The "What and Where" quiz reminded me how many cultures have built Artificial Mountains (Pyramids, Ziggurats, Towers of Silence etc) as part of their sacred landscapes. I have often wondered if that indicates the culture originated in an area of actual mountains of not. What does everyone else think?

It is an interesting point Gil, and one that I hadn't considered before.

Most cultures tended to build up to represent or honour greatness in one form or another, but why? Mmm, I must mull.

If they didn't build up they often built on top of whatever was available that was high anyway.

To go back to the Maya and the other Yucatan peoples, that's the flattest place I have ever seen and completely covered in scrubby forest so there are virtually no vistas anywhere. That might be one explanation for pyramids there apart from the high=sacred and nearer the sky gods theory; the buildings could only be seen from any distance by being tall enough to rise above the trees and so be able to have a commanding presence in the landscape and be visible to outsiders as a power statement. A tall structure also allows the very clear manifestation of status since social differentiation can be made apparent by the level you are able to rise to, literally as well as figuratively. In general though, building high is perhaps ultimately about the impact created by visibility from a distance and the expression of that power statement in terms of the demonstration of resources available to achieve the construction of the monument.

I am not sure that it is wise to attempt to ascribe one common motive or aspiration to all those who constructed "artificial mountains" in their time. While emulation of natural formations might indeed have been in the back of all of their minds with regard to aesthetic expression, I would doubt that so many diverse societies over so huge a timespan could be assumed to have shared a common goal when it comes to the point they were trying to make, or indeed have drawn inspiration from the same appreciation of the surrounding landscape which itself was as diverse as their circumstances.

On a more general note, the question of mountains (or the lack of such) often results in a pre-judged evaluation of the people who inhabit a particular area. The differentiation between 'highlanders' and 'lowlanders' can be found in many countries and needless to say is often fraught with stereotypes. Quite often the very evaluation of whether or not a country is mountainous can also be based on cliche or even just on plain false data. A comparison of the highest points of various countries around the world is quite revealing.

Let's start at the bottom. Everyone knows that the Netherlands are one of the lowest lying countries in Europe don't they. And so it may come as something of a surprise to find out that the highest point in the Netherlands, at 332m, is higher than any point in Denmark. And the Netherlands' highest point is also higher than any point in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Yet Lithuania’s neighbour Poland has a mountain higher than any mountain in mountainous Norway.

Further afield in the Caribbean we find that Jamaica’s highest peak is higher than any in Sweden while Hispaniola’s highest peak is higher than Germany’s Zugspitze. Panama, which became independent of Colombia because Panama was an isthmus and low-lying and so suitable for the building of the Canal, nevertheless contains a volcano which is higher than any mountain in the spectacular Drakensberg range of South Africa. And although Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Mount Kenya in Kenya are famously snow-capped mountains in the tropics, neighbouring Mount Stanley on the border of Uganda and the Congo is also higher than any mountain in France, Italy, Switzerland or even Indonesia.

South-East Asia also throws other surprises. Who would believe that flood-prone Bangladesh has a hill higher than any hill in Ireland. Or that Cambodia includes a mountain higher than Scotland's Ben Nevis. Malaysia’s Mount Kinabalu is higher than any mountain in Austria, Japan or New Zealand. Meanwhile Burma’s highest peak is higher than Russia’s Mount Elbrus which is the highest mountain in Europe. Can anyone actually name Burma's highest peak?

Who would believe that flood-prone Bangladesh has a hill higher than any hill in Ireland.

Well, I would, but that's because I think of the UK as not having any mountains, and assuming Asia is hilly.

I think the differentiations are between people living away from what is considered 'civilisation' and those closer to more people. People living in 'highlands' are usually more isolated and in smaller population pockets. It's really just the same rather tired rural/urban divide that assumes people in the country don't have the width of life experience of city dwellers and therefore must be introverted, insulated and inferior. And there is some justification in this attitude, though in these days of modern communications, low airfare prices, high internet use, people from anywhere in the developed world (and in many places in the less developed world) can access knowledge and people quite easily).

(I have to change your word to Myanmar to be certain I don't know. That's not true of course; I know perfectly well I wouldn't have a clue. Thought my husband might know but he said, "Haven't a clue" too.)

