Editing Lost city (section)

{{Short description|Human settlement that has become uninhabited and largely forgotten by history}}
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[[File:Peru Machu Picchu Sunrise.jpg|thumb|[[Agustín Lizárraga]] rediscovered the ruins of [[Machu Picchu]]  in 1902.]]
[[File:Lost City Ruins.jpg|thumbnail|Ruins of [[Ciudad Perdida]], a city built by the [[Tayrona]] in the [[Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta]], Colombia]]
A '''lost city''' is an [[Urbanism|urban]] [[Human settlement|settlement]] that fell into terminal decline and became extensively or completely uninhabited, with the consequence that the site's former significance was no longer known to the wider world. The locations of many lost cities have been forgotten, but some have been rediscovered and studied extensively by scientists. Recently abandoned cities or cities whose location was never in question might be referred to as [[ruins]] or [[ghost town]]s. Smaller settlements may be referred to as [[abandoned village]]s. The search for such lost cities by European [[Exploration|explorers]] and adventurers in Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia from the 15th century onward eventually led to the development of [[archaeology]].<ref>{{cite web|website=infoplease|url=http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0856675.html |title=History of Archaeology}}</ref>

Lost [[City|cities]] generally fall into two broad categories: those where all knowledge of the city's existence was forgotten before it was rediscovered, and those whose memory was preserved in myth, legend, or historical records but whose location was lost or at least no longer widely recognized.

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