I dunno if its just that I'm playing too much Civ or if it was because of the old episode of Nova that I just watched again re: the parthenon, but I find some of the wonders in our world to be SO intriguing! In particular I find that the parthenon and the pyramids amaze me.. the closer that humanity gets to figuring out how they could be built so long ago and in what ways the more I am intrigued by them. I find that every time I see a photo of the parthenon or watch video of it it takes me back to the day I was standing and looking skyward up the columns in disbeleif at the perfection of the architecture and in awe of the fact that it was built before 400bc! What are some other wonders that you guys find amazing??
What amazes me is how the pyramids were constructed around 2500BC you'll be amazed by the engineering capabilities of these people back then. And these huge roman temples where each column weights about 50 tons or something. Amazing how they had no technology advancements like today and they were still capable of building huge monuments that even today's engineers cant quite properly do.
Gimme a hundred years and a thousand slaves, and instead of building an effing pile of rocks I'll free them all and let them actually contribute something relevant to society. Don't get me wrong, for their time it was awesome. But it's not alien technology, it's the easiest way to build a rooftop with legos.....
^ lol white Aztec/Mayan; Japan Babylon India Indonesia and yea of course Egypt with the pyramids; also China/ and Australasia have some fascinating ancient monuments and few others like some Arab palaces,.. there are some more but i can't remember any,.. i have this book its called 7 wonders of the ancient world, very interesting stuff:nerd:
That isn't the point. The point is discovering how they built such monuments which such little technology. That's the wonder.
nah, you'd have to go through hoards of people questioning whether it's politically correct, tax money protests, etc
Angkor Wat (from my country of Cambodia). Its not that old, but I've read it was built around AD800 almost every wall has carved artwork or depictions of the current events of that ime, which I really need to go see in person someday.
wow! Amazing shots guys thanks for that.. I had no idea about the above Inklimited. @fulmtl: argh I was going to go to ankgor wat when I was in southeast asia but we only made it as far as laos I so wanted to go and see it, I've heard that its an amazing experience as its located in such a quiet and surreal area.
True that, had an interesting discussion w/ some engineers about near impossible to duplicate the moon landings in this day and age. I would really like to see the Great Wall of China someday though.
Fantastic. All these structures boggle my mind. ........ Thats not saying much lol. I guess they had more time on their hands with nothing better to do.
The Giza Pyramids (the 3 big ones that follow the star formation on Orion's Belt) is far older than 2500BC, but ethnocentric scientists from Egypt (one in particular) doesn't want it to seem that the Egyptians didn't build it. There is plenty of archeological evidence to suggest an ancient sea faring race (evidence by ancient maps of Antarctica coast line without ice, which is not possible to have been made no later than 4000BC) traveled and built the oldest structures that exists, their decedents then built smaller and less sophisticated structures as history moved forward. It is clear to me that ~3000BC and back had more advanced technology and civilization (don't know how advanced as time erodes much) and we see a decline in technology moving forward from that time period (where not a whole lot was developed, but only borrowed from earlier people). There seemed to be little to no education to pass on the technology and know how from the ancient civilizations, only to be lost or destroyed with time.
There's no evidence that the Giza pyramids or any of the other hundreds of pyramids in Egypt are far older than believed to be. Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/howold2.html I dunno why people think the Egyptians didn't build pyramids...it's a logical step from the mastabas used before. We know from "The Book of the Dead" and so many other papyri and hieroglyphics that they were obsessed with death and the afterlife and trying to preserve/mummify bodies and buried with valuable things that were susceptible to looting even at the time. They thought Polaris was heaven since it didn't move so the pyramids have shafts for the soul or ka pointed at it to escape or somesuch. There's sarcophagi in them and funeral temples nearby for the elaborate funeral rites that are well documented. The stones aren't terribly massive compared to other Egyptian structures *SPAM* before or after...Giza and the Sphinx I thought were a lot smaller in person than they look in photos btw. The base is a perfect level they say but all you need to accomplish that is dig a trench and fill it with water and measure off the water surface...Egyptians knew all about precise levels over distance from building more important things that didn't last as long as the pyramids...irrigation canals. anyway the oldest structures found are in Turkey and about 11,000 b.c they think IIRC