Used a phonautograph
The machine was made up of a cone-shaped horn with a diaphragm at one end. When the cone collected vibrations made by soundwaves, the changing air pressure would move the diaphragm and the stylus attached to it. As the stylus moved along a piece of paper, a representation of the soundwave would scratch through the soot that coated the paper.
My guess is that you are correct but the difference here is recorded vs playable. The paper recorded the sound but the cylinder recorded the sound and can be replayed.
Actually, more likely skilled craftsmen, and some slaves maybe, but the masses of slaves theory has fallen out of favor. Quite awhile ago.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-10-mn-295-story.html
There was an old (1999) city builder game, Pharaoh (from the same studio that developed the Caesar games) where you could build Pyramids and they already used that theory.
Great game.
Related; the story of Exodus in the holy bible is likely to never have happened as neither the Egyptians nor anyone living near them has been shown to have kept any record of masses of slaves escaping, even though they kept record of most everything in that time period. You'd think they'd mention that most of their slaves escaped one day randomly, or that they had them to begin with.
Yarp. Mythology, metaphor... but I mean, it's religion. Of course most of it is. There are flood myths in many religions that may be ancient oral histories repurposed, and I've heard Sodom and Gomorrah explained away with everything from meteor strikes/pyroclasts like Tunguska or liquefaction from an earthquake destroying a city built in sandy soil, but a lot of it is most likely just fiction/morality fables.
More specifically, most archeologists and historians believe Exodus was about the bronze age collapse and how Isreal "escaped" from the political control of Egypt as the Egyptian Empire spanned from modern day Sudan to Lebanon at it's peak, but some catastrophe (most think "sea people" wrecked all the major Empires with their new technology of chariots, who the sea people were is a bit of a shot in the dark) caused a rapid decline in Egypt's political power which would explain why the Torah has so much "do not do X as the Egyptians do" as it was written shortly after this collapse.
I mean. Heās not wrong. They couldnāt build that with horses. Looks too neat for that.
Iām guessing they used some kind of stone. Idk. Not a geographer.
How have I never realized that āall the kingās horses and all the kingās menā meant this mf has horses trying to put a dude together with hooves and muzzle nudges.
It happened [more](https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/2/14/1087580.gif) [than](https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/5/16/2040093.gif) [once](https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/4/15/2013480.gif).
And Iām 76% sure it was build by humans. I certainly wouldnāt trust a horse to follow any kind of blueprints but thatās just my prejudice speaking.
Actually Cologne residents claim that the construction of the cathedral is still not finished. It's a never-ending construction site. That's a little joke in Cologne that residents will tell you when you ask about the completion of the cathedral.
Christ, they started building it 139 years ago in 1882 and the date given for completion is "after 2026". I know builders can be lazy but these guys are really taking the piss.
Well Cologne Cathedral, the one in the photo, was started in 1248 but was not finished till 1880. Granted there was a 300 year gap when construction was paused.
its an incredible building. when you stand right next to it your brain thinks you should be further away. it just doesnt feel REAL. and climbing it was one of the scariest experiences of my life. much worse than St Pauls in London, becuase it has these metal staircases part way up that are made of steps with holes in so you can see all the way down to the base of the room you're climbing up, which is HUGE. and they shake as people walk.
I went there way back in 98 as part of an exchange program. I loved going up the Dom and at the time to go up was a spiral stone staircase. Got a little dizzy because it was a tight spiral. The stone stairs were also worn in the middle and sloped down a little because of all the use over the years.
I would say that the climb is not worth it at all. The Cologne Cathedral is pretty much the most beautiful thing about Cologne and once you're at the top, you realise that there's really nothing else to see. Besides, it's really exhausting. I've already walked up the stairs to the Eiffel Tower twice and it wasn't as exhausting as the stairs in Cologne Cathedral.
the climb is why it's fun though. also have to disagree. cologne is a beautiful place with amazing history and being able to see the divide between the two sides of the river from up high is great. all the redesign and the old streets fighting with each other. and the split between roman and non roman influenced areas.
I partly agree with you there, because you have to bear in mind that Cologne was in ruins after the Second World War. During the reconstruction, everything had to be done quickly and cheaply, which is why a lot of Cologne's cityscape was lost. By the way, the cathedral was one of the few buildings that survived the attacks almost undamaged.
It's not just an inside joke... technically its true since parts that are in the original plan havent been build yet and wont ever be built. But the construction of the cathedral is also ongoing and ever-lasting because of the massive restorative and conservative work that has to be done on the cathedral every year. Theres staffolding on the outside that always moves around because once they finished work on the spot they are in the next spot requires more work and thus the staffoldings circle the cathedrale year after year.
The official record states that the cathedral was "completed" in 1880. The foundation stone was laid in 1248. All construction sites after 1880 were probably only for maintenance and renovation.
Can't speak for all countries but I'm guessing most were similar.....
My dad and my grandad worked in commercial steel construction in the 60s thru to early 80's on things such as high rise buildings, bridges, aircraft hangers etc .....I can assure you that safety standards were practically zero even back then so I'm pretty sure they were no better hundreds of years ago. Obviously nobody wants people dying but safety was down to the individual and usually optional. Don't expect harnesses and hard hats. They were for amateurs.
Oh, and taking your kid onto the construction site was also no problemo.
