Teenagers Stayed Overnight at Their School and Found Hidden Ancient Roman Ruins
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
It seems reasonable a similar thing happened here even as far back as the 1870s when the original construction was taking place.
It lead to many treasures reaching museums etc instead of being melted down! It's still in effect, and still pays higher-than-melting prices: https://www.raa.se/kulturarv/arkeologi-fornlamningar-och-fyn...
> It's still in effect, and still pays higher-than-melting prices
But the melting price of an ancient bronze sword is nothing. Most ancient artifacts have no material value.
First world is a political term meaning non-aligned with the West or Communist states during the Cold War.
Historically, Sweden was a non-aligned country. The very definition of a “third-world” country.
Third World is now a slight for developing nations.
0. The Jakarta Method (Vincent Bevins) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method
The reality is either you (the policymaker) find it important enough to bear the cost or it's not important enough for anyone to do it. The Swedish solution in the sibling comment demonstrates the right mindset.
If you don't leave anything behind, future generations can just build without caution, because the past will forever be shrouded in mystery. Let's not repeat ancient civilizations' mistakes.
Edit: Actually it was Seattle, you can still visit its old ground level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
A US city often overlooked for some intricate people explorable underground spaces is Cincinnati: https://www.visitcincy.com/blog/post/unmistakably-cincinnati...
Some of Cincinnati's underground exists from plans to build subway trains that never completed. I think that makes Cincinnati's particularly sad being that it constitutes a perpetually unfinished public works/public transportation project.
Relatedly to that, Atlanta also has a tiny underground leftover from passenger train lines that ended passenger travel decades ago (and so was turned into a mall, because America): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Atlanta
But that doesn’t work if you need to support a skyscraper (not if you want it to stay upright), or dig a metro line, so new developments are now excavating the old rubble.
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.
Archeology is my fav.
(Seriously, though, _is_ anything much known about them beyond that?)
https://brucebyfield.com/2012/07/11/recognizing-dormitive-ex...
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.
...so what? Why would you compare "the size of Teotihuacan" to "the area enclosed in the Aurelian Walls"? Why not compare it to "the size of Rome"?
I can think of one reason you'd do this...
Not the OP, but I have heard that Rome is defined by the seven hills, so I thought the Aurelian Wall definition was excluding a hill or something. The Wikipedia article says the walls cover all seven hills and the Campus Martius: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelian_Walls
Are you saying you'd include even more in "the size of Rome (the city)"? If so, what?
Arrowheads are an example of something that's not too difficult to find in the wild if you know where to look.
44,000 years of continuous human occupation. (Except for a brief period during the 20th century ..)
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.
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).
Wifi must be a nightmare. Very interesting to think about. Every building I've lived in is plaster and wood beams and I get annoyed when audio starts dropping / distorting on BT earbuds at a distance.
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).
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?
I had an early-midlife crisis where I considered moving to another profession. After a great deal of thought, I determined that the profession that I would find most rewarding would be as a professor of history for university students. If I could share my passion for history in such a way as to inspire one student per semester, I'd have achieved something great.
It makes me sad that history is taught in such boring terms in high school. It's endlessly interesting. I hated school far too much to realistically believe I'd earn the required accreditation, hence I remained a tech guy.
Check out "Lies My Teachers Told Me." A university professor wrote it after becoming frustrated at how much deprogramming had to be done with incoming college students. I saw it in a used book store and immediately bought it. I liked it.
For example, most of what is known about the Commanches comes from letters and diaries of white people who were in contact with them, or were enslaved by them.
See "Empire of the Summer Moon" by Gwynne.
https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful...
It's a fantastic account, and I'm amazed nobody has made an epic miniseries about it.
On an unrelated note, Gwynne's book is fine as a fantasy story, but it's very badly regarded from the perspective of narrative history. Hämäläinen's Comanche Empire is a much better book arguing a largely similar position. Don't take that as applying to later books by the same author, sadly.
As evidence of the paucity of historical knowledge of the Indian peoples, estimates of the pre-Columbian population vary from 10 million to 100 million.
I know about the various rock paintings with symbols, but there isn't enough of that to represent much of anything.
I didn't. It's pretty frustrating how many people on the internet can't infer intent. I upvoted your clearly absurdist statement because I got it.
Sadly, that's the modern internet. Enough people are incurious and bigoted so as to make absurd statements appear genuine.
On an up-note: at least one person understood your snark and appreciated it for what it was.
You didn't exactly say this, but I'd stop short of defining history around the existence of the current US government and structure. Ironically 250 years is probably longer than any continental European government has been around in its present state.
In terms of history as such, we have just as much history in the US as Europe does. Just ask the Native Americans / First People. There are lots of examples elsewhere in the conversation.
After that it starts to get complicated.
TBF, so do some folks in the U. S.; though in most cases, just barely.
It almost seems hard not to find ancient ruins. It then becomes a question of priorities and resource allocation.
Walk through a modern subway, see bits & pieces of ancient history all over the place. Buy icecream, sit on a bench that labourers hacked out of stone 2ky ago.
Which is why ancient ruins in construction sites are often covered up, unreported, or even destroyed.
If it's the same one I read about, they did.
> The students who found a way into the ruins weren’t the first amateur explorers to rediscover the site. Some of the graffiti scrawled on the walls of the villa dates to between 1920 and 1950, when the building was occupied by a religious order. Other markings are more recent, perhaps left by students at the high school
> A room with monochrome stucco decorations Cantieri Narranti
Unlikely. We know that the white marble statues that we have were once painted. Time turned them into what we see today. This room was surely vividly painted.