Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Civilization #19 - Gilgamesh and Mesopotamia's Quest for Immortality

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Civilization #19 - Gilgamesh and Mesopotamia's Quest for Immortality

Okay, good morning. We are doing Mesopotamia today. This is the Bronze Age. We did Egypt last class. We are doing Mesopotamia today. And the next class, we will finish with the Indus Valley. So before I begin, I want to make three general points about the study of history and how civilization develop. The first point is this. Every culture has a mythology. And mythology is the collective worldview of the people that lets them understand the reality around them. So another idea that we can say is mythology is a shared reality.

And every civilization has mythology. So, for example, today our mythology would be science. and history, right? We think there are true and objective, but they're actually mythologies. They're a shared reality. And every civilization would have its own mythology, and that's what makes the culture unique. Okay, so that's the first point. So what we will do today to better understand Mesopotamia is to compare and contrast its

mythology with that of the Egyptians. Second point is there's an idea called the dialectic. And this was an idea proposed by the German philosopher named Frederick Hegel in the 19th century. He believes that history is driven by opposing ideas. So whenever you have one mythology or one idea, there always must arise a new, another opposing idea that challenges it.

And that's what drives history. And history is always moving towards a synthesis of ideas. So the example would be there's capitalism and the opposing idea would be communism. And the synthesis of the idea would be socialism. And what's really important to understand is that ideas can be living things that change over time. The third idea I want to introduce is the idea of diversity and differentiation. And the idea here is we humans have some fundamental natures about us.

So, for example, we're all religious in some aspect. Another fundamental instinct about us, we strive to be different. And that's why diversity is the iron law of society. Okay, so the example is, in a family, all the siblings will be different. In a classroom, the students will be different. And you could be a certain way in a classroom, and then you go to an another classroom and you figure out the students there are similar to you, so you will change as a person to differentiate yourself from other people.

Okay, so that's also another principle of history. Societies strive to be different from each other. They strive for diversity and differentiation. We cannot make generalizations about societies. The only thing that we can say is societies or cultures fall into different. a spectrum, okay? And they used to define by the elite or generalizations, okay? So this is another way of saying today I'm going to make very broad generalizations about these societies and civilizations. And they're useful for our purposes, but I want to be aware that these are simplifications, these are generalizations, okay?

All right, so let's start. Okay, so Mesopotamia is a very different culture and civilization than Egypt because of its geography. Okay? So if you look at the geography of Egypt, it has natural boundaries. So for example, to the west is the Sahara Desert. To the north is the Mediterranean Sea. To the east is the Red Sea. And then to the south are the cataracts.

So it makes it hard to travel up the Nile from the south. So there are really only two access points into Egypt, which can be easily defended. The South and also from the Levant. which is basically Israel, Syria, Jordan. And because of its natural boundaries, Egypt doesn't really feel threatened by external enemies, right? Also, it has the Nile River, which is the foundation of its civilization.

Remember last class we talked about how the Nile was very generous. It flooded predictably every season. and so it made agriculture very productive in Egypt, which allowed them to sustain a very large population, which then can be used to create monuments like the pyramid. So for most of its history, Egypt was stable and prosperous. Mesopotamia is completely different, okay? So first of all, Mesopotamia, which,

which is in what we call Iraq today. It has no natural boundaries. Mesopotamia is Greek for the land between two rivers. These two rivers are the Euphrates and the Tigris. Euphrates and the Tigris. To the west of Mesopotamia would be Arabia and the Levant. Levant, okay? To the north would be Anatolia, to the east of the Zagos Mountains. The thing about Anatolia is, it itself is a very prosperous place. So it will become eventually home to certain

empires, like the Haightites, who will always threaten Mesopotam. Okay. So Anatolia is a threat to Mesopotamia. The people of Arabia and the Zagos Mountains are nomads. And as we know, nomads are a very aggressive people. And so they will constantly launch raids against Mesopotamia, which threatens its safety. Okay? So Mesopotamia, throughout its history,

has always been at war with its neighbors. The other thing about Mesopotamia is, even though it's fertile, it's something called a fertile crescent, which extends from Mesopotamia into the Levant, it's called a fertile crescent. The Euphrates and the Tigris don't really cooperate. They're very chaotic.

They change course all the time. And so the only way to tame the Euphrates and the Tigris is through irrigation. Because if you farm too close to the bed, the riverbank, you're going to get flooded. So they have to develop irrigation in order to tame the Euphrates and the Tigris. So the geography, all these two cultures are very different, and therefore the history is very different. For most of its history, Egypt was unified as an empire. It was very stable. But Mesopotania was always in flux.

