Survivorship bias. There are lots of shitty structures that washed away from floods or eroded over time or were demolished to build on top. What exists today from ancient peoples is a fraction of what was built by them
Also, I feel like it should be worth noting that human civilization to date has only expanded.
Its not like Rome just went up in a poof of smoke. The civilization migrated to modern Turkey after the 400s and continued to influence art and architecture straight into the Renaissance Era a thousand years later. They established the formation of modern art and culture (for better or worse) and echo through cinema and music to this day. Roman iconography, literature, and science endures into the modern moment.
Rome didn't just go away. It was emulated and expanded upon for ages.
Neither did the old Chinese dynasties or the Aztec/Inca monoliths or the African kingdoms. They endure because they resonate, because they are the culmination of resonance formed over millennia, and because we continue to echo them even now.
What exists today from ancient peoples is a fraction of what was built by them
What exists today from ancient peoples is orders of magnitude grander than what was built.
We turned singular moments in time and space into a thousand fractalizing iterations of the same.
The Pyramids don't just live in Egypt anymore. They're everywhere.
Survivorship bias. There are lots of shitty structures that washed away from floods or eroded over time or were demolished to build on top. What exists today from ancient peoples is a fraction of what was built by them
yeah that's the picture
The picture was clearly unrelated.
Woosh
Also, I feel like it should be worth noting that human civilization to date has only expanded.
Its not like Rome just went up in a poof of smoke. The civilization migrated to modern Turkey after the 400s and continued to influence art and architecture straight into the Renaissance Era a thousand years later. They established the formation of modern art and culture (for better or worse) and echo through cinema and music to this day. Roman iconography, literature, and science endures into the modern moment.
Rome didn't just go away. It was emulated and expanded upon for ages.
Neither did the old Chinese dynasties or the Aztec/Inca monoliths or the African kingdoms. They endure because they resonate, because they are the culmination of resonance formed over millennia, and because we continue to echo them even now.
What exists today from ancient peoples is orders of magnitude grander than what was built.
We turned singular moments in time and space into a thousand fractalizing iterations of the same.
The Pyramids don't just live in Egypt anymore. They're everywhere.