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Bouncing off your point - I was at the Great Wall and someone told us that after the need for the wall disappeared, villagers were looting bricks from the wall to build the things they needed until the government stepped in to stop it

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To my understanding that was pretty standard throughout history.[0]

Why go chisel out new rocks to build your mill when there's an unused pile of them _right there_?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spolia

That's basically what happened to the pyramids in Egypt. They were smooth-sided for over 3000 years.

Even more wild is the fact that when we're talking villagers looting the smooth-sided pyramids for stone, we're talking about the Roman Republic era and around the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty under Cleopatra.

Most of them survived well into the middle ages. There was an earthquake in the 14th century that loosened the casing stones and knocked quite a few loose. After that is when looting the stones really took off.

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