<What seems to have been best preserved, were funeral monuments in stones. I always thought it strange that what was best kept for future generations mainly had something to do with death.

Not strange at all, mon ami: it's that urge for immortality most humans seem to be afflicted with. Sometimes it's expressed by individuals, sometimes by groups of people. Granted, not everything that has endured is funereal. You have the enviable advantage in Europe of living near Neolithic sites (nothing in North America is even half that old, that I'm aware of; not even the earthworks of the Mound Builder cultures of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys or the Pueblos of the American Southwest). It has been reasonably argued that the cyst graves, passage graves and the like were meant to be monuments and ritual sites for periodic reverence of the dead entombed therein. On the other hand, there's places like Stonehenge, and the megalithic arrangement in Brittany (whose name escapes me at present), and many others - monuments, but not for the dead.

And today, we keep even fewer things intact. There ia a build and destroy frenzy that is quite creative, but could be completely lost for future generations. (We live in the throwaway civilization).

Since I work in the shadow of architects, I lament the fact that modern buildings, like modern appliances, have a limited "service life" beyond which it is less expensive to demolish and replace than it is to repair. The key to it is: the materials of which they are constructed. The common element in surviving construction from past centuries (and millennia!) is stone (with a nod to earthworks, best preserved by luck). Not all cultures choose to build with such difficultly handled materials, nor do they necessarily live where stone is easily obtained. The Mound Builders built cities, too - of wood. So did the Neolithic Europeans. The ancient people of South and Southeast Asia built with bamboo. We build with concrete and steel, glass and wood and gypsum wall board - all of which weather, deteriorate, and (in the case of steel) oxidize. Why? It's cheaper and faster.

You're absolutely right - there are many beautiful modern structures whose ephemeral nature will eventually remove them from the landscape. We can record how they look, but not how it feels to be in their presence.

E'