User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
View of the central structure of Angkor Wat (built in the 12th century CE), photo by Jakub HałunIn the early days of the Pandemic,
there were a number of Americans who apparently believed toilet paper was a powerful antiviral and the more you had, the better you would be protected from Covid-19.
Despite the fact that neither the CDC nor the WHO vouched for its efficacy, these people bought so much toilet paper that the rest of us were unable to buy any for months.
We had a number of things we could use instead - washcloths, soap, and clean water being the preferred method but also some people might have gathered fallen leaves or ripped out pages of old, moldy books they had planned to donate to the local library and thankfully now found a better use for.
I think it's safe to say that while we might have substituted wash cloths, leaves, or pages from
Fifty Shades of Grey, none of us considered sharing it.
But that's what they did in Pompeii. As the author of
Four Lost Cities relates, not only did the Pompeiians not have individual stalls (their public toilets were in rows with about a foot of space in between each seat),
they also shared their toilet paper!
It came in the form of a sponge on a stick, or a
xylospongia. You'd take a dump then grab the sponge, dip it in water and wipe your ass. When finished, you handed it to the guy sitting next to you or simply left it for the next person to use.
I think all of our imaginations can take us places we don't want to go...... Let's move on.
This book is full of fascinating details about how ancient people lived in four "lost" cities. As the author explains,
these cities were never lost in the true sense of the word but, for various reasons, abandoned over time. Annalee Newitz visited these four ancient cities, interviewed a number of archaeologists, and even assisted at an archaeological excavation in order to learn what has been uncovered about the past, why these cities were built and why they might have been abandoned, and how the citizens of these cities lived.
They discuss the cities of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, Pompeii in Italy. Angkor in Cambodia, and Cahokia in present day Illinois. I found all of these riveting. Newitz studied not just the elite but also the ordinary people, and provides illuminating details of how they lived their lives... and yes, how in some places they used and re-used toilet paper. They use data archaeology to look at what the masses did and try
"to reconstruct their social and even psychological lives".
We learn how they built their cities, what they ate, what their beliefs might have been, and how they celebrated. We learn about Dido, a resident in Çatalhöyük who fell from the rooftop entrance to her home, breaking ribs and giving her injuries that, though they healed, made her favour one side of her body for the rest of her life. It's details like these that captivate me, elucidating the lives of our distant ancestors.
The most interesting section for me was the one about Cahokia. I am ashamed to admit, though I'm American, I never heard of this city. I know of course that there were ancient Aztec and Mayan cities in Mexico, and yet it never occurred to me to ask if there had been cities in the present day United States. I simply accepted the narrative we are taught in school, that civilization didn't come to America until the white men brought it.
In fact, as we learn in this book, there were sophisticated cities long before Europeans arrived,
the oldest of which, "called Watson Brake, dates back 5,500 years—centuries before the first Egyptian pyramids were built."Newitz explores in depth the largest pre-Columbian city, Cahokia. It was a sprawling metropolis with a population of up to 30,000 people, more than Paris had at that time. Nearly a third of Cahokians were immigrants from all over the southern future United States. The people of Cahokia (its original name is sadly lost) built huge earthen pyramids, the greatest of which was Monks Mound, soaring 30 meters high (nearly 100 feet).
The details we know from archaeologists are fascinating and
Four Lost Cities is a joy to read. Newitz meticulously brings these cities alive, sharing what is known of the people who lived there and how they would have spent their days. I kept my phone with me as I read, eagerly Googling images of the places described. Anyone interested in prehistoric times, peoples, and/or cities will find much to appreciate in this book.
And as for those people who hoard toilet paper - I imagine they still have mounds of rolls in their homes, lining the walls of their basements, shoved under beds and sofas, and stored in their freezers.
You know who you are.
And some day in the distant future, an archaeologist will dig out the remains of your home, learning how people lived in the twenty-first century. They will be baffled by all that toilet paper and struggle for an explanation.
