Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

As a former editor - - and perhaps I read too much "politics" instead of logic these days - - Newitz avoids what seems to be the increasing temptation of today's reporters to cite personal opinions instead building on the swampy (but nonetheless real) foundation of facts. My interest for about 20 years has been 'Sumer', (aka Mesopotamia) and thus, to a lesser extent, Catalhoyuk and more recently Gobekli Tepe. In my humble opinion, Newitz does a superb job of summarizing and explaining the relevant current facts about these two obvious predecessors of Sumer. Obviously, there's much to be learned about all three cultures; thus, one of the most valued facts is a clear concise starting point. Likewise for Pompeii. It would have been invaluable to read her account of Pompeii to establish a basic foundation before plunging into the great S.P.Q.R. of Mary Beard. Ankor was utterly new to me; Cahokia raised questions in terms of my years of learning and reporting on the Huron, Navajo, Zuni and Pueblo societies of Ontario, New Mexico and Arizona. Interested in origins and mitigation of slavery? Read her account of Pompeii. Engineering and water problems? Read Ankor. Cultural assimilation and evolution? Cahokia. Regardless of what one reads of lives of other peoples, there is nothing better than an analysis of founding values. Newitz provides background for those astute enough to ask questions, and always learn.Read . . . look at any modern city or historic ancient site . . . this book guides you to learning much more. Granted, I'd love to ask her, "How about . . .?" Instead, I suspect she'd answer, "Look it up. It's what libraries and technical journals are for. I gave you a solid introduction. Most answers are still awaiting discovery." Maybe not. She's a skilled interviewer, and that uncovers real knowledge. Even at my age, and presumed "knows a lot" attitude, she opened new windows to new scenes of question and learning. Personally, based on my learning about Sumer - - she adds a great deal to the little I've already learned, and reignited the spark of searching for and thinking about more. Very few books offer that much. This is one of them.

I really enjoyed this book. The writing is excellent and very enjoyable. I recommend the book if you enjoy learning about ancient history and cultures. Perhaps the strongest aspect of this book is the way that the author tries to re-create what ancient city life must have been like for everyday people like you and me, rather than the kings, priests, and other elites. The author is a natural story-teller. That being said, the book does not really deliver on it's promise to use the story of these ancient cities to understand the present or future of cities. The final chapter, an epilogue, advances highly speculative ideas that seem spouted off instead of being carefully research, as the rest of the book clearly was. Too bad the author didn't take the time to try to integrate everything they had learned in the course of researching the book. But still worth the read in my view.

These are four cities that had rich lives and extensive social networks that, other than Pompei, schooling seems to have brushed to the side: and even then, Pompei is usually just known for being destroyed by a generic volcano. But there is so much more! All four cities had lives and adventures and day to day things happening, just like today. And three - Angkor, Cahokia and Catal are typically not even footnotes, with their cultures ignored, despite their antiquity. Who's a thought that 6000 years and more ago central Turkey had huge cities, with at least tens of thousands of people and their support and infrastructure working as well as our today! And Cahokia - spoiler alert - was an advanced city of socially sophisticated residents that had been operating for centuries BEFORE the pesky Europeans "discovered" tham and decided they were somehow woodland savages. While London was still in filth, the Cahokians were living quite well. Worth a read to open Western eyes to the fact that we didn't actually "discover" a whole lot. We just ignored the people that were already there.

Vivid stories bring to life ancient cities, based on archaeology (especially the data archaeology subdiscipline) and other fields. The chain is often tenuous: known research --> "it is possible" --> "perhaps" --> "might" --> "we have to assume" (perhaps my least favorite phrase in a science book) --> "the anonymous populace triumphs!". Every story seems to be told with the objective of celebrating everyday people rather than the elites that have been the center of most historical and archaeological narratives. That's admirable--and correct--but the normative orientation here is so strong that we're really just treated to speculative stories. The magnifying glass on populism and repression over the past few years is an important warning against a strict normative bias that sees "the people" as always heroic. If you're an avowed data archaeology evangelist, this is the book for you. As science, it is constantly frustrating in its logical leaps. Human sacrifice is cool because, well, Europeans executed infidels. I share the author's intuition and data archaeology love, but the normative imperative is so myopic here that I found myself questioning our shared beliefs. It crescendoes at the end like too many of today's science books, with a closing that throws any attention to a scientific method or the author's expertise or any humility about the discipline out the window with sweeping policy prescriptions. Overall a decent read, but I had to constantly remind myself that I was reading historical fan fiction with an op-ed thrown in.

I chose this book because it was referred to in article I was enjoying in new scientist. Its really well written, and had me scooting off, looking on the Internet for more information. I have been lucky enough to visit pompeii.. but a new perspective brings it to life in a different way. Also bizarrely, at University about 35 years ago a course I took covered the economy of cities, so histories within histories had resonance for me. Back then we called çatalhöyük, New Obsidian: every generation tends to interpret the past through a lens of their own experience. The book ends with a chapter about how future archaeologists might interpret our current era. Wonderfully though provoking!It has everything I look for in a nonfiction book.

"Annalee Newitz" has documented an exciting and thoughtful conversation with an army of archaeologists who have focused on studying four radically different ancient urban cultures. This is as much about the future of cities as it is about the past. Her work touches on the thesis of the equally brilliant "The State Is Out Of Date" by Gregory Sams, which compares the terms "matriarchy" and "patriarchy" with societies organized from the bottom up to those more recent ones organized from the top down.

This is a wonderful book which gives us down to earth & honest perspectives of old urban civilisations, we know of & some we have never heard about. Also broke many myths about their rise & decline. Found it enthralling & full of new learnings.

E' un libro estremamente interessante in quanto si tratta delle storie di città che sono state molto importanti nelle loro epoche, ma che poi, per varie ragioni, sono cadute in disordini. Inoltre è uno dei pochi libri che affronta l'argomento della civiltà di Cahokia (Illinois) nel 1300 e dopo.