As I understand it - which is not at all - the pyramid complex in Giza was always next to a bustling inhabited city, but the complex itself seemingly went ignored/untouched for centuries. Same goes for famous Roman sites. Why were these objects and sites not reused or maintained or destroyed until relatively recently? Where did everyone go, and why weren’t they living in and around these structures this whole time? And if they were, why didn’t they do anything with the sites?
I understand that empires and civilisations come to an end, but they aren’t the result of wholesale genocide, and even if they were, the genociders would surely move into that area next and continue living in the pre-built cities and towns. But that doesn’t seem to be what happened.
Why is humanity out of the picture in these monumental and impressive sites for unbroken periods of deep time?
Cheers!
The pyramids mostly take care of themselves - most of the Roman sites were destroyed because people needed stone, and its easier to get pre-quarried stuff than dig it out of the ground yourself.
Our reverence of past architecture is a pretty modern trend - and the amount of work it’d take to keep repainting and gilting these ancient buildings is unreasonable if they aren’t useful.
The materials being repurposed is pretty awesome though, it sucks to lose old buildings but being able to reconstruct where stones from a given ended up going and them receiving care and maintenance in their new homes is better than the material being outright destroyed… and it helps weave history into our everyday lives.
One interesting debate you can follow right now (ish, it’s mostly been settled) is the repatriation of totem polls that were stolen from Haida and Coastal Salish peoples… there was a debate about trying to preserve them in museums or returning them to the tribes where they’ll serve their purpose and weather away to nothing. A takeaway from this discussion is that, if you have nothing else, it’s not a bad idea to try and preserve items so that future people can appreciate them… but there are also active totem carvers alive and passing on the knowledge today - it’s better to provide funding to keep the artform alive.
Similarly, the Great Pyramid of Khafre (the tallest of the 3 greats at Giza) was once clad in a smooth exterior. The outermost cladding was taken by locals needing stone over the years, leaving only its peak still holding the original cladding.
I don’t think the peak is the original cladding.
The lower levels had smooth limestone I think.
That top part had that silver and gold alloy I think?