Eli5 – Why are we finding entire homes and streets in archaeological digs? doesn’t anyone notice a street or building starting to get covered in dirt and dust? at some point someone must notice the old plato theatre is knee high into the earth?
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The white house used to be 3 stories tall. Now it is 2, as viewed from the outside, with a more substantial basement. I have seen pictures from mostly modern times of the same effect, the name of which I can’t remember. Google white house picture 1865, then compare it to today.
… There is a thing called the mud flood theory, which I don’t buy and am fairly certain is a misinterpretation of the evidence. I don’t want to bring it up, but it is the easiest path I can think of to show pertinent photos. The articles that refute this theory have the answers you are looking for, but the essential is this.
Human/animal matter left on the streets (remember before indoor plumbing, poo removal was a problem that often was addressed in large cities by ignoring the problem and smell), plus loess, fine dirt particles blown in the wind build up over time to effectively raise ground level. The process is slow to be sure. Incidentally, I have noticed that if I mulch my lawn clippings on my lawn, it appears that it raises the level of my lawn, as opposed to throwing them in the trash.
People noticed it over time. It’s not like one day the ground was 10 feet higher.
Seattle is a great example of what can happen. After a large fire and then a flood the city buried whole streets in retaining walls, then built on top of it. They find ships underground when making excavations in some coastal cities.
Other cases are of collapsing civilizations. Most of the Aztec empire is under jungle, which grow over top of the cities. There are pyramids in China that are old enough that the loess covered them up and they appear as very regularly shaped hills.
This comment is all over the place. Not my best bit of writing.
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