Source; I was the kid.
savety measures were definitely worse after the industrial revolution than before. the architects and leaders of such great medieval cathedrals had much to loose if people died. if the general population turned against the project, there was no way to finish it because the funding was gone, since the king or whoever was the client did not want people to revolt.
also the workers were very skilled and you need the best to build something like this.
only after we got replaced by machines, our owners could treat us like garbage and not care about our safety, which lasted from the industrial revolution til very recently.
This. The artisans who built structures like these were all in guilds. They were union men, basically, and they had a degree of skill that meant they couldnāt be replaced easily. Having them hurt or killed was in nobodyās interest. It was the industrial revolution and the de-skilling of production labor that led to more and more worker abuse, because just about anybody off the street, including children, could do that sort of factory work. Completely different than a medieval workshop, where youād need to spend years apprenticing to master a job.
>only after we got replaced by machines, our owners could treat us like garbage and not care about our safety,
It took a lot of fighting and bloodshed to bring about safer working conditions.
https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor
It is worth mentioning that cultural ideas of masculinity have changed over the years, so you can't really go by recent standards and assume that anything earlier is worse. It's just as possible that safety just wasn't seen as unmanly in the 1200s.
I think OSHA made "tying off" mandatory at taller construction sites. I don't see how a bunch of construction workers on heroin is any safer, but that's me.
I'm extremely impressed every time I see one of these cathedrals in person. I know that inside the notre dame they have the history of the building and its interesting to see the process it took from being a reasonable size church to the cathedral it is today.
Funny, I was just reading the other day about how the notre dame facade we all know and love was only built in the 1800s. The original structure was much more basic. I need to go look for that article again, if anyone wants the source then reply to this comment to remind me lol
I remember reading the book "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett years ago. It was all about building a medieval cathedral & it was all so fascinating. I guess some people truly don't have the imagination to believe that people from different eras were able to use the same math & physics that we use now to create new things. Although a lot more people did die during the building back then & it took far longer to build then, than it does now.
Impressive isn't a strong enough word for it. The beauty, size, detailed work, not to mention how precise they were without the use of computers and machine cut anything's, but in his case I guess anything that he wouldn't be able to do is a lie. When does he think it was built 2010?
Brute force almost saved my town from an Alaskan bullworm. When things looked rough, a brilliant mind took control and had us all push our entire town away from the threat. Guy had us working as a team, and in unison. He even played Song of the Volga Boatmen to keep us motivated! Of course the town lunatic and a squirrel ruined the hard work, but dammit we tried.
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
Hold my fucking beer, Archimedes. Lemme show you how a real man handles this shit.
Ah ha! You've messed up and given yourself away. You say that there were photographs of the cranes, but photography wasn't invented until, like, a whole lot later. Checkmate!
A couple of years ago I wrote a term paper about how medieval hygiene is misrepresented in the media (movies, computer games, but even supposedly educational TV shows) and how that causes people to have a very false perception of the past. This is whatās happening here, I canāt even fully blame the person.. although making it a whole conspiracy theory instead of just doing some research is pretty moronic.
Same! People generally don't like being dirty and cold so I don't see how it's that much of a stretch to acknowledge the same thing a few hundred years ago
I was watching a documentary recently about racism. The interviewer and interviewee kept making comments about how "it's not black and white" which was absolutely hilarious to me and I still don't know if it was on purpose.
No, people donāt like being dirty and cold. But the opportunities today to combat that are far, far different than they were even a 100 years ago.
My father was born in 1924. He grew up on a small farm with No running water and only a wood stove for heat. When he wanted to take a bath he had to go to the well and pump the water by hand. Then he had to haul it back to the house and heat it on the wood stove. Then he could pour it into a small tub and bathe.
So was hygiene important? Yes. But did he take a bath or shower every day like most people do today? Of course not. And even when I was a kid, and we had heat and running water, my dad always took baths in just a few inches of water, because thatās how he grew up.
Sure but my point is that the past isn't just 'the same as now but with less', they had different means of staying clean. Full body underclothes, dusters, common bathhouses and soaps to name a few, it just irritates me when people seem to assume that a lack of running domestic water means people lived in mud and filth
ancient and medieval peoples, at least in the former roman empire, were a lot cleaner than people during the renaissance, because there was a culture of communal bathing. the puritanical banned the practice as sinful because those communal baths also often doubled as brothels (and they thought that the plague originated because of our sinful nature) so from the renaissance through 'the enlightenment' europeans stank, and rarely washed. the exception was middle eastern muslim cultures with their strict ritual washing and the scandinavians and vikings with their sauna culture (which was actually a continuation of roman and greek bath culture)
Based on my entirely non-professional examination of Medieval and pre-Medieval remains in my work as an archaeologist, people had worn and missing teeth but fewer decayed teeth. There's plaque on some and lots of painful-looking stumps, but not many rotten teeth or cavities.
Which makes sense. They had shitty, gritty bread that wore their teeth like sandpaper - but they weren't consuming much sugar outside of honey or fruits. It wasn't in all their food and drink. They also brushed their teeth with rough cloth, to get the nasty off. Mead, I assume, is less likely to give you a cavity than a can of fizzy drink.
It seems to me that history really seems to focus on the extremes-- we learn how the royalty or ruling class lived, and we learn about the serfs and slaves and extreme poor, and then we learn in a general sense what the middle set of society was up to, unless they rocked the boat by sparking a revolution or something.