So the first great civilization of the Mesopotamia were the Samarians. They were eventually conquered by the Acadians. And then you had the Assyrians and the Babylonians. And these four civilizations are what we call Mesopotamia. Okay? Okay. Any questions so far before I go into the brief history of Mesopotamia? Okay, yeah, that's a good question, okay?

But what is the relationship between these four relationships? Samarians, the Acadians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians. Okay, so the very first civilization were the Samarians. And then they were eventually united by the Acadians. Okay, so Samaria was not really an empire. It was a culture and a civilization that was divided into city-state. like the Greeks before the conquest of Macedonians. And the Acadians under Sargon of Akkad, or Sargonne of Great,

united the city-states and gave us the idea of Samarian civilization. After the Ukrainian Empire fell, North Mesopotamia became the Assyrian Empire, South Mesopotamia became the Babylonian Empire. They all saw themselves as Hears, to the Sumerian civilization. So even though they're different civilizations, they share a common mythology,

which I would discuss later in the class. Does that make sense? Great. Okay, so I'm gonna talk very briefly about how Mesopotam develop. So, remember that in the beginning, agriculture first appeared in two places. Anatolia and the Lavant.

Then there was something called the 8.2 kilo year event. And we can see this as dramatic climate change that radically changed the geography and the climate of this world. Okay? And because of the cooling and temperature the people in the Lavand and the people in Anatolia were forced to spread out so when they went to Europe they went to Egypt they went to Mesopotamia and when they did that they spread agriculture and remember the agriculture the

mythology is the mother goddess which meant that they were mainly peaceful egalitarian people okay who were very artistic So this is a very peaceful, stable world. But then you have the 5.9 kilo-year event. Okay? This is about 6,000 years ago, 4,000 BCE. And again, you saw a radical change in temperature, which, again, forced migration,

and force these civilizations to change. One of the major changes in Mesopotamia is the founding of a place called Eurek. And Eurek is interesting, sorry, it's here. Urik is interesting because it is considered the first city of the world. And so this is the beginning of what we call civilization, okay? The modern idea of civilization. And that's about 40,000 people. And this is what we considered the beginning of the Samarian civilization.

And the Samarian civilization is considered the cradle of civilization. It is a beginning of the foundations of modern civilization. They gave us irrigation, technology. They gave us mathematics. They gave us astronomy. They gave us writing, canaform writing. They gave us the legal system. They gave us hierarchy and religion.

So there was an explosion of innovation with the founding of Erich. Now, Erich eventually would become a huge city, which compelled the people to migrate and found cities that are similar to Urich, okay? They're basically colonies, and they're scattered throughout Mesopotamethania, okay? These are city states that at first were part of the Uruk civilization, but eventually they became prosperous and wealthy themselves,

and so they broke away from Europe. And this led to tension and conflict, and maybe sometimes even outright warfare. But please remember, during this time, the idea of massive warfare that we would see during the Greek and Roman periods, it's still pretty absent. There's conflict, it's short-term.

And they have conflicts in order to resolve, like, territorial disputes, or trade disputes, but they're not trying to wipe each other out. Okay? One of the great mysteries is where the Samarans come from. We have this problem because when we discovered Kuneiform and we translated the Samaran language, we discovered the spoken language is very different from the surrounding regions, who spoke something called a Semitic language. So the language spoken in the area are part of the Semitic language group.

But Samarian is not part of that group. There's not enough similarities. Also, there is no other language like Samarian in the world. It's what is called a language isolate. It is unique. And so this has puzzled scholars for decades. And quite honestly, no one knows why this is the case. Okay, no one knows.

There are different theories. One theory is the Samarian people are people who came from Anatolia and settled in the Euphrates because it was good for agriculture, okay? So that's one theory. But there are other theories, there are other people who believe the Samarans came from the Zagos Mountains. There are other people who believe they came from Arabia and settled. And then there's another group of people who believe the Samarians are people who came from

the Innis Valley. We'll talk about the In This Valley next class, but all you need to know is in this valley, it is a very advanced civilization, it's very large, five million people, and it covers three major areas. Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest India. It is larger than Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. Okay? So people believe that the Inos Valley sent a colony to Mesopotamia, which found in Uyric.

