I've been working on this topic for a

while now it's not something new to me

by any means the topic oh wait before I

jump into it did you have like t-shirts

and stuff okay so the Austin school does

have t-shirts they are available Kelsey

has them yeah so the front is cool but

the back is better so that's that's the

front but the back I don't know what to

make of this but I just don't know

anyway so this is the back you kind of

need to have one of these I'm pretty

sure we're using to fundraise for the

Austin school so it goes to a terrible

cause $18 all right so back to the the

topic at hand so that one of the things

that I've often wondered about is how do

these categories come into being I was

actually talking about this earlier but

just as an example I had a student about

a year ago who was black and my black I

don't mean like he was african-american

he was actually actually I had to put

white when he filled out race because he

was from North Africa but I mean he was

black like his skin was black there's

when you see him in the street you're

gonna go look there's a black guy you're

not gonna go oh my god look at that

white guy who looks very dark but when

it came time to bubble in race he had to

put in white right so like how the hell

did we get that category clearly this is

a category that's arbitrary at some

level there was a rule made and then

some and then we we just take people he

jammed them into these categories and

one of the categories that's always

struck me as sort of odd was this

east/west category that we have so if

you were here on Thursday I I took the

salt a little bit and I talked about how

that category formed in terms and why it

mattered in terms of Foreign Relations

but I'm gonna take this thing even

further back and dig into it a little

bit deeper because that's pretty much

all this is about so even though this

talk is a brief history of Western

civilization to do that there has to be

an East

like to compare it to because you can't

really understand what the West is

unless you have an other to look at and

then you say oh really what the West is

is not that right

usually when you define something by

what it is you really don't know what

you're talking about but we need to find

it by what it's not it brings it in the

light a little bit so I want to take

this thing and also and look at the very

notion of the idea of the word

civilization so we're going to do the

east-west divide but we're also going to

do civilization versus non civilization

historians have traditionally I'm going

to start with civilization and

historians have traditionally defined

civilization starting with the advent of

writing

now the reason historians have picked

writing is just it's actually really

simple it's that all a historian really

is at the end of the day is a person who

does nonfiction literature

alright the difference between the the

history department in the English

department is that the historian is

doing nonfiction and the English

departments doing fiction that's the

primary difference between the two

because at the end of the day all a

historian is doing is reading historical

text and maybe trying to put them to

memory and then trying to create a

narrative based on what they've read

because at the end of the day there are

lots of holes would you read history

there's lots of gaps so you have to fill

them in so you're kind of constructing a

fictional story to fill in the gaps for

the non fictional parts that you know

and so when a historian says oh this is

what I think happened what they're

really saying is we really don't know

what happened

part based on the bits that we do know

this is the narrative I've come up with

if you create if you make history go

back to the advent of writing then

history is roughly four five thousand

one hundred years old now and at the

same time that makes civilization five

thousand one hundred years old right if

you if you if you couple the two

together so history and civilization are

Co defined having said that

I as a political scientist don't like

that so I love history I do history when

I was teaching for the University of

Maryland University College I was in

their history department I consider

myself to be at least somewhat of a

historian so I'm not saying this to pass

on history I just think it's really

arbitrary because he as a political

scientist one of the questions I ask is

why did writing even come into being and

it looks like the reason writing came

into being was that there was a state

and in this case the state and Sumer but

also there was a state in Egypt in these

two states had a problem and that was

they had a certain amount of cattle they

had a certain amount of grain they had a

certain amount of fruit they had wine

they had beer and they needed two horses

sheep whatever they had they didn't have

horses delete courses but sheep right

there whatever they had horses came

later and they needed to actually

categorize and keep track of what they

had they needed to be able to take the

resources and pull them they needed to

be able to distribute their resources to

do that they needed some way of writing

down what they had to do that they

needed numbers and they needed letters

right or characters so in Sumer and in

Egypt a character system formed the

problem with the character system is

right away you get into this trouble of

what if we get into a new concept and

then we have a word we don't have a

character for so the Egyptians also

began doing phonetic letters so there's

this kind of misconception that the

first phonetic alphabet ever was the

Phoenician alphabet hence phonetic

Phoenician but it really actually it was

the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that

