It honored the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. And it demonstrated French industrial prowess, iron craftsmanship advanced engineering capabilities..
Furthermore: The Eiffel Tower was planned to be temporary, it only still stands because it was used as a radio tower.
>planned to be temporary
Same for the Atomium in Brussels, Belgium.
Then they probably shouldn’t have used a stable atom..
Yet if an archaeologist excavated it with no knowledge of that, like everything that is not clearly a house, it would be chalked down as a 'ritual site'
I wonder if Stonehenge was only for demonstrating some tribe's engineering capabilities too