My town is built on a settlement which, estimated is 2000 years old. How does this work? As far as I know people always lived here (old Roman and medieval roads were found) but the town now lies several meters higher than the original one. I would suspect that old buildings are taken down and a new one is raised.
Does sediment, dust, … stacks meters high over a period of 2000 years and wouldn’t people dig out old buildings? Or did they purposely mound the entire town?
In: Engineering
Built on top of?
Or did these settlements just grow into villages, towns and cities?
Hmmmmmmm
It’s still a good question. You’d think that if they replace one building at a time, they would build them at the level of their neighboring buildings. The only exception I can think of is if large sections got destroyed at once from fire, earthquake, etc. Then you would probably end up building higher.
I’m just spitballin’ here, but maybe the location is a good spot for a town due to a natural resource, or a road crossing, or being about a day’s travel from a major city on the road, or something. So basically, conditions existed that made the location good for a town in the past, and as long as those conditions continue, that location continues to be a good spot for a town, and so it gets rebuilt.
The reason they stack higher and higher is because of demolition. Construction equipment and dump trucks didn’t exist back then, so if a building collapsed or was demolished, and you wanted to rebuild there, it was easier to just knock down the building where it stood, smooth out the debris, and then build on top of it.
Latest Answers