Seven Wonders: Mystery, Nostalgia, and God

“Everyone knows of the renowned Seven Wonders of the World, but few have set eyes on them.” — Philo of Byzantium

The recently released Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has become a touchstone for contemporary Western culture. The film has generally received negative reviews from a host of critics—especially culturally conservative critics. There are a number of criticisms leveled at the film, but there is a general sense of cultural exhaustion that surrounds what seems to be the last Indiana Jones movie. The lead actor, Harrison Ford, began his acting career in major films when Richard Nixon was president and starred in the first Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), when he was in his late thirties. What was then an Indiana Jones trilogy climaxed in 1989 with the George H.W. Bush era Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a film that is widely considered to be the best of the series. However, despite what appeared to be The Last Crusade’s final ride into the sunset, Ford returned with the 2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a film that was financially successful but is generally considered anathema by Indiana Jones fans.

With its creative ups and downs, the Indiana Jones series built its success on a twofold nostalgia. The first was a desire for Americans living in the slow simmer of postmodern decay to return to the rough and tumble, morally clearer, and better dressed world of the Greatest Generation at their World War II apogee. A professor at an elite college who travels the world battling Nazis and other villains, Jones represented a sincere and honest (although, at times, morally dubious) masculine fantasy of Americans longing for a simpler and stronger time — this nostalgia for a stronger and smarter America is especially pronounced in the Young Indiana Jones series, which depicts the exotic, aristocratic, and seemingly morally better world at the turn of the twentieth century. The second form of nostalgia that Indiana Jones provided was a view into the ancient and medieval worlds replete with sacred objects, knights in shining armor, and buried Egyptian temples.

If the World War II and World War I generations were viewed as a better world in the 1980s, the ancient and medieval worlds unearthed by Jones and his comrades were a vision into a time in which men and women walked and talked with God. This was a world in which humans created enormous and mysterious civilizations whose artefacts still haunt postmodern men and women living in the age of the nightly news, TikTok, and a near steady diet of cultural Marxism.

In his recent work, The Seven Wonders of The Ancient World: Science, Engineering, and Technology, Michael Denis Higgins, Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, provides a portrait in the majesty of early human civilizations. There are earlier variant lists of wonders, but the canonical seven eventually included the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Pharos of Alexandria, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and the Colossus of Rhodes. While there are many works on The Seven Wonders of the ancient world, Professor Higgins provides a unique perspective by exploring the geological underpinnings of the creation of the seven wonders. Higgins notes that the wonders may have been a part of a bucket list tour in the ancient world, which possibly had its source in religious pilgrimages along the Nile. Piracy hindered some sea travel in the period of Ancient Greece. However, travel was much more common in the Roman period. Higgins further notes that there has been an effort to link the Seven Wonders under a theme, such as a list of wonders from Alexander the Great’s empire. However, the Wonders were probably chosen, Higgins argues, due to their size and majesty.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World contains a great deal of overlap between science, history, and culture. While Higgins curiously notes that steam power and possibly even chemical batteries were known in the ancient world, slaves provided most of the power for ancient technology. Slaves were a replenishable resource, so, as Higgins notes, the reliance on slaves may have stifled innovation. Ancient science, however, was by no means “primitive.” Natural philosophy emerged in the seventh century BC with the pre-Socratics, and mathematics played a key role in the thought of Pythagoras and Plato. Finally, as Higgins writes, Aristotle developed what became known as the scientific method soon after. While the pre-Socratics as well as Pythagoras were largely located in Ionia on the western coast of modern-day Turkey, the center of Greek thought was Athens. Yet as Higgins points out, Greek thought shifted to Alexandria in the third century BC after Ptolemy I built his famous library.

Drawing from his own scientific background, Higgins notes that four or five of the wonders were built close to “plate boundaries” at which earthquakes, volcanos, and mountains are found. Higgins further argues that many ancient human stories and myths have a geological origin or are what Higgins calls a “Geomyth.” This is a point with which religious believers especially may take issue, as Higgins attempts to explain some Biblical stories as being the result of geological phenomena as opposed to direct Divine intervention.

The Great Pyramids of Giza are fittingly the foundation of Higgins’s exploration of the Seven Wonders. They are the oldest and biggest of the Wonders, and, interestingly, they are the only surviving Wonder that, as they currently stand in the twenty-first century, would be recognizable in their present form to the ancients who saw them. Indeed, it would not be until the construction of the great Medieval cathedrals that humans would build anything bigger than the Pyramids. Herodotus was the first historian to write of the Pyramids. Higgins curiously notes that ancient historians were obviously impressed with the pyramids, but they (Higgins gives the example of Pliny the Elder) also noted how these ancient wonders could be used as means to keep the people occupied under pharaonic “tyranny.” The pyramids were begun in 3100 BC as simple structures intended to preserve bodies. However, grave robbing inspired the construction of bigger and more elaborate structures, which, in turn, fueled what Higgins calls a “tomb race” to construct bigger and better structures. The pyramids were eventually built and have fascinated a host of people over millennia of human history.

Higgins ends his work with a theoretical discussion of how the ancient Wonders could be reconstructed with modern engineering. Such a discussion is certainly appealing, but like the remake of older movies (such as the Indiana Jones series), one wonders if replicating the past is something we really want to do. The key problem with the past is that even though it haunts us, its presence is largely ghostly. The past is gone and can be remembered and cherished, but we live in the present, constantly tilting toward an unknown future. Professor Higgins’s desire to rebuild the wonders of the ancient world is interesting, but one might object that the future needs something new, and pyramids and colossi have had their time. Indiana Jones was famous for collecting objects for museums—certainly a noble task. However, the future of humankind may require something new and possibly even better than that which was built in the past. For despite our healthy appreciation for what has come before us, we, despite our desires, live in the now.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: Science, Engineering, and Technology
Michael Denis Higgins
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023; 330pp

Print