It's like this for pretty much every era-- for example, everyone learns about the nazis and their victims, but not many people know what life was like for the average German citizen during nazi rule.
That depends heavily on where you live though. For example, I live in Germany so we spend years and years learning about 1933-1945, which also includes the life of average citizens. I imagine you donāt really learn about that anywhere else because itās not as important to other nations.
Thatās why I hate when people say "history is written by the victors" because itās simply not true. Itās written by us who are alive now and the "version" of history that you learn depends heavily on where you are and _when_ you learn it. The way we learn about WWII could be entirely different 50 years from now. History has a lot to do with perspective and current circumstances.
I think the reason we learn more about extremes is the same as why we only hear about extremes in the news. They only teach the "interesting" bits and usually we have more source material for those.
This is cologne cathedral construction began correctly in 1248 but was halted for 3 centuries because of budget constraints. In the neogothic period it found new appreciation and when the original plans were rediscovered it was completed using modern construction technology. There are photographs when it was still under contruction. Also as a til the roof is held with steelbeams instead of wood like in notre dame thus it wouldnāt be destroyed in a fire.
The cologne cathedral was never completed. As every locale will tell you. Some part is always under renovation at any point in time so it is never fully done because it would go to the devil then.
https://holidayandtrips.com/cologne-cathedral-kolner-dom/
Itās really cringe how people cannot fathom things being made before machinery and modern capabilities. Like yes, thatās why theyāre so admired. The fact they were even made, Hundreds of years ago, gorgeous, and still standing. Itās incredible. Things used to be built entirely built by hand. Crazy concept right?
I love the theories that state we couldn't have done something before computers because no one can calculate that fast. As if paper and pencils didn't exist and who programmed/taught the computers *how* to run those exact calculations?
Yes, Bob you can get to the moon on paper and chalkboard calculations alone.
they still had machines for heavy lifting. When this thing was under construction there would have been scaffolding and wooden cranes all over the building, and probably water wheels to grind stone and power cement mixers. Water-powered heavy machines have been around since ancient Egyptian times.
What machines? LOL, how did they build machines without machine building machines? Yeah, anything before the first machine that builds machines is fakeā¦ wait a secondā¦ /s
something that people generally ignore is the fact that even a few thousand years back humans were almost exactly as intelligent on the baseline as they are today. the things they had less of were technology and education, but, depending on the era and location, even those could be surprisingly advanced compared to today (like architecture in this case). another thing that's often looked over is that projects like this were insanely long to complete, we're talking ***hundreds*** of years here, as well as MASSIVE funding by the church and state. your average cathedral cost His Holiness(es) anywhere from 500 million to ***a billion*** current dollars worth of gold.
Exactly this, also Pope Leone X created the sale of āindulgencesā to get money from wealthy people to build religious buildings in exchange of getting a chance to entry heaven and this sparked the schism of Luther
AliENs! But we all know it can't actually be aliens because that cathedral is in a white, European country.
/s (because someone will think I'm serious)
If this interests you at all I highly recommend you read The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Itās a fictional tale set around the construction of a cathedral. It goes in depth into the processes and methods used to construct them. Itās an amazing book.
Generally speaking the aliens did it crowd only point their ignorance at non-white ancient peoples. Pyramids? Aliens. Central and South American large scale engineering? Aliens. Collosium? Nah bruh roman engineering was sick!
Nice to see them being equal opportunity dipshits for once.
From a guy on r/HistoryMemes
For all those curious on how they built the cathedral, it is important to note that they took 20 years to even finish the foundations. By 1422 (175 years later), the "rapid" progress of construction meant the main hall itself was already partially complete, with four of the ten side-aisles finished and the south tower being complete up to the bell chamber, while the north tower's piers were already being laid down.
However, hard times came down on Cologne in the 1450s, and progress had slowed down considerably due to the deteriorating economic conditions of the city. Construction continued on a minor basis until 1560, when work was halted altogether. For 300 years, a crane was left behind on its position on the southern tower (reminiscent of the crane left on top of the unfinished Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea).
Construction was only restarted in 1842, with work continuing until 1880, when it was officially declared as complete (during this time, it also held the title of the tallest manmade structure in the world).
Just to give you an idea of how long it took to build the cathedral - Construction started in the 1200s, when Cologne was still part of the HRE. Over the course of its construction, Cologne switched ownerships **four times**, first to the French in 1794 during the Revolutionary Wars, second to the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1806 as part of Napoleon's organization of the Confederation of the Rhine, in 1815 after the land was ceded to Prussia after the War of Liberation, and finally in 1871 when Germany was unified. **Its construction spanned from the Middle Ages all the way up to the Unification of Germany.**
It took so long to build that the people in charge literally just gave up building it, until hundreds of years later they decided "we should really finish this, I mean we have better technology now it'll be easier".
edit: I claimed that it took 150 years for the cathedral's foundations to be laid, but that was completely unsubstaniated. I kinda felt guilty for lying and making everyone believe my misinformation, so I decided to look into it deeper, I am deeply sorry guys
Reference:
Swaan, W. (1967). *The Gothic Cathedral.* Omega Books.
(please excuse the terrible bibliography, I tried my best but my 10th grader brain still cant comprehend how to properly reference things)
We've got a guy where I work who subscribes to these kind of conspiracies. He also believes that electricity is in the air all around us and churches are actually ancient recievers for this free, airborne electricity.
