http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Palenque-Chichen-Itza-and-more-tp4971563p4982042.html
Istanbul, I am inclined to agree with Pamela. Grand gestures, however,
>>
>>
>> Grandiosity of civilizations is easily observed but that same
>> grandiosity
>> applies to Buildings architecture as well as death circuses.
>> The Human need for Grand Gestures may be at the root of civilization.
>
> Jerry Sabloff, the president of the Santa Fe Institute, whose
> specialty is the archaeology (and thus the life) of everyday Mayan
> civilization, gave a little talk in late December to a small group
> where he mentioned in passing that the great architectural monuments
> of a civilization are nearly always erected early in that
> civilization's ascendancy--the Egyptian pyramids, the Mayan ziggurats,
> etc.
>
> I thought about this, both in connection with Hitlerian architecture
> (godawful but appears early in the Nazi ascendancy, and trails on into
> the 1960s--since I consider New York's Lincoln Center Albert Speer's
> last hurrah) and also in connection with the American skyscraper,
> which emerged in the very late 1800s with the invention of the
> elevator, and reached its heyday in the 1930s. Sabloff did not mention
> concomitant civil violence, and I don't have enough knowledge to
> propose a theory about it.
>
> The spectacle of architecture in the oil-rich states, such as Dubai,
> might be another example.
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