Man and Mountains
...Greeks had Olympus which rose an astounding 9,000 feet above Aegean. Then, Mt. Sinai was the pathway to the God of Jews, who gave Moses the tablets of Law. “Where there were no natural mountains, people built artificial mountains.” States Boorstin. These artificial mountains are called ziggurats. The oldest is from 22nd century BC. Boorstin’s Theory is mainly concerned with the religious aspect of the ziggurats and Stupas. A production explanation to the process of ziggurats or stupas would have been helpful to the understanding of these man made mountains. Boorstin did an exceptional job of vindicating the ideas that were induced through out the periods of construction for these mountains. The Great Ziggurat of Ur is a wonderful example of a man made mountain. It was created in the Neo-Sumerian period c. 2150-1800 BC during the reign of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Construction of the Ziggurat was headed by Ur-Nammu. This Ziggurat was made of three structures, making it a more complex structure than the other ziggurats. The core of the ziggurat was made of mud-brick, which was faced, with baked brick embedded in mortar made of bitumen. Of a more modern approach to ‘man made mountains’ stand the contemporary ‘Sky-Scrapers’ of the business world. The Empire State Building stands as the most ...