25 Lost Cities - mental_floss on YouTube - List Show (318) | Mental Floss

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube

And did you know that about 2,500 people visit the lost city of Machu Picchu, Peru every day

It's believed the location was built around 1400 CE for an Incan ruler and probably was deserted around when the Spanish took over

The ruins sit at about 8,000 feet above sea level. And interestingly, its discoverer was looking for a different lost city, Vilcabamba

Anyway, that's the first of many lost cities, most of which have since been found, that I'm going to tell you about in this video today

And speaking of cities and towns and being lost and being found

Paper Towns is a book that I wrote that's now being turned into a movie

It comes out July 24th in the U.S. and other places at other times

In 2015, a group of expeditioners found a lost city in Honduras known as White City

or the City of the Monkey God, a place that people have been looking for since the 1920s

Archaeologists then found a bunch of artifacts from between 1000 and 1400 CE

and they revealed a culture that was wealthy and religious and possibly played religiously-oriented sports

Schaftinga in the Netherlands, and yes, I know that my Dutch is excellent, was lost for centuries

though it's since been rebuilt and a full 55 people lived there. The majority of the town was destroyed in the 16th century during the All Saints Flood

which inspired the Dutch legend that the town was once very rich, but a fisherman caught a mermaid and refused to let her go

causing the flood and, you know, the ensuing poverty and destruction and everything

One of the largest Neolithic sites that you can still visit is Chattahouliuk, Turkey

which was a city from about 7500 through 5700 BCE. It was excavated in the 1950s when archaeologists were looking for the home of the sea people from ancient Egyptian stories

And the buildings were so closely packed together that people probably walked on the rooftops of their houses rather than on pathways

The archaeologists found everything from ovens to murals to ladders used to get into the houses and it believed that 7 people once lived there Angkor Cambodia was home to the capital of the Khmer empire between the 9th and 15th centuries And you can visit it now but plan for a long visit because at 400 square miles it bigger than the five boroughs of New York City

Experts aren't sure why the city was abandoned for Phnom Penh, but they believe it has something to do with the shift from Hinduism to Theravada Buddhism

Speaking of capitals, Karakuram in Mongolia was the capital of the Mongol Empire during the 13th century

When it was excavated in the 1930s, archaeologists found that its citizens had heated floors, kilns, and methods for processing copper

We don't even have heated floors here in the Menelfloss offices, we just walk around like peasants on regular carpet

Persepolis in Iran has been there since 518 BCE, when it was the capital of the Achaimid Empire, basically home to a huge palace for the emperor

Half of the palace was an artificial terrace, meaning it was built on a mountainside

The city was eventually burned down by Alexander the Great, who burned down many great cities

though you can now visit the ruins of it at least. Calakmul can be found in modern-day Mexico in the middle of a jungle, but it was once

a Mayan city with about 50,000 citizens known as the Kingdom of the Snake

The city even had a rival, the neighboring Tikal, because both wanted to be more powerful

and the two battled for centuries before the collapse of the Mayas. Tikal, by the way, is in modern-day Guatemala and features a temple that's 154 feet tall

Before the collapse of the Maya, the city may have had up to 90,000 citizens

By comparison, in 1350 CE, London had 50,000 citizens. One of the biggest trade port cities in Egypt was Heraklion or Thonis

There's even a myth that Paris and Helen of the Trojan War visited Heraklion before

the war began. For a long time, people believed that it was underwater, and in 2013, divers finally started

finding artifacts from the city in the Mediterranean Sea, including over 60 ships, gold coins

and huge statues. We have here a historic recreation. The astronaut isn't exactly in a diving suit, but it's close

And there was an anglerfish and a gigantic viking girl. You know, it was about like this

Speaking of the Trojan War there are three interesting lost cities from Greece Pavlopetri Haliki and Crisi Island Pavlopetri ruins are underwater thanks to an earthquake It believed that the city was around from about 2800 through 1000 BCE

And because of its size, some people believe that Pavlopetri inspired the myth of Atlantis

But I, for one, believe that Atlantis is real and it's out there and there are people living under the ocean right now

They're called Octonauts and they're doing important work in the field of marine biology

Haliki was also underwater for a long time due to a tsunami in 373 BCE, which was blamed on Poseidon

Archaeologists found the ruins in 2001 CE because the lagoon covering Haliki had dried up

Crecy is really a lost island, not a city, but we're making an exception here

It vanished, along with its supposedly amazing Temple to Apollo, around the 2nd century CE

A diver claimed to have seen the ruins in the 1960s, but no further progress has been made

so all you explorers out there, if you're looking for a lost island to seek, check out Creasy

Although, frankly, if you're not already familiar with the Lost Island of Creasy, I'm a little bit concerned with your credentials as a lost island explorer

Okay, let's finish up with some quick facts about various lost cities around the world

Ubar, or the Atlantis of the Sands, is called that because it was once wealthy and powerful

and in 1992 it was supposedly found in Oman by a group of archaeologists

But experts still aren't sure if that's the true Yubar or if it's still lost

The Maya city of Palenque in Mexico is 1,780 hectares and only 10% of it has been explored by archaeologists

It's believed that the people in the Indus Valley who lived in the lost city of Mahenjadaro

bred chickens, not to eat but because cockfighting was part of their religious rituals

Q-Lamp in Peru was built in stages. The old parts are from around 600 CE, which is about three times as old as Machu Picchu

The vast majority of the city was built between 900 and 1000 CE, about twice as old as Machu Picchu

Then the Inca conquered the people who built the city and added a bit more to it

The ruins are within a huge wall that's about 20 meters tall. It believed that Turquoise Mountain in Afghanistan was once a community where Jews Christians and Muslims got along and worked and lived together Now it believed that the only thing left is a monument Minaret of Jam But you can still visit the Great Stupa and a handful of Buddhist monuments from the lost

city Sanchi in India. Ashoka the Great commissioned the Great Stupa in the third century BCE, making it the oldest

existing Buddhist sanctuary. You can also visit Troy. Yes, that Troy in Turkey

It was discovered in 1793, but scholars still debate the historical significance of the

city and how real the story of the Trojan War actually is

Cliff Palace in modern Colorado was a city made in the caves of a cliff by the ancient

Pueblo peoples. About 100 people lived in the 150 rooms built into the cliff

The tribe left in around 1300 CE, possibly because of drought. Cahokia in modern day Illinois was a Native American city that had a population of up

to 40,000 people in the 13th century, meaning it was the largest city in US history until

Philadelphia in the 1780s. The Jayanagar, India had around 500,000 citizens before it was destroyed in the 16th century

Before that, the city had multiple fields, gardens, markets, shops, and temples

Great Zimbabwe was once home to a palace for the monarch in Zimbabwe

It took over 300 years for the city to be constructed after building commenced in the 11th century

The walls surrounding the city were 36 feet tall and covered 820 feet of distance

And finally, I returned to my salon to tell you about Pompeii, Italy

Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, covering the entire city in about 15 feet of ash, which

turned out to be pretty bad for both the city and its residents. Everything was destroyed

There are amphitheater, aqueducts, cafes, brothels, a gymnasium, and multiple public baths

It was rediscovered in 1748 and there were people-shaped casts, frozen where they were

when the volcano erupted. Just a pleasant reminder from all of us here at Mental Floss Video that life is fleeting

and at any moment a volcano could destroy us all. Thanks for watching Metal Floss here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these nice people

And don't forget, Paper Towns, the movie based on my book, comes out July 24th

It's really good, I'm not just saying that. As we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome