3 ms·

As I read once, Americans get surprised by European history (and Europeans by America's distances). As a local in Spain and as my sibling commenter said, this c

As I read once, Americans get surprised by European history (and Europeans by America's distances). As a local in Spain and as my sibling commenter said, this could def pass as "yeah there's a bunch of rocks in that field". It was common for buildings in the middle ages and almost at any time in history to reuse rocks from the nearby ruins from older civilizations. After all those were readily available and saving weeks of work could mean the difference between having a dwelling and death. It's also very commong to find archeological ruins when excavating, just yesterday my father (who is in construction) told me of a region in Spain where construction companies will just not go because it's certain they will hit ruins and have the project paralized. As the article described, here the owner gets their field of avocados taken over by the government at least until 2026, hopefully they didn't take any loan to buy it or they'll surely default.

Mordisquitos 4y ago
> It was common for buildings in the middle ages and almost at any time in history to reuse rocks from the nearby ruins from older civilizations. After all those were readily available and saving weeks of work could mean the difference between having a dwelling and death. I'm sure that the choice between a dwelling or death was sometimes the case, but it's not like they needed such a stark pro to override the con of destroying archæological remains. It was simply that at the time there was no such thing as wanting to preserve useless old things that happened to be there, and reusing conveniently available building blocks was a no-brainer.
- franciscop 4y ago
  Something that I've learned recently that we're very misinformed is the concept of the "lazy peasant". Apparently for most of history, people and communities were very often at the brink of death by starvation[1], so saving weeks of unrelated work that you can be spend on producing food is very likely a thing that more often than not would improve your survival chances greatly. Of course as you say "historical relevant" was also not a concept as well for the common folks. [1] Sure it'd be very seasonal, where you could go few years in a row with excess of food! But excess food was "bad" as well, so then what people got that they worked in reducing producing the amount of food to prefer diversifying their crops to reduce risk of a big event wiping their whole farm.
timeon 4y ago
> where construction companies will just not go because it's certain they will hit ruins and have the project paralized. I lived in one unspecified East European city and there was parking lot next to my flat where new construction was planned. It was next to old town so first team of archeologists came. They made grid with holes ~1m deep. Barely found anything. So they left. Then crawler excavator came and after while dug through the huge vault of some medieval cellar. Now there is underground garage. But there were cases when garages were made in place of Roman ruins as well, so this was nothing.

Mordisquitos 4y ago

> It was common for buildings in the middle ages and almost at any time in history to reuse rocks from the nearby ruins from older civilizations. After all those were readily available and saving weeks of work could mean the difference between having a dwelling and death. I'm sure that the choice between a dwelling or death was sometimes the case, but it's not like they needed such a stark pro to override the con of destroying archæological remains. It was simply that at the time there was no such thing as wanting to preserve useless old things that happened to be there, and reusing conveniently available building blocks was a no-brainer.

franciscop 4y ago
Something that I've learned recently that we're very misinformed is the concept of the "lazy peasant". Apparently for most of history, people and communities were very often at the brink of death by starvation[1], so saving weeks of unrelated work that you can be spend on producing food is very likely a thing that more often than not would improve your survival chances greatly. Of course as you say "historical relevant" was also not a concept as well for the common folks. [1] Sure it'd be very seasonal, where you could go few years in a row with excess of food! But excess food was "bad" as well, so then what people got that they worked in reducing producing the amount of food to prefer diversifying their crops to reduce risk of a big event wiping their whole farm.

timeon 4y ago

> where construction companies will just not go because it's certain they will hit ruins and have the project paralized. I lived in one unspecified East European city and there was parking lot next to my flat where new construction was planned. It was next to old town so first team of archeologists came. They made grid with holes ~1m deep. Barely found anything. So they left. Then crawler excavator came and after while dug through the huge vault of some medieval cellar. Now there is underground garage. But there were cases when garages were made in place of Roman ruins as well, so this was nothing.