If future archaeologists are anything like present ones, their interpretation will resort to something to do with spirituality or religion. They will assume
the people of the twenty-first century
worshipped assholes. Their hypothesis will be confirmed when heaps of Trump flags and red MAGA hats are also unearthed.
They'll write an incredible book about their discoveries and readers like me will be fascinated by the toilet paper use of the 21st century.
Rating: really liked it
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FOUR LOST CITIES is a really interesting concept. In this book, Annalee Newitz explores four "lost" cities that basically fell into disuse due to either environmental disaster or social change. To give this book a really personal and sensory narrative, they traveled to each of the four cities that they chose to write on: Çatalhöyük (in modern-day Turkey), Pompeii (the Roman getaway off the coast of modern-day Naples), Angkor in modern-day Cambodia (home to Angkor Wat), and Cahokia (a pre-Columbian Native American city dating back to early Medieval times).
I liked that the author made a point to include cities that were not exclusively European. I learned about Çatalhöyük in an art history class (primarily the bull's head motifs and building designs), but this was my first time learning about Cahokia and I liked how, in the cases of Cahokia and Angkor, the author challenged the Anglo-centric views of anthropologists that continue to bias research and education to this day. For example, the idea that Native Americans had no idea of land ownership, or that Native peoples are too naive to appreciate their
own art or cultural artifacts. This is a point that I think some people don't feel comfortable discussing and I was really glad that the author pointed that out.
It's difficult to rate this book because while I enjoyed it and the writing style was exceptional, it wasn't all that entertaining-- in part, because in some of the chapters, it felt like the lack of knowledge about the ancient cities gave the writing a sort of nebulous uncertainty. I felt this most strongly in the chapter on Çatalhöyük, where the whole chapter basically continued to reiterate the point that archaeologists still aren't entirely sure what the people were like or what really caused the discontinued use of the city. Likewise, Cahokia remains a mystery in many regards, with no written records and very little surviving evidence to give us insight into what the daily life was like in such an old civilization.
The chapters on Pompeii and Angkor are the most vivid, perhaps because they are the most written about and, in the case of Pompeii, so well preserved. Pompeii, in particular, was particularly fascinating because of its salacious history and the way that the day to day life of the nobility and the working class was so richly portrayed. I would have read a whole book about Pompeii, I realized, because once the chapter ended, I felt like I hadn't gotten my fill-- and sadly, it was the only chapter I really felt that way about, because everything else just raised more questions and left me feeling frustrated for answers.
I do recommend FOUR LOST CITIES because I think it gives you an idea of what makes a society crumble (at least, the physical parts of it) and it really shines a light on some parts of history that you probably wouldn't learn about in your history classes (again, writing this from a U.S. lens). In my American history classes, I
never learned about Cahokia, for example, even though it is literally a part of U.S. history and it goes back to the 1000s! That is so cool! I recommend reading the book in pieces and then taking a break after each chapter to let things sink in and give yourself time to look things up.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!3 to 3.5 stars
Rating: really liked it
3.5 ☆The "lost city" is a recurring trope in Western fantasies, suggesting glamorous undiscovered worlds where Aquaman hangs out with giant seahorses.
Modern metropolises are by no means destined to live forever, and historical evidence shows that people have chosen to abandon them repeatedly over the past eight thousand years. It's terrifying to realize that most of humanity lives in places that are destined to die.
Four Lost Cities described areas which are still being excavated and studied today: Çatahölyük (Turkey), Pompeii (Italy), Angkor (Cambodia), and Cahokia (USA). These span the centuries with the first example as possibly the very first urban settlement while the last two overlap in time through the 14th century.
In each of the metropolises, Newitz provided glimpses of the evolution of archeology as new methods of exploration have altered the interpretation of findings. History is after all his-story and has often been a subjective recasting of a past event. I found this aspect of this book to be at times more interesting than the sites themselves. In particular, the discovery of these "lost cities" had been played up in the past to promote European cultural superiority (ex. Angkor). The motivations up until and through much of the mid to late 20th century were to find treasures to exploit for museum or private collections; in other words, the archeologists had concentrated their efforts upon the rich. At Çatahölyük, Ruth Tringham presented an alternative mindset as the focus was on Dido, just one woman's household.
