So it's not a simple case of survivorship bias, though undoubtedly that is one factor.

A building that lasts that long is robust almost by definition. So, as long as any buildings do survive, we have fertile soil for survivorship bias.

The original comment questioned the accuracy of the statement "they don't build them like they used to", which I took to refer to building standards 2000 years ago.

Consider the following two scenarios:

A. 2000 years ago, all buildings were shoddily engineered except the Pantheon.

B. 2000 years ago, 90% of buildings were well engineered, of which the Pantheon is one example. The rest were deliberately torn down for one reason or other.

Survivorship bias does not allow you in itself to distinguish between A and B, which is the interesting question. It just allows you to disprove C:

C. Since the Patheon still stands, all buildings 2000 years ago must have been brilliantly engineered.

Which nobody is arguing for, I don't think.

Thanks for the good example!

Just goes to show you how powerful bread is. Egypt had great harvests on a regular basis, something few other places could accomplish, so they were able to spend more time developing knowledge. "Western Civilization" was born in Egypt, don't let anyone tell you different.

Also, a three mile long ramp.

I like to ask my students how they think the Egyptians did stuff like this. They usually guess something like "a wooden thing with rope and they pulled it up." It's hard to comprehend how much effort Egyptians put into their projects. Building an enormous ramp and then tearing down an enormous ramp? That's a lot of shoveling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramid_construction_t...

And from your wiki page: Most Egyptologists acknowledge that ramps are the most tenable of the methods to raise the blocks...

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/great_pyramid...

Egyptians also used the "build an earthen ramp to get the heavy stuff up, then clear the dirt away after you're done" strategy to build their ridiculously awesome temples. Any History Channel fan knows that.

If they would have had powertools, construction would have progressed a lot faster, the concrete would not have hardened as well as it should and the building would have cracked and collapsed a lot more easily.

There might be an element of truth to your argument, but I suspect the more important factor is the influence of the party motivating the construction.

A Roman businessman building a hi-rise tenement building would probably not bother enforcing the use of quality engineering and materials. They also didn't use power tools, but if I'm not mistaken, these hi-rise apartment blocks were known to collapse.

But if you're building something like the Pantheon, in Rome, for the emperor Hadrian, you're going to have access to the best materials, and are not going to want to risk your neck by slacking.

It might just be that the architect accidentally designed something strong enough. For example, many Gothic cathedrals collapsed during construction, and the ones still standing often are way stronger than needed.