All articles tagged with #ancient architecture
Archaeologists have discovered that the 3,000-year-old Maya site Aguada Fénix in Mexico functions as a massive cosmogram, depicting the universe's order through a complex system of structures aligned with celestial and cardinal directions, reflecting the Maya's cosmological beliefs and possibly serving communal and ritual purposes.
A Turkish man discovered an abandoned underground city, Derinkuyu, while chasing his chickens through a hole in his basement during renovations. The city, which was once home to 20,000 people, is the largest excavated underground city in the world and is believed to connect to more than 200 smaller, separate underground cities. Researchers found 18 levels of tunnels containing dwellings, dry food storage, cattle stables, schools, wineries, and even a chapel. The city was likely originally used to store goods, but was then used as a bunker to escape from foreign invaders. Derinkuyu was finally abandoned in 1923 by the Cappadocian Greeks, who faced defeat in the Greco-Turkish war and escaped to Greece.
Stone monoliths with precise depictions of nearby desert kites in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, engraved between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago, are by far the oldest known to-scale architectural plans recorded in human history, according to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE. The engravings could have been prepared as blueprints to aid in the construction of the kites, or served as maps for hunters. The researchers inferred the ages of the engravings by using geological dating tools to determine how long ago the corresponding local kite structures were built.