Gone, without a trace. Mass disappearances are a very real and
bizarre thing in which large numbers of people suddenly disappear
without a trace, for seemingly no reason. Sometimes, an airplane full of
passengers flies off into the night, never to be seen again, or a ghost
ship turns up floating around in the water with absolutely no sign of
its crew. Even these chilling instances, however, are small-time
compared to the vanishing of an entire society.
Entire
civilizations, cities, and empires have faded away, and today’s
archaeologists and researchers often try to retrace their inhabitants’
steps and reconstruct what exactly happened to see if we can find a
cause, and more importantly, a way to prevent it from happening to our
cultures today. Interestingly, some of the cultures on this list were
several hundred thousand people strong before they seemingly disappeared
without a trace. Here are ten civilizations that just up and vanished
mysteriously.
Nabateans
Semites
are people who belong to a particular ancient language group, which
includes Arabs, Akaadians, Hebrews, and more, and one of those groups
was the Nabatean culture, which existed since at least 312 BC, as they
are mentioned as having been attacked by the Macedonians.This
ancient and seemingly forgotten kingdom spanned the territories of
Syria, Arabia, and Palestine at one point, becoming rather massive.
Nabatean writing would eventually develop over the centuries to become
modern-day Arabic, and it wasn’t until recently that we were able to
retrace its evolution.
They established vast trade routes and
commerce and became an extremely technologically advanced civilization
for the day, with vast water systems which helped them survive the arid
climate of Arabia. They left us massive structures which aligned with
celestial bodies as other ancient cultures did, proof of an engineering
genius among these people. Toward the end of their history, they were
strong allies with the mighty Roman Empire, though Emperor Trajan did
annex the kingdom from AD 105 to 106. We really don’t hear about the
Nabateans much after that era.
Clovis People
Anyone
who’s ever been to the deserts of New Mexico might wonder how or why
any civilization would live there before the advent of air conditioning.
But this area, as well as an expansive land within the Americas, was
the territory of one of the earliest American civilizations, the Clovis
people, who are named after the modern-day city of Clovis, New Mexico.
A
rare and important archaeological discovery was made here, namely many
sharp objects and weapons, obsidian, bone tools, and hammers, which were
highly sophisticated for their time, 9050 to 8800 BC based on
21st-century estimates. These same tools and designs have been found
across a good chunk of North America, meaning this group was
particularly widespread. Nevertheless, they eventually just totally
disappeared.
It has been hypothesized that their massive size
forced them, much like Rome, to branch out into smaller groups which
eventually evolved into distinct peoples in different places, making
them the forerunners to many other Native American cultures. That notion
is supported by the fact that genetic links to the Clovis have even
been found in the remains of ancient South American people. Others have
speculated that they relied heavily on hunting the mammoth, which became
extinct, or even that the southwestern part of the United States was
hit by a comet that wiped them out.
Catalhoyuk
The
inhabitants of Catalhoyuk were a very old Neolithic civilization who
also disappeared into thin air, as far as we can tell. They lived in
modern-day Turkey from 7500 to 5700 BC in mud-brick housing not unlike
that of other extremely early civilizations. This particular group was
extremely artistic with their religion, painting massive murals and
erecting large shrines of dedication that astonish art buffs today. They
lived extensively on grain and other crops for sustenance.
Researchers
are continuing to unearth new facts about this group every day, so
perhaps we will soon know exactly what happened to them, but as of now,
we just have the empty shells of the marvelous buildings and unique
homes sitting seemingly abandoned. A large part of the mystery of their
disappearance is simply them being lost to time. All we have to go on is
the physical evidence itself, without literary references. Digs have
turned up skeletons beneath the floor of one building, of all places,
suggesting they may have used it for some rather devout religious
purposes, but right now, we don’t really know.
Rapa Nui
Arguably
the most famous of disappearing cultures, the Rapa Nui people were the
original inhabitants of Easter Island, leaving us the famed statues that
we’ve probably all seen. The Polynesian people inhabited the island,
which now belongs to Chile, though it’s 3,500 kilometers (2,200 mi) away
from the country. Due to its absolute remoteness, how the original Rapa
Nui arrived there is as much of a mystery as why they vanished.
So,
why did they disappear? Starvation due to excessive resource
consumption has been blamed. Destruction of Easter Island’s ecosystem by
rats has also been fingered as the culprit. It’s also believed that the
Rapa Nui traveled to another remote island, itself thousands of miles
away, to start a new settlement. (Descendants of the Rapa Nui of Easter
Island live in Chile today.) The truth might well be a combination of
the many proposed explanations.
Minoans
Hailing
from the Greek island of Crete, the Minoans were an old Bronze Age
civilization that existed from between 3000 and 1000 BC, long before the
Golden Age of Athens and Alexander the Great. The Minoans were patently
a Greek culture and the forerunners of the ancient Greece that’s most
famous in our history books today, and they were also a very pagan
culture, practicing animal sacrifices, burning offerings, having many
nuanced cults, and holding wild, orgiastic festivals of song and dance.
