Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings? I think that stone vs wood makes a significant difference in two major ways. One is simply time

Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings? I think that stone vs wood makes a significant difference in two major ways. One is simply time scale. Take Notre Dame as discussed in other places in this thread. While it has been rebuilt many times, it happens once every 150-250 years or so meaning that from the perspective of living memory what is there now has always been there. That is why many people consider the Notre Dame that burnt down the 'real' one and the one that will replace it as 'fake', despite neither on of them looking like the original. With wooden temples that get rebuilt every 50-80 years there is always someone around that remembers the last time it happened, making the framing of the event entirely different. The other is that stone is very hard to destroy. Meaning that even if stone church burns down and get rebuilt several times there will always been parts of the original church incorporated into the latest building. It is not uncommon for churches in Europe to have visible parts of their foundation the where built 800+ years ago despite most of the church being 'new'. This is what gives something continuity.