Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

As long as we tell our urban ancestors' stories, no city is ever lost. They live on, in our imaginations and on our public lands, as a promise that no matter how terrible things get, humans always try again.

Remember me but forget my fate.

There was no giant sign proclaiming the end of life as they'd known it; instead, there was a mounting pile of annoyances and disappointments.

The khñum debt slavery scenario sounds brutal until you consider that most capitalist cultures in the West use a similar system. In the United States, it’s not unusual for people to graduate from college with so much debt that they have to work their whole lives to pay it off.

It's terrifying to realize that most of humanity lives in places that are destined to die. The myth of the lost city obscures the reality of how people destroy their civilizations.

It’s terrifying to realize that most of humanity lives in places that are destined to die.

Often it is in the most squalid and filthiest of places that we can uncover profound truths about a society that considers itself civilized.

City leaders pour resources into beautiful spectacles for political reasons, rather than providing good roads, functioning sewers, relatively safe marketplaces, and other basic amenities of urban life. As a result, cities may look awe-inspiring but aren't particularly resilient against disasters like storm floods and drought. And the more a city suffers from the onslaughts of nature, the more contentious its political situation becomes. Then it's even harder to repair shattered dams and homes. This vicious cycle has haunted cities for as long as they've existed. Sometimes the cycle ends with urban revitalization, but often it ends in death.

In the soft apocalypse at Angkor, we can see directly what happens when political instability meets climate catastrophe. It looks chillingly similar to what cities are enduring in the contemporary world.