# The Paradox of ancient, crumbling abandoned cities in stories set in the ancient world **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** middle-earth\ **Created:** [March 24, 2025, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029 "2025-03-24T13:28:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/21 "2025-03-24T16:11:35Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Clark Ashton Smith did the same thing in his _Zothique_ stories, set in a far future dying Earth. My 2¢: For world-building purposes Smith excludes firearms from his setting, which although we’re talking sf/f here strikes me as unlikely. Just as fantasy authors almost never postulate a world where iron and steel making is a lost art, now that they’ve been invented I rather doubt that firearms will ever be forgotten (unless the world collapsed all the way to the stone age and started over). Given the supremacy firearms confer against non-gun powder enemies, I would expect even an age of savagery to retain at least black-powder flintlock muskets. > [@LSLGuy](#): > > Happy Birthday there @Lumpy!! Thanks! > [@Pleonast](#): > > I think “ancient” has different connotations, The British used to have “time immemorial” which for legal purposes was later officially set at 1189 AD. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/22 "2025-03-24T16:31:46Z")
Tolkien’s lost age imagery is particularly powerful, not only for its brilliance but because it speaks to an ancient impulse to see the past as greater than the mundane present. Unbreak link: https: [//youtu.be/BsVp31EvjvM?si=6qSb5zGBzQvCX4aQ](https://youtu.be/BsVp31EvjvM?si=6qSb5zGBzQvCX4aQ) ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/23 "2025-03-24T16:42:14Z")
Right - the Egyptians who built the pyramids were about as far in the past to him as the Biblical era/early Roman empire is to us. Same for the Mesopotamians. Stonehenge and Avebury were already thousands of years old when the Romans conquered Britain, for another example. We tend to intellectually compress the distant past in our own minds and not really acknowledge that some things were already ancient when the ancients saw them. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/24 "2025-03-24T16:46:55Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Just as fantasy authors almost never postulate a world where iron and steel making is a lost art… The movie version of Conan, at least, does. The “Riddle of Steel” is a lost art, once known to the Atlanteans, but now remembered only by a few isolated tribes. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/25 "2025-03-24T16:55:23Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > There’s a common trope that points out that the [Pyramids were as old to Cleopatra as Cleopatra is to us.](https://historyfacts.com/world-history/fact/the-egyptian-pyramids-were-older-to-the-romans-than-the-romans-are-to-us/) And didn’t prominent Romans like Caesar visit the thousand year old ruins of Troy? That was their version of the great and mythical past when men performed heroic deeds. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/26 "2025-03-24T16:59:52Z")
> [@EddyTeddyFreddy](#): > > Tolkien’s lost age imagery is particularly powerful, not only for its brilliance but because it speaks to an ancient impulse to see the past as greater than the mundane present. Not only that but he postulates not merely lost civilizations but an elder race that presaged humanity itself. As if there had been an early offshoot of genus _Homo_ that had a civilization 400,000 years ago, that lived and died when our ancestors still sported brow ridges. My unsupported speculation for why a lost past is such a provocative concept is that we have inaccessible subconscious memories of our toddlerhood, 18-36 months. The age of Gods and Giants (adults). > [@DemonTree](#): > > didn’t prominent Romans like Caesar visit the thousand year old ruins of Troy? AFAIK Troy/Illium was completely lost by classical antiquity. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/27 "2025-03-24T17:20:30Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > And didn’t prominent Romans like Caesar visit the thousand year old ruins of Troy? That was their version of the great and mythical past when men performed heroic deeds. Possibly you are thinking of to tomb of Alexander the great. Which was old (2-3 centuries old) but not “ancient” in Caesar and Augustus’ day. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/28 "2025-03-24T17:21:51Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > My unsupported speculation for why a lost past is such a provocative concept is that we have inaccessible subconscious memories of our toddlerhood, 18-36 months. The age of Gods and Giants (adults). That’s a really interesting idea. I recently read an article saying that we do create memories during those years and they are just inaccessible for some reason (vs the alternative theory that toddlers do not create episodic memories at all). [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00855-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00855-0) (Paywalled halfway down, unfortunately.) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/29 "2025-03-24T17:46:35Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > It’s a feature of real life. Not only do we have the middle ages following the end of the Western Roman Empire, but also there’s famously the Bronze Age collapse in the eastern Mediterranean that sparked the Homeric poems. I think the Bronze Age Collapse and the fact that our founding cultures arose in its aftermath built the idea of a lost, more advanced civilization into our cultural foundations, which is why it keeps popping up all the time in various mythic and fictional forms. It _was_ true once, after all! Plus it’s just so useful from a storytelling perspective. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/30 "2025-03-24T17:50:12Z")
