What happened to the places that history forgot – the cities submerged under water, decimated by invading armies or swallowed up by the sands of time? Where are they, and what can they tell us about our past?

From the sunken city of Thonis off the coast of Egypt to the deep cave dwellings of Derinkuyu in Turkey, Philip Matyszak brings to life the cities that time forgot, exploring sites from across Europe, the Middle East and Asia and covering four thousand years of human history.

Matyszak reveals a dynamic network of peoples and cultures who fought and traded between themselves, exchanging inventions, ideas and philosophies, with the result that peoples as far apart as Çatalhoyuk in Turkey and Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands shared much of a common heritage. Where archaeological remains and artefacts have vanished completely, Matyszak turns to ancient texts to discover what happened to the cities that have never been found. The trials, tribulations and triumphs that they faced, including how they coped with the challenges of climate change, displacement and conflict, have lessons for the present.