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Comment by mcguire | Hacker News Reader

Saw the title and was thinking, "Yes, and?" It's not exactly a crazy surprise.

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.

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Consider the source: Deseret News. It's likely a subject not because of surprise but because it's a shallow exploration of other faiths.

indeed, and with LDS sometimes it's even less than an exploration of other faiths, and more about hoping to project their own faith on others' histories. e.g. https://www.science.org/content/article/how-mormon-lawyer-tr...

Sometimes? It's more of an almost always thing. Mormons will try and bend every single ancient american archeological nugget into a faith promoting confirmation of the Book of Mormon narrative.

A mezoamerican city buried in the jungle? Obviously a confirmation that zerahelma was real!

The foundation of mormonism is confirmation bias.

Shocking how much the Great Mosque of Samarra looks like the depictions of the Tower of Babel [1]. That reminds me of the awesome Bad Religion song Skyscraper [2].

I really need some ADHD medication.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel

2. Skyscraper. https://youtu.be/ELBjwltRp3E

That depiction of Babel is by Peter Bruegel, a fantastic artist but obviously just making stuff up (1563) vs supposed biblical occurrence (far before that - but probably not real at all).

Its also far closer to the Colosseum, if we are comparing structures in reality vs art.

"Seeing this minaret, medieval Europeans mistook it for the biblical Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9), and, as such, it lent its form to medieval and Renaissance representations of the tower, as in the famous “Tower of Babel” by Bruegel (1563)."

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