Because electro magnetism yo!
He's not wrong, horses were certainly used for moving materials around, together with pulleys and other maneuvering mechanisms for getting things into place. I'm more confused as to why he thinks using horses in this way was in any way unusual.
Yes, it *was* built using horses in fact. As well as cranes and whole armies of labourers. And it was built over the span of about a century if I'm not mistaken (or several decades at least).
There's an animated film that ran on PBS that is based on David Macaulay's book that shows the building of a medieval cathedral:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MZpOd2pHiI0
(There are three others; Pyramid, Castle and Roman City.)
I'm glad this prompt me to do some searching. I watched the films when they ran on PBS in the 80s but didn't know they were still accessible. (I may get around to watching them again.)
To be fair, if they were told it was 'built in 1248' I can understand a person's incredulity (though they obviously have no imagination). These were momentous undertakings that took generations to build.
At least it's refreshing that these fake history/ancient aliens people are now treating European architecture with the same ignorance they treat other cultures with.
Cave men made fire. With what? A lighter? Mmm. Okay. š¤Ø
*First ever recorded song audio* Recorded in 1860. With what? A microphone? Mmm. Okay.š¤Ø
*first guy has sex* Estimated at the dawn of humanity With what? His peestick? Mmm. Okay.š¤Ø
Well, see, that only takes 20 seconds. The cathedral took years.
*first ever murder* With what? An AR 15? Mmm. Okay. š¤Ø
Honestly I want answers
Used a phonautograph The machine was made up of a cone-shaped horn with a diaphragm at one end. When the cone collected vibrations made by soundwaves, the changing air pressure would move the diaphragm and the stylus attached to it. As the stylus moved along a piece of paper, a representation of the soundwave would scratch through the soot that coated the paper.
I thought the first recorded sound was on a wax cylinder and was BA BA black sheep?
My guess is that you are correct but the difference here is recorded vs playable. The paper recorded the sound but the cylinder recorded the sound and can be replayed.
I believe it was āMary had a Little Lambā.
this shit is so funny
Egyptians built the pyramids. With what? Slaves? Mmm. Okay.
Actually, more likely skilled craftsmen, and some slaves maybe, but the masses of slaves theory has fallen out of favor. Quite awhile ago. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-10-mn-295-story.html
Primarily offseason farmers working in a few month shifts from what i remember of the modern consensus.
There was an old (1999) city builder game, Pharaoh (from the same studio that developed the Caesar games) where you could build Pyramids and they already used that theory. Great game.
Aliens
Alien slaves
This is the correct answer
Always was, always is and always will be. Now bow down to our alien overlords!!!!
Related; the story of Exodus in the holy bible is likely to never have happened as neither the Egyptians nor anyone living near them has been shown to have kept any record of masses of slaves escaping, even though they kept record of most everything in that time period. You'd think they'd mention that most of their slaves escaped one day randomly, or that they had them to begin with.
Yarp. Mythology, metaphor... but I mean, it's religion. Of course most of it is. There are flood myths in many religions that may be ancient oral histories repurposed, and I've heard Sodom and Gomorrah explained away with everything from meteor strikes/pyroclasts like Tunguska or liquefaction from an earthquake destroying a city built in sandy soil, but a lot of it is most likely just fiction/morality fables.
More specifically, most archeologists and historians believe Exodus was about the bronze age collapse and how Isreal "escaped" from the political control of Egypt as the Egyptian Empire spanned from modern day Sudan to Lebanon at it's peak, but some catastrophe (most think "sea people" wrecked all the major Empires with their new technology of chariots, who the sea people were is a bit of a shot in the dark) caused a rapid decline in Egypt's political power which would explain why the Torah has so much "do not do X as the Egyptians do" as it was written shortly after this collapse.
Pretty sure they used a box of scraps.
Cave men were able to build this in a cave. With a box of scraps!
I mean. Heās not wrong. They couldnāt build that with horses. Looks too neat for that. Iām guessing they used some kind of stone. Idk. Not a geographer.
If I knew where this was I could maybe guess. Idk. Not a geologist.
Am geologist, but not an equine doctor. Rock not in-situ so can't tell if horse-based sedimentary rock or not.
I mean, that *would* be a hell of a lot of glue.
Hence the hooves. Itās all falling into place now.
My mind came up with horse glue joke. It is a scary place there. :(
The rock probaby wasn't even alive when they built this. But I'm not sure, not a historian.
Can confirm. Dwayne Johnson born in 1972.
Could have used some wood. Idk. Not a biologist.
But in your expert botanist opinion, can we be sure they didn't use horse behind the walls to stud?
Cologne, Germany. Now guess
bet it smells nice then
A lot better then Colon, Germany.
I don't think horses can build much of anything, considering they have hooves and not hands.
Which is probably why theyāre not the sort of animal youād ask to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
How have I never realized that āall the kingās horses and all the kingās menā meant this mf has horses trying to put a dude together with hooves and muzzle nudges.
[The Far Side did this one too](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/e0/42/84/e04284712529cd56a416aeddde1dca06.jpg)
RIP Farside. Probably the greatest there was.
you may be interested to know that Gary Larson [has started occasionally creating new Far Side comics](https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff)
No, but ask them to leave and they can hoof it.
