Pyramid
This offers a weight distribution that allowed early civilizations to create monumental structures.Civilizations in many parts of the world have built pyramids.
The ziggurat's precursors were raised platforms that date from the Ubaid period[4] of the fourth millennium BC.
[6] Built in receding tiers upon a rectangular, oval, or square platform, the ziggurat was a pyramidal structure with a flat top.
The most famous African pyramids are in Egypt — huge structures built of bricks or stones, primarily limestone, some of which are among the world's largest constructions.
Smaller pyramids with steeper sides were built by the Nubians who ruled Egypt in the Late Period.
[19] Nubian pyramids were constructed (roughly 240 of them) at three sites in Sudan to serve as tombs for the kings and queens of Napata and Meroë.
[20] Pausanias (2nd century AD) mentions two buildings resembling pyramids, one, 19 kilometres (12 mi) southwest of a still standing structure at Hellenikon,[21] a common tomb for soldiers who died in a legendary struggle for the throne of Argos and another that he was told was the tomb of Argives killed in a battle around 669/8 BC.
They had large central rooms (unlike Egyptian pyramids) and the Hellenikon structure is rectangular rather than square, 12.5 by 14 metres (41 by 46 ft) which means that the sides could not have met at a point.
[22] The stone used to build these structures was limestone quarried locally and was cut to fit, not into freestanding blocks like the Great Pyramid of Giza.
[26] The Pyramids of Güímar refer to six rectangular pyramid-shaped, terraced structures, built from lava without mortar.
Autochthonous Guanche traditions as well as surviving images indicate that similar structures (also known as, "Morras", "Majanos", "Molleros", or "Paredones") were built in many locations on the island.
The 27-metre-high Pyramid of Cestius was built by the end of the 1st century BC and survives close to the Porta San Paolo.
Another, named Meta Romuli, stood in the Ager Vaticanus (today's Borgo), but was destroyed at the end of the 15th century.
[27] Pyramids were occasionally used in Christian architecture during the feudal era, e.g. as the tower of Oviedo's Gothic Cathedral of San Salvador.
An unusual pyramid with a circular plan survives at the site of Cuicuilco, now inside Mexico City and mostly covered with lava from an eruption of the Xitle Volcano in the 1st century BC.
[28] Many pre-Columbian Native American societies of ancient North America built large pyramidal earth structures known as platform mounds.
The first emperor Qin Shi Huang (c. 221 BC, who unified the seven pre-imperial kingdoms) was buried under a large mound outside modern-day Xi'an.
In the following centuries about a dozen more Han dynasty royal persons were also buried under flat-topped pyramidal earthworks.
[citation needed] Numerous giant, granite, temple pyramids were built in South India during the Chola Empire, many of which remain in use.
[32] Austronesian megalithic culture in Indonesia featured earth and stone step pyramid structures called punden berundak.
[34] The stone pyramids were based on beliefs that mountains and high places were the abode for the spirit of the ancestors.
[35] The step pyramid is the basic design of the 8th century Borobudur Buddhist monument in Central Java.
[39][40] At least nine Buddhist step pyramids survive, 4 from former Gyeongsang Province of Korea, 3 from Japan, 1 from Indonesia (Borobudur) and 1 from Tajikistan.
Several pyramids were erected throughout the Pacific islands, such as Puʻukoholā Heiau in Hawaii, the Pulemelei Mound in Samoa, and Nan Madol in Pohnpei.
[citation needed]With the Egyptian Revival movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, pyramids became more common in funerary architecture.
The Schoenhofen Pyramid Mausoleum (1889) in Chicago and Hunt's Tomb (1930) in Phoenix, Arizona are notable examples.
