Every civilization built a tower to reach the sky.

Different gods, different continents, the same impulse: build up, closer to heaven.

Great Ziggurat of Ur — Mesopotamia's stepped mudbrick mountain built for the moon god Nanna, c. 2100 BCE

Great Pyramid of Giza — Khufu's tomb, aligned to the cardinal points, c. 2560 BCE

Parthenon — marble temple to Athena on the Acropolis, Greece, 447 BCE

Borobudur — the world's largest Buddhist temple, a stone mandala in Java, c. 800 CE

Angkor Wat — the largest religious monument on Earth, modeled on Mount Meru, Khmer Empire, 12th century

Temple of Kukulcan — Chichen Itza pyramid whose 365 steps mirror the calendar year, Maya, c. 800 CE

Hagia Sophia — Byzantine Constantinople's floating dome, cathedral turned mosque turned museum turned mosque, 537 CE

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From a mudbrick mountain in Mesopotamia to a temple-mountain in Cambodia, civilizations with zero contact between them all reached for the same idea: build up, closer to the divine. The Great Pyramid was aligned to the cardinal points. The Temple of Kukulcan's staircases add up to the 365-day year. Hagia Sophia's dome has outlasted three religions and a thousand years of engineers trying to copy it.