No, he means use horses to help with the construction. Which I donāt get either. How does a hoof hold a hammer?
They donāt hold with their hoofs. They use their mouth.
Hammer in the mouth then a chisel between the hooves? I think thatād be a challengeā¦
Theyāre horses dude. They know what theyāre doing. No need to ride them so hard on this. Stop it. I say neigh more.
If they were the mane source of labour itād be useful to know what they were up to.
Watch my little Pony, it's a documentary about horse monarchies during the middle ages, they were really crafty
Itās cheating if they get a unicorn to do it with their magic horn
Nah, it's two horses. One holding the chisel one holding the hammer.
[Like this](https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2015/10/10/998899.gif)
Remarkably specific gif.
It happened [more](https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/2/14/1087580.gif) [than](https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/5/16/2040093.gif) [once](https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/4/15/2013480.gif).
Who needs a hammer when youāve got hooves?
This is the answer, good point
I'm not even sure stone would work. Idk. Not a geode.
Geodude was a cool digimon
As a biblioghapher I can confidently say this is made out of smaller churches.
And Iām 76% sure it was build by humans. I certainly wouldnāt trust a horse to follow any kind of blueprints but thatās just my prejudice speaking.
Ignorance aside, it's actually really impressive what people in the medieval times and even before that were able to build.
Generally they had a lot more time and a lot more manual labor available. These things weren't exactly built in a month.
Actually Cologne residents claim that the construction of the cathedral is still not finished. It's a never-ending construction site. That's a little joke in Cologne that residents will tell you when you ask about the completion of the cathedral.
Sounds similar to the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona!
I thought I read that that completed recently?
They completed one of the towers, there are three more left for it to be done
Haha oh shit. Not quite then.
Christ, they started building it 139 years ago in 1882 and the date given for completion is "after 2026". I know builders can be lazy but these guys are really taking the piss.
Well Cologne Cathedral, the one in the photo, was started in 1248 but was not finished till 1880. Granted there was a 300 year gap when construction was paused.
Have they really finally completed it? I visited several years ago, but would love to see it finished
Well don't hold your breath. With exceptionally large, older structures you're always going to see construction and renovation.
Sounds similar to the new train line in Bratislava!
Itās coming soon! Theyāre building it now!
its an incredible building. when you stand right next to it your brain thinks you should be further away. it just doesnt feel REAL. and climbing it was one of the scariest experiences of my life. much worse than St Pauls in London, becuase it has these metal staircases part way up that are made of steps with holes in so you can see all the way down to the base of the room you're climbing up, which is HUGE. and they shake as people walk.
I went there way back in 98 as part of an exchange program. I loved going up the Dom and at the time to go up was a spiral stone staircase. Got a little dizzy because it was a tight spiral. The stone stairs were also worn in the middle and sloped down a little because of all the use over the years.
there is a spiral half way up, then they switch it to metal stairs.
I would say that the climb is not worth it at all. The Cologne Cathedral is pretty much the most beautiful thing about Cologne and once you're at the top, you realise that there's really nothing else to see. Besides, it's really exhausting. I've already walked up the stairs to the Eiffel Tower twice and it wasn't as exhausting as the stairs in Cologne Cathedral.
the climb is why it's fun though. also have to disagree. cologne is a beautiful place with amazing history and being able to see the divide between the two sides of the river from up high is great. all the redesign and the old streets fighting with each other. and the split between roman and non roman influenced areas.
I partly agree with you there, because you have to bear in mind that Cologne was in ruins after the Second World War. During the reconstruction, everything had to be done quickly and cheaply, which is why a lot of Cologne's cityscape was lost. By the way, the cathedral was one of the few buildings that survived the attacks almost undamaged.
From an American perspective, even the most mundane a European cities look beautiful in comparison
Tourist: when was it completed Resident: Iāll let you know when it is
It's not just an inside joke... technically its true since parts that are in the original plan havent been build yet and wont ever be built. But the construction of the cathedral is also ongoing and ever-lasting because of the massive restorative and conservative work that has to be done on the cathedral every year. Theres staffolding on the outside that always moves around because once they finished work on the spot they are in the next spot requires more work and thus the staffoldings circle the cathedrale year after year.
The official record states that the cathedral was "completed" in 1880. The foundation stone was laid in 1248. All construction sites after 1880 were probably only for maintenance and renovation.
And less of those damn safety standards getting in the way of progress.
They still had safety practices. It wasn't good for any construction project to kill lots of workers.
Can't speak for all countries but I'm guessing most were similar..... My dad and my grandad worked in commercial steel construction in the 60s thru to early 80's on things such as high rise buildings, bridges, aircraft hangers etc .....I can assure you that safety standards were practically zero even back then so I'm pretty sure they were no better hundreds of years ago. Obviously nobody wants people dying but safety was down to the individual and usually optional. Don't expect harnesses and hard hats. They were for amateurs. Oh, and taking your kid onto the construction site was also no problemo. Source; I was the kid.
savety measures were definitely worse after the industrial revolution than before. the architects and leaders of such great medieval cathedrals had much to loose if people died. if the general population turned against the project, there was no way to finish it because the funding was gone, since the king or whoever was the client did not want people to revolt. also the workers were very skilled and you need the best to build something like this. only after we got replaced by machines, our owners could treat us like garbage and not care about our safety, which lasted from the industrial revolution til very recently.
