In a time when we share a space station with Russian crews and get there on their rockets, let’s consider this in historical context.

Right at our very own Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, they have an Apollo command/service module docked with a Soyuz. I took this photo in 2012:

Ancient people were such slobs, just leaving dead bodies and junk lying everywhere. 

Inhabited cities tend to get covered faster than abandoned ones, since city life accumulates matter and foundations sink under the weight of the buildings, eventually it becomes more convenient to level the house and build new foundations on top of the old ones than to elevate the building, itself, let alone dig…

and they always marked out their floor plans with grids of string and pegs. It’s amazing anyone could walk around without tripping over.

Self-cancelling mass!

They do, they have a lot more than giant baggers especially recently, but you guys don't care lol you just want to stick it to boomers

Near-1000 pound bikes are understandably intimidating for new riders.

Exclusively.

In addition to the other replies about the farmland and rivers: Once a place gets abandoned the people who remain (or later move in) tend to go, “I need some good stones to fence in the pigs. Lucky there’s a city full of it over there in Old Falerii Novi nobody’s using.”

Yeah, those extended tree lines with fertile farmland in between basically scream, “There used to be a river here.”

In a thousand years what was ground level can be 50 to a hundred feet below ground.

It looks like good farmland, so I expect there’s been a few river floodings over the years.

Equally mysterious is why no matter where you do archaeology, you’ll find that graves, cities, and other ruins contain red and white or black and white striped sticks.

That’s exactly it. Even Rome, which has been continuously occupied to various extents for over 2,700 years, had large sections buried over the centuries, as the population would ebb and flow and areas would be abandoned. The Roman Forum was famously called “The Cow Field” in the 17th and 18th century, and slowly…

Embarrassing question, but how would it have become buried like that? Was it just left abandoned and the elements (including wind bringing in dirt/dust/etc.) covered it up until it was lost to time?

An entire underground city? Was it populated by skeleton people?

I wonder why ancient people built so many of their cities underground.

Modern archaeology really is very cool.

Slow news day...