Ziggurats are temple platforms of ancient Mesopotamia (2013)
deseret.com
deseret.com
Take the case of Teotihuacan for example, which is at the bottom of a large valley surrounded by mountains. The famous avenue of the dead is oriented to point directly at one of those mountains, Cerro Gordo. It's a lot of effort to go to for a shitty vantage point when you can just build a hillfort a few miles away, like they did at Monte Alban.
There's not much in the way of buildings that humans can build tall with hand tools and preindustrial materials that last thousands of years but stone pyramids. Even masonry doesn't hold up to history, unless it gets buried (people like to tear buildings down and reuse small, light pieces - a limestone block isn't exactly portable).
Well, that might be true, but if there are they don't appear on that page. We see a ziggurat that is still underground, a sketch of a ziggurat, a ziggurat that has been reconstructed in modern times, a model of a ziggurat, the back wall of a ziggurat (that is otherwise still underground), and a rather different-looking building from the 1970s which is apparently inspired by ziggurats.
The reconstructed Ziggurat of Ur is very impressive indeed, but it's understandable that the article might have wanted a picture of an ancient structure rather than a modern reconstruction.
The article mentions the Hanging Gardens of "Babylon", but no contemporary source mentions any such thing in any Babylon of history. The best evidence we do have suggests that classical mentions, which don't say where, describe what was found archaeologically in Nineveh, present day Mosul 400 mi north of the ancient site of Babylon. Nineveh, in the time of the Neo-assyrians, had what may have been the first aquaduct (centuries before any of Rome's) feeding water to their elevated gardens. The Neo-assyrians cultivated a reputation for genocide of defeated people, and public torture of their leaders.
You can see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chogha_Zanbil for pictures of the remaining ziggurat at Chogha Zanbil.
On the other hand, the article is good as a general introduction, and I hadn't heard of the Great Mosque of Samarra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Samarra) before. Neat.
A mezoamerican city buried in the jungle? Obviously a confirmation that zerahelma was real!
The foundation of mormonism is confirmation bias.
I really need some ADHD medication.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel
2. Skyscraper. https://youtu.be/ELBjwltRp3E
Its also far closer to the Colosseum, if we are comparing structures in reality vs art.
https://obscurevideogames.tumblr.com/post/186676108700
Who's old now?
Most? Can we even count religions?
There were many tall temples built to worship her. Made of steel, concrete, and glass— presumably the glass allowed priests to gaze out at the monolithic goddess as they ascended to the tops of the towers. Some of these temples even had pools of water on the rooftops. That, plus the fact that the goddess was on her own island, makes it clear that Liberty was a water goddess.
I think it's worth pointing out, too, the Statue of Liberty is one of the icons of what scholars of religious studies call the "American Civil Religion". In terms of 1700s liberalism, she carries a torch, a "sacred fire" of liberty (I get vibes of prometheus, or the raven who brought down the sun) from France where the first massive liberal revolution took place, to America, home of the second revolutionary liberal state.
I think American Civil Religion is about the tradition and growth of the US "distro" of liberalism. Another major landmark, the Temple of Abraham Lincoln gives us an ascended figure from a story of how liberalism is supposed to have beaten the deeply contradictory institution of slavery that inhabited it. Mt. Rushmore immortalizes 4 founding fathers, etc.
Many had made a long sea-voyage after leaving their families behind. One of them was my 16-year-old grandmother; her only companion chickened-out at the last minute. They faced an unknown future armed only with promises. Liberty's very substantial promise (different to each of them) wasn't always kept, but no doubt many of them felt better about their brave choice.
When I think of a deliberately subterranean sanctuary, I imagine Christian catacomb churches, something selected out of necessity and later revered for the legend of the struggle. Anchorites would often live underground in cells. Egyptian tombs were places of a intense, one-time devotion for upper-level hierarchs, I should think? Then sealed-off.
Many Japanese temples are built on mountaintops, and major mountain rages around the world are usually host to monasteries as quiet places of contemplation. Oftentimes a temple not built in a high place is in some other manner auspicious. In East Asia, "Ley Lines" play an important role in where to place a temple. Very small Zoroastrian fire temples were usually placed as community hubs - they look just a little taller than surrounding buildings in some photos but I'm less certain height was such a concern? I remember seeing a documentary where a very revered fire that has been burning for hundreds or thousands of years if not, (perhaps only apocryphally), for as long as Zorastrianism has existed is in something of a pit carved into the side of a cliff.
I'm going to aim as far back as we've got records, to Gobekli Tepe and give an excerpt from Wikipedia: "Göbekli Tepe is located in the Taş Tepeler ('Stone Hills'), in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains.[24] It overlooks the Harran plain and the headwaters of the Balikh River, a tributary of the Euphrates.[24] The site is a tell (artificial mound) situated on a flat limestone plateau.[25] In the north, the plateau is connected to the neighbouring mountains by a narrow promontory. In all other directions, the ridge descends steeply into slopes and steep cliffs." Caveat: This was thousands of years ago so the geology could have been somewhat different. But it was probably a high place albeit not the very highest. A local raised formation.
The conclusion I feel comfortable making is, a great deal of factors go into deciding where to place a religious sanctuary. Where we put the temple, how big we build it, what we put in it is all about the meaning to us (so long as we're not driven underground, or far-afield by persecutors). But I'll unfold my "evolutionary religious studies" lawnchair/armchair to say it seems to me like surviving systems converge on the importance of height, and I think that's because what height tends to means to us (strength for a difficult climb, solitude for contemplation, vision of our surroundings, visibility from afar) are very worthy ideals that help us survive as societies and individudals. But also worth considering is; control of high places correlates to control of a large enough territory to agriculturally support heavier development up there. The dominant worldview model can eventually gain access to high places and when it does, it has the capacity to build its temples/monastic communities there.
Good times ……