TextSearch

It is thought that Myceneans built the Acropolis’ cyclopean wall, but why then are these walls all over the world? Are there ancient connections that we have missed?

Freddie Levy February 12 / 2020 Getting your audio player ready... The Athenian Acropolis. This rocky citadel sits alone, striking out imposingly against the backdrop of the dry, blue Mediterranean sky. Towering 490 feet (150 meters) over the modern cityscape, the outcrop spans a combined area of 7.4 acres, leaving more than enough space for the construction of some of the most iconic historical buildings left standing from the ancient world, including the cyclopean wall.The earliest known habitation of the Acropolis, understood through the finding and subsequent carbon dating of artifacts, dates back to the Middle Neolithic era, some 10,000 years before present time. During the Mycenaean reign over Greece from around 1600 BC (covering vast areas of the modern-day Mediterranean), it is believed a palace, stylized by a megaron (a great hall of sorts) stood mightily on top, with evidence of this once grand and imposing stone building coming from the excavation of a limestone column base and several limestone steps.This indicates a history of grand construction on the Acropolis over a thousand years before the now-idealized buildings like the Parthenon even existed.This begs the question: just how far back do the construction phases go and what implications does this have on the origins of Acropolis’ inhabitants?Acropolis as it stands imposingly above Athens today. (Lambros Kazan / Adobe Stock)Ageless MistreatmentWhether being burnt to the ground by the likes of the Persians in the 5th century BC, blown up by cannonball when audaciously being used as a gun-powder store during the Morean War in 1687, or even when being thrice besieged during the Greek War of Independence from 1821 - 1829, it is clear that the Acropolis has been thoroughly ravaged throughout the ages.Accordingly, when interpreting how old the settlement on top of the Acropolis complex is, it must be understood that it has been subject to intense destruction and reconstruction on numerous occasions, for thousands of years.Even in modern more peaceful times this mistreatment has been rampant. A 1906 report on excavations, which took place during the period of 1833 - 1896 sheds light on the poor and invasive archaeological work - especially notable examples of careless digging comes from 1885, where the Acropolis was continuously dug-up then refilled multiple times, resulting in major losses of valuable information regarding the sites prehistory.Compounding this, we must not forget about the thriving corruption that surrounded the illegal possession and trade of ancient artifacts up until the Greek Antiquity Laws of 1932 and 1950. Whilst this law undoubtedly stopped a small percentage of artifacts from being sold off to private collectors or from being locked away deep in a museum storage unit to never to be seen again, the problem was, and still is, rampant.As recently as 2015, Lieutenant Evgenios Monovasios of the Security Police Division of Attica told reporters that the number of ancient artifact thefts has increased as a result of the ongoing economic crisis in Greece.With all of this in mind, it is not hard to imagine that throughout the estimated two-thousand years in which the Acropolis has been inhabited, the site has seen a few, if not many, ancient artifacts and evidence of previous construction phases either stolen, lost, misinterpreted, hidden or simply destroyed through malpractice, negligence or deliberate acts of ruination.Due to all of these factors, it is hard to say exactly what is left from the original Acropolis inhabitants and how old these grand plans actually were. However, a clue may come in the form of something so robust, so well-built, it has been left standing through thick and thin to be marveled at today.Cyclopean MasonryThe American classical scholar Harry Thurston Peck in 1898 separated cyclopean architecture into four categories:Stones of various sizes with smaller stones filled in between them (often rough looking).Stones of unequal length but similar height.Rectangular stones of unequal height but similar length.Polygonal stones (often called polygonal masonry) that feature many curved angles and interlocking faces.(Any Category 2-4 stonework that fits flush, is smoothed down and has a high degree of precision and accuracy, is often also referred to as ashtar masonry).Rather paradoxically, Category 2-4 ashtar masonry is often found at the bottom of cyclopean walls, suggesting by the nature of their placement, that they are the oldest parts. It is because of this that they are quite often misdated and attributed to the same period as the later, rougher Category 1 stonework. Whilst The Mycenaeans, a civilization active between 1600 - 1100 BC are often credited for introducing cyclopean masonry throughout the Mediterranean, I believe they, in much the same vein as the Inca in Peru, simply adopted (and rather poorly imitated) a masonry style from a bygone era. This often results in a crude mismatch of Category 1’s an...

The Acropolis' Cyclopean Wall, Sages and Our Deeply Connected Past | Ancient Origins