And it makes sense because it's actually pretty easy to get from Innes Valley to York because of the Arabian Sea. Okay? So these are the different theories. But then there's another theory, which I think makes the most sense, which is this. Sumerian is a Creole language. It was invented by a melting pot of cultures and languages. And it's very similar to the Mandarin we speak today, right?

where Mandarin didn't exist, but because you had so many different cultures coming to the palace, they have to create their own language in order to communicate with each other, and we call that language today Mandarin. Does that make sense? Okay. So why do I think this idea makes the most sense? And again, just to be absolutely clear, no one knows, and we'll probably never know the answer. But I believe that Samarian is a Creole language.

The story makes the most sense because of this. Why was Uruk able to develop into the first city? What makes it special? The answer is this. It is at the center of the world. Okay? So let me explain. From Uruk, you're able to access the Indus Valley.

You're able to access the Arabian desert. You're able to go north to Anatolia. and the Zagrous Mountains, okay? And these civilizations we know traded with each other because it's the Bronze Age, right? Because to make bronze, you need to create an outlook between tin and copper. But also what's important to understand is,

we humans have been training with each other since the beginning, because we like to explore, and we like to experience different cultures. Okay? So that's what explains. why Europe was able to prosper so fast because it's the center of the world. To get anywhere, you have to go through your earth. But if that's the case, if it's a trading center of the world,

it makes sense for it to be also a multicultural and multilingual community of people, right? Because these traders from Arabia, Anatolia, the Zagos Mountains, Also, let's not forget about the Yemeniah, okay, who are up here on the steps. They also trade with these people. People in the Innes Valley, it makes sense for them to come together in a straining community and develop their own language and their own culture, which eventually spreads. Also, because this is a melting pot, it's really an immigrant culture, they're able to bring the most advanced ideas from all around the world and combine them together, which creates

new inventions like writing, like legal system, like mathematics, like astronomy. And that's why Samaria became the critical civilization, because of the meaning place of the world's cultures and ideas. And because of the very instability of the environment, meaning that the Tame the Tigris and Euphrates, and because they were always threatened by outside enemies, they had to develop a new culture, a new mythology, based on struggle, right? The Egyptians can afford to be passive and fatalistic. Let the gods decide.

But because this is an immigrant community, they have to focus on struggle and achievement, which is very much like America today. Does that make sense? So again, this is my theory of the Samarian people, where they came from, and why they are, why they are who they are. Any questions so far before I continue? So, next what I want to do is I want to compare Egyptian mythology with Mesopotam mythology to show how the geographic and cultural difference is that's how the geographic and cultural difference

translates into the mythology, the shared reality of the people. Okay? So let's look at Egypt first. All right. So again, Egypt is a very ancient civilization, and their mythology is extremely complex. They have different versions of the same stories. But I'm going to give you the generalization, which will be useful for our purposes. Okay? So let's look at Egypt. So, and then we'll look at Mesopotamia.

Egypt. Egypt believed the first god was Ra. There are other gods who they believe to the first god, like Atum and Amman. But let's just say the first god is Ra, who is a sun god. He comes to our world and he creates life. He basically gives life to everything, including humans. and as such we worship him but eventually we start to become misguided and we start to worship another god a false god Rob becomes angry and kills many of us and

but after he kills many of us he has tremendous regret and he decides his time is up he should give his groan to someone else okay this other god becomes Osiris Osiris is a great god because he gives people civilization which includes cities, which includes the pyramids, which includes writing, okay? So it's Issyrus who gives us civilization. Now here's a brother named Set. And Set is very jealous of the fact that Osiris is worshipped by the people. So he plots to usurp the throne from Osiris.

So what he does is this. He builds a sarcophagus, a tomb. He presents to Osiris and says, Osiris, my great king, this sarcophagus is the most beautiful and comfortable sarcophagus in the world. You will love lying in here. And Osiris is like, oh, that's interesting.

Let me try. So Osiris gets into the sarcophagus and sets closes it forever. It poses it forever, okay? Then he kills Osiris and dismembers his body. Osiris has a wife, Isis. And when he hears about the death of her husband, she looks for his body and assembles it together.

But she can't find the head. And then Osiris becomes the god of the underworld, okay? After Osiris is reassembled, he impregnance Isis. They have a son named Horace. Horace eventually grows up and he's angered by the fact that his uncle, set, has usurped his throne.