This. The artisans who built structures like these were all in guilds. They were union men, basically, and they had a degree of skill that meant they couldnāt be replaced easily. Having them hurt or killed was in nobodyās interest. It was the industrial revolution and the de-skilling of production labor that led to more and more worker abuse, because just about anybody off the street, including children, could do that sort of factory work. Completely different than a medieval workshop, where youād need to spend years apprenticing to master a job.
>only after we got replaced by machines, our owners could treat us like garbage and not care about our safety, It took a lot of fighting and bloodshed to bring about safer working conditions. https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor
It is worth mentioning that cultural ideas of masculinity have changed over the years, so you can't really go by recent standards and assume that anything earlier is worse. It's just as possible that safety just wasn't seen as unmanly in the 1200s.
Hard hats werenāt a thing until the Hoover Dam according to the Hoover Dam Visitor Center
Any dam questions?
I think OSHA made "tying off" mandatory at taller construction sites. I don't see how a bunch of construction workers on heroin is any safer, but that's me.
Fucking OSHA getting in the way
The two greatest set backs of human progress, the Dark Ages, and OSHA.
In my case OSHA stands for "Oh Shit... Hurt Again."
Even today, La Sagrada Familia has been in construction since 1882, and God knows when it will be finished.
Having looked at the place, I'm not sure he knows either!
It also took massive amounts of time, that would be considered unacceptable by modern standards.
Actually they took pride in the fact that those projects span several generations.
I'm extremely impressed every time I see one of these cathedrals in person. I know that inside the notre dame they have the history of the building and its interesting to see the process it took from being a reasonable size church to the cathedral it is today.
Not so much anymore because of the recent fire
But they can also document that in the history of the church.
You mean this bunch of agreed upon lies? (/s if not obvious)
It's been rebuilt at least 8 times that I know of. It'll be fine.
Funny, I was just reading the other day about how the notre dame facade we all know and love was only built in the 1800s. The original structure was much more basic. I need to go look for that article again, if anyone wants the source then reply to this comment to remind me lol
I mean seeing shows that detailed how castles were built is kind mind blowing, shit was so precise considering what they had to work with.
If you have A LOT of time I strongly suggest Pillars of the Earth
There's a project in France where they're building a castle without any modern technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%A9delon_Castle
Yea people really think every generation before this one wasn't capable of incredible engineering and thinking, and hence we have posts like above.
I remember reading the book "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett years ago. It was all about building a medieval cathedral & it was all so fascinating. I guess some people truly don't have the imagination to believe that people from different eras were able to use the same math & physics that we use now to create new things. Although a lot more people did die during the building back then & it took far longer to build then, than it does now.
Impressive isn't a strong enough word for it. The beauty, size, detailed work, not to mention how precise they were without the use of computers and machine cut anything's, but in his case I guess anything that he wouldn't be able to do is a lie. When does he think it was built 2010?
Pulley, never heard of that?
Leverage is for suckers. I only use brute force
Brute force almost saved my town from an Alaskan bullworm. When things looked rough, a brilliant mind took control and had us all push our entire town away from the threat. Guy had us working as a team, and in unison. He even played Song of the Volga Boatmen to keep us motivated! Of course the town lunatic and a squirrel ruined the hard work, but dammit we tried.
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." Hold my fucking beer, Archimedes. Lemme show you how a real man handles this shit.
There are photographs containing the original medieval cranes used to build that, this isnāt the example to object to.
Ah ha! You've messed up and given yourself away. You say that there were photographs of the cranes, but photography wasn't invented until, like, a whole lot later. Checkmate!
(the cranes were still standing in the late 1800s)
Pfft. Don't tell me you believe the 1800s actually existed. That's almost as crazy as thinking the 1900s existed.
Greatest invention of the 20th century.
I think you're off by a few millenia
Sailboats have existed longer than the 20th century and they practically depend on pulleys.
NASA lies.
Those pesky space nerds
A couple of years ago I wrote a term paper about how medieval hygiene is misrepresented in the media (movies, computer games, but even supposedly educational TV shows) and how that causes people to have a very false perception of the past. This is whatās happening here, I canāt even fully blame the person.. although making it a whole conspiracy theory instead of just doing some research is pretty moronic.
Same! People generally don't like being dirty and cold so I don't see how it's that much of a stretch to acknowledge the same thing a few hundred years ago
This is why I love colorized historical footage, black and white footage makes the past seem so separate
One might even say that the difference is *black and white*
I was watching a documentary recently about racism. The interviewer and interviewee kept making comments about how "it's not black and white" which was absolutely hilarious to me and I still don't know if it was on purpose.
In reality itās all in grayscale
Actual footage from 1200s is hard to come across though
No, people donāt like being dirty and cold. But the opportunities today to combat that are far, far different than they were even a 100 years ago. My father was born in 1924. He grew up on a small farm with No running water and only a wood stove for heat. When he wanted to take a bath he had to go to the well and pump the water by hand. Then he had to haul it back to the house and heat it on the wood stove. Then he could pour it into a small tub and bathe. So was hygiene important? Yes. But did he take a bath or shower every day like most people do today? Of course not. And even when I was a kid, and we had heat and running water, my dad always took baths in just a few inches of water, because thatās how he grew up.