I do try to look at lives of individual household when I'm excavating because history is not a big flow from the top down... You have to look from the bottom up, and combine small stories, and small pieces of evidence, to see a history which is dynamic.
In Pompeii, the sensibilities and religious values of the earlier excavators hindered an unbiased interpretation of what they had found; such as graffiti was deemed pornographic as opposed to also being that society's shorthand graphic depicting wealth. An estimated 75 percent of Pompeii's 12,000 residents were liberti (ie. slaves) and freed liberti, who had been allowed opportunities for economic prosperity. This societal structure had been determined by meticulous aggregation of data points in order to derive an idea of this resort town's social structure and businesses.
... data archeology represents the democratization of history. It's about looking at what the masses did and trying to reconstruct their social and even psychological lives.
Once the translation of writing expanded from sanskrit to khmer (a language indigenous to Cambodia), understanding of Angkor bloomed. The use of LIDAR ("light detection and ranging") technology for anthropogenic geomorphology (how humans change the land) also revealed a different pattern of urbanization and reason for Angkor's construction than expected in the late 1800s by the European explorer who had "discovered" it. Newitz seemed more speculative than not in this section about debt slavery / employment, urban settlement, and whether societal collapse preceded the abandonment of the site.
Cahokia in southernmost Illinois formed Mississippian culture from 1050 through 1350. Much of this section was written in a tentative fashion, as researchers continue to contest old presumptions coloring past hypotheses because of modern findings from stable isotope analysis and magnetometry. This metropolis defied the common understanding of why cities even formed in the first place. Cahokia seemed to center around communal activities be they spiritual or festive in nature, which breaks the mold of urban settlements created for trade or purposes of defense. While intriguing, I found this section the weakest in terms of Newitz's overall thesis and goal for writing this book; in particular, the reason / cause / catalyst for its abandonment was not addressed.
In the Introduction, Newitz stated that her goal was to explore the
reality of how people destroy their civilizations. The author asserted that each of the four metropolises failed after
prolonged periods of political instability coupled with environmental crisis. Newitz had only partially accomplished her objective. Angkor no longer has permanent residents, and yet elements of the khmer culture still exists. Some indigenous researchers argue that the Mississippian culture has left traces that persist today. Newitz didn't tie the abandonment of Cahokia to any crisis attributable to climactic change.
I had read this as a buddy read with the NFBC because I had visited Pompeii and Angkor. I did learn a few new things about both, and of course, about the other two settlements. But in the second half of
Four Lost Cities, I felt that more questions than answers had been raised and I became a lot more distracted. At that point, I looked up the author's bio, and I could practically see the wheels turning as Newitz contemplated material for her future sci-fi novels.
Rating: really liked it
Piecing together what urban life on earth was all about 9,000 years ago is like imagining what life would be “in a galaxy far, far away”. Luckily archeological technology has allowed us to uncover the daily routines of ordinary people and reveal what domestic life was like in ancient cities.
Using the four excavated ancient cities of Catalhoyuk, Pompeii, Angkor, and Cahokia, and concentrating on the evolution of these large urban populations, we learn what those citizens ate, how they congregated, and what the interior of their homes were like. I liked that the focus was on everyday lives, rather than “elite political maneuvers”.
Well researched and easy to read.
Rating: really liked it
This is a good but frustrating book. Newitz is a first-rate writer and has done their field work and homework. A fair bit of my frustration is inherent in any book on archaeology, especially one set in the deep past -- archaeologists' opinions differ and change over time, and will change again -- especially when the evidence they have is limited and ambiguous. But I (mostly) had fun reading about the work, the ruins, and these ancient civilizations -- especially where there were some constraints on the archaeologists' and author's interpretations.
