Challenge: Mesoamerican-style pyramids in Europe

How could European cultures have started building giant stone step pyramids, roughly in the style of those that were built in Mexico with stairways and a flat top?
 
Did not pre Christian Dacia have similar pyramidal structures, connected with its capital priest complex ?

(I'm only relying on a memory here)

Sarmisegetusa was the place.

Herodotus also speaks of seeing pyramids in the middle of Lake Moeris, rising from the lake floor with a platform on top on which was a seated colossus
 
Why bother building these structures when your god isn't a sun god. Also they might not have the right stone for this.
 
I believe Jedidiah Stott is correct with Dacia having Pyramids, though this was the best I could find as far as images go:

DSCF0342-1.jpg
 
Did not pre Christian Dacia have similar pyramidal structures, connected with its capital priest complex ?
(I'm only relying on a memory here)
Only in loonies imagination, I'm afraid. The only proven pyramid in Romania was Ponzi Scheme :)
It's usually mere meme reiteration of "Bosnian Pyramids".

Now, natural formations like mountain shape (Kogaionon by exemple) *could* have make them the focus of structures or worship places (Tombs were found in there after all)

Herodotus also speaks of seeing pyramids in the middle of Lake Moeris, rising from the lake floor with a platform on top on which was a seated colossus
He also speaks of giants ants living in India or how Ethiopians were 3m tall and immortals.
 

Incognito

Banned
Various cultures in South and Eastern Europe like the Scythians & Kipchak built pyramidal burial mounts called "kurgans". The internet tells me they look(ed) something like this:

AboutKurgans2.gif

Salbyk221201683.jpg

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Similarly, IIRC Celts and other built burial mounts. Not sure if this meets the OP or not.
 
I'm guessing there's no particular reason the ancient Europeans didn't build step pyramids (and some neolithic structures in the Western Mediterranean come fairly close). THey just didn't - perhaps because they had no native tradition of doing it, and never got the outside impetus. Egyptian pyramids weren't an export article, and ziggurats doin't seem to have appealed to their imagination. Possibly there were deeper religious reasons, a desire for rituals to take place within a spasce rather than on a stage, but such ideas aren't immutable. Hellenistic and Roman temples certainly took up the 'raised artificial structure with altar at the top' idea. They just never made the podium more central than the temple itself.

The other question is how much would be left of them if they had done that. Time and Christianity were unkind to Europe's great religious buildings.
 
Egyptian pyramids weren't an export article, and ziggurats doin't seem to have appealed to their imagination.
Well, you did have pyramids built in Roman Antiquity that were inspired by egyptian's.
And meroitic pyramids shows that while limited, pyramids could be an export article after all. Let's admit Rgypt have a better and longer hold on Syria, at the point of having local kings making pyramidal structures (more for temples than for graves, I would suppose : even Egyptians gave up monumental pyramids at this point), and making Phoenicians exporting a smaller but more exportable model in Punic colonies, including Carthage, that would eventually export it in Iberia.

A bit far-fetched, I confess it, but seems not totally absurd.
 
Pyramids are really labor and organizationally intensive to build. A pyramid requires a lot more work than even something like Stonehenge. Pyramid construction requires a large population that's politically cohesive and living in cities. That's something that didn't really arrive in Europe away from the Mediterranean until the Romans.
 

Incognito

Banned
Pyramids are really labor and organizationally intensive to build. A pyramid requires a lot more work than even something like Stonehenge. Pyramid construction requires a large population that's politically cohesive and living in cities. That's something that didn't really arrive in Europe away from the Mediterranean until the Romans.
There is archeological evidence that the Scythians I mentioned earlier had large (by ancient standards) cities in 5th century BC. See Gelonus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelonus

The kurgans were also fairly labor-intensive to build, with one reference I've seen saying that it is estimated that their construction required "200-400 individuals for 10 days, or 70-140 individuals for one month" (note that this is apparently not counting the "labor necessary to complete the funerary chamber (woodcutting, transportation, etc.), digging the ditch, and the other operations"). Maybe not as labor-intensive as the Egyptian pyramids,but the kurgans were not as big as the pharaohs's tombs.
 
A number of Egyptian Gods were worshipped in Ancient Germany and Gaul, converts from the old Greek Trade routes. Its funny you read some Roman authors talking about Germans worshipping Isis and it sounds totally ASB.

But for my money I would say that if the rarified Urn Culture (Stonehenge Builders) had changed what we think its religion was to worship the Sun as well as teh Moon/Stars. If that had happened we might have seen large steppe pyramids going.
 
A number of Egyptian Gods were worshipped in Ancient Germany and Gaul, converts from the old Greek Trade routes. Its funny you read some Roman authors talking about Germans worshipping Isis and it sounds totally ASB.

I would temper the "egyptian" part. It was the heavily hellenized and romanized Isis that was worshipped in the imperial period, much like an exotic Venus-like figure, and definitely not the Ancient Kingdom Isis.
 
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