Quote:
Originally Posted by Baby Lee
How far underground was Troy? Seems like they dug down dozens of feet, maybe even dozens of yards to unearth it.
Soil builds up with wind and rain, then plants grow. Plants die and turn into soil themselves. Eons pass.
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Where does the soil come from? Is it blowing or eroding from high places to lower places? I remember reading about an archaeology project once where they were measuring some mineral in the ocean that came from a mountain range, so they could check drought conditions in the past. So maybe there's that.
And plants are a good point. If you have dirt at Z=-3 inches compared to the ancient sidewalk and hoverport, and then the plant grows 12 inches and then dies, you could have dirt/mulch that moves up and over the ancient sidewalk and hoverport.
Wind would certainly move dirt around, but it would seem random that it would happen to pile up on the ancient hoverport. It seems like dirt is a zero sum game worldwide other than maybe stuff eroding off rocks.
But yeah, I read about places like Troy, and I've been to all sorts of historic places to see ruins, and they're often below ground level. Notre Dame has an old settlement under it, Mesa Verde has settlements that were excavated below ground level, and so on.
I guess the other logic is that we only find the ones that ended up underground because the ones that don't get buried either erode away or get carted off by local gypsies.