A video shared in 2022 attempted to recreate ancient archaeological sites to their former glory, and the results are super freaking cool.
The video was developed and shared by Bright Side, who started their voyage in South America at the ancient Machu Picchu site. The site is believed to have once belonged to the Inca civilization. Sitting atop the Cordillera de Vilcabamba region of the Andes mountain range, the name Machu Picchu literally translates to “Old Peak.”
The site was constructed roughly 7,000 feet above sea level (current range) around 1450 BC, according to the video. The recreation video — which did make me laugh — claimed that the Inca managed to build the entire site without the use of wheels or iron, despite there being zero evidence to say that this was the case.
Sadly, everyone from that time period is dead now, and it’s totally unclear whether raiders could have removed artifacts like these throughout the last few thousand years. (RELATED: Mayan ‘Superhighways’ Suggest We Need To Rethink How Advanced Our Ancestors Really Were)
Similarly, the sites explored at Pompeii, the Colosseum, the Parthenon, Taj Mahal and the Pyramids of Giza complex all looked absolutely incredible in the recreation. But scientifically and historically, all but the story of the Taj Mahal video is cringingly bad. The narrator makes a lot of big claims that aren’t necessarily paradigms of evidence, so most of them can probably be ignored.
But the recreations themselves are very cool. It would be great if the field of archaeology put their egos aside and did the work to accurately answer many of the questions still surrounding our history on this planet. There is so much missing from the story of our species that still needs to be uncovered.