So the two are going to battle. And the gods, who judge all, tell them they have to challenge each other to a duel. So they have a series of duels. One duel is they both turn into hippopotamus, and they try to stay in the river for the longest time possible. Horace sees this as an opportunity to kill Set. He tells his mother, Isis,

while Set is distracted, while he's a hippopotamus, take a spear and kill him. And Isis agrees. But when she tries to kill Set, she is paralyzed. she is paralyzed with fear and she fails horace and anger strikes beheads her mother she doesn't he doesn't kill her but she loses her head that's how angry is okay so Isis and Horace continue their challenge eventually set decides to poison Horace but before he can do so horse first poisons him okay and the

horse becomes king and he gives Egypt the of kingship. So every pharaoh is a direct descendant of Horus or another reincarnation of Horus. Okay? That is the Egyptian myth of creation. Now the Mesopotamians, okay, they have a different myth of creation called the Enuma Elish from up high, the Enuma Elish. the Anuma-Eleche. And this is the story of the Anima Elish. There are two gods. The first god is Tiamat,

who is basically salt water. Then you have Apsu, who is fresh water. The two great gods get together and they give birth to other gods, okay? They're children. These gods then give them birth to other gods okay eventually absou gets annoyed with his children because children are loud and he can't sleep so he resolves to kill all his

children and bring peace to the world Tiamat finds out about Apsu's Dabakal plan he warns she warns her children the gods get together and they kill Apsu Tiamat is enraged by the day death of her consort. And she resolves to raise a great army and destroy her children. The gods get together and they elect Mardark, who is the son of the gods. So he's basically a third generation, God, okay? They elect Mardark to lead them in battle against Tiamat.

So you have these two massive armies converges, converging against each other. And then Tiamat turns into a huge water serpent and challenges Marduk to a duel. They fight. Marduk unleashes world winds into the mouth of Tiamat, and that sort of like dizzies her, and then Marduk strikes her down.

After he kills her, she uses her body to create the world. She uses half of her body She used half of her body to create the sky. And she used another half of the body to create the continents. He creates the moons, and he creates the stars. He creates the entire universe, basically, from the body of Tiamat. After that, the gods all decide to rest in peace.

But they need people to take care of them. They need people to watch the land, to farm and till the land. So they create humans as their slaves, okay? Humans. And that's how the Enema Elish ends. Each city has its own God, and the humans in that city must revere and take care of that God to be their slave for all of eternity. So as you can see right away, there are massive differences between the Egyptian mythology

and Mesopotamian mythology. The first major difference is the gods are benevolent, right? The gods give us everything. We just sit back and the gods will give us life. They will give us civilization. They will give us kingship. They will give us pyramids. So all we have to do is respect and revere and worship the gods.

We humans don't need to participate in the order of things. But in the Nemei Lesch, we find out that gods are extremely violent and they demand our servitude. They are our masters. So we must constantly work to please the gods. That's one major difference. Second major difference is, as you can see from the addition mythology, the main virtue that winds out is cleverness, okay? Deception, trickery.

And you can say this is because for the longest time, Egypt was an empire. So what mattered was not the ability to go to war, but the ability to manipulate eternal politics, what we call palace intrigue. And this is no different from China. China, right? Because remember in China, we have something called Shunze Bingfa, the art of war by Sunsa. That is a manual on palace intrigue, right? How to trick other people. It's not a manual on how to go to war. But here, the value that is most prominent in Mesopotamia is bravery or strength. Not cleverness. There's no

tricky going on, it's just pure power, peer bravery. And the third major difference is in Egypt, they believe the gods are helping each other. They build on top of each other's legacy. That's what progress is. That's what improvement is. But in Mesopotam, they believe in something called creative destruction, which is to say, in all the world. In order, order to create something new, you must destroy the old. Tiamat represents the old, therefore she must be destroyed. And from the old, you can build a new civilization, but you must first destroy the old. And conflict is a source of creativity.

Does that make sense? And again, they have these two different mythologies because they're reflective. the shared reality of the different geographies and history. Okay, any questions so far before I continue? Are you clear? Okay, great, okay. All right, great, okay. All right, okay.

So, both Egypt and both Mesopotamia, they are in a struggle to prove their mythologies are the best. The reason why is, remember that this is a time when all these civilizations are trading with each other but also what's important to understand is there's a lot of migration going on and people have a choice if you're not happy here you can always move somewhere else okay there isn't any idea of like nation or culture or race people have autonomy

okay so you need to constantly prove that your civilization is the best to trap people, which provides the labor to drive your civilization. So the Egyptians created something called the pyramids. The pyramids. To show the people around them, we are favored by the gods. Because it's only the gods who could inspire us to build the pyramids. Okay? So now the people mess up here have a problem,

because how do you compete against the pyramids? Right? I mean, at first they tried, they created things called the ziggurats, the ziggurats, which are temples to house the gods. But then they did something that was completely different and which made them immortal, just as the pyramids made it just as immoral.

