A pyramide is a building where the outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a point. The base of a pyramid is usually trilateral or quadrilateral (but may be of any polygon shape), meaning that a pyramid usually has four or five faces. A pyramid's design, with the majority of the weight closer to the ground, means that less material higher up on the pyramid will be pushing down from above: this allowed early civilizations to create stable monumental structures.

For thousands of years, the largest structures on Earth were pyramids: first the Red Pyramid in the Dashur Necropolis and then the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still remaining. The largest pyramid ever built, by volume, is the Great Pyramid of Cholula, in the Mexican state of Puebla. This pyramid is still being excavated.

Ancient monuments

Pyramid-shaped structures were built by many ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, Mayans, Sumerians and Cambodia.

China

main: Chinese pyramids

There are many square flat-topped mound tombs in China. The First Emperor of Qin (circa 221 BC) was buried under a large mound outside modern day Xi'an. In the following centuries about a dozen more Han Dynasty royals were also buried under flat-topped pyramidal earthworks.

France

There is a Roman era pyramid built in Falicon, France. There were many more pyramids built in France in this period.

Egyptian pyramids

main: Egyptian pyramids

It was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and the only one of the seven to survive into modern times. The Ancient Egyptians covered their faces with polished white limestone, though most of the stones used for the purpose have fallen or have been removed and used to build the mosques of Cairo.

Greece

Fact: date=December 2008 Dotted throughout the landscape are remains of buildings that were described by ancient travelers as pyramids. They were first excavated by Americans and Germans in the early 1900s and the 1960s.

Pausanias, a Greek traveler in the second century AD described several of the structures as pyramids. One of these pyramids was located in Hellenikon (Ελληνικό in Greek), a village near Argos near the ancient ruins of Tiryns. The story surrounding the monument was that it was built as a polyandria, a common grave, for those soldiers who had fallen in the struggle for the throne of Argos back in the 14th Century BC He described the structure as something that resembled a pyramid with the decorations of Argolic shields, showing the military connection to it. Another pyramid that Pausanias saw on his journeys was at Kenchreai, another polyandria dedicated to the Argives and Spartans who lost their lives at the Battle of Hysiai in 669 BC. Unfortunately neither of these structures remain fully intact today to test how closely they resembled the pyramids of Egypt nor is there any proof that they even resembled an Egyptian pyramid at all.