The World Has Some Explaining To Do

So, over the past week they've discovered - or I should say uncovered - another one of those ancient street things. You know, the kind where they're digging and digging and then - oh, holy shit - there's a TOWN under here.

Only this time they did it in Jerusalem.

This is the kind of story that reads like this... "Working from the historic map, archaeologists three months ago uncovered the section of the wide, white stone street 14 feet (4.5 meters) below the current street level." I'm sure you've seen these things before.

And you can find the article here.

Anyway I don't know about you but when I see things like this I get kind of pumped. I'm one of those oddballs who gets off walking around in that kind of thing. I drove my wife NUTS when we were in Ireland a few years back - I just had to stop at every. last. castle. or. ruin... or for that matter anything that even remotely looked old that you could walk through... we passed. I got off on climbing up and down circular steps in a castle tower, or standing where the guidebook said "at this end of the room was the nobleman's table during the feasts". Even with the roof gone and the room exposed to the elements, in my mind I could cover the space and picture tapestries and people chomping mutton joints and having women like this sitting around coyly sizing up people's codpieces and stuff. I get off walking around in Ulysses S Grant's house in Galena. And I gotta tell you - there ain't much to that. But I go reverie anyhow. It's weird. I know.

Long time readers already know how I get nostalgic for eras I didn't even live in. It's an old malady.

But there's always been something that bothered me. Always that something in the back of my mind that I just can't seem to reconcile. I never see a new story or a new set of pictures from a "recent discovery" without having it worming around up there. And no matter how much I try I can't seem to explain it to myself or anybody else. Not so much on things like Grant's house and all, but the ancient stuff they find.

It's always buried.

It's always buried and it always bugs me that nobody else seems to mind or want to know how this happens. It's one thing when they find stuff in the desert or in a remote area of South America or Mexico or the deserts here in our southwest. People leave or get wiped out or a civilization ends and they're gone. So nature takes over. There's no anal housefrau to dust the shelves anymore. I get that.

But how in the hell do we lose entire STREETS? Not only entire streets but entire streets right under other streets we're living on right now. And it's 14 friggin' feet below.

Excuse me?

You can say everybody collectively forgot about it, sure. But somebody had to willfully and on purpose build something ON TOP of it before that could happen. And who the hell builds anything on top of anything? Can you point to a builder right now who has just decided... "ok I'm going to build my project 14 feet above this old street nobody is using"? Can anybody even show me a town being buried by nature even as we speak? I can't even come to grips with how we even "forget" something is there and build on top of it. Build on top of it... wtf??

Are you trying to tell me the earth is getting bigger? As time goes on layers and layers of garbage and crap just happen and it covers whole houses and streets and nobody notices... in the middle of Jerusalem.... and then we just build on top of it? Is that what you're saying??

Nobody notices? I'm asking that because if I drove home from work every day and kept passing a neighborhood that was slowly getting buried by dust and overgrown with weeds I think I'd notice. Somebody would notice. Amirite?

"Oh, we just discovered a street we didn't know was there. It's 14 freakin feet under your neighborhood." But nevermind, that just happens.

What?

It must be some kind of conspiracy. Those damn Templars!