I thought the best section by far was on Pompeii, and I liked that Newitz emphasized the lives of ordinary people, the "middlers" -- who aren't quite middle-class as we think of them (this was 2000 years ago!), but this was an unusually calm period in Roman Empire history, and there was some degree of equity in provincial society then. Pompeii was a tourist and party town -- neighboring Herculaneum was quieter, wealthier and more fashionable. Pompeii was badly damaged in a powerful earthquake in 62 AD, and some of the former elite mansions were repurposed into mixed-use developments, which was news to me. I'll have to look for a recent history of ancient Pompeii (and Rome) in the first century and would welcome reading a whole book on the topic. Recommendations, anyone?
More random stuff from my notes: 160 tabernas are known for maybe 12,000 residents. They served mostly takeout food -- a lot of it -- to middlers and tourists. Who got rowdy at times. Emperor Nero banned gladiatorial games for two years after one big riot. Pompeiian carts drove on the right! -- known from the scars they left on the curbs. And were restricted to certain hours, to hold down the noise. The sex stuff! Whoa. Things were different then.
The Roman government was surprisingly generous with aid to displaced residents after the massive eruption 0f 79 AD. Both cities and the surrounding countryside were buried in thick, hot volcanic ash, and left useless for many years after.
The Cahokia section was the weakest for me, a major disappointment. The archaeology here is especially nebulous. Except for the human sacrifices. The author wrote this up as a big party and fertility-ceremony (in part), culminating in burying 52 young women, human-sacrifice victims, in a mass grave. Newitz tried to spin this as no big deal, things were different then, Europeans did bad stuff too. True enough, but so what? Does the author really think the families of the dead girls accepted their deaths as just part of life? I doubt it. And the Epilogue! The less said about that, the better.
So. I'm not sorry I read the book, but it wasn't as good as I had hoped. Happens. Still pretty good, and the Pompeii stuff is great. You may want to start there. And skip the epilogue, is my advice.
Civilization is *good*, and a wealthy society is better able to adjust to shocks. Reviewer's opinion.
A good professional review, at the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/bo... He liked it more than I did, and wrote a much better and more detailed review. Read this review before you decide on whether to read the book.
Rating: really liked it
This book is part memoir and part history. It covers the history of four ancient cities that have been deserted for centuries. The four cities are: Çatalhöyük (Turkey), Pompeii (Italy), Angkor (Cambodia), and Cahokia (US). Newitz visited each site, interviewed experts, and recounts what has been discovered, focusing on how the people lived and how the city died out.
My favorite is the first part set in Çatalhöyük. I think it is a brilliant move by the author to follow what can be gleaned of the life of a regular person. A female skeleton, named Dido by archeologists, was found at the site, along with relics of her home life. It really helps bring the history to life. Since so much time has passed, they have to speculate, but it is based on logical reasoning and the author tells us how they came to those conclusions.
The Pompeii section contains lots of information I had already known, but there are some new tidbits, such as where the people went after they evacuated in the wake of the eruption of Vesuvius. The Angkor section shows how important it is to plan a city, rather than place the water source at the whim of the person in charge. The final section portrays life in an ancient city near St. Louis. I did not know much about this site and found this section informative.
This book is filled with fascinating facts about how people lived in ancient times. Other accounts call them “lost” cities, but the author points out that they were abandoned over a period of time for a variety of reasons. If you enjoy archeology or sociology, as I do, you may want to check it out.
Rating: really liked it
I've no complaints. But I am biased of course. I first found out about this book when I heard Annalee talked about in Swecon - I was so excited since they are one of my favorite SFF writers and could not wait for this book. I've been an urbanite almost all my life and I've worked on urban issues - mostly health - and anything city related fascinates me. After all, 70% of Indonesians will live in the cities by 2045.
The book discusses four so-called (but not really) lost cities: Çatalhöyük (Turkey), Angkor (Cambodia), Pompeii (Italy), and Cahokia (US). I enjoyed how Annalee wove the history, academic debates, etc into a readable account. Their preference to focus on the lives of ordinary folks -not the rulers - is very appreciated. While each city had its own origins, stories, heydays and then problems, it is the people who wield their fates. The political and environmental issues play a huge part but what were decided by the people is what finally determine whether the cities would wither, or spread around, or left behind, or live somewhere in different forms. Parts of Jakarta, for instance, would be underwater in no time due to lousy government planning and execution. What have been done by the citizens? What would the northern Jakartans do when their houses are inundated (worse than before)? Move to the south? So the city will expand south/east/west part? The government now plans to move our capital to Central Kalimantan. There would be lots and lots of 5W1H questions including about the people who would be its citizens.
