Impossible Places | 13 Lost Cities Even Historians Still Can't Fully Explain | 4K Documentary

13 lost cities that historians still cannot fully explain - from a temple older than farming to a city in Cambodia that only appeared when lasers looked through the jungle. This is a countdown of 13 ancient and lost cities, from Cliff Palace in Colorado to Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, built some 11,000 years ago. For each place we tell what is known for certain, what is still argued about, and what new research has changed: the lidar scans that redrew Angkor, the burned Herculaneum scrolls now being read with AI, the tunnel found under Teotihuacan after heavy rain, and the soapstone bird that came home to Zimbabwe in 2026. Every place in this film is real, and every shot shows the place we are talking about. Where a popular story about these lost cities turned out to be wrong, we say so. If you like ancient places and unsolved history, subscribe - a new journey lands on this channel every week. Chapters: 0:00 13 Lost Cities Even Historians Still Can't Fully Explain 0:32 Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde, USA 2:55 Sigiriya, the Lion Rock, Sri Lanka 5:05 Catalhoyuk, Turkey 7:14 My Son Sanctuary, Vietnam 9:21 Great Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe 11:44 Ciudad Perdida (Teyuna), Colombia 13:51 Caral, Peru 15:58 Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan 18:31 Herculaneum and the Vesuvius Challenge, Italy 20:57 Petra, Jordan 23:12 Teotihuacan, Mexico 25:35 Angkor and the lidar city, Cambodia 28:02 Gobekli Tepe, Turkey 32:10 All 13 lost cities in review Narration: AI voice. Facts checked against the sources listed below; if you spot an error, tell us in the comments. Footage: Envato Elements and Pexels (licensed), plus video published under the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY). Photos and engravings: Wikimedia Commons (public domain / CC BY / CC BY-SA). Music: YouTube Audio Library. Full credits - every CC BY video with its creator, and every Wikimedia Commons image with its author and licence - are shown on screen in the closing credits at the end of this video. Key sources: German Archaeological Institute (Gobekli Tepe) - PNAS 2013 and the Khmer Archaeology LiDAR Consortium (Angkor) - Vesuvius Challenge / scrollprize.org and University of Oxford (Herculaneum) - INAH and Sergio Gomez's Teotihuacan tunnel project - University of Cambridge on the 2024 Petra tomb - Iziko Museums of South Africa on the 2026 return of the Zimbabwe Bird - University of Cape Town (Great Zimbabwe) - US National Park Service (Mesa Verde) - harappa.com (Mohenjo-daro) - UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Visiting: several of these sites limit visitor numbers or require a guide or permit (Ciudad Perdida is reached only on a multi-day guided trek; Cliff Palace by ranger-led tour). Check current rules with the site before you travel. Ownership: every clip, photo and track in this video is either licensed to us or used under the Creative Commons licence credited in the closing credits. If you believe any material here is yours and has been credited incorrectly, contact us and we will correct the credit or remove the shot. #lostcities #ancientcivilizations #impossibleplaces