were the first phonetic alphabet it's

just a coat at the same time they also

used characters so they did both in any

case it means government came before

writing right because government made

writing happen out of necessity so then

my next question is well when a

government come into being we think now

that it was somewhere around six

thousand five hundred years ago or 4500

BC

in Egypt Egypt did at first we think and

then Mesopotamia did it shortly

afterwards so Mesopotamia beat Egypt to

writing but Egypt beat Mesopotamia the

government the two kind of did things in

tandem one would do one and then the

other one would catch up shortly

afterwards the reason that the

government came into being again was

probably out of necessity in the case of

Egypt it was probably tied to the flood

cycle so Egypt doesn't get much rain

annual rain that they have instead these

annual floods what happens is it snows

in Central Africa it snows in Equatorial

Africa right just the sentence doesn't

fit right just what and then the snows

melt and then they flood and create the

Nile flood the annual Nile floods and

that's what created this cycle in Egypt

that made Egypt this incredibly fertile

place per per acre Egypt is probably the

most fertile place on earth when you're

in the Nile Valley and that what that

did was that made it so it could prove

crazy amounts of food with almost no

effort without worrying about burning

other soil the problem was is weather is

weather and sometimes weather cooperates

and sometimes whether it goes haywire

and they were they were susceptible to

droughts and as a result there was the

possibility of famine but also the other

was true if they could get a flood that

lasted too long and it caused the crops

to rot in the field and so they they

they had to constantly worry about the

weather here's the thing if they could

pool their resources together they could

build greeneries and then in the granary

they could store the grain so what

probably created the first government in

Egypt was they probably went through

this terrible famine event you know a

significant portion of population died

and then they were then the next harvest

they're looking you know they're

bringing in the grain and they're like

wow we're leaving a lot of this grain

here in the field to rocks we can just

casually produce so much

food wouldn't it be cool if this grain

was around the next time there was a

famine and then somebody probably had

the brilliant idea oh my god let's

create a granary and tried to talk

everybody into it in the act of talking

everybody into it they as a community

got together made the decision to do

this they put their pooled their

resources they made the granary the

problem is the granary requires upkeep

so once they initially got together and

made the decision to make the granary

now they have to make the decision to

allocate the resources to sustaining the

granary and in that moment government

probably formed but then there's this

problem that humanity always suffers

from you know what the right thing to do

is but you're motivated by emotions by

addiction by laziness by habits by

desire and you'll do the wrong thing

anyway right so even after they got the

granary up and running and even after

they've allocated the resources to

sustain the granary there is this

propensity of humans to go geez I should

really bring that grain this year what

if I don't I'm gonna take the year off

and then you know the next year comes

along and you don't bring it again

there's no consequence the next year

comes along and you don't bring it again

but then little by little more more

people bring less and less grain because

we're forgetting the memory the horror

of the famine kind of fades next thing

you know it's the next generation they

didn't experience it so they don't know

what you're talking about when you go

yells about famine you should really put

grain in that drainer

and then the next famine hits and

there's no grain and people die really

large numbers and they're like well we

our ancestors built this granary and we

didn't do upkeep how do we do this and

at some point somebody must had this

idea and it's kind of a fascinating idea

when you think about it and that was to

lie to manipulate to twist the truth

because they realized that the rational

brain wasn't enough to motivate people

to do the right thing but if you just

walked up to a person goes and it said

to them you should do the following

because of ABCD you should drive a

smaller car because it's better for the

environment and then

time I see you're in an SUV touring

around with absolutely no passengers and

never off-roading so no one knows why

you have an SUV right because if we're

not rational beings humans have never

been rational beings all the science

shows humans aren't rational beings you

just put that aside we are rationalizing

beings right we make a decision and then

afterwards we've created we try to

create a story to make what we did make

not seem completely insane to the people

we're gonna have to explain this to

later and you were taught to do that

probably by your mother every time you

did something really stupid she go why'd

you do that

no you better come up with a reason then

sends you off to your room so now you're

like what is my reason what is my

reason I have to I anticipate the next

time I get into trouble for doing

something stupid so when you come home

with that giant red SUV right and all

your friends are like would you get that

for you don't even have family or go

off-road like wow I just really like the

idea of being paralyzed in a car

accident and I heard your six times more

likely to be paralyzed in an SUV than in

a regular car and so not so I'm going

