AHC: a surviving "Lost World/Civilization" discovered in 20th century

Incognito

Banned
Ever since I was but a babe, I really loved "Lost World" genre of fiction: the idea that in some remote part of the globe there can exist some civilization that survived for centuries, isolated from the outside world and "frozen in time". Atlantis, Shangra-La, King Solomon's Mines, etc.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with a scenario where such a civilization exists and remains undiscovered by most of the world until some brave explorers/adventurers discover it no earlier than the 20th century. And when I say "civilization" I mean something at least as developed as Classical Greece/Rome/Egypt or pre-Colombian Mesoamerica, not uncontacted tribes since those still exist OTL. Bonus points if the lost civilization is related to the famous known civilizations (Greco-Roman, Ancient Egyptian, pre-Colombian Mesoamerican, Ancient Chinese, etc) or has animals extinct elsewhere living in it.

P.S.: the "Lost Civilization" need not take up a large geographic area. Obviously something as big as the Roman Empire would be hard to hide. That would be just silly.
 

B_Munro

Interior of Africa works too if you delay the "Scramble" until the 20th century, which shouldn't be too hard.

Bruce
 
oshron

oshron

Benin could work, since contact with them was achieved pretty late in the 19th century and they were conquered by the British just before the turn of the 20th century. as a note, this isn't Benin like the current country named that (that region was formerly called Dahomey); the one i'm talking about is located in what is now Nigeria and was one of the more advanced African civilizations at the time. Timbuktu could be another good bet, though it would also only be delayed by about a decade considering the Scramble (the city was found by Europeans in 1893 iirc)

those aside, yeah, your best best are to have it in South America (either deep in the Amazon or high in the Andes) or somewhere in Oceania (like a few islands that are relics of the Easter Island civilization or, for outright fiction, a remnant of Mu)
 
Tobit

Tobit

I think the idea of a perfectly isolated society that still is developed and well off is pretty much fantasy. Any sufficiently large and advanced society has to rely on trade, or a sufficiently large and advanced society would consistently be sought out by local merchants to trade with.
 

Johnrankins

For the bonus points a Roman Legion heard of some legend of gold in Africa and somehow made it to the jungles of Africa and survived. They established a city/state there somewhere in the interior which wasn't discovered until the early 20th century.
 
9 Fanged Hummingbird

9 Fanged Hummingbird

oshron said:
Benin could work, since contact with them was achieved pretty late in the 19th century and they were conquered by the British just before the turn of the 20th century. as a note, this isn't Benin like the current country named that (that region was formerly called Dahomey); the one i'm talking about is located in what is now Nigeria and was one of the more advanced African civilizations at the time. Timbuktu could be another good bet, though it would also only be delayed by about a decade considering the Scramble (the city was found by Europeans in 1893 iirc)

those aside, yeah, your best best are to have it in South America (either deep in the Amazon or high in the Andes) or somewhere in Oceania (like a few islands that are relics of the Easter Island civilization or, for outright fiction, a remnant of Mu)
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First contact between Benin and Europeans was in 1485 with Portuguese explorers. The Oba of Benin was sending ambassadors to Lisbon early in the early 16th Century and they maintained for a good long while. Hell, the best descriptions of Benin I know of were written by Dutch visitors in the 17th Century.
 
Tobit

Tobit

Johnrankins said:
For the bonus points a Roman Legion heard of some legend of gold in Africa and somehow made it to the jungles of Africa and survived. They established a city/state there somewhere in the interior which wasn't discovered until the early 20th century.
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You mean to say they weren't discovered by white people until the 20th century. I would imagine it would pretty difficult to set up a roman city, with out your local neighbors not noticing.

And what good is gold if you don't trade it with people, so they would probably want to be trading with the Arabs and Touregs who controlled the trans saharan trade.
 
Tobit

Tobit

altamiro said:
The highlands tribes of Papua New Guinea may fit the bill IOTL.
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Yeah I think that would be the closest, it did have a huge diversity of cultures to it. I would probably wager that there are species that are extinct every where else too.
 

Johnrankins

Tobit said:
You mean to say they weren't discovered by white people until the 20th century. I would imagine it would pretty difficult to set up a roman city, with out your local neighbors not noticing.

And what good is gold if you don't trade it with people, so they would probably want to be trading with the Arabs and Touregs who controlled the trans saharan trade.
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Point, but that would be true of virtually every kind of civilization we can come up with. They would be known by SOMEBODY almost certainly.

My idea is that after the gold runs out they have nothing to trade and everybody forgot about them outside the immediate area.
 

dustbunny

What about something based in far-northern Pakistan or Kashmir? These places are pretty remote and might be able to go unnoticed for some time. Or is that not likely with all the neighbors down south?

It just seems like mountains are pretty good at keeping populations relatively distinct and isolated, so that might be a good place to start.
 
Shurik

Shurik

You might also be able to get away with some Shangri-La type pocket -valley somwhere in the Himalayas.
 

B_Munro

Tobit said:
I think the idea of a perfectly isolated society that still is developed and well off is pretty much fantasy. Any sufficiently large and advanced society has to rely on trade, or a sufficiently large and advanced society would consistently be sought out by local merchants to trade with.
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If it's large enough, it can be pretty darn self-sufficient before the modern era. Being sought out by merchants is more of a problem, but depends on the ease of transportation, and trade often depends on chains of transportation. Mexicans weren't trading directly with Peruvians in 1492.

Bruce
 

M79

You could have one with the native civilization just killing off everyone who looks substantially different than they do. Interior of the Congo, Amazon basin, or Papua New Guinea might work, but if the initial settlements of New Zealand are wiped out by a more advanced Maori tribe it could come to qualify as well. Interior of northern Siberia might also work, maybe someone happens to blunder across them following Tunguska.
 
9 Fanged Hummingbird

9 Fanged Hummingbird

B_Munro said:
If it's large enough, it can be pretty darn self-sufficient before the modern era. Being sought out by merchants is more of a problem, but depends on the ease of transportation, and trade often depends on chains of transportation. Mexicans weren't trading directly with Peruvians in 1492.

Bruce
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Mexico and Peru are also on two different continents. Meanwhile, the Mexicans were trading with everybody between the Southwestern USA and Panama, and the Peruvians were going IIRC into Columbia and the Amazon.
 

B_Munro

9 Fanged Hummingbird said:
Mexico and Peru are also on two different continents. Meanwhile, the Mexicans were trading with everybody between the Southwestern USA and Panama, and the Peruvians were going IIRC into Columbia and the Amazon.
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The Inca _empire_ extended into those areas, so that's a bit of an iffy case if you're talking long-range trade: how far down the Amazon? Did the Puebloans and Panamanians (Guaymi, I think?) know the Aztecs from Adam? I would think they were at the end of a chain of trading links, rather than Mexican traders travelling through hundreds of miles of desert and jungle.

Bruce
 
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