Well the country/mountain/urban divide is nothing but pure ignorance and, as you say, inexcusable in this day and age of communication. But the prejudice is on all sides, urbanites condescend and generalise about mountain or country folk who in turn generalise and condescend about city folk.

However whether one lives on the top of a mountain or in an inner city it doesn't mean that one life experience is inferior to that of the other, it only means that the experiences are different. The age old and ridiculous equation of difference = inequality.

People adapt to suit the needs of their enviroment. Just as a country or mountain dwelling person would seem out of place in an urban centre or not have the necessary skills to negotiate daily existance in a city neither would a city dweller have the skills to survive life in the mountains and would seem out of place.

IIRC there's an outlying subrange of the Himalayas which just about reaches the Burma / India / China border area - and it contains at least one peak over 5000m, Khakabo Razee or something like that, which is probably at least partly in Burma.

Mounds were created during the iron age in England for hill forts - this was used in early motte and bailey castles which may - at a guess - have often been built on old hill fort sites. The great Bronze age mound at Mohenjo Daro - later topped with a Bhuddist shrine - covers no citadel construction so experts say but was made as a look out post over the great flat Indus plain beyond the city walls.

We once happened on 'Cow Castle' on an amble on Exmoor which is a fascinating man-made conical hill offering a good view over the local terrain. There were ancient metal diggings close by which perhaps needed safe guarding.

I tend to favour looking for the practical reason for such effort rather than something more esoteric. The high towers of Tuscany come to mind and likewise crenallated church towers. A raised structure says 'Here am we are and this is our stronghold - beware, we can see you.'

Aside from hill forts, there are also burial mounds. Many of which are quite large and usually dominated a flat landscape.

It is increasingly accepted that the term "hill fort" is something of a misnomer, at least as it applies to Iron Age settlement in the UK and Ireland. The longevity of their use - half a millennium in some instances - has always belied the assumption that they had a purely military purpose though it is certain that many of them acquired one with a vengeance during the early Roman occupation in Britain. In Ireland, where no such defining moment ever arose, both the terminology used to name them and an appreciation of their function has always been varied.

The distinction between "rath" and "dun" for example has never been lost, either in tradition or in more modern archaeological assessment of these common features in the Irish landscape. Regional variations, sometimes within just a few miles of each other, concerning their use as burial sites or not are also extensively documented and traditionally understood. Moreover their context within the landscape, sometimes appearing to have chosen the "wrong" site militarily but yet were undoubtedly military installations, and sometimes having been constructed in a perfect military setting only to have a purely domestic use according to tradition and evidence, all suggests political "hot spots" and "cold spots" which persevered through generations. The whole picture is of a very complex and varied society, and moreover one that was remarkably stable for all that. While the structures might have a superficial resemblance to each other their diversity of purpose reflects a far more complicated application than universal use of the word "fort" can ever impute.

Yet in Britain, thanks largely to the traditional predominance of the appellation "fort", this complexity is only recently being taken seriously. When I see archaeologists on programmes like "Time Team" etc struggling to appreciate this diversity without sounding like "New Age" revisionists I sometimes wonder why they just couldn't pick up a book and read about the Irish equivalents which, after all, originated within the same culture.

Oh, I always thought the term, 'hill fort' meant an area of habitation; a place likely to have been protected for security but otherwise of varied use according to place and circumstances. Is this a semantics prob?

Surely if someoone like me has a broad understanding of the term it is not a new concept. I have read quite widely on the subject for many years - though I must confess this has been more centered on Gaul and La Tene growth.

Sadly pieces about history often contain description in 'information' boxes that it is hoped a general public can latch on to... hence the usual burble about, gulp, I hate to write this, the use of the word 'ritual.'

The problem resides within the definition of "fortification" and what this normally implies. It is still a word commonly used even by experienced and knowledgeable archaeologists to describe ostensibly defensive structures. However even this subtle distinction manages to ignore yet another even more subtle distinction which has not been lost in Ireland, only apparently in the UK; namely what word does one use therefore to describe a structure which is defensive not against military attack but simply the elements themselves. Moreover when does the corral function overlap with or even outweigh either the domestic or military function? These questions are actually answered within the Irish language and therefore within the various traditional names for these features. In Britain, thanks to the rather abrupt cultural cut-off implemented at the end of the Iron Age, the subtleties were lost. My point is that they need not have been lost irretrievably. Ireland can be used as a pretty good match if one wants to piece together the intricate picture of which these structures were once such intrinsic and expositional components.

