Quotulatiousness

June 23, 2022

1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed | Eric Cline

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Middle East — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Long Now Foundation
Published 19 Apr 2020

Consider this, optimists. All the societies in the world can collapse simultaneously. It has happened before.

In the 12th century BCE the great Bronze Age civilizations of the Mediterranean — all of them — suddenly fell apart. Their empires evaporated, their cities emptied out, their technologies disappeared, and famine ruled. Mycenae, Minos, Assyria, Hittites, Canaan, Cyprus — all gone. Even Egypt fell into a steep decline. The Bronze Age was over.

The event should live in history as one of the great cautionary tales, but it hasn’t because its causes were considered a mystery. How can we know what to be cautious of? Eric Cline has taken on on the mystery. An archaeologist-historian at George Washington University, he is the author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. The failure, he suggests, was systemic. The highly complex, richly interconnected system of the world tipped all at once into chaos.

“1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed” was given on January 11, 2016 as part of Long Now’s Seminar series. The series was started in 2003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world’s leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

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June 12, 2022

History Re-Summarized: Egypt

Filed under: Africa, Architecture, History, Humour, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 18 Feb 2022

I for one was shocked to learn the Egyptians actually buried their kings in a giant Millennium Puzzle.

We’ve covered Egypt on this channel in previous videos, but this History Re-Summarized is the Definitive Edition, redone from the ground up to present the best possible account — starting at the beginning for a full chronology of Ancient Egypt, from the very first Pharaohs to the Muslim Conquest.

(Observant Egyptologists and D&D players might note the Pyramids are actually D-*Fives*, but technically they’re D-*Nines* since each face is actually two right triangles at a slight angle to each other and not a single flat isosceles triangle, so shhh, we can pretend it’s a D4.)

Sources & Further Reading: The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt & Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction by Ian Shaw, World History Encyclopedia entries on “Ancient Egypt”, “Old Kingdom of Egypt”, “First Intermediate Period of Egypt”, “Middle Kingdom of Egypt”, “Second Intermediate Period of Egypt”, “New Kingdom of Egypt” https://www.worldhistory.org/egypt/, The Great Courses’ lecture series “History of Ancient Egypt” by Bob Brier. Additionally, I have an undergraduate degree in classical studies (re: Persia, Ptolemies and Rome). Extra special thanks to our OSP Discord server moderator & Egyptology connoisseur Billy, for his assistance and guidance for this video!

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March 16, 2022

Etruscan Cities and Civilization

Filed under: Greece, History, Italy — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Thersites the Historian
Published 9 Apr 2020

The Etruscans were one of the most interesting civilizations of antiquity. In this video, I explore some of the distinctive features of Etruscan civilization and also look at some of the key urban sites in Etruria.

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March 1, 2022

Mycenaean Greece

Filed under: Architecture, Europe, Greece, History, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Thersites the Historian
Published 25 Jan 2018

In this video, I look at the Mycenaean civilization in Greece, which lasted from 1600-1100 BCE.

February 8, 2022

Roman Republic to Empire: 01 Mistress of the Mediterranean

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

seangabb
Published 21 Jan 2021

[Update 2023-03-02 – Dr. Gabb took down the original posts and re-uploaded them.]

In 120 BC, Rome was a republic with touches of democracy. A century later, it was a divine right military dictatorship. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this transformation with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
(more…)

February 5, 2022

City Minutes: The Roman Empire

Filed under: Architecture, Europe, History, Humour — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 4 Feb 2022

The funny thing about Empire is that ~*Rome*~ includes far more than just the City of Rome. Spread out across every corner of the Mediterranean — and then some — Roman Civilization was always adapting to local circumstances and changing over time. Today we’ll look at 5 cities that show the diversity of just how much “Rome” could really mean in the days of the empire.

The Great Cities In History by John Julius Norwich, “A Wonder of the World – Ephesus” from The Great Tours: Greece and Turkey, from Athens to Istanbul by John R. Hale, “Ephesus”, “Leptis Magna”, “Roman Britain”, “Pompeii” from World History Encyclopedia https://www.worldhistory.org/ephesos/, https://www.worldhistory.org/Lepcis_Magna, https://www.worldhistory.org/Roman_Britain, https://www.worldhistory.org/pompeii/. “Ephesus”, “Leptis Magna” “London”, “Pompeii” from Britannica https://www.britannica.com/place/Ephesus, https://www.britannica.com/place/Leptis-Magna, https://www.britannica.com/place/Lond…, https://www.britannica.com/place/Pompeii. I also have a degree in Classical Studies.

