7 ms·

I always wanted to ask something from archeologists: why did ancient people bury these cities instead of e.g. living in them, or demolishing them?

skocznymroczny 5y ago
In most cases, those ancient cities and temples weren't buried by the people. Egypt is a desert country. Over time, the wind carries the sand over everything. Also, many old cities and temples were flooded by the Nile.
- HenryKissinger 5y ago
  Is every place being slowly buried likewise? Is the planet slowing getting thicker? Where does all this material come from?
  - bbarnett 5y ago
    Human skin is 99.9% of the dust in most homes. (had to reply with a gross out amusement, it's not sand, it's dead people!)
    - anoncow 5y ago
      I used to believe that too. However, apparently there is more to it https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/what-is-dust-made-of/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/what-is-dust-made-of/ Also this video by Derek is very informative https://youtu.be/jn5M48MVWyg https://youtu.be/jn5M48MVWyg
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      >Human skin is 99.9% of the dust in most homes. Sure, ever since Thanos.
  - rustymonday 5y ago
    In the case of Egypt it's mostly wind-blown sand and dust. But deposition can also be caused by river sedimentation during floods. In non-desert areas, dead biomass (fallen leaves, etc.) creates soil. My parents had a stone path through their yard that they didn't maintain, and within a decade it was covered over with soil and grass grew over it. Over the course of a few thousand years, structures can be buried by several meters of earth.
    - AlotOfReading 5y ago
      The speed of deposition is super variable. In fluvial environments, I've seen reports of feet per year, which put recent sites (i.e. medieval) under 40+m of sediment. On the other hand, I've worked sites with long term 'stable surfaces', where layers thousands of years old were within centimeters or less of modern contexts.
  - saalweachter 5y ago
    Organic matter largely comes from the air. Inorganic matter largely gets blown from other places, or washed down from mountain tops.
  - speeder 5y ago
    Replying your specific question, actually the planet is slowly getting rounder. A simplification of the process: Tectonic plate movements create mountains, as they climb on top of each other (and where space was opened, lava there turns into new rock) Then erosion carry material from high places, to low places. Thus over time places in high areas get "shorter", while places in low areas get "taller". Meanwhile some parts of tectonic plates are sinking again and melting again. But as the planet core cools down, this process get slower and slower, and erosion speed remains "constant", so over time the tendency is the planet get rounder and rounder, eventually the planet would have cooled 100% and no new mountains would form, while erosion would make all mountains become flat over time.
breakbread 5y ago
https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/ https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/ I think post has what you need.
- jsrcout 5y ago
  That was fascinating, and informative!
toyg 5y ago
As the sibling comment says, cities are not buried - they are subsumed by material that accretes on top of existing structures. Say you lay a road in a town, then the road starts developing holes; to even it out, you place a new layer on top. Over decades, this process raises the road so significantly that, when buildings are demolished, they get rebuilt at a higher level or their ruins are simply covered by new roads. Rinse and repeat for centuries, and you end up with Rome. If instead you just abandon the settlement (like it happened in many Egyptian / Greek / Roman towns, like Volubilis in Morocco), then nature will do its thing, pushing detritus over the ruins, or growing plants that will slowly create new layers of organic material that eventually turns to dirt. Towns near rivers or coasts might be claimed by waters once people stop maintaining their protection. Etc etc.
tinco 5y ago
Not sure about this particular city, but for cities in general I think it's usually because they're just absolutely destroyed. I was just listening to Dan Carlin's King of Kings podcast and in there is the poignant story of a greek general traveling through what is modern Syria I believe. While traveling through the desert the general comes across an abandoned city unlike he's ever seen, and unrivalled by any city of his time. Its 11 miles of walls were 10 meters thick and 30 meters high. There was no one around to inform him of what the city was named. Now it is believed that the city was the capital of some (Assyrian?) kingdom, that just 200 years earlier was basically the capital of the civilised world and had stood for hundreds of years. It was destroyed by a particularly cruel horde, and everyone in it was slaughtered, the fields around it salted, the goods and artefacts taken. It was so thoroughly destroyed that 200 years later a well read and knowledgable general couldn't even place it or find anyone to tell him about it. The only thing that remains were the basically indestructible stone walls. I don't really have the mind for remembering history details, so I'm probably way off on some details, but I thought it was a cool story about how we've come to find these ancient ruins just all abandoned without even locals knowing what they are. Dan Carlin makes it really come alive, highly recommend listening to his stories.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  I think you're referring to the city of Ur, the "capital" of Mesopotamia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur And the guy who rediscovered it (from a European perspective) was an Italian called Pietro Della Valle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Della_Valle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Della_Valle
  - astine 5y ago
    Tinco is referencing a famous story by Xenophon who was a Greek mercenary who fought for the Persians. The city being references is believed to be Nineveh(1), which was indeed a capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire at one point. The ruins of Nineveh still exist, but they are in northern Iraq, not Syria. 1 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0032,006:3:4 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg...
thaumasiotes 5y ago
They didn't. The cities are buried by the natural accumulation of dirt. Nobody would do it on purpose - what would be the point?
dougmwne 5y ago
I want to point out the survivorship bias present here too. Only buried cities can survive millennia to be discovered later. Abandoned cities that were in erosion prone places are in little bits at the bottom of the slope. Cities that weren't abandoned can have buildings that are thousands of years old and actively lived in and maintained. I spent some time in an Italian hill town that has been continuously inhabited since the Romans. At the same time I visited Pompeii. Most of the buildings in the center were Roman and had identical construction to Pompeii. They were living "ruins" and therefore could not be discovered because they had never been lost. There was a Roman Theater in that town that had been partially built into homes and partially quarried for building materials. There had been a set of giant marble masks originally in the theater, but now scattered around the town built into other building. Conservation of matter, it doesn't go anywhere unless someone carries it away.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  What is the name of town?
devoutsalsa 5y ago
toldinstone on YouTube did a video on this about why ancient time is buried. 3m51s watch, and interesting enough I remembered it to recommend to you :) “Why Ancient Rome Is Buried”: https://youtu.be/fz4ZdXpri04 https://youtu.be/fz4ZdXpri04

