HAMPI - VIJAYANAGARA: India’s forgotten MEGALITHIC CITY | Wonders of Ancient India, Ep. 6

Once one of the largest cities in the world, the ruins of Hampi Vijayanagara, extend over 25 square kilometers of rocky terrain along the banks of the Tungabhadra river, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Founded in 1336 over the ruins of a far older megalithic city, in less than two hundred years Hampi rose from a small village to becoming the capital of the greatest medieval Indian empire to ever rule over south India. In 1565, a Muslim army defeated the Vijayanagara king Rama Raya at the battle of Talikota. Abandoned by its king and court, the great city was subject to months of pillaging and looting, from which it never recovered. By the early 19th century, Hampi lay in ruins, its great temples and palaces inhabited only by wild beasts and nearly swallowed by the jungle. Today, Hampi contains the ruins of hundreds of temples in various stages of ruin and decay, only a handful of which have been restored or even excavated. The structures that better than any others appear to have survived the ravages of time are some huge megalithic stone walls and subterranean structures that appear to far predate the medieval architecture at the site. These megalithic structures, which the Vijayanagara kings repurposed and restored, are all but identical to the megalithic monuments of Egypt and Peru, and contain moreover tantalizing evidence of the use of advanced technology for cutting and lifting the enormous stone blocks. Hampi Vijayanagara may be one of the last great megalithic projects of its kind anywhere in the world, after which the techniques and principles of megalithic architecture were seemingly lost in the centuries that followed the Muslim conquest of the Vijayanagara empire. #archaeology #megalithic #lostcity #ancientindia #hampi #documentary