Even though this ruined Mesoamerican temple by Jonas Wilde doesn’t depict any particular site, it’s clear Jonas was inspired by the amazing Mayan structures of the Classic Maya era (250-900 AD). Jungle foliage drapes itself over the building, while palm trees sprout from the platform. The composition of this LEGO build is stunning, with the scene built on a platform that includes cutaway views of earth and stone, and a variety of heights that accentuate the detailed flora.
In 1983, UNESCO designated the legendary Peruvian citadel of Machu Picchu as a World Heritage Site. Located in the Sacred Valley, 50 miles northwest of Cusco, the city was constructed around 1450 at the height of the Inca empire and was abandoned just over 100 years later. At time of writing, the LEGO Architecture theme has yet to feature a South American structure or building. This omission prompted Diego Baca to build his own microscale version of this historic site.
Diego has captured all the key features including Huayna Picchu as the mountainous backdrop, the blue of the Urubamba River glistening on the left, and la piedra sagrada [tr. the sacred rock] represented by a single 1×1 round plate sitting on high. Also note the wandering llama in the middle of the site!
Diego has kindly created PDF instructions for this model in the same style as the official LEGO Architecture instructions, with a few pages of photographs, historical information, and step-by-step building plans.
Brick To The Past is a collective of British builders who specialize in large-scale historical dioramas in LEGO. We’ve covered some of their previous masterpieces, including a huge Roman camp and section of Hadrian’s Wall, and their recreation of the streets of Victorian London. We recently interviewed leading member James Pegrum about BttP’s impressive Battle of Hastings display. As if that wasn’t enough for 2016, the gang’s latest effort is this enormous diorama depicting a section of Anglo Saxon Britain in 793AD.
As you’d expect from such a large model, there are numerous areas worthy of your attention. An obvious highlight is the monastery under attack by Viking raiders…
As I wrote in introducing ArzLan’s LEGO Petra, I spent the summer of 1994 on an archaeological dig in Jordan, and visited Petra for one memorable weekend. Both Petra and Jordan as a whole remain one of the highlights of my life. Letranger Absurde has built a lovely microscale version of Al-Khazneh, the “Treasury” (actually an empty tomb), that greets each visitor to Petra as they emerge from the winding gorge called the Siq.
My one critique of this excellent LEGO model is that the sandstone geology of Petra is nearly as spectacular as the many structures carved into the rock face. Although building a detailed tomb using varying shades of tan and red might not have been achievable, plain brown LEGO for the surrounding rocks seems like a lost opportunity.
Al-Khazneh is, of course best known as the entrance to the fictional, trap-filled obstacle course leading to the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The facade is the most spectacular thing about the tomb — the interior is just an empty square chamber, though the acoustics are great for singing.
We’ve come to appreciate the amazing brick-built animals created by AnActionfigure — each one has seemed more life-like than the last. But life would not be life without death, and so I was quite pleased to see the builder’s take on an Egyptian mummy. I’ve seen a number of mummies, not least of which the great Ramses II himself in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and AnActionFigure has captured the look of a mummy wonderfully, from desiccated flesh and exposed bone to the linen wrappings.
If that’s not creepy enough, the mummy’s eyes open and close with a switch at the back of its neck.
We’ve see plenty of LEGO mosaics before, but this one has a twist. James Pegrum used LEGO to capture the archaeological discovery of a Roman floor mosaic. This is a teaser for a Romano-Celtic themed collaboration by British building collective Bricks to the Past, due to be unveiled at STEAM next month. Can’t wait to see what other gems are unearthed when the full display is revealed!
Built for the MOC Olympics contest in a round focused on human evolution, Deus Otiosus created this scene depicting one of our forebears about to become a cat’s lunch. The sculpture and posing of both characters is perfect. And as an added bonus, you can even enjoy this build from all angles thanks to a handy spinning animated version.
The archaeological purist in me had initially passed this up because it’s white (versus the tan-hued limestone and weathered brick of the real thing), but the Internet has convinced me that this LEGO Colosseum by Ryan McNaught — whose equally epic Saturn V rocket we highlighted earlier this year — is too epic to ignore.
Ryan’s Colosseum is split into modern and ancient halves, with a ruined structure on the left and a shiny new amphitheatre populated by entertained Romans on the right.
His scene is completed by a LEGO version of the nearby Arch of Constantine:
Check out lots of photos (many with great little scenes of daily life in modern and ancient Rome) in Ryan’s photoset on Flickr.
It’s not often that a diorama completely defies my expectations. When I saw this brown, tan, and gray scene by Gabriel Thomson (qi_tah), I dutifully clicked through expecting something post-apocalyptic. Instead, I found something far, far more interesting — the monumental architecture of Göbekli Tepe, a Neolithic archaeological site in Turkey from 11,000 years ago that predates agriculture.
Gabriel has faithfully recreated details like the stone walls between the standing stones and even the “bench” that encircles the structure. I also love that it’s a mid-process excavation he’s chosen to illustrate in LEGO, complete with a grad student (my assumption) documenting each strata with a camera as it emerges from the dusty earth.
One of my dearest memories of the summer in 1994 that I spent working on an archaeological dig in Jordan was a weekend trip to Petra. We arrived from Amman late in the evening, but several of my fellow archaeology students couldn’t wait until morning to see the amazing structures carved from the sandstone 2000 years ago, so we snuck across wadi after wadi, avoiding the main paths. Once past the guard posts, we walked through the narrow gorge known as al-Siq — pitch black at night — until the passage opened in front of us to reveal Al Kazhneh, lit only by starlight.
ArzLan built his LEGO version of the Treasury for the Hong Kong Animation Festival, and features Indiana Jones in his Last Crusade visit to this UNESCO Heritage site.
I just finished reading Peter Heather’s excellent The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians.
So, does this diorama by Harry Russell (Karrde) featuring an Anglo-Saxon pit-house fall under ApocaLEGO?
Nah. But I’ll use any excuse to blog an archaeologically inclined LEGO model.
(Hat-tip to Legobloggen for helping me to catch up after a busy, busy month.)
I’m a sucker for archaeologically themed LEGO. As Bruce says, Barbara Werth gets credit for being the first to incorporate the new skeleton horse into a LEGO vignette.
