Stone Age humans, and their bronze age descendants, expanded to populate almost everywhere on Earth, filling the planet with human culture and human development. And while much of that development was shared and mutual, many civilizations evolved in isolation from one another.
The development of these disparate and separate cultures provides a fascinating insight into human thinking, and permits researchers to differentiate between cultural facets which were unique to one culture and those which are commonly found in a people of sufficiently advanced technology and organization.
Animal sacrifice and deity worship, for example, appear independently almost everywhere and are considered to be an expected phase in the development of any culture. So it is with monolithic architecture, and specifically the most straightforward example from a construction standpoint: pyramids.
Pyramids appear across the globe and were built by so many civilizations separately that some see this as evidence of some super-civilization offering guidance. For some it is aliens, for some a lost ancestral race. And for some it is simply that pyramids are what you get if you gather enough building material in one place.
Here are ten of the most unusual and interesting pyramids across the world.
1. The Great Pyramids of Giza
2. The Bent Pyramid of Sneferu
3. Djoser’s Stepped Pyramid
4. The Greek Hellenikon
5. The Meroe Pyramids of Kush
6. Cholula
7. The Maya Temple of Kukulcán at Chichen Itza
8. The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan
9. The Pulemelei Pyramid of Samoa
10. The Bosnian Pyramid Complex
Top Image: Pyramids are some of the most ancient man-made structures to survive, and hold a particular fascination due to their ubiquity. Source: MiaStendal / Adobe Stock.
By Joseph Green
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