Anyway, let me stop my rambling and say that I'd like to know more about anthropogenic geomorphology, so if you find something along that line, feel free to nudge me.
Rating: really liked it
This holds oodles of information. My main focus was on Cahokia, yet all 4 parts were thorough. I'm glad I read it. A task that took much longer than any most usual geographical type non-fiction I've read completely as a whole, without any skimming. In driving past Cahokia Mounds at least 4 or 5 times in the last 2 decades, I have always wanted to see more and understand it better. I think I do now- understand it. But there certainly are better and more beautiful places to see in that area of Little Egypt in Illinois.
I've been within Pompeii and watched digs there in the late 1990's. I walked within dwellings back rooms and could go all over then, but this is no longer doable I have heard. The pornography and translations graphs (graffeti) are the most foul I've ever read. (Believe me, many do NOT have to be translated either.) Nothing is sacred. Nothing. It is extremely interesting because unlike these other 3 cities, the ending was so alive. Fully. Yet so abrupt. And it was nearly all libertii (former slaves or offspring of slaves or freedom earned themselves etc. of the first 2 generations) and the mixtures of ethnic peoples of so many tribal areas made it even more tragic. If that is possible. I never knew that if a woman had 3 children she was automatically considered freed. Or that with 4- you got all the kids free too. Or that slavery under Nero was changing and that he gave women rights of ownership in their own names for one of the first times. He was crazy but he wasn't all bad.
But I have to warn you a tiny bit. Annalee Newitz does summersaults over gymnastic triples over backwards flips to parse the slavery and manual labors and mass executions of the indigenous cultures. Western civilization BAD, indigenous cultures GOOD- you know. So 1000 dead slaves for one ceremony is not as bad as Henry VIII killing two of his wives. That's the kind of parsing I'm posting about. Made me laugh.
It didn't ruin the book for me, but did make me question a few of her main premises about economics vs spiritual substance being the urban imploding etc. When you are sacrificing people in droves of 100's for certain ceremonies, I would believe that the volunteers become skimpy after not too long.
It's mind-blowing that the Ankor sites could have been excavated by hand, manual labor. It would be similar to digging out the Panama Canal with a shovel and a pail. I do not think all that labor was done for such periods of time without huge slavery classes. For more than just a few decades. More like 2 or 3 centuries.
The author doesn't deny that at all, and yet she vastly underestimates the economics of some of these causes for such outcomes, IMHO. Even within the structural spiritual cultures of highly ritualized living there comes a point what the substance would just not "be there" for the core games or the show. Climates always change, rivers bend into other directions- and economics of trade and possible growth of crops always matters. She never denies that, but her scales are skewed, IMHO.
Rating: really liked it
I am definitely an outlier here which surprises me because I generally like nonfiction and love archaeology. This book was downright boring and rather moralizing. The section on Pompeii was the best, particularly because we have written records of that city. The civilization in modern day Turkey was rather interesting, but I felt that Ankor cities and Cahokia was extremely technical and did not flow. Was truly interested in the life of the ordinary people of each of the cities. The drawn maps were helpful and interesting, but actual photographs would have added to one's understanding.
Rating: really liked it
3.5 stars
Rating: really liked it
Four cities from throughout human history spread across the world - who were the people who lived there? What was it about these places that attracted people and why did they end up leaving?
If you have an interest in human history and archaeology but don't have much in-depth knowledge or want anything too academic or dense then this is certainly worth a try. The style is more like a newspaper long-read and, although there is some basic archaeological information, there is a lot of speculation about the motives of people who occupied and then deserted these cities. Were their choices political, religious, purely practical? What must they have been thinking and feeling? I should say that this speculation seems to largely come from the experts and specialists that the author meets & speaks with and isn't just their own imagination.
