Tagged “medieval”
Chand Baori
With no surveying instruments beyond simple tools, how did builders lay out roughly 3,500 steps in a repeating, symmetrical geometric pattern descending 13 storeys to the water table without a single visible error, and how much of what stands today is the original 8th-9th century core versus later rebuilding?
c. 8th-9th century CE · Abhaneri, Dausa District, Rajasthan, India
Great Zimbabwe
Colonial-era authorities spent decades insisting Africans could not have built this city — so how, exactly, did a Shona state organize the labor, engineering skill, and long-distance trade needed to raise 800,000-plus mortarless granite blocks into walls eleven metres high, and why, after roughly two centuries at the height of its power, was the city abandoned?
c. 11th-15th century CE · Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe