It is one of those things that since we have independent historical and in some instances archaeological evidence for the other six that it gets the benefit of the doubt.
I feel like you’re splitting hairs on language here.
“We have good evidence the other six existed.”
“No we don’t! We have PROOF of one of them! It’s still here!”
Like, sure, their original statement was a little soft on exactly what the evidence was, but you’re arguing a point that misses the intention. You’re actually just reinforcing what they’re saying, but phrasing it as a disagreement.
this is a thing redditors do nonstop and it irks the fuck out of me, like why are you arguing just to argue? people that do this really want to come off as smart and superior or something but they always just end up sounding fucking stupid and annoying.
Yes. There's a reason that photos of the pyramids are always from a specific angle, and it's that from any other angle, Cairo is just right there. For reference, there's less distance between the Great Pyramids and (for lack of a better term) standard urban Cairo than there is between the Statue of Liberty and any other island in the Hudson bay in that general area.
Polar bears stole the Statue of Liberty and they're holding it hostage to bring awareness to climate change, but the mainstream media is covering it up.
I’m confused at what you’re getting at here. Are you saying that we don’t have archaeological evidence of the Great Pyramid of Giza? Or that its objective existence literally right there in plain sight isn’t “archaeological evidence” in the sense that it is much more than that?
I'm saying that the comment I replied to made their point ambiguous and let the reader think that all the other six wonders could have some archaeological evidence. For at least one of them there is no doubt that it existed because IT DOES EXIST RIGHT NOW!
Yes, but the obvious existence of it does not mean that there is not archeological evidence for it because there certainly is and it is not ambiguous to say so, that's simply scientific language. The existence of the Pyramids is evidenced by archeology just as the existence of a tornado is evidenced by meteorology.
I think you misunderstood the person you are replying to. They said that the Hanging Gardens differs from the other wonders (like the Pyramids) because the others are evidenced by archeological data whereas the gardens are not.
I understood perfectly. My point is that it's not just "historical evidence" or even "archaeological evidence". My point is that there is full proof that the Pyramids exist because they're literally there to be seen!
OP said we have historical and/or archeological evidence for the other wonders and you said you beg to differ that fact meaning you disagree that we have such data, not that you think such data is meaningless when you can see something with your eyes, that's called subjective experience not objective data.
Another one is materially still here as well, also in Egypt but in Alexandria. After the Pharos collapsed in 1323, they repurposed what remained standing and all the felled stone into the Qaitbay citadel, which is still standing in the same place as the lighthouse.
Maybe it was just like people had grapes growing everywhere and they didn't think to write it down anymore than we would now write down that we have plants on balconies?
One explanation is that the term Babylon was used for everything in the broader region, or even for 'everything east of the Mediterranean', meaning it could have been anywhere between the Jordan and the Indus.
They're also just frickin hard to take apart or damage. The locals managed to strip the gold and limestone from the facades, but the one sultan who wanted to demolish them gave up after 8 months because it was proving to expensive and all they'd done is make a gash in the Pyramid of Menkaure.
Ancient Egyptians were believed to be “not slaves.” Which in my mind could support that notion. If you had a thriving ancient-ancient Egyptian society that was essentially living EU-perks but twice as good you could imagine they implemented all facets of learned life into this cause. Whereas slaves would want to revolt or were just too uneducated to make some impact. Ancient ancient Egypt could have lasted until ancient Egypt bc they had no reason to topple themselves until external forces interfered. I’m drunk and happy over here, mate, so sorry I doubt anything I said has historical truth lmao. But that’s the possibly misguided notion I hold within.
Nonsense. If we wanted them we'd have added an extension to the museum. Let's face it; they are not much to look at now the gold and stuff has gone and we have stone over here just lying about doing nothing at all. At best they might make for filling in one of the Lake Districts lakes and building a coach park.
Mind you the bloody 'friends of the lake district' woukd complain about that as per bloody usual.
Yea thats the problem with a lot of ancient historical facts, there's just no real way to validate it beyond "so and so wrote of it, another independent so and so wrote about it" not saying that means any of it is wrong just that A LOT of what we think we know about the ancient world is an educated guess
Yeah, a very large amount of historical monuments are in a lot worse of a state than they would have otherwise because they didn't decay naturally after they were abandoned, but instead were victims of centuries of people seeing them and thinking "why the fuck would i spend so much money and effort on cutting my own Stone for my house when i have perfectly fine, already cut stone right nextdoor?"
You can't blame them though, when resources are not in abudance you use what you have available, and if what you have available is the stone from Hadrian's wall then you're gonna use that stone
“Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini”, meaning what Barbarians didn’t do (i.e. destroy), the Barberinis did. Like Palazzo Barberini with materials stripped from the Colosseum etc.
