Comment by DougN7
6 hours ago
As an American, where we have comparatively little history (we’re celebrating 250 years - some folks in Europe live in houses older than that!) visiting Rome is almost mind blowing to see SO MUCH ancient history right there, and almost everywhere. So cool!
Comparatively few historical ruins built out of materials that would have lasted this long, but a long history, actually, and some you can still see...
Mexico City is a quick plane ride from the USA, and while some of their ruins are buried, you can hop a short bus ride outside the city to walk among standing ruins of Teotihuacan, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere at the time Jesus walked on the Earth. It was 20 square kilometers whereas Rome at the height of the empire had only 14 square kilometers within the Aurelian Walls.
I've been on the Great Wall of China and all over the world and Teotihuacan was fascinating for me to see. Even more intriguing, no one knows who built it. Aztecs discovered it many centuries after it was abandoned and forever wondered about its origin.
Nitpick but we do know who built Teotihuacan -- it was the Teotihuacanos! Unfortunately it's true that we know relatively little about them.
We know who robbed the bank, it was clearly the bank robbers!
Archeology is my fav.
It was a carefully planned large city with the road along the main axis pointed at 15 degrees east of north, and the large pyramids were integrated into the city's design, but we definitely don't know who did that planning. Hundreds of apartment compounds were standardized. Tens of cubic meters of earth were moved and they had to quarry lots of basalt and other stone.
There is strong evidence it was a multi-ethnic city, especially since there are distinct ethnic neighborhoods based on artifacts such as pottery. No trace of writing or how the city and government were organized, and whether a ruling elite called the shots or if there were ruling families from different ethnic groups working together.
This feels kind of tautological. We know who built Teotihuacan, it was the Teotihuacanos! What do we know about them? Well, they built Teotihuacan...
(Seriously, though, _is_ anything much known about them beyond that?)
There are older structures and artifacts than 250 years, they're just not European in origin. Like Cahokia Mounds in Illinois: https://cahokiamounds.org/
Arrowheads are an example of something that's not too difficult to find in the wild if you know where to look.
Also if one expands it to the Americas more broadly it goes back pretty far. Earlier this year on a trip to Central America I stayed in a home that dated to the mid-16th century. Still not as impressive as what Europe has, but was neat!
I've been to Cahokia, and look forward to revisiting it in future decades since only 10% has been excavated so far!
Same!
Narwala Gabarnmang says hi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung
44,000 years of continuous human occupation. (Except for a brief period during the 20th century ..)
Those are very cool. Worth a visit if you’re ever in the St Louis, Missouri area.
A few years ago I made a graphic showing the years before present dates of some of the earliest archaeological sites across the Americas for Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopling_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_the_Clovis_Fir...
> (we’re celebrating 250 years - some folks in Europe live in houses older than that!)
We used to smoke weed on the roman wall behind my friend’s high school. Very popular hangout spot. Lots of people using it for rock climbing practice (you’re not far off the ground and can climb laterally for hundreds of meters).
The local castle, about 1000 years old, is a popular makeout spot for teens.
Stuff built long time ago still serves its purpose - the people.
Anyway yes we have some comparatively old stuff here, you get used to it quickly. Colleague lives in cca 400 years old house, nothing special. Just more building restrictions, not because its somehow protected but simply due to meter-thick stone walls and corresponding architecture, statics and so on. One couldn't tell if its 100 years old or 400 from outside. After renovation even less (it was a farm house before, so french state doesn't feel the urge to interfere with his property).
250 years is longer than the existence of a country called Italy, let alone the Italian Republic. Just like in Italy, the history of people in your area did not start with the founding of your country.
Really? My history class taught me that before the Europeans arrived there were only the native americans, so nothing of historical value.
I had always thought I didn't like history. It was just so incredibly boring.
Later in life, I found out why. It's not that I didn't like history, I just don't like the sanitized version taught to me in primary/secondary school. It's like corporate public relations where they vaguely acknowledge wrongdoing, but communicate in a very weaselly way to downplay it.
The rote response I hear from the USA fandom is always some variation of "WELL THEM INDIANS DID BAD THINGS TOO" and it's like... ok? Then why obfuscate? If everyone is equally bad or whatever weird thing you're trying to say, why not just lay out all the cards and let me decide for myself how to interpret the history?
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The adobe structures of the American southwest, and mounds in many other areas survived, but for the most part there was not much left of historical value in terms of ruins of structures of the native americans. Europeans more often build with stones, rock, brick, etc and more regularly other more survivable building materials.
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some folks in Europe live in houses older than that!
TBF, so do some folks in the U. S.; though in most cases, just barely.
we have some omega ancient history here in america like possibly 13,000-16,000+ year old history, we just don't have structures that stood the test of time mostly stone crafted tools and hunting weapons and such. but first peoples history goes way back mindblowingly far
I was in Pompeii just 2 weeks ago, the thing that absolutely blew my mind was that there is a section where archeologists are working _right now_ still uncovering more buildings, and you can see them exactly as they are coming out of the ground - I think with the rest of the ruins I've had this feeling that you know, it got somehow cleaned up and repaired a bit for tourists, but nope, you can see in that section of active excavation works that these 2000 years old structures are really coming out of the dirt with the frescoes and mosaics still intact.
And then we went to Paestum, which is an even older Greek settlement in Italy - with the original Greek temples still standing. Mindblowing, and I'm used to old stuff being around(a friend of mine lives in a house where a portion of it is a listed structure dating to the 12th century, it's just a bathroom and a storage room for them lol).
The crazy thing is that Pompeii's art was so well preserved by the ash but now it is exposed to the elements and will degrade.
There's almost no original art in Pompeii, it's all in the archeological museum in Naples. There are some reproductions in place in Pompeii, but mostly it's bare brick walls that the art has been scraped from. You need to see the brick walls, then see the art in the museum, then compose the two in your head.
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some folks in USA have houses older than that too
Early settlement of Europeans into present-day USA started in earnest in the early 1600s.