why are ancient cities like ancient Greece in ruins? I know that they fell and probably lost wars, but why did no one reconstruct the ancient temples, buildings, and homes?
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Imagine that a skyscraper in New York City collapsed tomorrow. Now imagine all of the work, materials, and coordination it would take to rebuild it. You’d need…
* Enough labor to clear the rubble, bring new materials in, and then actually reconstruct the building.
* People with training/specializations — architects, demolition experts, project managers, foremen, contractors, etc…
* A coherent and organized government to ensure a safe rebuilding effort for the years it would take to rebuild the building.
* The infrastructure to remove the debris and then bring new materials in, some of which are going to need to come from large distances away.
* And, of course, enough money to pay all of these people and materials, as well as a nearby place to safely house all the workers.
Without any one of these, it becomes very difficult to rebuild the skyscraper — or, at the very least, you’re not likely to build something that is high quality. If the state of New York was in the midst of a civil war or a massive earthquake, the odds that they have the time or resources to dedicate to rebuilding that skyscraper is pretty low.
A large temple in Ancient Greece was akin to a skyscraper — it was a massive undertaking that took a ton of time, resources, coordination, and wealth. It took the city of Athens 10 years to build the Parthenon — and that was while they were at the peak of their wealth and influence. Plenty of these buildings did get rebuilt or recovered over time when they fell apart… but it was far from a simple undertaking and needed a lot of things to be going right or the building was simply going to be left to ruin… or it was going to be cannibalized for other building projects.
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