The
ancient Egyptians mention them in hieroglyphics, which means the
Minoans definitely got around in the ancient world, and they had
high-quality technologies and impressive arts for the day—but then they
declined and disappeared. Theories have suggested that they were
decimated by a volcanic eruption in the Santorini islands near Crete,
which must have ravaged the coasts of Crete with waves, ash, raining
stone, and more. Herodotus, the famous Greek historian, writes that they
were brought down by plagues and diseases, but there simply is no way
to tell, as Herodotus wrote many centuries after the peoples of this
island had disappeared.
Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture
Between
roughly 5400 and 2700 BC, a society known as the Cucuteni-Trypillian
culture lived in the areas of what is modern-day Moldova, Romania, and
Ukraine in the Carpathian Mountains. Strangely, this group also
disappeared off of the face of the Earth. They were an early
civilization that relied heavily on agriculture and close proximity to
water supplies, building houses and settling as humans of the period
were largely just beginning to do.
They had an extremely in-depth religion and were proficient in many arts, including sculpting, pottery, and much more.
Before
its strange disappearance under unusual circumstances, this massive
culture spanned an impressive 350,000 square kilometers (135,000 mi2)
and practiced a rather bizarre way of life, even for the time. The
social order was such that the people inhabited very densely populated
settlements, which they would burn to the ground or otherwise completely
abandon and rebuild every 60 to 80 years. Some have theorized that this
was how they honored their dead, in a sort of mass crematory funeral.
Anasazi
The
Anasazi culture of the North American Southwest left behind many
structures and artifacts for us to find before they ultimately
disappeared. Maybe it was the brutal climate of the Southwestern
heartland or the changing of that climate which made conditions
uninhabitable, namely where access to water is concerned, but this is
one group of people who also disappeared.
Massive structures built into the cliffsides were left totally abandoned and were found in relatively pristine condition.
These housing structures were perfect for fending off intruders, as
they were often multiple stories high with windows for the entrance via
ladders. When war would break out, the Anasazi could climb into their
structures, raise the ladders, and be several stories above the invading
tribes and could fire down on their enemies with impunity.
Many
Native American tribes as well as some scholars claim that the Anasazi
never actually disappeared; they just reached the critical mass of size
that a society can become before it inevitably breaks off into smaller
factions and becomes new groups of people—much like ancient Rome. They
believe that certain tribes today which survive are the direct
descendants of the Anasazi people.
Nabta Playa
The
ancient people of Nabta Playa, in the southern part of modern-day
Egypt, were a Neolithic group which existed in the area from roughly
11,000 to 6,000 years ago and were largely nomadic, as was common for
that area at the time. The climate of the Nabta Playa basin was one of
feast or famine, where seasonal shifts provided an abundance of water at
some points during the year and then a complete drought at others.
Eventually, the people settled down and inhabited the area as a
civilization.
Changes in the climate have rendered the area
almost entirely dry sand at this point, which also preserved what the
people here left behind before they disappeared, such as a stone circle.
The stone circle roughly aligns with the stars in many different ways
and became a haven for sacrifice to the gods, with animal remains being
found in vast underground caverns. Like those who built Stonehenge, the
people who lived there eventually declined and then wholly disappeared.
Khmer Empire
Over
the long timeline of history, the Khmer Empire is one of the more
recent disappearances to take place. The empire existed from AD 802 to
1431 in Southeast Asia, spanning the modern-day countries of Thailand,
Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and was a mixed culture of Buddhists and
Hindus that came about through centuries of warfare. The Khmer Empire
built some of the most astonishing temples and monuments in Southeast
Asia today, many of which are in near-perfect condition.
But like
the others on this list, the Khmer Empire, too, declined and
disappeared. Some have noted that the migration of the Thai people may
have slowly overtook the Khmer people, much like the Germanic tribes
slowly infiltrating the western half of the Roman Empire over time.
Others have blamed the constant war that the Khmer lived with daily, but
they were never wholly overtaken. Still others have pointed to possible
changes in weather conditions which altered their access to rainwater,
causing a mass migration. Theories run the gamut as to why they fell,
but no one really knows for sure.
Olmecs
The
Olmecs were the first large Mesoamerican civilization, and their
culture was as rich as it was bizarre and unusual. They left us many
standing structures and statues which exist today, and their prominence
lasted from 1200 to 400 BC, with a society based on sacred religious
practices for which they built pyramid-like temples. Much like the
Polynesian people of Easter Island, they also carved massive stone
heads, some of them as tall as 3 meters (10 ft) and weighing 8 tons.
So
much of this culture that lived long ago has been lost to time, and we
don’t even actually know what they called themselves or much about their
language. “Olmec” is a term the Aztecs had for them centuries after
their disappearance, which translates roughly to “rubber people.” Even
more interesting is the fact that not a single trace of anyone who lived
there remains—not even the bones. But we do have the artifacts.
They
disappeared from the world stage sometime around 400 BC. Some have
suggested that the insanely humid Mesoamerican climate eroded their
bones away. But as for the people, the language, and the culture outside
of their art and artifacts, we know next to nothing, especially not why
they vanished.