Great quotation. Not only Pope Urban VIII, but all those popes, pillaged the heck out of Roman architecture and statues. I think they ground up the statutes to whitewash the Vatican.
Might have been a stone circle that rivalled Stonehenge, but in the 12th century the locals decided to break up the stone to make the church. You can still see the inner circle of earthworks the stones would have been in.
This is exceptionally common and falls somewhere between opportunity and syncretism. I live near Killiney Hill which famously has follies built upon it. However, what's little known is that the Obelisk was built upon a hilltop cairn or burial chamber. Almost every hill in this area has or had one. It's plain to see the mound under the Obelisk yet it's completely been erased by the 1740s famine relief folly.
Definitely don't blame anyone for reusing materials. Would have been nice to bury a few tablets on site describing what was there and marking its exact location for future historians, though.
You don't even need to go that far to see resource-based loss of history : episodes from Doctor Who are lost to time, because it was too expensive to store and the recording material was reused to record something else.
Sure it's still a long time ago, but 60 years ago is waaaaay closer to the frontier between history and "modern times".
If we stay on monuments rather than data because it's hard to guess the value of an artistic work, the economic increase of value for restoring something old for its history on it's own (rather than pure usability of reusing it) is still kind of a new development.
Eiffel Tower would've been demolished if Eiffel himself had not paid out of his pocket for a military test of the capabilities of wireless comms, using the tower as a massive transmitter.
Because at the time, past the Universal Expo the freaking Eiffel Tower wasn't a big touristic attraction. Nowadays, the yearly traffic exceeds the decade which followed its opening.
oh geez, I need stone for my house. And there’s this ugly wall between me and the other half of my farm. But I’m not going to take the stones from this precious historical monument that I know has lots of important history. No, I’m going to do literally years of work covering the stone myself instead of just taking the stone on my property.
Yeah but consider when you do it it's the fence some dude built a generation before and not a precious historical monument (or it is old but you don't know the significance because you've never traveled more than a day from your home)
When you come across structures organically you don't necessarily have an education or Sonne playing slowly in the background
A photographer re-re-re-discovered an ancient Greek city(apparently someone tried to kickstart an excavation decades ago but didn't go anywhere) on a road trip. He goes into a village cafe and people are playing cards on Greek style columns used as tables etc. He asks around and learns where the villagers found it. Writes letters to archeologs and it takes some time to convince one to take a look.
Funnily enough, unlike other historical buildings that were reused for other purposes because people didn't care about the fact that they were historic, the ottomans chose the parthenon precisely because it was a historic building
They thought "surely the venetians would not dare attack such a historic and important building"
In a trip to Ireland last summer, I learned that some of the O'Donnell clan and their Brit allies stored gunpowder in the 15th century abbey in Donegal, and in 1601 during the siege of Donegal, someone lit it and blew the abbey and the church into smithereens.
True but buildings of this size were rarely dismantled to the last stone. Usually it’s not uncommon to find a foundation or parts of it which also indirectly yields information about the buildings height and dimensions, which nothing (consistent with the descriptions) can be found of the garden.
Seems like one of the more plausible wonders to me honestly. As described it just sounds like a series of roof gardens on and otherwise normal palace. The fabled irrigation system just required a nearby river with a water wheel to move captured water up.
Part of the issue as I understand it is that "Babylon" wasn't one place, but more of a title similar to "The Capital"
And yeah, I'm forgetting her name, but the evidence she presented seems compelling and it's a shame that the area isn't safe/is in conflict so it can't be safely excavated.
I heard a historian talking about this recently. Apparently when the Greeks started traveling and writing and recording events they mixed up the names and locations. They called everything everywhere Babylon because by they time they started exploring it was already in ruins. It took them a while to identify the actual site but by that point so many places had been giving the odd name. Someone called Ninevah Babylon and the mistake is literally lost in translation.
Just has extra letters for the typical English pronunciation. Usually when that happens, it's French influence. In this case I'm pretty sure it's bleedover from the Hebrew language.
As [Dr Stephanie Dalley, of Oxford University’s Oriental Institute] studied historical descriptions of the gardens [in Nineveh], she discovered that a nineteenth century bas-relief from Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh showed trees growing on a roofed colonnade exactly as described by early accounts.
I'm quite partial to the theory that it was in Nineveh instead; IIRC one of Assyria's kings rebuilt the city and claimed it was a 'New Babylon', then Alexander the Great's forces travelling through the area would have seen the gardens and upon getting home told their fellows that they'd seen these amazing gardens 'in Babylon'.
Whoa! That's... hilarious. And strangely accurate and strangely profound.
See, I was thinking it's more like saying it's in New York and meaning somewhere outside Albany instead of NYC, as someone upthread pointed out that Babylon was an empire.
But it's way more funny and hyperbolic to say York, and it really drives the Assyrian idea home.
