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‘Rare find’: amphitheatre dig in Kent paints picture of Roman town
- ginko 5y agoIs it just me or does that cat skull look unusually large? Fore reference here's a modern domestic cat's skull in someone's hand: https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Felis-Linnaeus-Domestic-Specimen/dp/B07P41FXNH https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Felis-Linnaeus-Domestic-Specim...
- kwhitefoot 5y agoPerhaps it is a European wild cat, Felis Silvestris.
- mint2 5y agoNot just you since the article says the archeologists nicknamed it maxispus.
- Vanit 5y agoI think that's just a pun on Maximus as a name and isn't a comment on its size.
- toyg 5y agoYeah, but what did the Romans ever do for us...? /s It's still incredible to me how nature can seamlessly cover structures as big as this, given a few hundred years of neglect. Cities substrata are understandable, but a hill just birthing itself, thanks to dirt flying in and vegetation growing and dying on the spot, is just amazing.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoTall structures don't end up buried. What happens is that they may collapse and/or be destroyed to reuse the stones so that what's left is low on the ground and get buried. An amphitheatre may suffer that fate or be low on the ground to start with: It may have been built on a natural slope or in a natural depression.
- toyg 5y ago> Tall structures don't end up buried. Uh, yes they do: the pyramids, for example.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoSome smaller pyramids in areas where sand storms can move sand dunes were buried. These are special conditions. The pyramids of Giza were never buried and stood like they are now for thousands of years, like the Colosseum in Rome, for instance. They are much too tall. I'm no expert but the rate of new soil behind deposited and burying things has to be in the "few millimetres per year" range at most in general, so I would guess no more than a very small number of metres after 2,000 years.