I study the ancient world because I love learning about people, their lives, their stories, and their struggles. Studying the ancient world not only reminds us of human struggles we share with people who lived and died on this planet before us, but it also teaches us about human resilience. Despite collapse and oppression, humans survive. They find solutions and rebuild civilizations. There are lessons to be learned from ruins, broken pottery, and fragments of texts. The buildings built on destruction levels we excavate, walls made of spolia ⬇️ we study, destroyed statues we uncover, origin myths based on survival stories we translate, are all testaments to how resilient ancient people were, and how they stood against oppression, war, destruction, and catastrophes. They are testaments to our own resilience, creativity, and potential.
Spolia: repurposed stones reused in new monuments
Image (public domain) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:THES-Heptapyrgion_spolia_2.jpg