I thought that the view of the variety of hill forts as dwellings, gathering places, ritual centres, statements of power etc rather than a blanket definition as defensive constructions had been generally accepted over here for quite a long time. Certainly the 'fort' appellation and the early excavation and interpretation of these by gentlemen of a military background may have embedded the militaristic interpretation in the public mind but not so much in the academy up here. Is this in some way similar to the Irish situation given that our experience of Rome is also different to the English?

If anything, and I'm afraid I can't immediately give any references, I have a suspicion that the 'revisionist' view, that the monumentality is largely a status symbol, may be being thought of in some quarters as being a little too 'peace and love, man' and being revised to take more account of tribal/regional competition and raiding if not warfare.

A lecturer once pointed out the danger of false assumption based on the word "fortification" by informing us that while he enjoyed a fortified wine he was under no illusion that it had ever been subject to attack. There are many reasons to strengthen a structure, and "in the end of the day" (to use football pundit jargon) that is all the word means.

nordmann wrote:

what word does one use therefore to describe a structure which is defensive not against military attack but simply the elements themselves.

With reference to the recent floodings in Britain and Italy etc, then the concept of a raised area for human habitation makes a lot of sense. This article from a local archaeological group in Sussex suggests that the area was subject to frequent flooding in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age:

Archaeology at Medmerry

Drainage ditches seem to have made an appearance in Roman times and were then maintained and extended thereafter. Prior to that, it's only a small step to see raised 'hill forts' as being merely an obvious solution when the farmland and pasture in the surrounding area was deemed liable to flood and double-up as floodplain and water-meadow.

Vizzer,
there where such "things" in the North European Plain.
In the former area of The Netherlands they called them "terp" (pl: terpen)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terp
I see now for the first time the relationship with the word "dorp" (village).
Kind regards, Paul.

Sparked with what Vizzer said about man made "hill forts" in defence against the surrounding flooding and besieging, what with 
the man made besieging walls as in the roman besieging technique in Alesia and all
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/ancient-history/circumvallation-romans-mastered-surrounding-towns.html

and even a man made besieging mountain during the siege of Ostend in 1602.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Ostend
Perhaps was this "Spanish platform" not so important in the siege if you believe the English language wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Ostend although from Ostend research I was nearly sure that it at least had a very high symbolic worth.
The Dutch wiki gives more about the subject:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beleg_van_Oostende
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grote_Kat
From the wiki:
The Big Cat or Big Cavalier is the name of a fortification that played an important role in the Siege of Ostend. It was located at the city of Ostend, at the height of the dunes in Mariakerke, right opposite the fortification of Zandhil. It was a monumental structure of 40 meters high with a parapet of 3 meters on top. You needed 166 steps to get to the top. The building was built by the Spanish troops...





Do someone knows about other earth ramparts used for besieging?

Pan Pudding Hill, or sometimes Panpudding Hill or Pampudding Hill, is a scheduled ancient monument which overlooks Bridgnorth station. The man-made hill was built in 1102, on the orders of King Henry I, as a siege earthwork to attack and capture Bridgnorth Castle. The distance from the hill to the castle, nearly 300 yards, is a testament to the power of mediaeval siege catapults.
Pan Pudding Hill was used to attack Bridgnorth Castle on other occasions, and finally in 1646 by Cromwell’s Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. After the last attack Bridgnorth Castle was blown up, leaving only the remains of the keep which can be seen in the castle grounds in High Town.

Not a mountain - nor even a hill but I think man made is the mound called Cow Castle in Exmoor. Just now I looked it up and found several similar mounds in England also called Cow Castle. I wonder how that naming came about? It is an age since we came across it on a long walk in Exmoor and my thoughts at the time was that it was a look out place rather than ever inhabited - difficult on a cone - but possibly a place of speedy refuge from foe or as pointed out above, possibly flood..... but not an easy clamber for cows yet otherwise useful for stock watching, I guess. Am trying to think again like an early Iron Ager. What I do recall is the wealth of wild raspberries along the track.... possibly the remains of a very ancient allotment/veg patch?

