Hacker News Reader

Comment by neilwilson | Hacker News Reader

It's always amusing to find out what Americans think is old. Most of the buildings around here are mid to late Victorian with the odd Elizabethan dwelling sitting about two feet lower than anywhere else. The church is 900 years old with the present building dating from 1483.

I chuckle when I realise we have public conveniences here in the UK that are older than Canada.

View on HN

So question. I always see statements like this online. And I sometimes wonder what is the point. Like it's a colony. The oldest structure are from societies that are all but dead. What's the value of statements like that?

People can't seem to help it. Much the same as when people go abroad and compare everything unfavorably to their home country. Seems like it's reflexive.

Bragging.

"The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way." --Earle Hitchner

The UK has always had the advantage of being an island protected from the wars that periodically sweep through mainland areas. There are plenty of cities that I have seen Europe that, due to post-WWII reconstruction, make New York and Chicago seem positively old and historic.

Tectonically stable as well. On the other side there is Japan where there is very little old at all - the earthquakes and landslides see to that. It's a big problem. All anybody wants to do in England is buy and prop up some ancient building. It's hardly surprising we have an energy usage crisis. Everything ends up set in aspic.

It's always amusing when non Americans have to chime in with examples of all of their older things. As if it invalidates anything that's newer. This is an article about the oldest buildings in the states. Which means it's old for the Americans. We get it, you have older stuff, and your infrastructure is generally poorly laid out because of it. Congratulations!

PS. 200km is apparently a "long way" for most Europeans. I find that amusing.

The oldest building in this list is from 1190. Almost 300 years older than your example.

Oh Neil. You silly goose.

I'm glad the fact your structures are older than others brings such delight to your day.

"A person from the United States of America thinks something 100 years old is old. A person from the UK thinks 100 miles is a long way away"

Does your superiority complex help you sleep better at night?

> It's always amusing to find out what Americans think is old.

It's not that we "think" those buildings are old. They are the oldest. There are no older buildings. Age is relative. If you colonize a pacific island, the oldest building will be 1 year old. That doesn't mean the colonizers think 1 year is a long time.

If you want to get into a manhood measuring contest we could broaden the criteria to include native american structures.

If you want to get into a manhood measuring contest we could broaden the criteria to include native american structures.

I don't want to get in to a content, but I am interested in how old they are. The oldest structure here in the UK is a neolithic dwelling dated to ~3700 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knap_of_Howar

The Americas have the likes of Watson Brake and Sechin Bajo, dated to roughly the same time as that, give or take a couple of centuries.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17678841

Well, there is Sechin Bajo from around 3,500 BC, though we know there were people in the Americas at least 8000 years before that, unfortunately their structures haven't survived (that we have found).

Taos Pueblo is on here, there aren't a lot of standing Amerindian structures from that period.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com