They created something called Epic of Gilamash. And today we celebrate the Epic of Gilgamesh as the first work of world literature. Okay? So let me first explain the plot of the Epic of Gilamash and show you how it reflects Mesopotamian culture and values and then explain the meaning of it, okay? So the Epic of Gilamash. So there was a king of Erich. Eric, the first city, Eric, he's the king of the first city. And he's a demigod, okay? He's huge, he's a giant, and he's very brave.

The problem is, even though he's built this great city, Eric, high walls, prosperous land, advanced civilization, he gets bored very quickly. He starts to bully the people around him. So he sees young man, he challenges him to a fight, and he beats them up. He's a bully. He also rapes all the young women in Urich. And this drives their parents to pray to the gods for relief. So the gods decide to create an equal to Gilgamesh.

His name is Ekadu. Enkadoo. Anakadoo is made of clay. The two fight, and even though Gilamash defeats Enkadu in battle, Gilgamash

is happy because he thinks he's found a good friend, someone who he can share adventures with. So the two become great friends, the best of friends. They go on these adventures together. And these adventures are tremendous challenges. For example, they challenge gods to battle.

And at first they're afraid, but through their friendship and through their bravery, they're able to triumph in the end. There's a god named Ishtar, and she falls in love of Gilgamesh because he's so heroic. But Gilgumash rebuffs Ishtar because Gilgumash basically knows that Ishtar wants to turn him into her sex slate. He doesn't want that. He wants his freedom. He wants to prove he's a great hero.

Ishtar feels rejected, feels ashamed. So she sends something called the bull of heaven to destroy Eric. Gagamash and Ekadu fight the bull of heaven, and they kill this great bull. The guards now are really pissed off at Gilmash and Akkadu, and they decide that Enkadoe must die. So they inflict a disease on Nekidu, which kills him. At this point, Gilgamesh is heartbroken.

He's lost his best friend at the same time he knows death is waiting for him. He has all his accomplishments. He's a great king. He's built this great city. But eventually he must die. He does not want to die. He fears death. So he hears about this immortal man, this man who has live forever and who will live forever and he decides to seek him out on his journey he has to overcome many hurdles and along the journey along the journey everyone implores him give him ash give up this bait project immortality is for the gods we are humans we must die that's what makes us different from the gods enjoy your life drink be Mary, but Gilgamesh, refused to turn back, and he insists on continuing on his journey.

Eventually, he finds this immortal man, who explains to him he was made immortal because he survived the great flood. God created humans, but the humans became too loud for the God. So the God's resolved to kill them. but this man this one man was favored by one god so he was told about this plot and he built a boat and put a lot of animals in the boat in order to escape and this is the basis of the story of the north's flood in the bible okay after the flood receded this man came down and built an altar to worship the gods the gods felt regret for what they did so

So to compensate, they promised never to do this again, to never destroy humanity again, and also they grant this man immortality. But this is just a one-off. The gods will never do this again. And so the man tells Gigomash, the search for immortality, it's pointless, just go home. But Gilomache refuses to give up.

So the man challenges Gilamash to not sleep for seven nights and six days. Sorry, six days and seven nights and seven days. Gilamash tries, but he can't do it. So it's all futile. And then he goes home. But the moment he goes home, he has an epitone. He sees the great walls of earth. He sees the people.

happy in Earth. And he realizes this is what immortality is. Immortality is not living forever. Immortality is to be remembered by the people who love you. So the irony of all this is he goes on this search for immortality fails. But because he goes on this search, because he goes on this quest, he becomes immortal. because his story, his struggle, is remembered and celebrated by the people

in the epic of Gilgamesh. So this is a reflection of the values of Mesopotamia. The point is in the achievement. The point is not in the victory. The point is in the exploration. The point is in the struggle. And that's why the Mesopotamians were so innovative. But that's also why they went to war with each other all the time.

And this is the beginning of the idea of literature, where memories can be shaped in such a way that becomes so beautiful, that it becomes implanted in the minds of others for centuries, which will inspire them to greater heights of achievement. So now we have the beginning of literature, and that is the legacy of Mesopotamia. The legacy of the Egyptians were pyramids. A testament to the tremendous creativity of humans, of Egypt, the humans in Egypt. But the Epic of Gilgamesh is also a testament to the tremendous creativity of that civilization.