Ancient China used chronologies. The author of the _Tao Te Ching_ presumably was educated and aware of such history as existed then. Literate people in ancient China had a sense of historical time depth. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/31 "2025-03-24T18:04:55Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Ancient China used chronologies. Right, but my point was that our usage of “ancient” as references to particular eras likely does not match the usage of the words translated as “ancient times”. That is, the ancient in “ancient China” is not the same connotation as the “ancient times”. Because, as your earlier post points out “who was more ancient than the ancients” doesn’t make sense if the word “ancient” means the same in both instances. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/32 "2025-03-24T18:19:38Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Stonehenge and Avebury were already thousands of years old when the Romans conquered Britain, for another example. Though I don’t think that was known even at the time. These were attributed to the druids until very recently (they still are in the public consciousness). I don’t know if that goes back to Roman times, when the druids were still around. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/33 "2025-03-24T18:21:41Z")
That’s why I took it to mean prehistoric, as far back as the Neolithic, a time of shamanism. Scholars think the _Tao Te Ching_ expresses ideas that survived from shamanist tradition. It would have presented a stark contrast with the highly formalized and stratified culture of classical China when the book was written. It looks back to a time before Chinese society became formalized and stratified. Thinkers in the Axial Age considered questions like “How did we get to be the way we are, and is there any alternative?” The _Tao Te Ching_ brings time depth to bear on that. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/34 "2025-03-24T18:24:33Z")
Well, I’ve just skimmed through Caesar’s account of Druid customs, and he doesn’t mention Stonehenge. No-one does, really, until the 17th century. So even the supposed Druid association with Stonehenge is shaky and post-hoc. ---
**Author:** ![Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecc23a/32.png) [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada_Jr)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/35 "2025-03-24T23:09:38Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > That’s why I took it to mean prehistoric, as far back as the Neolithic, a time of shamanism. Scholars think the _Tao Te Ching_ expresses ideas that survived from shamanist tradition. It would have presented a stark contrast with the highly formalized and stratified culture of classical China when the book was written. It looks back to a time before Chinese society became formalized and stratified. Thinkers in the Axial Age considered questions like “How did we get to be the way we are, and is there any alternative?” The _Tao Te Ching_ brings time depth to bear on that. Traditionally, the _Tao Te Ching_ is ascribed to Lao Tze, who lived around 500 BCE. There is some question about the historicity of Lao Tze (the name just means Old Master), but apparently the oldest extant copy of Tao Te Ching dates from 400 BCE. In 500 BCE China was already ancient, and the scholars at the time, the waning of the Zhou dynasty, thought that their times were pretty craptastic and looked back to past Golden Ages. The “ancient sages” that Lao Tze referred were the founders of the Xia and Shang Dynasties. In Western history up until the mid-20th Century these were regarded as wholly mythical, but during the Zhou they were considered completely historical (and they are now regarded as basically historical in Western scholarship). The Xia is now dated around 2000 BCE, so from Lao Tze’s point of view 1500 years in the past (actually, I don’t know off-hand how long in the past traditional Chinese history placed the Xia, but definitely a while ago). Basically, China is _old_, old enough to have historians writing about ancient history at a time that we consider ancient history. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/36 "2025-03-24T23:23:34Z")
> [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](#): > > Basically, China is _old_, old enough to have historians writing about ancient history at a time that we consider ancient history. Isn’t China widely believed to be the oldest extant civilization in the world? With Indian either a close second or perhaps contesting that title? ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2025, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/37 "2025-03-24T23:52:30Z")
I thought that ancient ruins and lost knowledge were a foundation of fantasy, with the pithy distinction: - Fantasy = the ancients knew more than we do now - Science fiction = people in the future will know more than we do know That doesn’t _exactly_ apply to every story, but the idea of very powerful lost knowledge, with the ruins and such that go with it, is one of the fundamental tropes of fantasy. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/38 "2025-03-25T00:32:57Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > I thought that ancient ruins and lost knowledge were a foundation of fantasy, with the pithy distinction: That fits with science fantasy as well, like the _Numenera_ universe. They’re in the _far_ future, living among the ruins of an advanced technological civilization. They don’t understand any of it, so it’s “magic”. Their ancients were more advanced than their present. But for us it’s future technology. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/39 "2025-03-25T01:13:17Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > That fits with science fantasy as well Oh yeah, I had a paragraph about _Star Wars_ having a foot in both sci/fi and fantasy that I deleted (old high republic, lost Jedi arts (in IV), etc.). Genres, just like species and genders, can get fuzzy around the edges. For many things you know exactly which category it’s in, but others can deliberately subvert it, or just tell the story they want with little regard to convention. I know people love to argue the margins, and about how the rules break down, but like distinguishing different species (say a dog and a mackeral) usually the rules work. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029/40 "2025-03-25T01:17:00Z")
Actually I was arguing that it fits _well_ within your classification–just that it fits _both_, and so we call it science-fantasy. It only seems fuzzy if you demand it can only be one or the other. No different than saying something can be, say, science fiction and horror. It can just be both. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-paradox-of-ancient-crumbling-abandoned-cities-in-stories-set-in-the-ancient-world/1016029.md?page=3)