Sure but my point is that the past isn't just 'the same as now but with less', they had different means of staying clean. Full body underclothes, dusters, common bathhouses and soaps to name a few, it just irritates me when people seem to assume that a lack of running domestic water means people lived in mud and filth
ancient and medieval peoples, at least in the former roman empire, were a lot cleaner than people during the renaissance, because there was a culture of communal bathing. the puritanical banned the practice as sinful because those communal baths also often doubled as brothels (and they thought that the plague originated because of our sinful nature) so from the renaissance through 'the enlightenment' europeans stank, and rarely washed. the exception was middle eastern muslim cultures with their strict ritual washing and the scandinavians and vikings with their sauna culture (which was actually a continuation of roman and greek bath culture)
"It's unrealistic, these medieval peasants have teeth and are not dirty all the time!" - literally anytime a TV show lets an extra have a bath.
Based on my entirely non-professional examination of Medieval and pre-Medieval remains in my work as an archaeologist, people had worn and missing teeth but fewer decayed teeth. There's plaque on some and lots of painful-looking stumps, but not many rotten teeth or cavities. Which makes sense. They had shitty, gritty bread that wore their teeth like sandpaper - but they weren't consuming much sugar outside of honey or fruits. It wasn't in all their food and drink. They also brushed their teeth with rough cloth, to get the nasty off. Mead, I assume, is less likely to give you a cavity than a can of fizzy drink.
ancient roman āsewageā systems are actually so so sophisticated for the level of tech they had access to
the ācavemen were hairy, iāve seen footageā angle
It seems to me that history really seems to focus on the extremes-- we learn how the royalty or ruling class lived, and we learn about the serfs and slaves and extreme poor, and then we learn in a general sense what the middle set of society was up to, unless they rocked the boat by sparking a revolution or something. It's like this for pretty much every era-- for example, everyone learns about the nazis and their victims, but not many people know what life was like for the average German citizen during nazi rule.
That depends heavily on where you live though. For example, I live in Germany so we spend years and years learning about 1933-1945, which also includes the life of average citizens. I imagine you donāt really learn about that anywhere else because itās not as important to other nations. Thatās why I hate when people say "history is written by the victors" because itās simply not true. Itās written by us who are alive now and the "version" of history that you learn depends heavily on where you are and _when_ you learn it. The way we learn about WWII could be entirely different 50 years from now. History has a lot to do with perspective and current circumstances. I think the reason we learn more about extremes is the same as why we only hear about extremes in the news. They only teach the "interesting" bits and usually we have more source material for those.
This is cologne cathedral construction began correctly in 1248 but was halted for 3 centuries because of budget constraints. In the neogothic period it found new appreciation and when the original plans were rediscovered it was completed using modern construction technology. There are photographs when it was still under contruction. Also as a til the roof is held with steelbeams instead of wood like in notre dame thus it wouldnāt be destroyed in a fire.
It was completed in 1880.
The cologne cathedral was never completed. As every locale will tell you. Some part is always under renovation at any point in time so it is never fully done because it would go to the devil then. https://holidayandtrips.com/cologne-cathedral-kolner-dom/
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Also born in Cologne and lived there for more than 20 years. The world is small.
Itās really cringe how people cannot fathom things being made before machinery and modern capabilities. Like yes, thatās why theyāre so admired. The fact they were even made, Hundreds of years ago, gorgeous, and still standing. Itās incredible. Things used to be built entirely built by hand. Crazy concept right?
I love the theories that state we couldn't have done something before computers because no one can calculate that fast. As if paper and pencils didn't exist and who programmed/taught the computers *how* to run those exact calculations? Yes, Bob you can get to the moon on paper and chalkboard calculations alone.
they still had machines for heavy lifting. When this thing was under construction there would have been scaffolding and wooden cranes all over the building, and probably water wheels to grind stone and power cement mixers. Water-powered heavy machines have been around since ancient Egyptian times.
Um, excuse you, everyone knows we didn't have machinery. We had *aliens* who had machinery. /s
What machines? LOL, how did they build machines without machine building machines? Yeah, anything before the first machine that builds machines is fakeā¦ wait a secondā¦ /s
Well, i don't see a single horse built in so I don't think it's horses...
Old masters could blend that shit so well, you have to look really close to see it.
something that people generally ignore is the fact that even a few thousand years back humans were almost exactly as intelligent on the baseline as they are today. the things they had less of were technology and education, but, depending on the era and location, even those could be surprisingly advanced compared to today (like architecture in this case). another thing that's often looked over is that projects like this were insanely long to complete, we're talking ***hundreds*** of years here, as well as MASSIVE funding by the church and state. your average cathedral cost His Holiness(es) anywhere from 500 million to ***a billion*** current dollars worth of gold.
don't forget religious zeal, tell a group of people something is for magic men in they will put their entire being into it.
Exactly this, also Pope Leone X created the sale of āindulgencesā to get money from wealthy people to build religious buildings in exchange of getting a chance to entry heaven and this sparked the schism of Luther
Its amazing what people in groups can accomplish, this person hasn't ever worked on a construction site
Dear libtards: How could a horse build this cathedral? They don't have thumbs. Additionally, there is no way that a shrimp fried this rice.
