Why are ancient buildings, cities and structures usually found buried underground?
In: 62
Several different things are going on:
1) ancient ruins obviously can’t be found floating in the air above ground level….if the ground erodes _away_ from a ruin it collapses and erodes away too and there’s nothing left to find. Stuff at the surface tends to either erode away or fall to the ground. That basically leaves ruins in the ground as the only remaining option.
2) People like to build in areas where sediment accumulates. People live near water, floods carry sediments and bury things that exist near water. Up on top of mountains and hills, the ground usually erodes away. But that’s often not where people are building.
3) People bury old things by building on them. People would just knock down the old building, level off the area with dirt, and build on top of it. Much easier than hauling away the rubble when you haven’t yet invented the bulldozer and dumptruck. Especially when people built of mud brick, this results in older ruins being buried under newer ones and cities could actually build up into their own hills of layers of mud brick, known as “tels”. Even the steady accumulation of garbage can cause this sort of thing.
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