Population: 500,000
Present-day population: 20,715
Twenty thousand urns, containing the charred and unscorched remains of Carthaginian newborns and infants were recently discovered in Carthage, located in modern-day Tunisia.
Buried between 400 and 200 BC, in a cemetery called the Tophet, the internment of the urns coincides with periods of extreme scarcity within the city.
It is not known whether the children were sacrificed in offering, or if famine, drought, and other hardships increased infant mortality and the remains were cremated.
Because all records of Carthaginian life were destroyed by the Romans after the Third Punic War, the question may never be decided.
In 1985, the mayor of Rome and the Mayor of Carthage signed a peace treaty, officially ending that latent 2,100 year conflict.