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bedstuybk t1_j45mpu3 wrote

Reply to comment by ProceedOrRun in Discovery of a temple of Poseidon located at the Kleidi site near Samikon in Greece by MeatballDom

Especially with regards to Ancient Rome, what i don’t understand is how it all got so buried in the first place. I mean… the place has been continuously occupied for thousands of years, so it’s not as if the whole city was just windswept and buried in 50 feet of sand like ancient Egyptian ruins. Did the Roman/Italian people just stop sweeping up for a very long time?

I know that’s overly-simplistic, but, still… people have been living there this whole time. How do entire buildings seem to just get swallowed into the earth?

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ProceedOrRun t1_j45nxl9 wrote

They simply built on top of what was already there, and everyone else did to. Must have been easier than clearing everything away.

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bedstuybk t1_j45obaq wrote

Well, i get that a bunch of stuff got built over, but didn’t they demolish the old stuff first? How do you build on top of these existing structures unless they were already buried— leading back to the question of how they got buried in the first place. I understand with a location such as Pompeii that got buried in a day or so in lava and volcanic ash, but that doesn’t explain other sites that remained occupied.

You make it sound like New New York in the show Futurama, where Old New York is literally just under the surface, decaying with the new city built on top, lol. I know that’s not what you’re saying, but i pictured that in my head.

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Welshhoppo t1_j45oyik wrote

Rome is actually on a slight floodplain, so the city was prone to flooding. That brings in a whole load of muck and earth that covers the city. The modern Roman forum had to be dug out of the ground, it's a good sixty foot deep in places. The ground level was basically nearly the height of the temple of Antonius Pius.

During Late Antiquity and the Middle ages. Rome's population plummeted, as such there was no one around to prevent that from happening. No one is going to dig out large buildings when no one needs them to either live in, or to break down and use as supplies to build new buildings. It's how the majority of them survived.

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bedstuybk t1_j45p635 wrote

Well, now, that explains a lot. Thanks for that info!

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CodewordCasamir t1_j463pve wrote

It blew my mind how cities just continuously pile up on top of eachother. Look at the raising of Chicago or Mary King's Close in Edinburgh. Both are really fascinating especially Edinburgh.

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limping_man t1_j48js3b wrote

Did people leave suddenly that so much was left in place to be covered etc?

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Welshhoppo t1_j48qbs9 wrote

Yes.

During the Gothic War under Justinian and Belisarius, Procopius suggests that the population of Rome dropped to zero and everyone was either dead or left.

Add to that the events of the Little Ice Age, the Justinianic plague, the Black Death, the many other sacks of Rome. There's plenty of times where the population would suddenly drop.

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limping_man t1_j4a9j0z wrote

Super interesting comment. I know so little about this period

Where do I go to read about this that isn't too academic & above casual layman interest level? Thank you

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