As I understand it - which is not at all - the pyramid complex in Giza was always next to a bustling inhabited city, but the complex itself seemingly went ignored/untouched for centuries. Same goes for famous Roman sites. Why were these objects and sites not reused or maintained or destroyed until relatively recently? Where did everyone go, and why weren’t they living in and around these structures this whole time? And if they were, why didn’t they do anything with the sites?
I understand that empires and civilisations come to an end, but they aren’t the result of wholesale genocide, and even if they were, the genociders would surely move into that area next and continue living in the pre-built cities and towns. But that doesn’t seem to be what happened.
Why is humanity out of the picture in these monumental and impressive sites for unbroken periods of deep time?
Cheers!
One small point to correct/adjust is the idea that these sites were “ignored.”
The pyramids have been a tourist attraction for thousands of years. The Romans talked about visiting them. I’m guessing there was never a time when they weren’t of interest to people in the area. Same for something like the Colosseum, Parthenon, or Pantheon. They might not have always prioritized preservation, but they certainly didn’t forget they existed.
The pyramids mostly take care of themselves - most of the Roman sites were destroyed because people needed stone, and its easier to get pre-quarried stuff than dig it out of the ground yourself.
Our reverence of past architecture is a pretty modern trend - and the amount of work it’d take to keep repainting and gilting these ancient buildings is unreasonable if they aren’t useful.
The materials being repurposed is pretty awesome though, it sucks to lose old buildings but being able to reconstruct where stones from a given ended up going and them receiving care and maintenance in their new homes is better than the material being outright destroyed… and it helps weave history into our everyday lives.
One interesting debate you can follow right now (ish, it’s mostly been settled) is the repatriation of totem polls that were stolen from Haida and Coastal Salish peoples… there was a debate about trying to preserve them in museums or returning them to the tribes where they’ll serve their purpose and weather away to nothing. A takeaway from this discussion is that, if you have nothing else, it’s not a bad idea to try and preserve items so that future people can appreciate them… but there are also active totem carvers alive and passing on the knowledge today - it’s better to provide funding to keep the artform alive.
Similarly, the Great Pyramid of Khafre (the tallest of the 3 greats at Giza) was once clad in a smooth exterior. The outermost cladding was taken by locals needing stone over the years, leaving only its peak still holding the original cladding.
I don’t think the peak is the original cladding.
The lower levels had smooth limestone I think.
That top part had that silver and gold alloy I think?
Reusing stones from ancient ruins used to be a widespread practice. I remember hearing a story, not sure how true it is, that the ottomans had plans to use the giza pyramids as a quarry. The practice of grinding up old mummies is almost as ancient as the mummies themselves. Used mainly for fertilizer I believe, and I think it was in vogue as a paint pigment for a while.
I know there are places, especially around the Mediterranean, where you can see foundation stones still etched with ancient hieroglyphic/whatever scrip just thrown in willie nillie.
I won’t condone everything the British museum has done, but a lot of these artifacts wouldn’t exist if they weren’t shipped off. Caring about the past and the artefacts left behind, while by no means new thing, most people for most of history didn’t seem to give two shits. Probably more concerned with not starving etc…
that the ottomans had plans to use the giza pyramids as a quarry
Close, Mohammed Ali had this idea who was independent ruler but on paper was still ruling under ottoman empire. Luckily A french advisor convinced him that it would be cheaper to get the stones from elsewhere.
Was this before or after his boxing career?
Yeah the pyramids at giza used to have an outer layer of white limestone (was it? Or maybe marble…) which was taken and used elsewhere.
In addition to the points others made, Rome has not always been a bustling city.
Its population declined from more than a million in AD 210 to 500,000 in AD 273 to 35,000 after the Gothic War (535–554) reducing the sprawling city to groups of inhabited buildings interspersed among large areas of ruins, vegetation, vineyards and market gardens.
The city’s population declined to less than 50,000 people in the Early Middle Ages from 700 AD onward. It continued to stagnate or shrink until the Renaissance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome#Middle_Ages
Thanks to multiple sackings, power struggles, plagues etc.
It only surpassed a million again in 1936. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome#Demographics
That it took so long to recover is surprising. How did the Vatican not revitalize the city when it grew in power?
I don’t know but my speculation:
- Europe’s economy (from which the Church’s income was largely derived) didn’t go into overdrive until the Renaissance / Columbus landing in America.
- That growth being offset by the Reformation, with a lot of Europeans leaving the Roman Catholic Church.
- The somewhat decentralized nature of the Church, with a lot of assets in the hands of monastic orders and semi-autonomous archbishoprics.
- Perhaps an absolutist theocratic monarchy is not the most conducive form of government for economic and population growth.
The population started to tick up with the Renaissance, but when Italy essentially unified under a more modern constitutional monarchy in 1861, ending the Pope’s temporal power over the city, Rome’s population growth went stratospheric.
Source: https://www.jetpunk.com/users/quizmaster/charts/population-of-rome-over-time
Consider this Roman bathhouse still in use. I don’t think that they were ignored at all
The Colosseum was never abandoned (apart from initially, obvs). The reason its still standing is that people (including popes) kept paying for it to be maintained.
they weren’t, exactly.
neither the pyramids nor the coliseum in rome was ever truly lost to be rediscovered.
The Coliseum wasn’t even necesarily ‘abondoned’, but had rather been repurposed for workshops and housing after it was damaged in earthquakes, and in any case there just wasn’t the interest in the games there used to be. It costs money and resources to keep things up. especially old things, and the people who owned it found that, keeping the games going simply weren’t worth it.
For they pyramids… they were only ‘rediscovered’ by western people. Keep in mind, they were tombs, massive, expensive-to-maintain tombs. for long-dead rulers. Nobody went inside them becuase they’re tombs, and in any case, nobody kept them up because, again, it costs money and resources to do that. And as for exploring their chambers… it takes a certain kind of arrogance to do that, too.
In other places, like the pyramids in south america, they’re lost because the civilization that built them died out, and the jungle reclaimed that land, hiding them. (mayan temples, for example.) Others were, similar to the egyptian pyramids, never actually lost to the culture that built it.
You may notice a trend here. These places are old, and take money, resources and effort to maintain. When times are hard, no one is spending it on upkeeping something that just sits there. not unless there’s a very important reason to do so.
jungle reclaimed that land, hiding them. (mayan temples, for example.)
I bet you those half-buried mayan temples were THE spot where all mayan teenagers went to hang out.
The pyramids of Giza were glorified tombs. The emperor’s didn’t want people inside and I assume wouldn’t want them nearby. The colosseums were maintained by the roman government. And from what I heard the colosseums were reused for various purposes, just not much historical significance. Didn’t Mussolini use the colosseums?
The pyramids at Giza used to be smooth on the outside so people took pieces of them and built something else. I think they’re in a category with places like Angkor Wat. The sites’ importance decreased (religions changed, trade shifted, natural disasters, etc.) and it was easy for nature to cover them in sand or jungle and, poof, out of sight, out of mind.
It is very likely that they weren’t in fact totally forgotten. There probably was local knowledge about them that led white men with too much time and money, thinking themselves superior and as preservers of culture, to “discover” them. Tourism was for the elites and there wasn’t any money yet in preserving these old sites.
My guess would be that as people lost their homes, they started to inhabit places like that like the homeless founder bridges and such these days. Well, not the pyramids so much, but the colloseum definitely. It likely then became dangerous to be in that area. So they kept the structure up the best they could but weren’t worried about part that didn’t provide cover from weather.
