Fondations of Religions

Foundations of Religions

As early as 2500 BC, great civilizations flourished south of the Himalayan mountains, in what is now India. Three world religions began there – Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. All three teach that life, like a circle, has no end. It returns again and again as do the seasons. They believe that a person's soul comes back to to live another life in a new body.. This is called reincarnation. Hinduism began about 1500 BC. Hindus worship alone on most occasions, and many make pilgrimages to temples to pay homage to their gods. Hindu temples have richly decorated exteriors and pilgrims worship outside. The most important part of a temple is a small shrine with no windows, which is the home of the god.

A tall, curved shikhara, or tower, rises above the shrine, and a series of open porches are used for assemblies and religious dancing.

Did you know?

Even a small Hindu shrine can be seen from anywhere in a village because of the tall, carved shikhara above it. The shikhara represents a holy mountain that is thought of a staircase to the heavenly world.

Sri Ranganatha

The tower in Mysore, India is one of 15 giant gateways trough the five walls that enclose a Hindu shrine. The gateways were built between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries. The shrine itself is quite small and crowded by the priests' houses and the assembly rooms for pilgrims.

Ranarpur Temple

The Ranakpur temple honors Mahavira, the founder of Jainism. Jains believe that a person lives many lives, including those of animals. Jains try not to hurt any living creatures. One of Ranakpur's large corbeled domes rises above the courtyard. The dome rests on two stories of columns and is surrounded by smaller domes.

Fondation of Religions. Photo by Elena.

Building in Rock

In the second century BC, Buddhist monks built a monastery at Ajanta by cutting artificial caves into the cliffs above the river. Carvers chipped off unwanted rock and carried it away leaving a building behind. The columned entrance of the vihara, where the monks lived, led to a rectangular room surrounded by galleries. Each monk had a square cave that opened onto a gallery. Stone walls and ceilings were rubbed smooth then covered with paintings or carved with sculpture. The monastery also had a chaitya, or meeting hall, where people gathered to worship and study.

Myth in stone

The lively sculptures on the outside of Kandariya Mahadero represent many of the figures in stories from Hindy mythology.

Kandarya Mahadeo Temple

More than 1,000 carved figures cover this eleventh-century temple in Khajuraho,  At first glance it looks like a mountain of rock covered with rows of sculpture. The temple stands on a high platform with the shrine under the tall shikhara at one end a deep entrance at the other. Processions move through a passageway, which wraps around the halls and shrine.

Temple floor plan

Mathematical rules control the design of Hindu temples. Many small squares make up the floor plan of the temple. A square which never changes, symbolizes the heavenly world.

Heavens Meets Earth

Heaven Meets Earth

Christians believe in Jesus, the son of God, and their religion is based on his life and teachings. Christians were persecuted for many years during the Roman Empire, but in AD 313 Emperor Constantine made the religion legal. He then left the city of Rome and moved east by Byzantium and established a new Christian capital named Constantinople, which is now Istanbul in Turkey.

The Roman Empire later split into east and west. The western empire collapsed after it was invaded many times by nomadic tribes from central Asia,, but the eastern part survived to become the Byzantine Empire. Christianity as it developed there is called Orthodox Christianity. Hagia Sophia was the magnificent Orthodox church in Constantinople and it inspired builders of Orthodox churches for centuries. The great dome at the center of the church represented the heavens. The floor below represented life on Earth.

The Pantheon

For many years, the dome of the Pantheon, in Rome, Italy, baffled modern engineers. They did not know how the ancient Romans managed to build such a large dome. Then they discovered that the dome was made of concrete that becomes lighter as it gets higher because each level is mixed with lighter stones such as volcanic pumice.

For many hundreds of years the dome of the Pantheon was the largest in the world. It measures 142 ft across and is the same in height. Walls 16 ft thick buttress the base of the dome.

Wall of a Temple. Photo by Elena.

The church today

Four towers called minarets surround Hagia Sophia. They were added when the Islamic Ottoman Turks, founders of modern Turkey, conquered the Byzantine Empire and converted the church into a mosque.

Central dome

The large, lightweight dome is built of a single layer of brick and is 107 ft wide. It has a row of arched windows cut into its base.

The Congregation

There were no seats in Hagia Sophia. Worshippers stood in the space beyond the columns – the men in the aisle below and the women in the gallery above – to listen to the singing of the Orthodox church service.

Half domes

A half dome at each end lengthens the nave to 250 ft and buttresses the main dome by pressing against its base.

Decorating with Mosaics

A mosaic is a design of picture made up of small pieces of colored glass or stone that are mounted on a wall or ceiling. Mosaics seem to glow in the dimmest light. At one time, many colorful mosaics covered the ceilings of Hagia Sophia. Jesus and other great leaders and heroes of Christianity were portrayed in mosaics against a gold background, which symbolized Heaven.

Hagia Sophia

Byzantine architects began this church in Constantunople in 532, during the reign of Emperor Justinian. They finished it six years and it soon became the model for future Orthodox churches. The clergy, the worldly ruler, under the great domes, where the teaching of Jesus were read.

Hunter to Trader

Hunter to Trader

Early Trade and Exploration

The world looked very different 20,000 years ago. Great glaciers, caused by an ice age, covered much of the land. The people who lived at this time were hunters and gatherers, and they were always on the move. They followed herds of animals; gathered wild nuts, berries, plants and shellfish; and fished the rivers. They traveled long distances for things they valued, such as flint for making tools and weapons.

