Let's Find Out - History of the World: 3500 BC to 800 BC | soft-spoken ASMR

Starting point is 00:00:00 So, um, I don't know, it's just the more I learn about history, the more, the more I understand why I hold some of the ideas that I do. And maybe, hopefully you'll, you'll feel the same. If anything, you'll, if anything, I guess, you'll, uh, you'll feel that you understand the ideas you do a little better, whether you think they're yours or not. So, chapter one. First empires and civilizations, from 3,500 BC to 800 BC, the Middle East, and Sumeria. Sumeria is where we're starting. In about 5,000 BC, farmers settled on the fertile land of the southern Mesopotamia, now in Iraq, known as Sumer.

Starting point is 00:01:04 and from these humble beginnings the world's first great civilization formed living along the rivers mesopotamia by the way is greek for the land between two rivers sumerian farmers were able to grow in abundance of grain and other crops the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place as these were you know some of our definition of civilization is the opposite of nomads it's something that is able to be settled in a specific place and flourish and evolve from that instead of maintaining the same technology and culture for us tens and hundred people as far away as present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan and they dug a network of ditches and canals even as drainage channels for for their fertile flood-prone lands much like the Nile a thousand years later by 3,000 BC a number of city-states had developed in Sumer the largest being er you are with a population of 40,000 the first known system of writing actually originated in

Starting point is 00:02:47 Sumer as far as we know at first pictographic meaning like hieroglyphs. It gradually evolved into a series of wedge-shaped designs, which you guys understand is, uh, you guys have all seen it. It's like a flathead screwdriver being just imprinted into wet clay. And this is called kineiform. It was actually instead of a flathead screwdriver, it was used from using reed stalks and clay tablets. Kuneiform actually, actually, instead of a flathead screwdriver, it was used from using reed stalks on clay tablets. Kuneiform actually means wedge-shaped in Latin, apparently. Sumerians also devised complex, administrative, and legal systems, developed wheeled vehicles, and potter's wheels, and built great ziggurats in buildings with columns and domes. The first great empire of Sumer was established by Sargon. King of Akkad

Starting point is 00:04:01 An ancient kingdom situated north of Sumer In about 2,350 BC Oh we got our fact checker here Excuse me Yes ma'am Are these correct Make sure

Starting point is 00:04:21 I know I don't want to be telling them false news Fake news Trying to get them asleep We're not trying to Fill their head with lies subconsciously and subliminally. Do you just... You just want to add to that a little bit?

Starting point is 00:04:41 I wanted to show you her Pharaoh bonnet. Penny, we're not at Egypt. Yeah, we're not at that part. So we said the first great empire was established by Sargonavakad and of Akkad, maybe. In the Arabian cities were united under his control. And the empire stretched from Syria to the Persian Gulf.

Starting point is 00:05:23 This dynasty was destroyed in about 2,200, so it lasted 150 years. 2,200 BC, of course. But after 2150 BC, the kings of Err re-established Sumerian authority in Sumer, and also conquered Akkad. So following an invasion of the Elamites, a civilization to the east of Sumer, in the sack of Ur in around 2000 BC. So remember this is about a thousand years before the Trojan War to give you a relative time scale in about, what, 500 years after the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. So 2000 BC, following an invasion, an invasion by the Elamites,

Starting point is 00:06:26 Err was sacked, and Sumer, came under Amarite rule, out of which emerged the great city-state of Babylon. See, page 14. So, like a big, dense history book, that's actually only one page away, so. So that was the Sumerians to about 2000 BC. Now let's switch to the ancient Egypt. Egyptians The old kingdom

Starting point is 00:07:11 The old kingdom is the first kingdom obviously The first Great civilization in Africa began with the settlement of the Nile Valley In the northeast In the northeast

Starting point is 00:07:26 I guess for you would be up here The northeast of the continent In around 5,000 BC That's 7,000 years ago. And by the way, it's worth putting in here that 7,000 years ago, the earliest roots of the Egyptian culture might have been grabbing and themselves being in an historical, a historical offshoot of an even earlier preceding civilization.