Chapters:
0:00 — Rome
0:58 — Ephesus
2:00 — Leptis Magna
3:03 — Londinium
4:12 — Pompeii
5:17 — Conclusion

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

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January 23, 2022

The Abandoned Hill With Two Members Of Parliament

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tom Scott
Published 6 Jul 2020

Old Sarum, in Wiltshire, is a now-desolate hillfort run by English Heritage. But it was once one of the most important sites in southern England: so important that it had two members of Parliament. Then, it became a “rotten borough”: and a warning about power.

Thanks to English Heritage: more information and how to visit: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/v…

Research and script assistance from Jess Jewell
Drone camera by Jamie Bellinger
Edited by Michelle Martin: https://twitter.com/mrsmmartin
Audio mix by Graham Haerther: https://haerther.net

Filmed safely, following all local and national guidance: https://www.tomscott.com/safe/

SOURCES:
Corfield, P. (2000). Power and the professions in Britain 1700-1850. London: Routledge.

Dodsworth, W. (1814). An historical description of the cathedral church of Salisbury: including an account of the monuments, chiefly extracted from Gough’s “Sepulchral Monuments,” and other authentic documents: also, biographical memoirs of the Bishops of Salisbury, from the earliest period by W. Dodsworth, verger of the Cathedral

English Heritage’s own research page: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/v…

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/c-eight/…

I’m at https://tomscott.com
on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tomscott
and on Instagram as tomscottgo

January 7, 2022

“This is not satire. This is academic archaeology gone woke”

Filed under: History, Politics, Science, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the New English Review, Timothy H. Ives asks whether the many stone heaps across New England are actually the ruins of First Nations sacred sites:

Historic photograph of Woodvale Farm, Rhode Island. The pasture shown here, enclosed by stone walls, features several stone heaps
Photo via New English Review.

Brightman Hill lies deep in the forests of Hopkinton, Rhode Island. It is named for the Brightmans, one of the families who farmed it, and evidence of its agricultural past is, to most observers, unambiguous: old building foundations, a nineteenth-century burial ground, an extensive network of stone walls and hundreds of stone heaps, the results of field clearing. But in 2019, a federally-funded survey of Brightman Hill shattered these traditional interpretations.

The surveyors, Ceremonial Landscapes Research, LLC, are a small group of antiquarians led by Alexandra Martin, a registered professional archaeologist who recently earned her doctorate in anthropology. Instead of stone heaps and walls, the surveyors reported “linear stone groupings” on Brightman Hill. One, they said, “brings to mind a turtle.” Another “appears to have the head of a snake”; another contains “a ‘nest’, large enough for an individual to sit in.” Boulders, naturally milled and deposited by glacial ice, came alive. One was categorized as “an apparent effigy of a human head,” significantly facing southwest, while the flat section of another became a “stone seat” from which celestial alignments could be observed.

This is not satire. This is academic archaeology gone woke. New Englanders may not realize it, but the ground is moving beneath their feet.

Stone heaps, walls and other ruined stone structures are scattered across the secondary forests of New England. Traditionally, archaeologists agreed that they were vestiges of abandoned farmsteads, reclaimed by the forests when many farmers left for the cities or pastures new. But now the culture wars have come to this previously polite field.

Today, radical left-wing academics support claims that the stones are the ruins of ancient Native American ceremonial constructions, and that they need protection from ongoing “settler-colonial” development. Tribal officials champion this claim, presumably to further their own campaigns for “decolonization”. Their “resistance” is applauded by attention-seeking antiquarians and a public entranced by guilt and ideas of social justice. I call this confluence the Ceremonial Stone Landscape Movement (or CSLM).

CSLM claims are fashionable, and almost uniquely powerful. None of these stone structures were signed and dated by their creators, but ceremonial claims carry particular weight — especially when anyone who dismisses them risks being accused of continuing the destruction of Native American culture. Yet the movement’s roots are neither ancient nor grounded in Native American tradition. They’re not even that deep.

The movement and its bizarre theory originated in the late twentieth century among a group of white, middle-class antiquarians. Many are members of the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA), founded in 1964; at the time NEARA’s founders resented academic archaeologists for refusing to take seriously their theory that New England’s farmstead ruins are in fact the remains of a megalithic culture transplanted by settlers from Europe in prehistoric times. By 1984, one NEARA member detected a “persecuted-crusader” complex among its members, who seemed determined to “wave the banner of truth with regards to the ‘real’ prehistory of New England” until the “mainstreamers … fall in line and admit the visions of a minority were accurate after all.”