And if you think about it, the Epic of Gilgumash was written because it is in a dialectic with the pyramids, right? The Epic of Gilgamesh is also saying to the pyramids, immortality, it is an illusion. Eventually, these pyramids will collapse. For the Pharaoh to seek immortality is a delusion. What matters is for the Pharaoh to look after the well-being of his people here and now, because that's why he will be loved and remembered for eternity.

He will die if his people die. But if your people live on because of your contributions, then you'll remember forever. You'll become immortal. And that's the story of Glimash. Any questions? Is this all pretty clear? Okay.

All right. So I will make a final point about these stories. Within these stories, we can see the evolution of societies over time. Okay? So let's go back to the story. story of the Enuma Elish. So remember, Tiamat, and Absu, create the world. That's the first story.

Then the Gauta created, okay? And then they inhabit the world, that's a second story. And then Tiamat and Mardut go to war. And then from the victory of this war, Marduk creates the universe. So basically, we're seeing three different mythologies embedded within this mythology, which gives us the idea of social change and evolution Mesopotamia at this time. So the first story is Tiamat, right?

Who is Tiamat? She's the mother goddess, right? She's the one who gives life. So this shows Mesopenae as an agricultural society. Then you have the emergence of the gods, which the urban people would celebrate. Okay? And then finally you have the battle between Tiamat and Mardark. And this shows the battle between the old society with a new society, okay?

The urban and the agricultural. The agricultural, it is egalitarian, it is peaceful. The urban is patriarchal, right? So why? How do we explain or how do you justify the transition from an equal society to a patriarchy? The answer is this. The answer is embedded in the mythology, right? Tiamat represents chaos. Marduk represents order.

So even though we are letting go of the old, we're just showing the old, it's to create a more peaceful and orderly world. Okay? So remember, Tiamat is the water serpent. And for the longest time, we believe the water serpent represent life and divinity. Why? Because if you think about it, the serpent, the water serpent, looks like the river. And the river is the basis of civilization, right? So, and this is true for most civilizations.

In China, what do we call the water serpent? What do we call the water serpent in China? Long, right? The problem is the river floods. And if you flood too much, you destroy civilization. So it's chaotic. Okay? And that's why it's important to have a patriarchy or an urban elite.

Because they can help us, command us to create irrigation, to build walls, which will tame the river and the water serpent. Does that make sense? So within this mythology, we are seeing the evolution of society, from an egalitarian one to a patriarchy. Also, we are, in the Gilaquimash, we are witnessing the transition from a society based on a great king to one that is more organized around a bureaucracy.

Right? Right? Because remember, the story starts with the king going on all these adventures. The story ends with the king coming back and recognizing what matters is the well-being of his people. And for that, you need a bureaucracy to manage everyday affairs. And so this represents, you can interpret this as representing the beginning of a barricotic elite, which will help the king order the world in a way that brings more stability and prosperity to the people. Okay, but at first the king must recognize his own hubris.

He must become humble, okay? So the great fear of the Mesopotamans is their king will become the pharaoh who will channel all resources to building this monument, which will create inequality corruption in waste in society, which will lead to massive suffering during times of drought. Any questions? Yeah, so Mesopotam, the irrigation was very advanced because the Tigris and Euphrates very incorporated. Okay? They would change course all the time. So they have to build very advanced ergonisms that would change over time. The thing about Samaria is because it's trading and because there are different city states, this is, it becomes a hotbed of innovation. Because if one city state creates a really good irrigation system, another city state can just

copy it really easily. Okay. Does that make sense? Any more questions? Okay, so next class, we'll discuss the Indus Valley civilization. Okay? And the Inis Valley civilization, if we just use the analysis we did today, where basically geography is destiny. You would think the Inis Valley civilization is very much like the Egyptian civilization where you have a monarchy, you have centralized authority, and where they build these great monuments.

The irony is when you look at the Nis Valley Civilization, and there's a huge, huge civilization, they have very advanced technology. They have these big cities that are very well designed. They have plumbing, they have sanitation. They even have air conditioning. They have these towers that sort of like trap hot air. People live for a very long time. Like I think over half of the population will live past 50,000.

will live past 55, which is incredible, which is an incredible achievement. But what is startling about the civilization, the Indianapolis civilization is it's peaceful and it's egalitarian. So it's a complete mystery as to why they're so different from Egypt and Mesopotamia, okay? Because again, Egypt is a centralized empire. Mesopotamia is always at war.

Okay, so next class we will look at the inner-savily civilization and try to resolve the paradox as to why it is advanced, prosperous, at the same time, peaceful, and egalitarian.