar area, among the boulders, there is a monolithic statue of God Ganesha, and several more temples inside a small mandapa.

2 km. northeast of Hampi Bazaar is the 16th century Vittal or Vitthala Temple, one of the finest examples of the Vijayanagara Empire's architectural art. The outer columns of this temple are said to have produced music when carved, which is why they are also known as musical columns. In fact, the thin stone columns do make a sound when you pat them with the palm of your hand.

On the way here and in front of the entrance to the temple complex on the right, you can see medieval shopping arcades, which are stone columns and once stone slabs lying on them, which allowed traders and buyers to be here during the daytime and hot.
The inner part of the temple complex - both the temple and the dance hall are perfectly preserved, here you can see friezes and columns with figures of animals and warriors, and in the intervals there are sculptural images of ten Vishnu avatars.
Here is a stone chariot that has become a symbol of Hampi, dating back to the 15th century. Stone wheels made in the shape of a lotus can rotate around stone axes.

The royal center of Hampi is so named because it was here that the elite lived, in some places it is surrounded by stone walls, with lookout towers that you can climb into, and contains several attractions of a predominantly Indo-Saracen type.

On the left, there are elephant stalls connected by small windows through which elephants could communicate with their trunks.

The Lotus Palace, which is a mixture of Indian and Islamic architecture, is a complex pavilion, it has never been inhabited and was used as a resting place in the hot season. The stone palace has a complex architectural plan, thanks to which the breeze is always felt in it, the building got its name from the blossoming lotus flower, which is similar to carved domes and vaulted ceilings.

Hampi has been open to tourists for only the last 20 years, until then it remained an abandoned city in the jungle.

At one time, it was visited by the English writer Joseph Kipling, who wrote The Jungle Book, for which in 1907 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

An abandoned ancient city in the jungle is a familiar book stamp, something from Kipling's "The Jungle Book" and stories about Mowgli. It is difficult to imagine that a traveler, lost in the rainforests, can suddenly stumble upon the beautiful ancient ruins that remain from the huge and once rich city. But this is exactly what happened to the French traveler and biologist Henri Mouault in 1860.

1.

Struck by the beauty and grandeur of the buildings, entwined with the roots and branches of trees, Anri Muo wrote about his find in his autobiography "Travel to the kingdoms of Siam, Cambodia, Laos and other areas of central Indochina", attaching his own maps and illustrations. These notes opened the grandiose temple city of Angkor for Europeans.

2.

Apparently, the name "Angkor" comes from "nagara" - "city" in Sanskrit, and "ongko" - which in the colloquial speech of the Khmers meant "ancient capital".

3.

In fairness, it must be said that Europeans visited Angkor before Muo - it is known that the Portuguese stayed here in the 16th century, and in the 19th century, not long before Muo, the French missionary Charles-Emile Buyevo, who also described his journey in a book that remained, unfortunately , unnoticed. This city-temple has never been completely abandoned, remaining in the years of decline, home to a small number of ordinary residents and monks.

4.

Angkor as the capital of the Khmer Empire emerged at the beginning of the ninth century - here was the residence of King Jayavarman II, and after - his descendants. This city is considered the oldest metropolis - while the European capitals numbered several thousand inhabitants, according to various estimates, up to a million people lived in Angkor! Water supply was organized in the city, crafts and industry (including metallurgy) were developed.
During the heyday of the city, unique temples dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu arose. Angkor Wat is a gigantic temple complex measuring 1,500 meters long and 1,300 meters wide, built of sandstone. Scientists assume that the power of elephants was used in the work. Angkor Wat consists of five lotus-shaped towers, rectangular galleries, and around - a rectangular moat with water, whose width is 190 m.
In the center of Angkor is the Bayon Temple - a Buddhist sanctuary, which once consisted of 54 towers (37 survived). Each tower has four faces facing the four cardinal points. The galleries of the temple are decorated with bas-reliefs and figures carved from stone - there are hundreds and thousands of them here, they are devoted to religious scenes, less often to military campaigns.

5.

The hands of Hollywood filmmakers have also reached Angkor. Thanks to this, one of the local temples unofficially bears the name of Angelina Jolie. The Ta-Prohma ruins, fused with the jungle trees, became the filming location for the film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and tourists associate them primarily with the famous movie star. Cambodians do not mind - the name stuck and helps in their simple souvenir business.

6.

As befits ancient historical monuments, Angkor silently keeps its secrets. The study of the city leads scientists to the idea that it may have been created as a giant map of the starry sky - the location of the temples coincides with the drawing of the constellation of the Dragon. The stone statues of Angkor also hide their mysteries. On the bas-reliefs, you can find figures of stegosaurs that became extinct hundreds of millions of years before the appearance of man.

