On a flooding reef off Pohnpei, Pacific islanders raised a stone city of 92 artificial islets and 750,000 tonnes of basalt. Meet Nan Madol, the astonishing “Venice of the Pacific.”
Dholavira, a great city of the Indus Valley Civilization, thrived for 1,500 years in a near-waterless salt desert by mastering the art of harvesting and storing the monsoon — one of the most brilliant feats of ancient water engineering ever found.
On the island of Crete stands Knossos, the labyrinthine palace of the Minoans — Europe’s first civilization. With its bull frescoes, oldest throne in Europe, and running water, it is the real place behind the legend of the Minotaur.
Caral, in the Supe Valley of Peru, is the oldest known city in the Americas — built with pyramids, sunken plazas, and clever earthquake-proof foundations at the very same time as the Great Pyramid of Egypt, yet with almost no sign of war.
Thousands of years before the Great Wall, the Liangzhu culture built a walled water city, the world’s oldest known dams, and jade masterpieces in the Yangtze delta — a lost cradle of civilization only recognized by UNESCO in 2019.