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Some historians think for a few hundred years Hadrian's Wall was a megastructure where the locals had no solid understanding of who built it, how they managed i
by brownbat 9y ago
Some historians think for a few hundred years Hadrian's Wall was a megastructure where the locals had no solid understanding of who built it, how they managed it, or why.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kkr42 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kkr42
It's admittedly debated, but even if just plausible, still fascinating to contemplate.
If not for the wall, there were probably periods in the local history around the pyramids that would qualify. Julius Caesar is closer to our time than he was to the time when they were built. There's a lot of time for people to forget other civilizations in there.
- careersuicide 9y agoThere's also The Great wall of Gorgan: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/irans-great-wall-is-now-buried-and-forgotten http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/irans-great-wall-is-now... > It was so well-known that it allegedly factored into the plans of military legends such as Genghis Khan. Today, however, it’s been almost entirely forgotten—many locals living within a few miles of it don’t even know of its existence.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y agoThis is still true of Stonehenge, Avebury, and some of the less well-known archaeological remnants in that area. (Durrington Walls, Marden Henge, and so on.)
- adrianratnapala 9y agoI think with Stonehenge and the like, the thing some people find mysterious is how they were built using the technology of the day. (I don't find it mysterious, I think they did things by working hard and being clever). The claim about Hardian's wall is that after the fall of the Roman Empire, the medieval people didn't know how to build such things at all, and could only guess how the Romans had done it. And part of those guesses might well have been "by magic".
- arethuza 9y agoWe still have no idea how or why people would melt the rock walls of fortresses to create "vitrified" forts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y agoThat sounds plausible. I have heard a similar story about the ruins of the Roman baths at Bath, Somerset in medieval times: the locals thought that they were built by vanished giants.
- yipopov 9y agoCompletely implausible, we're talking about medieval Europeans, not Flintstones era simpletons. The concepts of fortification and putting one rock on top of another were pretty well hashed out by then.