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Oddly enough, but often residents leave entire cities, they are overgrown with grass and rot. Often this withdrawal is caused by war or natural disaster. The city becomes a kind of time capsule, because it remains in the state in which the owners left it. Many of lost cities were found, others have remained a legend. This top 10 can be called in different ways and abandoned cities, abandoned cities, lost cities, disappeared cities, city of legend, etc. but whatever you call it the greatest cities that have left their mark on history forever.

10. City of Caesars

Also known as the Eternal City and the City of Patagonia. It was never found, but presumably, it is located in the south of South America, in the Patagonia region. It was founded by Spanish travelers who were shipwrecked off the coast of South America. A bunch of legends surrounds the city: Someone talks about mountains of gold, someone says that the city was inhabited by 10-foot giants, someone claims that this is a city of ghosts that appear and disappear.

9. Troy

Sung in the poems of Homer, Troy was previously somewhere in the territory of modern Turkey. It was a developed and well-armed city with a reliable security system. Its coastal location allowed it to become a major port, and the nearby plains allowed it to develop agriculture. The remains of Troy were first discovered in 1870 by Heinrich Schliemann. Despite the fact that the excavations of Troy have since been often suspended and plundered, the scale is impressive today.

8. Lost City of Z

Supposedly located in the jungle of Brazil, the city of Z was the basis of a famous advanced civilization. The intricate network of bridges, roads and temples excites the imagination. Rumors of its existence have been going on since 1753, when a Portuguese navigator wrote a letter claiming that he had visited the city. In 1925, explorer Percy Fawcett and several groups that went in search of him disappeared.

7. Petra

Perhaps the most beautiful of all the cities on this list. Petra is located in Jordan near the Dead Sea and was previously the center of the Nabataean Trade Caravan. The most striking is its architecture - the temples are carved right into the rocks and the surrounding mountains. The city was built in 100 BC. and as studies show, he achieved many technological advances: dams, cisterns and much more helped him survive during floods and droughts. After the conquest by the Romans and the earthquake in 363 AD. the city fell into decay, and soon became an abandoned city... Petra stood in the desert until 1812.

6. Eldorado

Ostensibly located in the jungles of South America, a golden city ruled by a powerful king, and the locals are rich in gold and precious stones. Many expeditions obsessed with this idea lost and died in the jungle... The most famous of these was organized in 1541 by Gonzalo Pizarro, who led a group of 300 soldiers and several thousand Indians. They did not find any evidence of the existence of the city, many died from the epidemic, hunger and attack by the natives.

5. Memphis

Founded in 3100 BC, Memphis was the capital of ancient Egypt, and served as the administrative center of civilization for hundreds of years before losing influence with the rise of Thebes and Alexandria. At its peak, Memphis had a population of over 30,000 - the largest city in antiquity. The location of the city was lost until Napoleon's expedition discovered it in the 1700s. due to the subsequent sprawl of modern cities, many parts of Memphis are lost.

4. Angkor

Angkor in Cambodia was the center of the Khmer empire from 800 to 1400. AD The region was abandoned after a gradual decline, which ended with the invasion of the Thai army in 1431, leaving massive cities and thousands of Buddhist temples without a single inhabitant in the jungle. The city remained relatively intact until the 1800s, when a group of French archaeologists discovered it. Angkor and its surroundings are recognized as the largest pre-industrial city in the world, and its famous Angkor Wat temple is considered the largest religious monument in existence.

3. Pompeii

The Roman city of Pompeii was destroyed in 79 AD during the eruption of Vesuvius, who buried him under 60 feet of ash and stone. The city was estimated to have a population of about 20,000 and was considered one of the best luxury resorts for the Romans. The ruins of the city remained intact until the 1700s, when it was reopened in 1748 by workers building a palace for the King of Naples. Since then, excavations have not stopped there.

2. Atlantis

Today it is already argued that Atlantis is nothing more than a myth, but at one time it was the main and at the same time the attraction of gold miners from all over the world. The city was first mentioned in 360 BC. in the writings of Plato as a developed civilization, a powerful naval city. According to some scientists, Atlantis conquered almost all of Europe before sinking under water as a result of an environmental disaster. This legend of a technologically advanced city full of treasures has captured the imaginations of many writers and would-be adventurers. But none of the expeditions aimed at finding him was found.

1. Machu Picchu

Of all lost citiesthat have been found and studied, perhaps there is nothing more mysterious than Machu Picchu. Isolated near the Urubamba Valley in Peru, the city remained hidden from human eyes until 1911. The city is divided into districts and includes over 140 different structures. It is said to have been built in 1400 by the Incas and abandoned by them less than 100 years later, most likely after its population was destroyed by smallpox brought from Europe. Many legends have developed around the city. Someone claims that the whole city is a holy temple, others claim that it was used as a prison, but recent studies show that, most likely, the city was the property of the Inca emperor Pachacuti. And the place was chosen based on the astrological mythology of the Incas.