Italian Ruins Walk

Back with another post on the Italian series :D

The pictures that I've got today are all from Rome, absolutely one of my favorite cities I've ever been to. All of the history is just unreal, as everyone could imagine. I think what really makes it even more special is that they preserve the history instead of just bulldozing it away and getting rid of it like so many other stupid places do. We need to preserve the human history as much as we possibly can!

Going off on a little tangent, one of the most unfortunate things to realize as I'm getting older is a line that was given to me so many years ago but it was just something surface level. "History is written by the victors". It sounds pretty logical and normal, right? The real issue I have is that it also means that so much history is wiped out and that's a damn shame! Yes there are ugly things and challenging things that always happen but history is important because we learn from it, we learn to be better if we are able to take a step back and think.

Walking through Rome and seeing all of these ruins, it really rang true to me that we know so little about what actually has happened in our past. Are we, the last 6 thousand years of Humans, the first and only ones? Absolutely not! There have been numerous other human civilizations and I think as far as empires go that we inhabit today, I would like to think in the 100,000 years or so that we can confirm humans have existed, I think we've likely had 3 or 4 empires of roughly similar size throughout that time. Maybe not 8 billion people big but certainly massive cities and shit.

Walking through Rome reminds you of that in almost every single freaking step! Take the marble structure above. It is obviously incredibly old and unbelievably strong. They also wrote things on it so they were highly sophisticated people as we know the Romans were in their heyday but we think that we are the top notch shit right now because we have computers and stuff. We are pretty fragile when it comes to thinking how much skill and experience it took them to go from building homes with bricks and the like to harvesting marble, shaving it and cutting it down, polishing it and then hanging the shit on top of the pillars. There is so much skill involved with that whole process, all without combustion engines like we've got today!

You walk around and just marvel at the amount of time and dedication it took to do these things, it's really pretty amazing. I have a granite block in my wife's uncles yard that the construction crew was going to throw away. I told them to drop it in the yard and we would figure out how to use it. Little did I know how fucking heavy that thing was hahaha, I couldn't move it! It wasn't that big, but it was big enough that I wasn't able to move the damn thing. Maybe when my son gets older him and I can work at it as a team but I think to these gigantic stone and marble pillars and structures they've got here. It's insane how heavy these must have been and the confidence of the masons and architects back then to pick it up with some type of crane and lower it into place is awesome!

I loved seeing the ruins of what was once great and likely beautiful structures like this. It really makes you think back at what these places looked like in their prime. I know we've got paintings and stuff, frescoes that are being discovered every few months or years to depict it but standing there and trying to imagine what these places looked like is unbelievable. There is so much that we don't know and don't appreciate about life back then, I really was in awe just walking around. This is also why I think that Rome is one of the most well-preserved historical sites in the world because this stuff is all out in the open, for everyone to see and experience. That's really something amazing.

These days there is so much focus on destroying and taking down the old buildings so that they can put up some new trash. I think that is an abysmal shame and insult to historical things like this. You can see these structures two or three thousand years later because it was built with purpose, the purpose was to last. Any of the major metropolitan areas that exist today in places like Tokyo, New York or LA. None of those damn gigantic cities would have a single building still standing in 150 years if humans in the area ceased to exist. Mother nature would take that shit over and turn it into dust and a bunch of hills. You couldn't see any of those buildings or things lasting that long. Then you go to a city like Rome that was built to last and these structures have survived, with some assistance of course, for 2,000 years or more. That's amazing!

I love to think of just what exactly used to be in these spots. There is a common thread among most of these areas and that they were stone of some kind and everything was held up by these giant stone pillars. None of this wood stuff that we've got or glass. Looking back at these pictures from back when we went to Italy, one of the things that I really want to do now is make sure to do something in stone like this for my house. I won't be able to build a house in stone of course but I would love to make a stone structure on a property that we live in one day.

I find it hard to believe that we walked in this area in like 2 hours, seeing all of these wonderful things. It's mind boggling how much is packed into this area in the center of Rome but I absolutely want to go back one day! I know that we've told our son about the trip and all the wonderful things we did and saw when we were there so he wants to go. Hopefully in 10 years we can go back, when he's older and will remember everything that we do. We could certainly go now but that would be a bit of a waste as he would likely forget everything we did and saw. I want him to remember this as fondly as my wife and I do!