Greatest ancient supertalls

[:jax:]

There were a lot of great constructions back in the days. What are your favourites? The rules are simple:

ANCIENT: It has to be completed at least 2000 years ago (the year 8 as of today)

SUPERTALL: It has to be at least 30 meters tall

[Matthieu]

Does the Pont du Gard count as it's a bridge/waterway?

[:jax:]

I would say yes. It is both old, tall, and constructed (didn't specify that, but implicit).

[JloKyM]

My vote goes to the Pyramids

[arxeos]

the light house of Alexandria

[dlouval]

Pyramid Giza.
Discussion close. No questions.

[3tmk]

It's hard to beat the Pyramids

BTW, I remember somebody (Dejan perhaps?) posting a cool picture with all the tallest buildings before the 19th century

[zwischbl]

buildings from 2000 years ago?? there are so few left that the only real choice can be the pyramids since they exceed these 30 meters by a huge margin and are simply gorgeous anyway.
why dont you say buildings at least 500 years old? thats pretty ancient as well

so for now my vote goes to the pyramids.

[:jax:]

I asked for the favourite constructions, not the tallest ones, otherwise it would be sufficient to make a list. The pyramids, both the older and the larger, are impressive and important, but in the end they are oversize tombstones outside town, and not among my favourites even in Egypt. The lighthouse (Greek as well as Egyptian), or the Karnak temple complex, or Abydos are more magnificent structures in my view.

I can't consider something 500 year old as ancient, it is fairly old but still part of our modern building traditions. Even relatively young cities like Prague or I guess Munich would be filled up with such "ancient" buildings.

For truly ancient you would have to go to Mesopotamia, or stone age cultures in Syria, Turkey, and Malta, or a little later the Indus valley, or China, or Egypt and Sudan. These didn't initially build really tall early on, that I know of, but around 3500 years ago they started to (even so, the supertall restriction will exclude magnificient structures that may be only 15 or 20 meters tall, for a later thread I guess).

I could have taken a later time for the cutoff, the fall of the Western Roman empire is a traditional date (and would include all tall Roman buildings). If the cutoff was 1500 years ago the first of the standing Buddhas in Afghanistan would have been included. But there should be enough examples in the first 1500 years of building tall (3500 to 2000 years ago), and there is no requirement that the buildings should be still standing. The lighthouse is gone, as are the (no longer) standing Buddhas.

The first great wall of China would be in scope, but not the latter ones. You have the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Romans, the Assyrians, the Persians, great cities like Babylon, Rome, Carthage, Hattusa, Thebes, Athens, Alexandria.

As most of those buildings are gone, leaving us to reconstructions, it could be debatable how tall the buildings really were. The columns in the Great Hypostyle Hall are 24 meters tall, would the complete building have been over 30 meters tall? Possibly, but we couldn't know that. As current supertalls often use "cheats" to enhance their heights, let us assume that the ancients added some flag pole as well, so the Great Hall (and similar buildings) would be in.

And OK then, "recent ancient" is in, buildings completed between 8 and 508 are acceptable as well.

[BaalNamib]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jetavanaramaya

The tallest stupa in the world, largest brick building ever built.

[erbse]

Geil!




Gotta be the first 'supertall' in history.

[sk]

babel tower......

[premier]

^ Exactly my thought