Ancient Modern New York

There's three things amazing about this video:

First, that it's amazing. I mean, just look! Ancient Modern New York!

Second, they had tons of stuff. I mean, I know this. I seen Once Upon a Time in America! And Gangs of New York, a documentary made in real-time, that showcased how wonderful New Yorkers used to be at throwing knives. But seriously, just like at the advent of writing, human civilization already had economics and art and oral literature and metallurgy and music and painting and math and geometry and architecture. Ancient humans had many of the thing we have today. Just no television. Or BuzzFeed. And just like then, Ancient Modern New Yorkers had cars and huge buildings and rail cars and subways and tons of large structures. Duh. Still, it's crazy to see it, and realize that they didn't have frikkin' cameras, especially motion picture cameras, up until that point. Especially given that we've evolved into such a visual society. Thus ----> Buzzfeed gifs.

The third amazing thing is that at 4:10 seconds the video shows a building being demolished. Only it wasn't. It was deconstructed. And you know why? Cause with all the things that they did have back in the good ol' days, they didn't have bulldozers (circa 1923). They barely had cars.

Now, they've had cranes in one form or another since Ancient Egypt. But even up until late 1800s most of the cranes were big, bulky, built in place, and a combination of pulleys, cables, and hydraulics that were man or machine powered (some were hydropowered). Point is, they didn't build a crane for a wrecking ball, because A- the resouces (one of the first recorded uses of a steel wrecking ball was in the 1880s) and B- what were they going to do with the rubble? If you watch the demolishment of the building they didn't knock it down and bulldoze it, they took it apart brick by brick! Or maybe sledgehammer by sledgehammer, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. It was more deconstructed, piece by piece. This also makes sense as many buildings back in the day were recycled into new buildings and homes. After World War II locals west of Aushcwitz reused bricks from krema gas-chambers to construct farmhouses. Course, that was in part because they were impoverished by war, but still.

The past is a crazy place.