'Eighth Wonders of the World.' Part 5 - These are amazing

 

 Eighth Wonder of the World

There are a few considered for the title.

Three are listed here. They are constructions rather than natural wonders.

Pre-1900 creations

Part Five

Macchu Picchu

Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel located in southern Peru on a 2,430-meter (7,970 ft) mountain ridge.

The Inca civilization had no written language and, after the discovery by a Spanish soldier Baltasar Ocampo, by the end of the 16th-century no more Europeans visited the site until the 19th century.

Photo from 2007

The names of the buildings, their supposed uses, and their inhabitants are the product of modern archaeologists based on physical evidence, including tombs at the site

Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give visitors a better idea of how they originally appeared.

1912 after major clearing and before reconstruction work began

Most recent archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was constructed as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later, at the time of the Spanish conquest. According to radiocarbon dating, it was occupied from c. 1420–1532.

Temple of the Sun or Torreon

During its use as a royal estate, it is estimated that about 750 people lived there, with most serving as support staff. Since its rediscovery in 1911, growing numbers of tourists have visited the site each year, with numbers exceeding 1.4 million in 2017.

Moai

Moai are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500. 

By Ian Sewell - IanAndWendy.com Photo gallery from Easter Island, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1193567

Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island's perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads, which comprise three-eighths the size of the whole statue and they have no legs. The moai are chiefly the living faces of deified ancestors. 

The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first visited the island in 1722, but all of them had fallen by the latter part of the 19th century. The moai were toppled in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, possibly as a result of European contact or internecine tribal wars.

There are approx. 900 statues. They are still being discovered as of 2023.

Obelisk of Axum

The Obelisk of Axum is a 4th-century CE, 24-metre (79 ft) tall phonolite stele, weighing 160 tonnes  in the city of Axum in Ethiopia.

By I, Ondřej Žváček, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6027150

Erection of stelae in Axum was a very old practice. Their function is supposed to be as markers for underground burial chambers. The largest of the grave markers were for royal burial chambers and were decorated with multi-story false windows and false doors, while lesser nobility would have smaller, less decorated ones. While there are only a few large ones standing, there are hundreds of smaller ones in various "stelae fields".

The Obelisk at Axum in 1805

It was taken to Italy in 1937 as war booty. It was agreed to return it in 1961 but took until 2005 to do so fully due to the difficulty and cost involved.

The Northern Stelae Park in Axum, with the King Ezana's Stele at the centre and the Great Stele lying broken.

By Jialiang Gao www.peace-on-earth.org - Original Photograph, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=543948

More in this Series.

Hope you have a good week. If you like anything that you see, please share or let me know as feedback lets me know someone is reading.

Cheers

Peace

Anthony