Borobudur temple was constructed in the 9th century CE, and to this day is the largest Buddhist temple in the world. 123 metres long and wide, the square temple is made of nine stone platforms stacked on top of each other. Most impressively, the temple uses no cement or mortar to bind it, and is held together by its weight alone https://casinoslots-sa.co.za/online-blackjack.
Pretty crazy right? If you take one thing away from this video, let it be this: the ancient Buddhists didn’t mess about when it came to architecture. As I said earlier, this temple has had to face some pretty intense challenges. First it was buried under a coat of volcanic ash in 1000CE. That stopped anyone rediscovering the temple until 1815, when a British explorer stumbled across it. Then in 1985, terrorist bombings of the site failed to bring the building down. Even in 2006, when the region was hit with a 6.2 richter scale earthquake,Borobudur remained intact. The earthquake obliterated the nearby city of Yogykarta but the temple didn’t even wobble. I guess if you can carve a 70-metre stone deity out of a mountain, you can build a temple that nature itself can’t kill. 3) Derawer Fort In 1733, Sadeq Mohammad Khan and his armies captured a poxy fort in the way out in the Cholistan desert of modern-day Pakistan. The stronghold had been built in the 9th century CE and, like most 900-year-old building, needed a bit of a makeover. Fortunately Sadeq was powerful enough to give the antique building the renovation it deserved, and the stunning result has become known as the Derawer Fort. Spanning one and a half square kilometres, the fort contains housing, a mosque and even a cemetery. All protected by 40 formidable bastions and a brick wall 30 metres high. Why build such an impressive structure so far in the desert only camels and sand are going to see it? Simple. Derawer Fort lies over a deep pocket of underground water. And, since deserts tend to be get about as rainfall as the Sun, water is an extremely valuable resource. Unfortunately, while no army could destroy this amazing construction, time and neglect have started to. The fort being tucked away in a desert makes it hard to sell as a tourist attraction, and few groups have expressed any interest in funding Derawer’s upkeep. 2) Forest of Knives Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d say: lemurs are freaking badass. No, not the ones that get to doss around in the rainforest or keep appearing in Dreamworks movies. I mean the ones that choose to live somewhere that makes Mordor look homely. This is Tsingy de Bemaraha [Sing-ee de B-mara-ha], a 600 square kilometre national park in central Madagascar. The giant slab of limestone that once covered the region has eroded extremely unevenly, creating millions of rock daggers each upwards of 300 feet tall. As if the sea of stoney spikes didn’t make this place amazing enough, there are also mountains that look like they’re floating, Temple of Doom-like bridge canyons and literally thousands of hidden caverns and caves. Most of the region remains unexplored to this day, mainly because people prefer to explore areas where the floor isn’t made of murder. But despite being largely uncharted, Tsingy de Bemaraha has still become notorious enough to earn the incredibly awesome nickname: “the forest of knives.” 1) Chand baori As we’ve already established, water was pretty important to the ancient world. And while the people of Pakistan were busy building castles to protect theirs, a village in Rajasthan was coming up with an innovative way of accessing its water. Abhaneri is a tiny village in the remote Eastern corner of India. With low rainfall and temperatures regularly reaching 40 degrees celsius, there’s almost no water on the surface. So in 800CE, the locals did what anyone would: dig an insanely over-the-top hole. Chand baori is the oldest and largest stepwell in the world. 30 metres deep, the well descends through 3,500 steps and a series of 13 stories. So there you, problem solved. Now if the people of Abhaneri want water all they have to do is scale down 30 metres of steep and presumably wet stairs while carrying a bucket, fill it up, and climb their way back up without spilling any. Easy peasy. Relatively uncelebrated for over a thousand years, this amazing feat of architecture gained a claim to fame after it was used to film the pit scenes in The Dark Knight Rises. And as we all know, anywhere Batman has visited is instantly made 500% more epic. So, that was 10 Wonders of the World You Won’t Have Heard Of. What lesser known wonder was your favourite. Are there some amazing wonders that you’ve heard of and we haven’t? Let us know in the comments below. And if you want more amazing locations, check out 10 Weird Wonders of the World, playing now.
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March 2019
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