Towering pyramids and man-made earth mounds were once dotted across East St. Louis, in southern Illinois, US, in a city known as Cahokia.
Around 600AD, the city – which was bigger than London and Paris – attracted thousands of visitors lured by the promise of forging a new civilisation.
At its peak in 1050, the population is said to have boomed to more than 30,000 people.
But around 350 years later, the city and its native American inhabitants, known as the Mississippians, completely disappeared.
Now its name has been completely lost to time.
Cahokia has long been a source of intrigue since Europeans explored Illinois in the 17th century.
Magnificent wooden homes and huge 30ft monuments once rose along the eastern side of the Mississippi.
Hunting, farming, trading and ritualistic ceremonies took place in the cosmopolitan city.
Europeans named it after the Illinois tribe which inhabited the region for hundreds of years.
But when trailblazers from the continent arrived, the city had been completely abandoned for around 300 years.
Now archeologists are trying to solve the riddle of its unexplained demise.
Some experts believe the city could have perished due to climate change, a natural disaster, scarcity of resources or flooding.
Archeologist Annalle Newitz, who took part in a dig of the region, believes a mass exodus due to social segregation could have caused the city’s collapse.
She said the elites monks encloses “themselves in a walled neighborhood” causing social order to breakdown.
She said: “As the city reshaped itself during the Moorehead phase, Cahokians violently rejected the people and symbols of their once-monumental downtown.
“Roughly half the city's population moved away, and those remaining began to retreat into their own neighborhoods.”
It comes after shock claims Antarctica is hiding a huge city underneath more than a mile of ice.
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