I learnt quite a bit, even about Pompeii which is probably the most well-known of the four cities, and I'll certainly now look for more reading about the other cities covered. I also liked that the author spent the time discussing why these cities have never really been "lost" because the people and cultures still survive elsewhere or because the local population still knew the location but finding a "lost" city gave notoriety to the western colonial explorers/forces.
Personally, I didn't find the style for me - I felt it wandered away from a point to circle back around later or to mention similar things again. I think some photos or sketches may have helped focus the stories being told.
Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for the review copy.
Rating: really liked it
We all would’ve learnt about ancient civilisations in history. But what do we really know about them? Why did people abandon those sophisticated civilisations? These may be questions for archeologists, but as a history seeker I’ve always had these questions in mind.
The Four Lost Cities - we follow the exploration of four ancient forgotten civilisations along with the author Annalee Newitz. Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.
With fascinating details, archeological insights and rich cultural background, this is how ancient history should be written. Anyone who is interested in history would like this book. The author is a cohost of Hugo award winning podcast Our Opinions are correct! She is the author of Future of another timeline that will interest time travel enthusiast and scifi lovers alike!!
Thank you Netgalley & publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest opinion!
Rating: really liked it
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Four Lost Cities is an incredibly interesting and topical monograph that isn't a monograph. The author, Annalee Newitz, takes readers through a conversation about the rise and fall of four ancient cities. Many scholarly works get bogged down in jargon, but this book takes the reader on a journey with an easy to read style and makes it all the more effective in bringing it's central message to the reader.
The ancient cities are Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey from the Neolithic period, Pompeii in Italy, Angkor in Cambodia, and Cahokia near the Mississippi River in North America. Going into this book, I knew about two of the four cities and was astounded to read about both Çatalhöyük and Cahokia.
Contrary to popular belief, Newitz concludes that the residents of these cities did not die out, rather they migrated from their close-quarters homes. Through the narrative, Newitz analyzes the cultural and historical implications that led to migrations from these ancient metropolis sites. Detailing new and innovative techniques in the field of archelogy, Newitz presents conclusions and findings in a compelling way. Though the author's background is journalism, the research that was put into this book is evident in every paragraph.
Though I do not live in a metropolitan area, I see the effects of urbanization within my community and region. Like other reviewers, I focused on the message about urbanism and it's effect on society. I enjoyed reading the historical and archeological analysis of urbanism and migration in ancient cities. Newitz makes a clear statement that the subject civilizations migrated as a result of necessity. This is the message I held on to at the end of the book. We, as humans, must change as a result of necessity, be that migration from urban centers or changing other habits. This is an incredibly timely message for the world!
Rating: really liked it
I found this book to be somewhat uneven. Some parts are fascinating and informative,, such as the first large human city and Pompeii. (Note to self--I hope that you didn't find that one interesting because of the sex stuff). The other two cities are full of speculation and not that informative. I was going to give it a four star rating anyway until I read the epilogue where, with almost no evidence, the author describes a future in which all cities eventually collapse leaving piles of rotting bodies behind and this after earlier savaging Jared Diamond's book "Collapse.""). You might want to skip that part.
Rating: really liked it
Sure, this book is full of interesting anecdotes and theories about the four lost (somewhat lost, at least) cities. The first city described, in particular, fascinated me--Catalhoyuk. However, two things irritated me. First, the evidence--fossils and shards and post holes filled in with garbage, etc.--invites a great deal of speculation, but much less certainty. Pompey is a bit different in that accounts and records of that era survive in print. I don't thing the author can be faulted here--we're going on what they left behind, and it doesn't always add up to a coherent story.
What irked me more was this constant moralizing tone that suggested we shouldn't make judgements (about human sacrifice, for example; or engineering) because we are bad too, in our modern era. It strikes me that the evidence from both ancient societies and our own is that we need to be much more willing to call a spade a spade and make the tough calls to change our track. There is a cloying admiration for all ancient societies here, one that serves as a presupposition that detracts from this books overall story.