skocznymroczny 5y ago

In most cases, those ancient cities and temples weren't buried by the people. Egypt is a desert country. Over time, the wind carries the sand over everything. Also, many old cities and temples were flooded by the Nile.

HenryKissinger 5y ago
Is every place being slowly buried likewise? Is the planet slowing getting thicker? Where does all this material come from?
- bbarnett 5y ago
  Human skin is 99.9% of the dust in most homes. (had to reply with a gross out amusement, it's not sand, it's dead people!)
  - anoncow 5y ago
    I used to believe that too. However, apparently there is more to it https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/what-is-dust-made-of/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/what-is-dust-made-of/ Also this video by Derek is very informative https://youtu.be/jn5M48MVWyg https://youtu.be/jn5M48MVWyg
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    >Human skin is 99.9% of the dust in most homes. Sure, ever since Thanos.
- rustymonday 5y ago
  In the case of Egypt it's mostly wind-blown sand and dust. But deposition can also be caused by river sedimentation during floods. In non-desert areas, dead biomass (fallen leaves, etc.) creates soil. My parents had a stone path through their yard that they didn't maintain, and within a decade it was covered over with soil and grass grew over it. Over the course of a few thousand years, structures can be buried by several meters of earth.
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    The speed of deposition is super variable. In fluvial environments, I've seen reports of feet per year, which put recent sites (i.e. medieval) under 40+m of sediment. On the other hand, I've worked sites with long term 'stable surfaces', where layers thousands of years old were within centimeters or less of modern contexts.
- saalweachter 5y ago
  Organic matter largely comes from the air. Inorganic matter largely gets blown from other places, or washed down from mountain tops.
- speeder 5y ago
  Replying your specific question, actually the planet is slowly getting rounder. A simplification of the process: Tectonic plate movements create mountains, as they climb on top of each other (and where space was opened, lava there turns into new rock) Then erosion carry material from high places, to low places. Thus over time places in high areas get "shorter", while places in low areas get "taller". Meanwhile some parts of tectonic plates are sinking again and melting again. But as the planet core cools down, this process get slower and slower, and erosion speed remains "constant", so over time the tendency is the planet get rounder and rounder, eventually the planet would have cooled 100% and no new mountains would form, while erosion would make all mountains become flat over time.

