Europe and America Part II

I kept asking myself as I looked at the ancient rock that had once formed this or that architectural wonder of ancient Greece what stupidity would have possessed the Goths, the Romans, the Turks (who, in the 16th century used the Parthenon as a store-house for dynamite and managed, by that decision to accidentally explode it during a thunderstorm) to destroy such legacies of human accomplishment and beauty. It was heartbreaking to see how many ancient buildings in Greece had had to be restored in order for us to even get a sense of what they once looked like. The whole scene of ruin reminded me (in a very anachronistic way) of the tragedy of the cultural revolution in China. In any case, whatever disease caused such aesthetic atrocities, I had to remind myself, our species isn't cured of yet: even today the monuments of a 3 thousand year old civilization are, to many Athenians, little more than another place to tag.