When the French discovered the Rosetta Stone it had been used as building material for a Mamluk fort. So the Mamluks apparently found this cool ancient tablet and thought “this would make a good brick for our fort!”
When the French discovered the Rosetta Stone it had been used as building material for a Mamluk fort. So the Mamluks apparently found this cool ancient tablet and thought “this would make a good brick for our fort!”
There are almost certainly equally momentous finds sitting around in plain sight today.
CompetitiveSleeping on
Many rune stones were used as building material, too. The by far most important and impressive runestone, [the Rök runestone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6k_runestone), from the early 9th century, was used in a church building.
Same reason probably; “Heathen crap, worthless”.
Rodruby on
Isn’t idea of preservation of history is kinda recent? For a long period of time people didn’t really care, if it’s a good stone – it goes to stone wall, if it’s a good wood – it goes to wood wall, etc
Moose-Rage on
Preserving history or even caring about it as a hobby is a very recent thing. For most of human history, it wasn’t really a thing, at best, something studied by scholars but had no practical use for the common layman. So, yeah, the average person saw a brick-shaped thing and, surprise, used it as a brick.
OtherVersantNeige on
Hélas, in a lot of civilisation, they took the brick from monument like pyramid, Chinese great wall for build
In 2013, they destroyed a Mayan pyramid in Belize for building a road…
7 Comments
If not brick, why brick shaped?
(History is crazy btw).
Same energy as people in the Middle Ages using Roman sarcophagi as fancy water troughs for cow
This is super common.
The oldest known map of a territory was found in 1900 as a stone used for an ancient cist (like a giant stone coffin/tomb).
It then sat in some dude’s basement for 100+ years (everyone even thought it was a map at that point).
Someone looked at it again 10 years ago and was like, “this might be a pretty big deal.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-B%C3%A9lec_slab
There are almost certainly equally momentous finds sitting around in plain sight today.
Many rune stones were used as building material, too. The by far most important and impressive runestone, [the Rök runestone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6k_runestone), from the early 9th century, was used in a church building.
Same reason probably; “Heathen crap, worthless”.
Isn’t idea of preservation of history is kinda recent? For a long period of time people didn’t really care, if it’s a good stone – it goes to stone wall, if it’s a good wood – it goes to wood wall, etc
Preserving history or even caring about it as a hobby is a very recent thing. For most of human history, it wasn’t really a thing, at best, something studied by scholars but had no practical use for the common layman. So, yeah, the average person saw a brick-shaped thing and, surprise, used it as a brick.
Hélas, in a lot of civilisation, they took the brick from monument like pyramid, Chinese great wall for build
In 2013, they destroyed a Mayan pyramid in Belize for building a road…