Lens-Artists Challenge #37 – HISTORY

[Categories: Photography, Photography 101 Forever]

Led this week by PATTI.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana, THE LIFE OF REASON -The Phases of Human Progress, Vol. 1 Reason in Common Sense.

What is evidence of history?  Buildings, museums, battlefields?

Abbey of Bayeux Cathedral, St. Mary of Melrose, Melrose, Scotland: The Acropolis, Athens: Borgund Stavkirke, Norway: Edinburgh Castle, Scotland, Luxor Temple: Egypt?  I could link to Lens-Artists Challenge #35 – Architecture and be done.

Stacking stones.  Let’s start with that.  Not surprisingly, they are the oldest significant, surviving historical evidence of man’s propensity for piquing future ages to perpetually ask… WHY???

This is the Avebury Stone Circle in Avebury, England, south of Swindon.  (Nearly all these pictures are digitized from prints.)

Whilst training for marathons and half-marathons I would run 11 miles from Wanborough to Avebury and hitchhike back.  WHY???

Everyone knows this one:

This picture was taken 25+ years ago when you could still get close to Stonehenge.  Now, most any zoom lens will do.

This is the the Pyramid of Djoser (or Djeser and Zoser) [Wikipedia].

Old.  Very old.

Finally, a stone stack a bit neater and taller, even without the gleaming limestone face:

The Great Pyramid.  For 3800 years, Wikipedia tells me, the tallest structure in the world.

Notably, all the stone structures presented here were built, approximately of course, between 3000 and 2000 BC.

As my reading passion, Lapham’s Quarterly, reminds me:

“Lapham’s Quarterly embodies the belief that history is the root of all education, scientific and literary as well as political and economic. Each issue addresses a topic of current interest and concern—war, religion, money, medicine, nature, crime—by bringing up to the microphone of the present the advice and counsel of the past.”

Lest we forget.

Weekly Lens-Artists Challenge info and leaders can be found here.  Check ’em out!  Also search for Lens-Artists to find posts.