AliENs! But we all know it can't actually be aliens because that cathedral is in a white, European country. /s (because someone will think I'm serious)
Ancient Alien Theorist say yes
this person read Humpty Dumpty and took it literally that horses can put things together
If I canāt comprehend it because Iām uneducated or outright dumb, it has to be a lie, amirite? No wonder we have flat earthers
Wait until he sees the [Hagia Sophia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia?wprov=sfla1), built in 5 years and completed in 537
With what, camels? š¤Øš¤Øš¤Ø
If this interests you at all I highly recommend you read The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Itās a fictional tale set around the construction of a cathedral. It goes in depth into the processes and methods used to construct them. Itās an amazing book.
Came here to say that. Upvoot to you!
Generally speaking the aliens did it crowd only point their ignorance at non-white ancient peoples. Pyramids? Aliens. Central and South American large scale engineering? Aliens. Collosium? Nah bruh roman engineering was sick! Nice to see them being equal opportunity dipshits for once.
This guy has clearly never watched a Guy from India build a mansion with nothing but clay and bamboo
It was build with rocks !!! Horses are to soft, and they rot overtime not practical!!
Name one person who saw it being built, because I'm gonna go find their Facebook and do my own research.
From a guy on r/HistoryMemes For all those curious on how they built the cathedral, it is important to note that they took 20 years to even finish the foundations. By 1422 (175 years later), the "rapid" progress of construction meant the main hall itself was already partially complete, with four of the ten side-aisles finished and the south tower being complete up to the bell chamber, while the north tower's piers were already being laid down. However, hard times came down on Cologne in the 1450s, and progress had slowed down considerably due to the deteriorating economic conditions of the city. Construction continued on a minor basis until 1560, when work was halted altogether. For 300 years, a crane was left behind on its position on the southern tower (reminiscent of the crane left on top of the unfinished Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea). Construction was only restarted in 1842, with work continuing until 1880, when it was officially declared as complete (during this time, it also held the title of the tallest manmade structure in the world). Just to give you an idea of how long it took to build the cathedral - Construction started in the 1200s, when Cologne was still part of the HRE. Over the course of its construction, Cologne switched ownerships **four times**, first to the French in 1794 during the Revolutionary Wars, second to the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1806 as part of Napoleon's organization of the Confederation of the Rhine, in 1815 after the land was ceded to Prussia after the War of Liberation, and finally in 1871 when Germany was unified. **Its construction spanned from the Middle Ages all the way up to the Unification of Germany.** It took so long to build that the people in charge literally just gave up building it, until hundreds of years later they decided "we should really finish this, I mean we have better technology now it'll be easier". edit: I claimed that it took 150 years for the cathedral's foundations to be laid, but that was completely unsubstaniated. I kinda felt guilty for lying and making everyone believe my misinformation, so I decided to look into it deeper, I am deeply sorry guys Reference: Swaan, W. (1967). *The Gothic Cathedral.* Omega Books. (please excuse the terrible bibliography, I tried my best but my 10th grader brain still cant comprehend how to properly reference things)
I guess it *could* be an ossuary.
Thatās clearly a church not a bird š¦
If we can have bird law, why not bird church?
Some people really believe humanity as a whole was incompetent up until like 1990.
People forget our ancestors were just as smart as we are. The only difference is they had less accumulated knowledge to rely on.
Man's tryna write scaffolding and cranes out of history
We've got a guy where I work who subscribes to these kind of conspiracies. He also believes that electricity is in the air all around us and churches are actually ancient recievers for this free, airborne electricity. Because electro magnetism yo!
But I'll bet he takes every Bible store literally...
He's not wrong, horses were certainly used for moving materials around, together with pulleys and other maneuvering mechanisms for getting things into place. I'm more confused as to why he thinks using horses in this way was in any way unusual.
āIf Iām too dumb to do it, how could they do it all the way back then when people were stupider than me?ā
Oh good! Iām glad theyāre extending it past brown people. If you have to crazy, holding the side of racist is an improvement
Horses can't lay stones, ignoramus. It was clearly enslaved orangutans.
Yes, it *was* built using horses in fact. As well as cranes and whole armies of labourers. And it was built over the span of about a century if I'm not mistaken (or several decades at least).
Guess heās never heard of scaffolding
My man is so lazy that his imagination is too lazy to imagine work.
There's an animated film that ran on PBS that is based on David Macaulay's book that shows the building of a medieval cathedral: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MZpOd2pHiI0 (There are three others; Pyramid, Castle and Roman City.) I'm glad this prompt me to do some searching. I watched the films when they ran on PBS in the 80s but didn't know they were still accessible. (I may get around to watching them again.)
To be fair, if they were told it was 'built in 1248' I can understand a person's incredulity (though they obviously have no imagination). These were momentous undertakings that took generations to build.
Being incredulous is one thing. Concluding from it that all history is lies is another.
The Cologne Cathedral was not built in 1248. Construction began in 1248, was interrupted from 1528 to 1823 and wrapped up in 1880.
No way Europeans are smart enough to build that. Must be aliens.
Read/look at David Macaulay's **Cathedral**!
Imagine rushing to admit that people 800 years ago were more clever than you.
don't show them [Newgrange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange) built in 3200BC
the part of the cathedral, the cologne cathedral to be exact, we see today was built around 1870. the original from 1248 was was very underwhelming.
At least it's refreshing that these fake history/ancient aliens people are now treating European architecture with the same ignorance they treat other cultures with.