In my old Anthropology days, (1980’s), my cultural Anthro prof showed us a picture of a statue that appeared to be sinking into pavement. Over the years, new pavement had been added to the road/sidewalk and was slowly covering up the statue.
As a lesson in the “cultural relevance of reality” he stated the locals didn’t recognize this as being slowly covered in pavement, but they saw it as the statue slowly emerging from pavement.
Any ideas on what that statue might be? and is this story as an example of the locals believing it to be emerging, not being covered up true? I have doubts that this is really thought by the locals.
Googling “statue emerging from pavement” brings up a lot of images of modern statues that are obviously intended to represent figures emerging from the pavement (or the ground) like this:
I’ve never heard of a situation like the one your prof. described.
No statue or pavement involved, but there’s a Shiva temple at the Hindu holy city of Varanasi in India that is partially submerged in the River Ganges, apparently due to the excessive weight of the stone steps (ghat) constructed around 150 years ago. Pictures: 1, 2.
When I was in Varanasi and saw this temple, I got 5 different reasons why it is where it is and how it got there from the 5 different locals I asked about it. The reasons went from storms and earthquakes to excessive weight and it was “supposed to look like that”.