All right. Possibly not.

According to the Exmoor Heritage Gateway listing for Cow Castle (or Cae Castle - cae is welsh for field):

"The enclosure has an internal area of 1.2 hectares, most of which is on sloping ground. It is defined by a rampart up to 2 metres in height with an external berm 4.5 metres wide. On the southern side of the enclosure a stone revetment is visible on the external face of the rampart, and where it is best preserved, it survives as a coursed stone wall 0.8 metres high. A quarry ditch 5 to 7 metres wide follows the inner side of the rampart for most of its circuit. The enclosure has a single entrance, 8 metres wide, on the eastern side.

... It has been previously reported that there are at least four house platforms within the enclosure on the northern side. These were not visible due to dense bracken. However, a slight platform was noticed at the northwestern end of the enclosure, and there are several natural terraces on this side which would have been convenient locations for settlement. The quarry ditch may also have been used for buildings."

So it may have been an Iron Age fortified settlement built to dominate the valley of the River Barle (it's located at the confluence of the Barle and White Water stream).

   

The Lion Mound at Waterloo. Enhances or ruins the battlefield??

There's always this opne - according to English Heritage
"The largest artificial mound in Europe, mysterious Silbury Hill compares in height and volume to the roughly contemporary Egyptian pyramids. Probably completed in around 2400 BC, it apparently contains no burial. Though clearly important in itself, its purpose and significance remain unknown."



Waterloo isn't unique as a battlefield where later building has obscured the detail - Senlac is similar in some ways, partly hidden by parts of Battle Abbey (though Senlac is disputed as the site of the battle)

Priscilla wrote:

Not a mountain - nor even a hill but I think man made is the mound called Cow Castle in Exmoor. Just now I looked it up and found several similar mounds in England also called Cow Castle. I wonder how that naming came about? It is an age since we came across it on a long walk in Exmoor and my thoughts at the time was that it was a look out place rather than ever inhabited - difficult on a cone - but possibly a place of speedy refuge from foe or as pointed out above, possibly flood..... but not an easy clamber for cows yet otherwise useful for stock watching.

It came as a real shock to me to see Cow Castle mentioned here - not a place you have ever commented on before, Priscilla, either here in the public domain, or in your private correspondence with me. I live about 40 minutes drive from Exmoor, and Cow Castle is a place where my husband and I often used to walk. It is the strangest of places - I wonder if you, as a writer, ever noted the atmosphere there? My husband - in his very "factual" way - always laughed at my imaginings, and pointed out that any Ordnance Survey map of Exmoor clearly shows the many tumuli of the place and Cow Castle was simply just another one of these. The place is, as any place is, full of the dead. So what? But it was something more - an inhabited place at one time, of that I am sure - not just a place where the ancient people of these parts brought their dead for burial. So I was pleased to read MM's post which possibly confirmed my very unscientific and unhistorical "feelings": Cow Castle, now buried beneath the bracken, has its tale to tell - of those who, like us, lived, loved, hated, were afraid - humans who despaired, but yet who could be awe-struck at the beauty and mystery of the place where they found themselves...

I may venture up there sometime soon, but not on a cold or snowy day - and not alone.

Oh. I'm full of surprises, Temp...... but I can think of no way   that   would have brought me to casually mentioning Cow Castle to you.... but I do use the site in a book. I did not feel it a chilling place,,, and am somewhat sensitive to such things but I did sense it once humming with life. From the side of our view it was too steep to build on. The aerial pics show  the site better but had never thought to look it up before on line...... I knew it was not a burial site...... of course everywhere is on this small island but it is not that kind of mound.  Exmoor has wonderfully atmospheric layers of very ancient history... will send book.

The largest pyramid/mound, by volume known to exist today, is the Great Pyramid of Cholula, or Tlachihualtepetl (meaning "made-by-hand mountain" in Nahuatl) which is a huge complex located in Cholula, Mexico. The pyramid stands 55 metres above the surrounding plain and now, after a thousand years of successive enlargements, its base measures 450 by 450 metres (that's three times the area covered by the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt). Originally it was a temple probably dedicated to the god Quetzalcoatl but it had been abandoned as a religious site and was overgrown by vegetation when Cortez passed through the town of Cholula in 1519 (and massacred the Cholulans) on his approach to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. A substantial Catholic church was built on the top platform a few decades later once Mexico had completely fallen under Spanish control.