Gradually, they drifted across much of Europe and Asia, and crossed into North America. At the end of the last ice age, around 10,000 BC, the glacier thawed and lush forest grew. As the climate changed, so did the way humans lived. Many continued to hunt and gather food, but people in the Middle East planted crops and bred animals. They made pots, wove cloth, and used metals such as gold. Soon they started to trade with other villages for goods they could not produce themselves.

On the move

A group of hunters and gatherers in North America follows a herd of caribou as they migrate between summer and winter pastures. The people carry all their possessions as well as their flint-tipped spears and arrows for hunting.

Past Reflections

People made utensils and tools from obsidian, a black volcanic glass that was highly valued. Almost 9,000 years ago, women at Catai Huyuk in Turkey used obsidian mirrors such as this to put on their make-up.

Flint Ax

Hunters used bone or wood to chip flint stones into tools with sharp edges.

Survival Tools

Hunters and gatherers caught they prey with weapons such as wooden daggers with deer-horn points, harpoons made from wood (middle) and spearheads made from deer bone with flint set in carved grovers.

Nature. Photo by Elena.

Golden Bull

This bull made of gold came from Bulgaria. People often traded for precious metals, such as gold.

Working the Land

Early farmers in the Middle East made the first plows and harnessed oxen to them. Thousands of years later, this farmer in central India users similar tools to plow his land.

Village Life

The town of Catal Huyuk, in southern Turkey, is one of the oldest towns in the world. People built these mud-brick houses, which were joined together and entered through the roofs, in 7000 BC. Some of the houses were special shrines, decorated with will paintings, for worshiping the gods. The people herded cattle; grew wheat, barley and peas; and were skilled cloth-makers. They had plenty of obsidian and exchanged it for goods from other areas. Catal Huyuk soon became a busy trading center.

Ancient Egypt

Discovering Ancient Egypt

How can you discover ancient Egypt? You can visit the pharaoh's treasures in the world's great museums. You can read travelers' tales recorded by writers of the past, such as the Greek historian Herodotus, and you can learn fro Egyptologists. When. When Napoleon Bonaparte's army invaded Egypt in 1798, the French discovered many of its ancient treasures. Since then Egyptologists have studied monuments, painted friezes, objects from the tombs and things people threw away that the dry climate has preserved. They have deciphered records of daily events and other writing that survives on stone and papyrus. If you ever visit Egypt, you will be able to see the people who now live beside the Nile. They still use some of the old farming methods, and tools have changed little since ancient times. But their crops no longer depend on the time of inundation or flooding, because the Aswan Dam now controls Egypt's lifeline.

Dynasties of Ancient Egypt

Egyptologists have pieced together the sequence of the kings of ancient Egypt from fragments of inscribed stone and papyrus. Generally, a dynasty lasted for the time one family or group of pharaohs was in power. There were three very successful periods. During the Old Kingdom, the first pyramid at Saqqara and the Great Pyramid at Giza were built. In the Middle Kingdom, trade expanded and arts, crafts and temple building flourished. The Hyksos were expelled at the beginning of the New Kingdom and the pharaohs of this time established en empire.

Ancient Egypt in the Ice Age. Photo by Elena.

Did you know a few things about Ancient Egypt?

To save them from the rising waters of Lake Nasser, the temples from Philae Island were taken piece by piece to Agilkia Island and rebuilt..

When the pyramids were built at Giza, desert surrounded them. Now, the suburbs of Cairo are creeping close to them.

The British Museum displays coffins and mummies. The Cairo Museum has objects from Tutankhamun's tomb. The temple of Dendur has been rebuilt in New York<s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The great Sphinx at Giza is showing its age. From time to time expert restorers have erected scaffolding to maker repairs.

The voyage or Ra II: Norvegian scientist Thor Heyerdahl wanted to test the seaworthiness of reed boats. In 1970, he built Ra II from bundles of papyrus lashed together with rope. It took 57 days to sail from Morocco to the West Indies. This did not show that the ancient Egyptians made such a journey, but it did prove that papyrus vessels were capable of surviving long sea voyages.

New Design

Manhattan – A New Design

The construction of an innovative buildings is difficult and often requires new techniques and special building materials. Many unexpected problems arise no matter how careful the advance planning may be. The architects and engineers face major obstacles to introduce innovative methods and to work out a way to actually build new buildings.

All the pictures have been taken by Elena.

A great building can reflect many different ideas and styles and tells us about the values and beliefs of the people who design and build it.

These buildings have thing, lightweight roof, which was made by pouring concrete over a tightly stretched wire mesh.

Ancient buildings around the world looked different because they were shaped by the building materials available. Each material inspired  a different construction method.

Broadway and Toronto Dominion Bank on sight.

Metals, plastic and glass from around the world are used in this buildings.

There are always many unexpected costs and delays in construction.

Their roofs are designed to be made of prestressed concrete.

Large international corporations are building impressive and functional buildings. Many of these giant buildings can be seen all over Manhattan.

As space became scarce, corporations needed high-rise buildings, so architects and engineers designed skycrapers to withstand earthquakes.

Modern buildings dot the New York  skyline, but modern lifestyles affect their future.

Each new generation of architects and engineers will face many new obstacles and technological opportunities.

Architects will create different building materials, methods and architectural styles to meet new challenges. 

St. Andrew's church in the heart of Manhattan.

Trinity church, one of the oldest Christian temples on Manhattan.

Stone Jungle. New York, New York.

Place in front of the Trump Center, near the Central Park of New York.