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The Lost City of the Kalahari is a historical mystery of exploration and archaeology dating to the end of the 19th century. History reports the existence of a ruined city found in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa.
In 1885, the Canadian Guillermo Farini (pseudonym of William Leonard Hunt) was one of the first Westerners to cross the unexplored portion of the Kalahari. On his return to Europe, he published a book detailing his experiences which included descriptions of unusual rock formations that he believed to be ruins of hitherto unknown buildings. Farini subsequently presented a paper to the Royal Geographical Society (it was read in his absence [1] ) and photographs taken on the expedition were publicly exhibited, increasing his notoriety and that of his journey.
In his book Farini describes the ruins as [2]
A half-buried ruin - a huge wreck of stones
On a lone and desolate spot;
A temple - or a tomb for human bones
Left by men to decay and rot.
Rude sculptured blocks from the red sand project,
And shapeless uncouth stones appear,
Some great man's ashes designed to protect,
Buried many a thousand year.
A relic, may be, of a glorious past,
A city once grand and sublime,
Destroyed by earthquake, defaced by the blast,
Swept away by the hand of time.
At the start of the 20th century, Farini's observation gave birth to a legend throughout South Africa. Some people claimed to have seen an abandoned boat or even a stone quarry in the empty desert. Others attempted to explain the presence of this unknown civilization with comparisons to archaeological finds at Great Zimbabwe.
In 1932, twenty-five expeditions were launched to find the Lost City. They crisscrossed the desert area in the direction of Farini. F. R. Paver and Dr. W. M. Borcherds headed out from Upington to search the desert sands, flying over the area in reconnaissance aircraft and subsequently suggesting a number of explanations. However, they failed to find any signs of construction in the area.
Additional airplane searches were conducted by Joshua N. Haldeman, maternal grandfather of Elon Musk.
A. J. Clement researched the story in 1964 and advanced a new theory. Clement claimed his study of Farini's description of his route highlighted inconsistencies in Farini's story. Clement concluded that Farini went deep into Southern Africa, but he never actually went to the heart of the Kalahari where he claimed the Lost City was sited. To test this premise Clement explored what he regarded as Farini's true route and discovered a set of monumental rocks, resembling walls.
Clement concluded that Farini's 'lost city' was shown to exist but as a natural formation. Clement had found a geological curiosity, dating back 180 million years to the great upheaval accompanying the birth of the Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa. [3]
The stones are composed of dolerite, a particular type of igneous rock which can erode to give the appearance of straight and regular blocks suggesting artificial construction.
Josh Gates visits the Clement walls in Expedition Unknown, along with a number of smaller sites containing man-made walls, roads, and carvings. [4]
Nineveh, also known in early modern times as Kouyunjik, was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq. It is located on the eastern bank of the Tigris River and was the capital and largest city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as well as the largest city in the world for several decades. Today, it is a common name for the half of Mosul that lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and the country's Nineveh Governorate takes its name from it.
King Solomon's Mines is an 1885 popular novel by the English Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of an expedition through an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain, searching for the missing brother of one of the party. It is one of the first English adventure novels set in Africa and is considered to be the genesis of the lost world literary genre. It is the first of fourteen novels and four short stories by Haggard about Allan Quatermain. Haggard dedicated this book to his childhood idol Sir Humphry Davy.
Great Zimbabwe is a medieval city in the south-eastern hills of the modern country of Zimbabwe, near Lake Mutirikwe and the town of Masvingo. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe from the 13th century, having been settled in the 4th century AD. Construction on the city began in the 11th century and continued until it was abandoned in the 15th century. The edifices were erected by ancestors of the Shona people, currently located in Zimbabwe and nearby countries. The stone city spans an area of 7.22 square kilometres (2.79 sq mi) and could have housed up to 18,000 people at its peak, giving it a population density of approximately 2,500 inhabitants per square kilometre (6,500/sq mi). It is recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Et-Tell or Khirbet et-Tell is an archaeological site in the West Bank, commonly identified with the biblical city of Ai.
The San peoples, or Bushmen, are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. Their recent ancestral territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and South Africa.