breakbread 5y ago

https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/ https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/ I think post has what you need.

jsrcout 5y ago
That was fascinating, and informative!

toyg 5y ago

As the sibling comment says, cities are not buried - they are subsumed by material that accretes on top of existing structures. Say you lay a road in a town, then the road starts developing holes; to even it out, you place a new layer on top. Over decades, this process raises the road so significantly that, when buildings are demolished, they get rebuilt at a higher level or their ruins are simply covered by new roads. Rinse and repeat for centuries, and you end up with Rome. If instead you just abandon the settlement (like it happened in many Egyptian / Greek / Roman towns, like Volubilis in Morocco), then nature will do its thing, pushing detritus over the ruins, or growing plants that will slowly create new layers of organic material that eventually turns to dirt. Towns near rivers or coasts might be claimed by waters once people stop maintaining their protection. Etc etc.

tinco 5y ago

Not sure about this particular city, but for cities in general I think it's usually because they're just absolutely destroyed. I was just listening to Dan Carlin's King of Kings podcast and in there is the poignant story of a greek general traveling through what is modern Syria I believe. While traveling through the desert the general comes across an abandoned city unlike he's ever seen, and unrivalled by any city of his time. Its 11 miles of walls were 10 meters thick and 30 meters high. There was no one around to inform him of what the city was named. Now it is believed that the city was the capital of some (Assyrian?) kingdom, that just 200 years earlier was basically the capital of the civilised world and had stood for hundreds of years. It was destroyed by a particularly cruel horde, and everyone in it was slaughtered, the fields around it salted, the goods and artefacts taken. It was so thoroughly destroyed that 200 years later a well read and knowledgable general couldn't even place it or find anyone to tell him about it. The only thing that remains were the basically indestructible stone walls. I don't really have the mind for remembering history details, so I'm probably way off on some details, but I thought it was a cool story about how we've come to find these ancient ruins just all abandoned without even locals knowing what they are. Dan Carlin makes it really come alive, highly recommend listening to his stories.

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
I think you're referring to the city of Ur, the "capital" of Mesopotamia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur And the guy who rediscovered it (from a European perspective) was an Italian called Pietro Della Valle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Della_Valle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Della_Valle
- astine 5y ago
  Tinco is referencing a famous story by Xenophon who was a Greek mercenary who fought for the Persians. The city being references is believed to be Nineveh(1), which was indeed a capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire at one point. The ruins of Nineveh still exist, but they are in northern Iraq, not Syria. 1 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0032,006:3:4 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg...

thaumasiotes 5y ago

They didn't. The cities are buried by the natural accumulation of dirt. Nobody would do it on purpose - what would be the point?

dougmwne 5y ago

I want to point out the survivorship bias present here too. Only buried cities can survive millennia to be discovered later. Abandoned cities that were in erosion prone places are in little bits at the bottom of the slope. Cities that weren't abandoned can have buildings that are thousands of years old and actively lived in and maintained. I spent some time in an Italian hill town that has been continuously inhabited since the Romans. At the same time I visited Pompeii. Most of the buildings in the center were Roman and had identical construction to Pompeii. They were living "ruins" and therefore could not be discovered because they had never been lost. There was a Roman Theater in that town that had been partially built into homes and partially quarried for building materials. There had been a set of giant marble masks originally in the theater, but now scattered around the town built into other building. Conservation of matter, it doesn't go anywhere unless someone carries it away.

ithkuil 5y ago
What is the name of town?

devoutsalsa 5y ago

toldinstone on YouTube did a video on this about why ancient time is buried. 3m51s watch, and interesting enough I remembered it to recommend to you :) “Why Ancient Rome Is Buried”: https://youtu.be/fz4ZdXpri04 https://youtu.be/fz4ZdXpri04