eli5: Why were some ancient cities like Palmyra and Machu Picchu left to ruin and fall apart over hundreds of years instead of being repopulated?

Question

eli5: Why were some ancient cities like Palmyra and Machu Picchu left to ruin and fall apart over hundreds of years instead of being repopulated?

In: 1677

Answer 1

Machu Picchu wasn’t really a city so much as an Imperial estate. It had some significance to the Incan rulers, but exactly what this was isn’t known.

It was abandoned when Spanish invasions of Incan territory put stress on their government, and never recolonized because it had existed to serve the Incan rulers, and there were no more Incan rulers. The location wasn’t really suited for any other purpose, like trade or agriculture or mining

Palmyra has a long history stretching all the way back to the stone age. It actually still is populated today, although it’s not exactly a major city. People lived (and still live) at Palmyra because there’s water…it’s an oasis in the middle of the Syrian desert. But Palmyra’s heyday happened when lots of trade was occurring across the region….it’s a convenient stop on the trade routes between the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, and located in a sort of no-man’s land between the Roman and Persian empires.

So Palmyra got very wealthy off trade, and was able to maintain some independence…at least until Rome sacked it and destroyed it. But it was too convenient a spot to remain empty forever (unlike Machu Picchu) and so eventually the Romans rebuilt it as a smaller settlement. It survived off trade for longer, but the Timurids sacked it in 1400 and after that it was basically just a village. The reason it never grew back into a city is probably because of shifting patterns of trade. Not long after this time, overland trade between Europe and Asia shifted more to seaborn trade as European sailors started sailing around Africa. As a result, there was no longer a strong economic reason to rebuild the city again and it remained a village.

This is the usual story with abandoned cities. They are usually repopulated if the original reason that they were built is still there. But if whatever driving motivation goes away, a destroyed city is often not resettled.