December 18, 2021

History Summarized: Minoan Greece

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Humour — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 17 Dec 2021

The classical Greeks weren’t the first kids on the Aegean block. Long before Athens’ golden age, before Homer, and even before the Trojan War, there was a civilization on the island of Krete. The land of King Minos was home to beautiful palaces, a fascinatingly-complex economy, and something approximating Bull-Cthulu. It’s a fun time, let’s jump in.

SOURCES & Further Reading: The Greeks: An Illustrated History by Diane Cline for National Geographic, The Greeks: A Global History by Roderick Beaton, Lectures from The Great Courses Plus — “Being Minoan and Mycenaean” from The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World by Robert Garland, and “Minoan Crete” & “Schliemann & Mycenae” from Ancient Greek Civilization by Jeremy McInerney. And I have a university degree in Classical Studies.

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

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December 14, 2021

Minoan Civilization

Filed under: Europe, History — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Thersites the Historian
Published 25 Jan 2018

In this video, I look at the Bronze Age civilization on Crete known as the Minoans.

December 11, 2021

QotD: In praise of getting stinkin’ drunk

Filed under: Health, History, Humour, Middle East, Quotations, Wine — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

A lot of this has come to mind because I’ve been reading an interesting new book — Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland. Using history, science, myth and popular culture, Slingerland defends getting drunk. Drinking has always played a role in “enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers.” There is archaeological evidence that brewing precedes baking.

Slingerland admits the problem of problem drinking. Yet he convincingly argues that the downside of booze has been addressed at length over the last 30 or 40 years. It’s time, he observes, for some pushback against the “puritanical discomfort with pleasure lurking in the background of scholarly discourse.” Slingerland decries “our current age of neo-prohibition and general queasiness about risk,” and exports “the simple joy of feeling good.”

Slingerland, a philosopher at the University of British Columbia in Canada, then goes even further, positing that by causing humans “to become, at least temporarily, more creative, cultural, and communal … intoxicants provided the spark that allowed us to form truly large-scale groups.”

That is to say, without Budweiser and red wine, civilization might not have been possible. For our ancestors, intoxication was “a robust and elegant response to the challenges of getting a selfish, suspicious, narrowly goal-oriented primate to loosen up and connect with strangers.” Brewing vats and drinking vessels were found at a 12,000-year-old site in Turkey. When humans began to sow crops and domesticate livestock, it allowed us to get over distrust and work in larger numbers, giving rise to towns and then cities. Slingerland: “It is no accident that, in the brutal competition of cultural groups from which civilizations emerged, it is the drinkers, smokers and trippers who emerged triumphant.”

Mark Judge, “Drunk: The Vital Pleasure of Getting Hammered”, SpliceToday, 2021-09-01.

December 2, 2021

TIKAL – greatest city of the Maya

Filed under: Americas, Architecture, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Lindybeige
Published 1 Dec 2021

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Here I take you with me on my first day at Tikal, in the jungles of Guatemala. Archaeology, wildlife, strange sounds, and a sunset. The overgrown remains of a stone-age civilisation.

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Kapok image: David Mead, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

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QotD: The quickening pace of change

Filed under: Education, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One of the toughest things to get across to History students is the pace of change. Students hate it, but the “memorize this list of dates” approach actually helps — one can’t help but notice that your list of “the 20 most significant dates” for, say, the medieval period covers a millennium, while that same list for the Roman Empire covers maybe a century. Even there, though, most people could be forgiven for mistaking 50 AD for 150 AD, or even 250 AD (even archaeologists generally consider it a success if they can date something to within a century, I’m told).

But nobody would mistake 1790 for 1890, let alone 1990. A Roman of the late Republic (100 BC) could still get around ok if you time-warped him into the late Empire (300 AD). Time warp a guy from 1790 into 1890, though, and he’d think he was on Mars. (Zap him into 1990, and he’d think he’d died and gone to Hell). The pace of change accelerated exponentially starting in about 1400; by the Industrial Era it was a blur.

Which is why I’m terrified right now. We feel like change is happening at light speed. As a Historian, I can promise you — it’s at least Warp 6, and the dilithium crystals are nowhere near to overloading.

Severian, “Faster and Faster”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-02-01.

October 7, 2021

Houses and Herms: Private Life in Classical Athens

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Religion, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Thersites the Historian
Published 6 Oct 2021

In this video, I look private life in classical Athens with a focus on material culture.

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October 2, 2021

This Is Sparta: The Material Remains of a Warrior Polis

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Thersites the Historian
Published 1 Oct 2021

A video about the material remains to be found at Sparta, or perhaps more precisely, why there isn’t more to see given the obvious importance of Sparta.

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I was unaware that Sparta, after its final military defeat by Roman forces in 192 BC, was effectively turned into a full-time “Living History” theme park for the benefit of tourists … subsidized by the Roman state.

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