Submitted by Mind-Matters-Not t3_z109pu in todayilearned
Reply to comment by Dawnawaken92 in TIL the Great Pyramid of Giza is not the largest pyramid in the world, Great Pyramid of Cholula, also known as Tlachihualtepetl, is the largest archaeological site of a pyramid in the New World, as well as the largest pyramid by volume known to exist in the world today. by Mind-Matters-Not
This is often true of any major historical site. For the Aztecs and Mayans, they often built pyramids over/atop other (previous) smaller ones. Generally the site location is what was important; either a source of water, a spring, specific fault lines, etc.
The old saying about real estate was true even for them: Location, location, location!
They found something like 9 different "Cities of Troy" built right on top of each other dating back all the way to the early Bronze Age.
Troy 6 or 7 is believed to be the Troy from the Trojan War & The Iliad.
This is a really silly question but how does this work, exactly? Are they directly on top of one another? Is there just some weird midway period where everyone's house is half buried and they build another story? I've always been puzzled by the mechanics of this
These are usually long periods of time apart, sometimes centuries. In the case of Troy it's been burnt down/destroyed a few times. I guess over time the remains get eroded or new dirt ends up ontop of the old and people just build ontop of that.
It always seems like somehow these things fall down under the floor and im sure there is someone who understands this stuff better than I that can explain how buildings end up being below ground level over time other than "dirt gets on it"
I liked Pratchett's comment on it. Something like, "It ends up that what cities are built on is mostly older cities."
New new York will happen, one day.
Yup. A lot of churches were built over pagan temples when Christianity swept through the world. For the location and convenience mostly. Also, it would probably be easier to convince vikings to start adopting a radically different religion if going go church is as similar an experience as possible to going to whatever temple they used to have. The cynic in me imagines “dear vikings, come to our church, it’s where your temple used to be. We preach love and tolerance and we’re keeping things as “normal” as possible, we won’t tell you about eternal damnation until we’ve hooked you in with everlasting life in paradise” would be the best tactic.
It also helped to rebrand the holidays they already knew and practiced
Absolutely, I think that’s a part of keeping things “business as usual” as much as they can. Enticing or convincing someone is a lot easier if you do it bit by bit, rather than completely up-ending their view of the world in one fell swoop. You start with the positives, then you get to the negatives once they’re already pretty much on board.
It’s manipulative, but it’s also effective.
Interestingly, the stigma against eating horse meat in European culture actually came to be as it was considered a delicacy with religious connotations among various pagan peoples in Europe (if I recall correctly - can’t be fucked to google that). So instead of co-opting the horse meat tradition it instead became shunned, in contrast to many other traditions which were integrated into Christianity
For a lot of religions providing a schedule and set of meanings for holidays feasts and festivals is arguably more important to how followers interact with the religion than almost any other factor. Especially in an agricultural society where those holidays and festivals frequently serve to remind people when planting and harvest seasons are beginning and ending, which is why most religions following solar calendars tend to have a few holidays near solstices and equinoxes, and even with lunar or lunar-solar calendars like Hebrew you tend to get fairly close shots to that part of the solar year.
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