When I was a child, we would take road trips around the U.S. And back then I always wondered, "why don't we built great big monuments and structures like the pyramids or giant castles?" All I ever saw were giant office buildings, just tall rectangles. The only awe inspiring stuff was natural, like mountains or forests or canyons.
As an adult, it's much clearer to me. The pyramids were a fantastic waste of human blood and sweat and toil. They were immense tombs, for crying out loud. There's no gigantic monuments here because most of those ancient things existed for their own sake, or for the sake of some tyrant, or spiritual practice.