why are ancient cities like ancient Greece in ruins? I know that they fell and probably lost wars, but why did no one reconstruct the ancient temples, buildings, and homes?
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It can make a bit more sense when you consider global population.
The world didn’t have a billion people on it until the 19th century (1800).
In ancient times, the global population was in the low hundred millions. If you wanted to build a city, there was plenty of room to just build in empty space no one else was using. That’s a big part of why we can find Greek cities far away from Greece. The Greeks got on some boats, sailed off, picked a spot, and set up shop. It was easier then to just build a new population center.
Other times though, ancient cities would continue to see use. It was the use that would shift. There’s evidence that the cities of the classic Maya continued to serve as ritual sites with low/occasional population well into the contact period. The cities had shifted from being major trade centers to be acropolises. To this day the Maya will bury their dead under their homes, or even in their homes and then build a new house over it. This is the same process that constructed the great Maya pyramids we marvel at today (just with a lot more stone).
So some cities got abandoned and no one ever went back because of superstitions, disinterest, or there were easier places to build. Many ancient cities were torn down and their materials repurposed for later. Others shifted in use over time, becoming something other than a city people lived in.
Many cities were reinhabited. Babylon would be continually inhabited, ravaged, and reinhabited throughout the Bronze and Iron ages.
Notably, most of the ruins that survive today were religious, trade, and political centers. It’s rare to find an intact ancient house just laying around. Greek houses used by common people were pretty feeble constructions made of mud brick and mud brick doesn’t last long in the scope of time.
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