Starting point is 00:08:03 Turkey, modern-day Turkey, Asia Minor. There's a site that's actually pretty large, with monoliths being huge single stones like Stonehenge, dates from 9,000 to 10,000 years BC. It's worth mentioning, you know, as fantastically old as the Egyptian civilization is, 7,000 years old. We have definitive proof based on soil dating samples that this, ancient, the ancient civilization, it was so old that to them, to the early Egyptians in the old kingdom, this civilization would have been 5,000 years old, gives a proper historical context. And it's in the right direction to where we should be, to where our perspective should be, given that we know so much about evolutionary biology now, that we know that our species is

Starting point is 00:09:29 way older than 6,000 years old. We know that we've been humans proper with our brains and our cognitive abilities for at least 50 to 100,000, maybe 200,000 years. So to have a bunch of really intelligent apes like us running around in Africa, Asia, Europe, a conservative estimate would be 50,000 years when we have our, um, in the oldest cave art. Transmit culture and, you know, to start developing primordial languages, sounds that mean objects and ideas,

Starting point is 00:10:20 and to transmit those and gradually progress, I think it would be foolish not to consider that as realistic. So anyone who wants to off the cuff dismiss a civilization that's even older than Egypt, I think would be foolish. You know, and I think it's, I think it's so awe-inspiring that we, we come from, every one of us, come from these ancient, ancient successful peoples that, you know, established really complex things that we just take for granted, like legal systems and governments and art, you know, I mean, even language, it's unfathomely. complex. So our culture and the way we see the world, in the way we act in our language, it's more complex than just we're born, we're taught a language, and that's how we project innate ideas that we're already kind of either, I was thinking biology, yeah, we

Starting point is 00:11:34 actually do have archetypes in our brains that are kind of biologically almost. But either way, whether it's culturally transmitted through a subtle process of meme coattail writing or more biologically more deeper ideas in ways of viewing the world and personalities like archetypes of the hero the sage the whiz the um the joker the mother earth the evil mother father time the tyrannical father um and sisters and these archetypes are so intertwined with our biology and our way of viewing the world that looking at our history is certainly not the only way and it shouldn't be there shouldn't be any one thing that we put our stake in and claim as the uh the source of all to figure out how we can better understand ourselves you know we're the most complex beings in

Starting point is 00:13:37 the world, celestial phenomena, stars, black holes, quasars, whatever you want to call it, whatever you think is more comes what we've been able to understand. Our brains, actions, then there are atoms in the universe. Just something cautious, reserved about claiming absolute certainty about the way we think about the world without cross-referencing it with facts about the world and about ourselves, which in a common-sensical way but also in a weird way that doesn't make sense we are one in the same I mean we are a part of the natural world that we claim to objectively observe but anyways that's the whole truth versus versus truth debate that I've been fascinated in listening to with

Starting point is 00:15:03 Jordan Peterson and Sam Sam Harris who is an intellectual giant he's so fascinating to listen to both. Both those guys are. Anyways, Egypt. These early settlers were from the Sahara, where some 2,000 years earlier, I guess maybe 7,000 BC, because first farming societies had developed before climate change had turned the Sahara into a desert. This same climate change had been dried out the swamps of the Nile, making it a much more attractive settlement now.

Starting point is 00:16:00 So the desert started to emerge out of the drier climate, and they migrated towards the source of all life in northeast Africa, the Nile River. The 4th millennium BC, the valley of the Nile was densely populated with towns, that had grown in the region had been divided into two Egyptian kingdoms traditional Egyptian chronology tells us that in 3200 BC

Starting point is 00:16:42 the pharaoh or ruler Meneas M-E-N-E-S unified two kingdoms to create a single state this saw the beginning of the in one was the the northern kingdom which is the

Starting point is 00:16:59 lower Nile because again that's where I say again because I always mention this the Nile River flows north on our map because that's the gradient of the African terrain from Central Africa

Starting point is 00:17:15 north the terrain generally goes downhill. That's the watershed, the general so the upper Nile is closer to the source which is closer to the mountains which is south and near Nubia.

Starting point is 00:17:38 So these two kingdoms were the upper and the lower Nile. This saw the beginning of a 3,000-year civilization that was marked by monumental tomb-building projects in the flourishing of Egyptian culture. The earliest period of ancient Egypt, known as the Old Kingdom from about 2,500 to 2100 BC, was ruled by a number of powerful pharaohs and saw major developments in technology, art, and architecture, of course,

Starting point is 00:18:19 like the pyramids. During this era, hieroglyphic script was developed and the Great Pyramids, sorry, the Great Sphinx and Giza pyramids were constructed during which thousands of ordinary Egyptians died. The pyramids provided for the afterlife of the pharaoh And were closely associated with the cult of the sun god Ra Their flared shape resembled the rays of the sun And provided for the deceased king of a stairway to the gods

Starting point is 00:19:00 And again as a quick aside The great sphinx the Sphinx on the Giza Plateau Great Proponent research about the Great I keep calling it. The Sphinx. Now there's weathering around the Sphinx that appears very, very conclusively

