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Ziggurats are temple platforms of ancient Mesopotamia (2013)
- mcguire 4y agoSaw the title and was thinking, "Yes, and?" It's not exactly a crazy surprise. On the other hand, the article is good as a general introduction, and I hadn't heard of the Great Mosque of Samarra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Samarra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Samarra) before. Neat.
- drewcoo 4y agoConsider the source: Deseret News. It's likely a subject not because of surprise but because it's a shallow exploration of other faiths.
- an1sotropy 4y agoindeed, and with LDS sometimes it's even less than an exploration of other faiths, and more about hoping to project their own faith on others' histories. e.g. https://www.science.org/content/article/how-mormon-lawyer-transformed-archaeology-mexico-and-ended-losing-his-faith https://www.science.org/content/article/how-mormon-lawyer-tr...
- cogman10 4y agoSometimes? It's more of an almost always thing. Mormons will try and bend every single ancient american archeological nugget into a faith promoting confirmation of the Book of Mormon narrative. A mezoamerican city buried in the jungle? Obviously a confirmation that zerahelma was real! The foundation of mormonism is confirmation bias.
- mojomark 4y agoShocking how much the Great Mosque of Samarra looks like the depictions of the Tower of Babel [1]. That reminds me of the awesome Bad Religion song Skyscraper [2]. I really need some ADHD medication. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel 2. Skyscraper. https://youtu.be/ELBjwltRp3E https://youtu.be/ELBjwltRp3E
- voz_ 4y agoThat depiction of Babel is by Peter Bruegel, a fantastic artist but obviously just making stuff up (1563) vs supposed biblical occurrence (far before that - but probably not real at all). Its also far closer to the Colosseum, if we are comparing structures in reality vs art.
- mdturnerphys 4y ago"Seeing this minaret, medieval Europeans mistook it for the biblical Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9), and, as such, it lent its form to medieval and Renaissance representations of the tower, as in the famous “Tower of Babel” by Bruegel (1563)."
- blipvert 4y agoZiggurat Vertigo. Good times ……
- tablespoon 4y agoThe article photo looks like it's actually of a Mayan pyramid, which is silly since it seems like there are perfectly impressive pictures of actual Ziggurats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat.
- throwaway894345 4y agoThere was some documentary I watched about how disparate cultures all over the world independently invented pyramids and similar structures. Basically covergent evolution applied to ideas.
- contingencies 4y agoI think the idea is pre-cognitively expressed in hominid behavioral patterns: sweeping views + army of allies beneath and around you = physical safety. Well, since pterodactyls died out, anyway.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoEvo-psych is usually pretty hard to nail down into a singular argument that isn't simply projecting your own assumptions back out. Take the case of Teotihuacan for example, which is at the bottom of a large valley surrounded by mountains. The famous avenue of the dead is oriented to point directly at one of those mountains, Cerro Gordo. It's a lot of effort to go to for a shitty vantage point when you can just build a hillfort a few miles away, like they did at Monte Alban.
- contingencies 4y agoGood point. However, if you can see it in all hominids, it's probably legit. ie. strength in numbers + defensible positions vs. predators, preference for sweeping open views vs. predators, etc. Ultimately moving rocks in an agricultural society can begin with the simple requirements to til the fields more efficiently. What starts as a pile may become the symbol of the legitimacy of the dynasty...
- brundolf 4y agoAnybody else learn the word via this videogame? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat_(video_game)
- allemagne 4y agoAnything notable about this article I'm missing? Just seems pretty tame for being on the front page
- greenthrow 4y agoNo, it is extemely low quality and does not deserve to be on here.
- Archelaos 4y ago> Most religions have attempted to build their sanctuaries on prominent heights to be visible to all the faithful. Most? Can we even count religions?
- 8bitsrule 4y agoAFAIK we can't even count 'temples', a word archeologists frequently ascribe to buildings of many sizes with nary a shred of evidence that they're not community centers, beer halls, warehouses or king's palaces. A century ago it was 'obvious' that Giza was covered with gigantic 'tombs'. Among the hazards in viewing mysterious, undocumented past civilizations through culturally-conditioned eyes.
- christophilus 4y agoI was thinking the same thing. 4000 years from now, someone will discover the goddess “Statue of Liberty” submerged in the Atlantic: There were many tall temples built to worship her. Made of steel, concrete, and glass— presumably the glass allowed priests to gaze out at the monolithic goddess as they ascended to the tops of the towers. Some of these temples even had pools of water on the rooftops. That, plus the fact that the goddess was on her own island, makes it clear that Liberty was a water goddess.
- JetAlone 4y agoIt's interesting that you bring up the Statue of Liberty. In Japanese she is called "自由の女神", "Jiyuu no Megami" which can be translated as "Goddess of Freedom". So future anthropologists with a limited snapshot of Japanese culture could find a picture of the Statue of Liberty captioned in Japanese, and conclude she was explicitly considered a goddess or divine spirit of sorts. I think it's worth pointing out, too, the Statue of Liberty is one of the icons of what scholars of religious studies call the "American Civil Religion". In terms of 1700s liberalism, she carries a torch, a "sacred fire" of liberty (I get vibes of prometheus, or the raven who brought down the sun) from France where the first massive liberal revolution took place, to America, home of the second revolutionary liberal state. I think American Civil Religion is about the tradition and growth of the US "distro" of liberalism. Another major landmark, the Temple of Abraham Lincoln gives us an ascended figure from a story of how liberalism is supposed to have beaten the deeply contradictory institution of slavery that inhabited it. Mt. Rushmore immortalizes 4 founding fathers, etc.
- dahart 4y agoThere’s a rejection sampling method named after Ziggurats that was named because of the shape of the ancient temples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat_algorithm
- ETH_start 4y agoReligious structures commonly ascend upward in a pyramid/cone shape, toward a point. This seems to map to a hierarchy of human values, in order to symbolize the supreme value that should guide a person and society (e.g. a supreme all-powerful, life-giving consciousness).