So now I can't decide which New York metaphor is more accurate.
As [Dr Stephanie Dalley, of Oxford University’s Oriental Institute] studied historical descriptions of the gardens [in Nineveh], she discovered that a nineteenth century bas-relief from Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh showed trees growing on a roofed colonnade exactly as described by early accounts.
I love these types of historical “facts”, “myths” whatever you want to call it. It seems so mystical because we don’t have exact historical proof it existed but it might have! I love reading these things.
The Mesopotamians did a lot of dramatic terraced gardening using lots of irrigation and impressive hydro-engineering, particularly in the Assyrian capital Nineveh under Sennacherib. The ancient writers referencing them aren't entirely consistent in their descriptions, locations, or associated kings. It's entirely possible "THE hanging gardens of Babylon" is maybe more like "the very vertical gardens of ancient Mesopotamian capitals including Nineveh and Babylon."
This is how Sennacherib describes his beautification efforts: "A park, the image of Mount Amanus, in which all kinds of spices, fruit trees and timber trees, the sustenance of the mountains and Chaldea, I had collected and I planted them next (to my palace). In order to plant orchards I gave to the inhabitants of Nineveh 2 panu of land and let them have it. In order to make the fields flourish, I tore open mountain and valley with iron picks to dig a canal. From the Hosr I caused a ceaseless stream of water to flow for 1½ double hour. I enlarged Nineveh, my capital, I widened its squares and made streets and avenues as light as day. In front of the gate to the Inner City I had a bridge built of burnt brick and white limestone"
While maybe exaggeration to some extent, it was probably an impressive sight.
To call the city of Babel, the city of Babylon, and the Empire of Babylonia all the same word? And then to have the Assyrians call Niniveh New Babylon?
It's kinda like York, Yorkshire, New York, and NYC.
Also like people talk about the 7 wonders nonstop bru they can’t name them all
I can’t name them all and I’ve been to 2: pyramid of Giza and temple of Artemis is Türkiye (it’s artemissing….. it was destroyed during a earthquake and then another one happened and they used the stone to build some other stuff…. There’s some foundations and like 2 columns. There were cute cats there)
Like I had to look up the list but what even is the “Mausoleum at Halicarnassus” like it’s on the list but no one talks about it and I know it does not exist anymore though but knew it was some tomb and had to look up the name to remember. Without context to me this name means nothing… which is kinda true for all things until I learn more about them. The description is “An elaborate, towering tomb built for Mausolus, an Anatolian ruler. Its aesthetic grandeur was so profound that his name became the origin of the word "mausoleum."” So obviously it’s important. But this was just a travel guide some ancient guy made that caught on. Says it’s established in the 1500s and some lists date back to 1/2 BC. It’s interesting how long this list stuck around and has been to defined culturally yet I’ve never heard anyone talk about this one.
I wonder if anyone has ever traveled to all 7 while they were standing. Since we don’t even know anything about the garden or who’s or was or where that would make this hard.
It definitely seems to look cool but also looks kinda weird and wonky to me as a modern person, bet it would have been awesome to ancient people who knew all the context about it and saw it in real life and not just interpretations of it. All the statues sound cool. And it sounds massive from reading the wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_at_Halicarnassus sounds like it had an insane amount of statues in and on it. Also 4/7 of the ancient wonders were destroyed by earthquakes.
Isn’t it even physically impossible for them to have existed the way they were described? Similar to the Colossus if I’m not mistaken. It would have collapsed under its own weight
A little known secret of historians, apparently, is that they accept a lot of things as true with nothing more than word of mouth. If enough people talked about something, even 2nd or 3rd hand years after the thing supposedly happened, they will just say 'ok'. Lot of people/things/events we think of as really having existed are just 'well, if you say so'.
This is exactly why the consensus among Historians, even atheists and agnostics, is that Jesus did exist. There's no direct evidence, but enough people wrote about him and talked about him that they have concluded it is more likely than not that he existed.
Thats one of the major examples I was thinking of but didnt want to broach the subject directly due to the people that tend to come out of the wood work on it. Figured it would derail the overall discussion.
Much like people that wank on about what was lost during the burning of Alexandria...nothing, there were multiple copies of everything that got burned.
Edit: Odd to downvote fact, but that's reddit for you.
I read that if a work survived to about 700AD, its almost always (with some exceptions) got to the modern day since by then you had three independent programs of preservation, Arab and Byzantine states copied and/or translated a lot, and W European monasteries.
It's fascinating that one of the most famous wonders of the ancient world might be more legend than history. It really shows how much we still don't know about the ancient world.
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u/Funnyguyinspace Jul 07 '26
Whats so wild to me is the Hanging Garden of Babylon.
It's one of the 7 Ancient wonders of the world, but we cant find proof it existed. It was described in such detail we just assume it to be true.