Dur-Sharrukin, present day Khorsabad, was the Assyrian capital in the time of Sargon II of Assyria. Khorsabad is a village in northern Iraq, 15 km northeast of Mosul. The great city was entirely built in the decade preceding 706 BC. After the unexpected death of Sargon in battle, the capital was shifted 20 km south to Nineveh.
Percy Harrison Fawcett was a British geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist, and explorer of South America. Fawcett disappeared in 1925 during an expedition to find an ancient lost city which he and others believed existed in the Amazon rainforest.
Zerzura is a legendary city or oasis located in the Sahara Desert.
The Battle of Jericho, as described in the Biblical Book of Joshua, was the first battle fought by the Israelites in the course of the conquest of Canaan. According to Joshua 6:1–27, the walls of Jericho fell after the Israelites marched around the city walls once a day for six days, seven times on the seventh day, with the priests blowing their horns daily and the people shouting on the last day. Excavations at Tell es-Sultan, the biblical Jericho, have failed to find any traces of a city at the relevant time, which has led to a consensus among scholars that the story has its origins in the nationalist propaganda of much later kings of Judah and their claims to the territory of the Kingdom of Israel.
Paititi is a legendary Inca lost city or utopian rich land. It allegedly lies east of the Andes, hidden somewhere within the remote rainforests of southeast Peru, northern Bolivia or northwest Brazil. The Paititi legend in Peru revolves around the story of the culture-hero Inkarri, who, after he had founded Q'ero and Cusco, retreated toward the jungles of Pantiacolla to live out the rest of his days in his refuge city of Paititi. Other versions of the legend see Paititi as an Inca refuge in the border area between Bolivia and Brazil.
Solomon's Porch, Portico or Colonnade, was a colonnade or cloister, located on the eastern side of the Temple's Outer Court in Jerusalem, named after Solomon, King of Israel, and not to be confused with the Royal Stoa, which was on the southern side of Herod's Temple.
William Leonard Hunt, also known by the stage name The Great Farini, was a well-known nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Canadian funambulist, entertainment promoter and inventor, as well as the first known white man to cross the Kalahari Desert on foot and survive. He also published under the name Guillermo Antonio Farini.
Amud or Amoud is an ancient, ruined town in the Awdal region of Somaliland. Named after its patron Saint Amud it was a center of activity during the Golden Age of the Adal Kingdom. The archaeological site is situated 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) above sea level, around 10 km southeast of the regional capital Borama.
Expedition! is an American travel documentary television series that was broadcast in the United States on ABC Tuesday nights in the 1960–61 television season and Monday nights in the 1961–62 television season.
Atlantis of the Sands refers to a legendary lost place in the southern deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, known as Ūbār/Awbār (أوبار) or Wabār/Wubār (وبار) in Arabic, thought to have been destroyed by a natural disaster or as a punishment by God.
Christoph Baumer is a Swiss explorer and historian of Central Asia. Starting in 1984, he has conducted explorations in Central Asia, China, Tibet and the Caucasus, the results of which have been published in numerous books, scholarly publications, TV and radio programs.
"Count" Byron Khun de Prorok was a Hungarian-American amateur archaeologist, anthropologist, and author of four travelogues. He has come to be regarded as a tomb raider, or grave robber, opening up graves and tombs and removing remains and artefacts against the wishes of those laying claim to them.
La Ciudad Blanca is a legendary settlement said to be located in the Mosquitia region of the Gracias a Dios Department in eastern Honduras. It is also known by the Pech name Kahã Kamasa. This extensive area of rainforest, which includes the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, has long been the subject of multidisciplinary research. Archaeologists refer to it as being a part of the Isthmo-Colombian Area of the Americas, one in which the predominant indigenous languages have included those in the Chibchan and Misumalpan families. Due to the many variants of the story in the region, most professional archaeologists doubt that it refers to any one actual settlement, much less one representing a city of the Pre-Columbian era. They point out that there are multiple large archaeological sites in the region and that references to the legendary White City cannot be proven to refer to any single place.
Theodore A. Morde was an adventurer, explorer, diplomat, spy, journalist, and television news producer best known for his unverified claim of discovering the "Lost City of the Monkey God."
Star Born is a science fiction novel by American writer Andre Norton, first published in 1957 by World Publishing Company of Cleveland. As the sequel to The Stars Are Ours!, Star Born continues its predecessor's adventure three generations later.