With reference to Gilgamesh/GG's original comment about whether artificial mountains were deliberately constructed where there are few natural mountains, it should be noted that Cholula is only 40 kilometres east of the prominent volcanoes, Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, which are both visible from the site. Popocatépetl even has a similar conical/pyramidal profile.


The church of Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios which is perched on the top of the Cholula pyramid, with Popocatépetl erupting in the background (2016).

Nicknamed "the Cornish Alps"; spoil mounds from china clay mining:

Cornish china clay industry

Another spoil tip. This one composed of sodium chloride (salt) a by product of potash mining, next to the town of Heringen in Hesse, Germany. Nicknamed "Monte Kali", nearby waters are now saltier than the Baltic:

Monte Kali

No one has yet mentioned the eighth of Rome's famous hills: Monte Testaccio or Monte dei Cocci; an artificial mound next to the Tiber River near the Porta San Paolo, composed almost entirely of broken fragments of ancient Roman amphorae dating from the time of the Roman Empire. The spoil heap covers an area of 20,000 square metres at its base, has a circumference of nearly a kilometre, and stands 35 metres high, though it was probably considerably higher in ancient times.



The pottery fragments are nearly all from standard globular 70-litre vessels imported from Baetica (the Guadalquivir region of modern Spain). Monte Testaccio is estimated to contain the remains of as many as 53 million of these olive oil containers which equates to some 6 billion litres of oil. Studies of the hill's composition suggest that Rome's imports of olive oil reached a peak towards the end of the 2nd century AD, when as many as 130,000 amphorae were being deposited on the site each year, which is equivalent to 7.5 million litres of olive oil imported annually. The vessels found at Monte Testaccio appear to represent mainly state-sponsored olive oil imports (arriving at the nearby Horrea Galbae where the state-controlled olive oil warehouses were located) and so it is very likely that in addition to all this oil, considerable quantities were privately imported into the city as well.

Monte Testaccio was not simply a haphazard waste dump; it was a highly organised and carefully engineered mound presumably managed by a state administrative authority. Excavations carried out in 1991 showed that the mound had been raised as a series of level terraces with retaining walls made of nearly intact amphorae filled with shards to anchor them in place. Empty amphorae were probably carried up the mound intact on the backs of donkeys or slaves and then broken up on the spot, with the shards carefully laid out in a stable pattern. Lime appears to have been sprinkled over the broken pots perhaps to neutralise the smell of rancid oil and also to help bind the layers together.



There is no equivalent mound of broken grain or wine amphorae and the overwhelming majority of the amphorae found at Monte Testaccio are of one single type, which raises the question of why the Romans found it necessary to dispose of these amphorae in this way. While pottery vessels that had contained wine or grains could be readily reused, those that had contained oil were likely permanently tainted. Furthmore while many other discarded amphorae were often broken down into fragments for use as an aggregate in construction, the large globular oil containers broke into large curved fragments that could not readily be reduced to small shards, furthermore their residual oiliness may also have meant they were unsuitable for mixing into concrete.  Likely the difficulty of reusing or repurposing these globular oil vessels meant that it was more economical to simply discard them. Monte Testaccio's use as an amphora dump seems to have ceased after about the 260s, perhaps due to the city's quays being moved elsewhere.

The area around the hill was largely abandoned after the fall of Rome and throughout the Middle Ages Monte Testaccio stood in isolation surrounded by an area of scrubby wasteland, albeit still within the ancient city walls. The area was the location for jousts, tournaments, fairs and other festivities, while the decriptions of visitors on the Grand Tour suggest it was still predominantly used as an open place of public recreation until the 19th century. Monte Testaccio also had a religious significance in that it was regularly used on Good Friday to represent the hill of Golgotha in Jerusalem, when the Pope would lead a procession to the summit and place crosses to represent those of Jesus and the two thieves crucified alongside him. Meanwhile the hill's porous structure meant that caves and tunnels dug into its base remained dry and cool all year round; ideal for wine cellars, many of which are still used for that purpose today.

Thanks MM for this example and the logical reconstruction of the history with logical reasoning and facts.
Kind regards, Paul.