[HN Gopher] Alternative wonders of the world
___________________________________________________________________
Alternative wonders of the world
Author : _Microft
Score : 62 points
Date : 2022-07-31 14:35 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| hayst4ck wrote:
| The picture does not do Mehrangarh justice. It is quite an
| imposing citadel looming over the city. It is particularly grand
| at night.
| _Microft wrote:
| Here it is on Nitter:
|
| https://nitter.net/ulturaltutor/status/1553472360434515973
|
| Make sure to check the replies, there are other amazing buildings
| in there.
| finiteseries wrote:
| Always avoid using the main nitter.net instance, it's slow even
| in DE.
|
| If you're in the US, try
| https://nttr.stream/ulturaltutor/status/1553472360434515973
| gadtfly wrote:
| https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances
| wszfahwbwbaha wrote:
| wow this is a really bad site. Why are you posting it?
| jansan wrote:
| It is useful for people who have blocked Twitter. The slower
| the better, because you will nto get addicted to it.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Presumably most people who have blocked Twitter haven't
| done so because they want an even worse version of Twitter.
| deepdriver wrote:
| It's better than Twitter in that 1) it does not require
| an account, as Twitter increasingly does even to view
| tweets, and 2) it strips much of Twitter's tracking and
| advertising JavaScript.
| civilized wrote:
| My dream: when we look at these, we remember them for the
| craftsmen whose creative genius made them possible, not for the
| Ozymandiases who happened to be sitting at the top when their
| construction was ordered.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Like many "wonders" the Great Pyramids at Giza were tombs and
| memorials to the dead. Can't say I feel moved by the life of 2800
| year old pharaohs, but two "alternatives" that do stir me are
| here:
|
| Bayeux War Cemetery, Normandy, France
|
| Vietnam War Memorial, Washington, DC, USA
| jl6 wrote:
| Not sure if maybe you were referring to something else, but the
| Great Pyramid of Giza is closer to 4500 years old.
|
| I personally think it's wondrous that anything at all survives
| from so long ago, let alone something of such staggering
| geometry.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| > let alone something of such staggering geometry.
|
| That's what is so cool about it. It's more or less the shape
| of a naturally occurring mountain, which just so happens to
| be the shape most resistant to erosion.
|
| Primitive interior arch-work and interior passageways
| notwithstanding.
| epolanski wrote:
| I'm still amazed that Cleopatra and Jules Ceasar are closer
| to Tik Tok release than the Great Pyramid of Giza building.
|
| It cannot be understated how little we know of our ancestors
| 2500 years ago, and how little remains we have, and the
| pyramids are even older.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Pointy pile of rocks is most stable structure. It is no
| wonder why it is so common around the world historically. And
| as they are rocks, they are rather sturdy against erosion.
| deepdriver wrote:
| And they were already ancient in what we now call ancient
| times. Cleopatra lived closer to the 1969 Moon landing than
| to the time of the construction of the Great Pyramid.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I think we need an "alternative fun facts" thread to
| replace these well-worn ones.
| deepdriver wrote:
| How about this one? The Ancient Babylonians had asphalt
| roads, as long ago as 600 BC and maybe earlier:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt#Ancient_times
|
| https://trid.trb.org/view/694262
| dmoo wrote:
| Some of these and more are featured in Around the World in 80
| Treasures which I highly recommend.
|
| https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x80ubq1
| jollyllama wrote:
| I'd add Mont-Saint-Michel, France.
| stevage wrote:
| To me, towns are a bit out of place. I get a greater sense of
| wonder from a large building created with single minded
| purpose, rather than villages that grew over time.
| Aransentin wrote:
| How about the Turpan water system?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turpan_water_system
|
| An artificial oasis city built in the Late Middle Ages* on the
| Taklamakan Desert for travellers along the Silk Road, it provided
| irrigation by having more than 5,000km of hand-dug underground
| tunnels to transport water from the mountains; an IMHO extremely
| impressive feat of geoengineering for the time.
|
| * https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-00728-7_...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > it provided irrigation by having more than 5,000km of hand-
| dug underground tunnels to transport water from the mountains;
| an IMHO extremely impressive feat of geoengineering for the
| time.
|
| This was a very common form of water engineering for the
| region; the technology was thousands of years old at that
| point.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I had never heard of the Tomb of Emperor Nintoku and was
| wondering why it was included since it just looked like a park in
| that picture. Looking into it, it turns out the lighter green
| outline of the keyhole is actually a moat and the keyhole is a
| burial mound. It was created during the 5th century.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozu_Tombs
| voz_ wrote:
| These wonders are cool, but "alternative" is lame - the initial
| list was about the wonders of _classical_ antiquity. The origin
| of the idea of a list of wonders goes back to a few hundred BC,
| the structures themselves being a few hundred to a few thousand
| years old at that point already.
|
| That being said - the point is that it should be relatively
| personal, and a good deal subjective - not entirely objective. To
| provide an "alternative" list means that one is seeking a
| rejection or counter opinion to what is seen as canonical... when
| no such canonical list exists. Even the original 7, where often
| not 7, and were not uniformly agreed upon ever.
| partdavid wrote:
| What you say is right, and occurred to me, too. But there's
| another sense of "alternative" at play--not that the list is an
| alternative to another list, but that these sites are
| alternatives to more commonly-noted ones.
|
| There are a handful of modern wonders lists, and they (and
| other media) often focus on a few "usual suspects", like the
| Taj Mahal and Machu Picchu. So maybe in the spirit of the post
| it's "Some wonderful sites you may not have heard about", and
| that doesn't seem like a bad thing.
| deepdriver wrote:
| The history of the Great Mosque of Djenne is apparently a bit
| controversial:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Djenn%C3%A9#Pr...
|
| >Dubois revisited Djenne in 1910 and was shocked by the new
| building. He believed that the French colonial administration
| were responsible for the design and wrote that it looked like a
| cross between a hedgehog and a church organ. He thought that the
| cones made the building resemble a baroque temple dedicated to
| the god of suppositories. By contrast, Jean-Louis Bourgeois has
| argued that the French had little influence except perhaps for
| the internal arches and that the design is "basically African."
|
| >French ethnologist Michel Leiris, in his account of traveling
| through Mali in 1931, states that the new mosque is indeed the
| work of Europeans. He also says that local people were so unhappy
| with the new building that they refused to clean it, only doing
| so when threatened with prison.
|
| >Jean-Louis Bourgeois however, recorded that the rebuilt mosque
| was constructed by Djenne's traditional local guild of masons,
| traditionally responsible for the building and maintenance of the
| town's original mosque and of Djenne's other buildings, using
| traditional techniques and with minimal French involvement.
| omnibrain wrote:
| I thought this would be about the "New 7 Wonders of the World"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_7_Wonders_of_the_World
|
| It started in 2000, back when the web still felt like a magical
| place of possibilities. There was this Organization to crown 7
| New World Wonders and everyone can participate via the Internet!
|
| Around the same time there was also an initiative to collect
| names and send them (via broadcast?) to space. I can't find
| references to this anymore, only to newer initiatives like with
| Artemis. But it was also pretty exciting.
| causi wrote:
| My vote goes to the Internet Archive for being a wonder of the
| world.
| jl6 wrote:
| There are some definitional challenges here for sure - when is
| something a thing, rather than a collection of things?
|
| Is the internet itself a thing that could be listed? What about
| a city? The international road network? What about the anti-
| ice-age device we've been busy installing in the atmosphere?
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-02 23:01 UTC)