{"id":243,"date":"2004-08-11T20:21:00","date_gmt":"2004-08-11T20:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=243"},"modified":"2004-08-11T20:21:00","modified_gmt":"2004-08-11T20:21:00","slug":"243","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=243","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Rebuilding a temple<\/strong><\/p>\n

A UC-Berkeley news release<\/a> describes the partial rebuilding of the temple of Zeus, knocked down by earthquakes and\/or Christians.<\/p>\n

Speaking of earthquakes: The use of interlocking stones dissipates a lot of energy,” said [engineering professor Nikos] Makris. “A single stone or stones connected with mortar or cement would be rigid and less able to effectively absorb the energy induced by earthquakes.<\/p>\n

A further linguistic clue supports the seismic stability theory: The word the ancient Greeks used for the column drum, spondylos, also means vertebra. The temple columns were abiding by the same shock-absorbing principles as the human spinal column.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rebuilding a temple A UC-Berkeley news release describes the partial rebuilding of the temple of Zeus, knocked down by earthquakes and\/or Christians. Speaking of earthquakes: The use of interlocking stones dissipates a lot of energy,” said [engineering professor Nikos] Makris. “A single stone or stones connected with mortar or cement would be rigid and less […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-243","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1520,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1520","url_meta":{"origin":243,"position":0},"title":"Did the Earth Move for You?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi of Iran explains that women cause Middle Eastern earthquakes. \"Many women who dress inappropriately ... cause youths to go astray, taint their chastity and incite extramarital sex in society, which increases earthquakes,\" Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi told worshippers at overnight prayers in Tehran. It's the way that they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14050,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14050","url_meta":{"origin":243,"position":1},"title":"Will Christians Fulfill a Pagan Emperor’s Plan?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 15, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Julian \"The Philosopher,\" Rome's last Pagan emperor (mid-360s), would get chuckle out of this. (Although to me he comes across as super-serious, he must have found some things funny. I hope.) While he was force-fed Christian theology by bishops, growing up in a royal Christian household, he later studied ancient\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Julian_antioch-mint-bull.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1529,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1529","url_meta":{"origin":243,"position":2},"title":"No, It Wasn’t the Provocative Women","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It was Icelandic Pagans who caused the volcano to erupt, say Russian Orthodox clerics, countering the Shiite Islamic cleric who blamed women for inciting the lust of hapless men and thus, somehow, earthquakes. They noted that Iceland \"has recently become a center of European neo-paganism of Aryan occult kind, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":926,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=926","url_meta":{"origin":243,"position":3},"title":"The Most Advanced–But Vanished–Pagans.","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone has their favorite vanished Pagan civilization, I suppose. The Minoan civilization is one of mine.Tropaion links to a Discovery Channel video about the destruction of Atlantis. The basic idea -- that \"Atlantis\" was Santorini (Thera) and Crete -- is not new, but the computer recreations of their cities is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1082,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1082","url_meta":{"origin":243,"position":4},"title":"Gallimaufry & What Didn’t Happen","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 When M. and I left our hotel room on Tuesday, the lobby was full of the crackle of police radios. Everywhere you looked in downtown Chicago, there were cops standing around.These are some kind of federales outside a federal office building on Jackson Street.I was happy, therefore, to get\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":494,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=494","url_meta":{"origin":243,"position":5},"title":"The logistics of sacrifice (1)Looking\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The logistics of sacrifice (1)Looking at an artist's rendition of the Roman temple of Minerva Sulis at Bath, UK, you will see a thin plume of smoke arising from the altar outside the temple. There appears to be no fuel, just smoke.I got to thinking about animal sacrifice, not the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}