Starting point is 00:19:35 to come from rain and not from Nile flooding. And just as we were talking about the climate, it appears that maybe there was even older civilizations back 10,000 years, BC, that might have built the Sphinx, because the Sphinx appears to have, some weathering on it through rain and wind erosion that can't be accounted for simply by the dry arid 4,000 years that it's purported to have been around. So if there's evidence,

Starting point is 00:20:20 it's worth considering. And it's cool to think that we're our advancements technologically and culturally and architecturally and all this, architecturally, maybe even older than we to give ourselves credit for. So that was the old kingdom and the ancient and new kingdoms, the middle and new kingdoms of ancient Egypt. A period of stability in Egypt known as the middle kingdom, BC to 1630 BC, still 500 years before the Trojan War. followed a century of severe drought, famine. The central government, Egypt, pharaohs, restored the country's prosperity and stability by securing its borders, increasing its agricultural output,

Starting point is 00:21:38 partly by reconquering the lands of Nubia in the lower, a parts of Africa that was rich in quarries and gold. This era was known for its jewelry and goldsmith's designs. the worship of Osiris, the god of death, and the rebirth, the god of death and rebirth, which is interesting, it's kind of like a Jesus metaphor there, also spread across Egypt during this time, leading to the prevailing belief that everyone not just pharaohs would be welcomed by the gods after death. Ambitious building in mineral projects, along with a severe flood, along the Nile, led to a weakening of the Pharaoh's power in Egypt, enabling foreign settlers, mainly Hixos.

Starting point is 00:22:42 This doesn't say anything about the Hixos being Jewish, being Jews, or Israelites, that they were. So, I just thought that was interesting because later, after this, the Hixos, or the Jews rather, were actually slaves. They were captured by the Egyptians and made slaves. And that's when Moses came and he was adopted by the Pharaoh, I think, and then led the Jews to freedom in Israel. Territorial disputes, you know, conquering, and they conquered Egypt. Then Egypt came back in an uprising and then enslaved those former conquerors. And then another cycle happened, generations later, the Jews were able to flee that slavery and establish a kingdom on earth of their own.

Starting point is 00:24:04 So that drama was an interesting story, but maybe Jews aren't the same as Hixos. I don't know. So at this, during this point, the shift from a bronze to an iron-based economy, also contributed to the decline. This was followed by the new kingdom in 1539 to 1,075 BC. When control was re-established by the pharaohs and Egyptian influence extended into Syria, Nubia, and the Middle East, regarded as one of the greatest chapters of Egyptian history, many great, temples. The era also included the reign of some of Egypt's most famous pharaohs, including the female ruler, Hetzepshut, and the Boy King Tutankhammed. The ship's last great pharaoh. Ramsey's the Third. In 1070 BC, Egypt went into a slow

Starting point is 00:25:41 decline as it split into several smaller kingdoms. Around 719 BC, the Kushites, see page conquered Egypt and ruled as pharaohs until they were pushed back by their own until they were pushed back to their own borders by the Assyrians in 656 BC Assyrian rule was followed by Persian conquest in 525 BC occupation by Alexander the Great the Macedonian the place above Greece ruler in 332 BC And finally

Starting point is 00:26:25 By Roman conquest In 30 BC And so the last thousand years before Christ Egypt was essentially just A wheelhouse of Every couple hundred years A new empire A new budding empire

Starting point is 00:26:42 From the Mediterranean Africa and the Middle East Coming to conquer it Migration at the bottom Egypt nearing the end of the new kingdom and then all the other little all the other little kingdoms that we'll talk about next time that took way longer who would have thought then then I wanted it too but it was interesting some some

Starting point is 00:27:46 parts of it I just had to put my two cents in so I hope that wasn't too much of a bus kill I guess but yeah hope you guys liked it I'm gonna continue using this book because I think it's useful, it's pithy, it's right to the point. And using this book a lot of all for supporting me, especially my patrons, my PayPal, Venmo, a lot of chat supporters, donators, and all of you who show love in the comments. I love talking to you guys. I love interacting, love getting feedback, love picking your brains, pick in mind. It's fun. It's like most of the reason why do this. So let me know what you

Starting point is 00:28:44 thought. Yeah. And I guess hitting that like button if you like this stuff I create is more likely to show up in your feed. Until next time get some sleep. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Um, hope your Hanukkah was good.

Let's Find Out - History of the World: 3500 BC to 800 BC | soft-spoken ASMR

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