| ▲ | stephbook 3 hours ago |
| Would be pretty stupid to spend all this energy erecting stones just for the view of it. Like, it obviously had SOME purpose. |
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| ▲ | cogman10 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| What's interesting is that it may have had multiple changing purposes during construction. It took 1500 years to be established in its current form. It's pretty likely (to me at least) that the purpose of the year 1 work was different from year 1500. |
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| ▲ | malfist 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah, why did they go through all that effort to build the Eiffel tower? |
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| ▲ | billynomates 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It honored the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. And it demonstrated French industrial prowess, iron craftsmanship advanced engineering capabilities.. | | |
| ▲ | ralfd 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Furthermore: The Eiffel Tower was planned to be temporary, it only still stands because it was used as a radio tower. | | | |
| ▲ | uniq7 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I wonder if Stonehenge was only for demonstrating some tribe's engineering capabilities too |
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| ▲ | irishcoffee an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I realize that was tongue in cheek, but what I found more interesting is that is was only to stand for 20 years and was initially set to be demolished in 1909. So your question is even more amusing as the thing was only supposed to be temporary. | | |
| ▲ | ButlerianJihad 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Since it was part of a World's Fair, it is unsurprising today that the Eiffel Tower was slated for demolition. I grew up very near to Balboa Park, and it was rather late in life that I learned that all those buildings were sort of hastily erected for the Panama–California Exposition, 110 years ago, and they were expected to be demolished quickly, or decay, because they were never intended for permanent habitation. And so the intervening years have been a saga of very industrious preservation and restoration, as most all of the buildings have been deemed to be architectural marvels and very much worth keeping around. |
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| ▲ | Gravityloss an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Selfie geolocation |
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| ▲ | dilawar 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Or someone told them that folks in Egypt made a huge building out of stones. They started and gave up after a while. As good a story as any? |
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| ▲ | repelsteeltje 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Sounds like the question Ylvis posed [1], years ago. :-) [1] https://youtu.be/mbyzgeee2mg |
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| ▲ | bux93 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It was probably a tribe that later emigrated to Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_things_(Australia) |
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| ▲ | spicyusername 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| My favorite theory is that nomadic civilizations during that period were known to congregate together temporarily throughout the year. Stonehenge was one of the places they would do this. Makes sense to make the meeting spot nice. |
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| ▲ | alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Would be pretty stupid to spend all this energy erecting stones just for the view of it I think the same way looking at medieval cathedrals or Roman and Greek era theatres, collesiums, and agoras... At least the Ottomans used the Parthenon as an arms depot, giving those stones some meaning. (This is sarcasm) |
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| ▲ | Projectiboga 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The cathedral movement started in 1006 with a quiet goal to redirect resources away from the crusades. It was also from a sort of cultural vacuum after the world didn't end at the turn of the millennium. | | | |
| ▲ | theodric 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It wasn't "for the view," it was, in no particular order, and non-exhaustively: * To provide work
* To serve as a reminder of the power and authority of the church
* To glorify God
* To make sure all the other nearby kingdoms were aware of how much cooler you are than them | | |
| ▲ | IAmBroom 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > * To provide work Cite required. Work in a pre-industrial agrarian society is ever-present, unless there's a drought. (Although in that case the coffin builders may need extra hands.) | | |
| ▲ | theodric an hour ago | parent [-] | | That's a simplistic, reductive, and uninformed expression of history which completely disregards the roles of the artisan, merchant, innkeeper, or any of the numerous other trades which kept early economies moving. Not everyone was a hand-to-mouth peasant farmer, either in medieval Europe, or in earlier points in history. The building of a cathedral provided generations of employment for stonemasons, men involved in felling and shipping timber, men involved in cutting and shipping stone, as well as people responsible for feeding the workers, making and repairing their tools, etc.; and once built, the cathedral would be a draw for pilgrims, who would need places to stay, food to eat, and so on. A cathedral provides work. |
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| ▲ | alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | sarcasm (noun) - the use of words that mean the opposite of what one intends to say especially in order to insult, to show irritation, or to be funny : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on ironic and usually bitter and caustic language often directed against an individual or idea. |
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