The Cities of the Dead

This flow traces the contrast between Barsoom’s ancient urban inheritance and the changed societies that occupy its ruins.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

Korad’s Silent Grandeur

A Civilization in Ruins Monumental architecture Korad’s marble buildings, public spaces, and old harbor structures suggest a once-rich center of trade and culture. Its grandeur survives even though its original inhabitants are gone. A changed population Green Martians camp in the empty city without reviving its civic life. Their presence makes the ruins a home of necessity rather than a continuation of the civilization that built them.

Art Without Its Makers

Images of a Lost People Frescoes and mosaics Carter sees paintings of landscapes and, in another building, human figures dressed in fine garments. The works preserve evidence of artistic traditions absent from the Thark culture around him. History survives unevenly Dejah Thoris can explain the likely ancestry of the builders, but records and literature have largely disappeared. The remaining art raises questions that neither present inhabitants nor inherited legends can fully answer.

A Harbor Turned Sea Bottom

Geography Records Loss The old coastline Dejah Thoris explains that the valley outside Korad once formed a natural harbor. The channel and surrounding hills retain the shape of a city built beside water. Receding seas change life As the seas withdrew, people moved toward canals and fertile corridors. The abandoned port is therefore not only a ruin but a record of environmental transformation.

Thark’s Borrowed Name

An Inheritance Misremembered A name outlives its makers The Green Martians have taken the name of the ancient city they occupy. They use its buildings and spaces without possessing the culture that created them. Civilization is not secure The contrast between the city’s scale and the Tharks’ nomadic social organization suggests how quickly a civilization can lose its institutions. Stone survives, but shared memory and humane traditions do not survive automatically.

Ruins as a Future Warning

A Planet of Lost Possibilities Beauty and decline together Carter remembers Barsoom’s ancient cities as beautiful but emptied, surrounded by a world dependent on canals and machinery. Their magnificence cannot by itself prevent environmental and social collapse. A warning without certainty The ruins make the later atmosphere crisis feel like the newest stage in a long decline. Carter’s account preserves wonder while asking whether technological survival can endure without changes in human conduct.

Carter’s arrival at the dead city

During Carter’s first days in Korad

As Carter and the Tharks travel away from Korad

When Carter reaches the city of Thark

As Carter looks back from Earth