for and be like oh so I've got this

problem if I if I lay it out to you and

I say look you really need to bring the

grain because there's gonna be a famine

and we're all gonna die we know you

won't bring the damn grain because

humans don't work that way but what if I

told you this if you bring the grain I

had a dream last night and in it the god

almond came to me and he said he would

reward people who brought the grain and

punish people who didn't you bring the

grain the drought happens next thing you

know a priest is doling out the grain

cuz right we just invented the

priesthood a group of people who had

direct contact with a God you didn't

bring the grain the drought happens and

the next thing you know the priest is

like guess what guys some of us are

going to starve to death

in other words no matter what happens

that pre

looks recent that priest looks like they

can they can look into the future now

your incentive to bring the grain is to

establish a closer or link to your best

imaginary friend Brian it's so that you

can have this direct link with in this

case the god Amun so it turns out that

the advent of government probably was

totally tied to an economic situation

and also a religious situation where the

goal was by a community or an individual

to intentionally manipulate your

economic behavior using religion using a

normative method for manipulating your

behavior to create some desired economic

outcome in this case a giant insurance

policy a giant community-wide insurance

policy so that the next time the weather

went to we didn't all starve so

that's that's what I used to think would

be an amazing marker for the start of

civilization and then we started making

some really unusual discoveries so let

me just clarify that the reason I had

picked that that period six thousand

five hundred years ago was in part based

on a bias that I had the bias was the

human beings didn't do anything worth

noting until we started doing

agriculture that agriculture was sort of

the this major change this major shift

in our in our way of being now not that

agriculture was necessarily a good thing

so if you looked at what gathering and

hunting societies did before agriculture

they move from location a location

especially once they started put too

much pressure on the local environment

right you've eaten too many mongongo

nuts it's time to move so that there is

enough mongongo nuts laughs to create

the next generation of mongongo trees

right that's the goal the goal for a

gatherer and hunter is to have no impact

on the environment we've killed a bunch

of gazelles here we killed just as many

as we can to not affect the size of the

herd next year it's time to move and fly

a new source for food that's your goal

we've been at this watering hole just

long enough that we've put too much

pressure or just enough pressure on it

it's time to move and find another

watering hole right your goal is to have

no impact the gathering and hunting

culture that has an impact breaks their

echo system and they starve to death the

next year right

but in that system you don't own

anything you're migratory because you

move from place to place topping into

seasonal foods but also avoiding over

taxing whatever specific food that is

that you you rely upon agriculture

doesn't happen because we invent it we

go oh my god this is better because

think about it and gathering and hunting

you have a wide variety of foods one of

the problems with the modern diet right

is that a lot of people especially the

United States just keep eating the same

food over and over and over again that

can lead to food allergies for one thing

one of the reasons why we've seen an

increase in the number of people who are

gluten intolerant is we basically have a

monoculture when it comes to wheat if

you were to look at how we planted wheat

fields just 200 years ago there were

probably a hundred different strains of

wheat so when you a tweet you weren't

eating the same wheat every single time

but also you ate other things other than

wheat you had some barley in the mix

right there were you had a variety of

foods but a gatherin hunter like you're

eating berries for part of the year and

you're eating tuber is another part of

the year and next thing you know you're

eating legumes and then you have this

steady source of meat coming into your

diet so there's a little bit of deer a

little bit of rabbit a little bit of

giraffe whatever happens to be available

and in the proper quantities right that

makes for a really healthy diet if you

just ate macaroni and cheese every day

for like four years

maybe supplement it with ramen or

something you will die of malnutrition

like it will kill you you can't just you

at some point you're gonna need to eat

like something from the broccoli family

or something you know I

I know it's actually the cabbage family

it's just funny to say especially

because have you noticed all the weird

broccoli he's like what's that purple

broccoli what didn't they do like was it

fish DNA they spliced in there to get it

to turn purple I don't know what weird

DNA they put in that plant to get it to

flip there was an experiment at one

point with putting fish DNA into

strawberries to keep them from freezing

in the winter mmm these strawberries

tastes funny when we started doing

agriculture it wasn't because we wanted

to we did it kicking and screaming so

the ancient Egyptians probably the

prehistoric Egyptians probably n doing

agriculture about 11,000 years ago they

were at the first right the

Mesopotamians beat the Egyptians by a

seven or so centuries but the Egyptians

started doing at about eleven thousand

years ago by about five thousand years

ago so over a six thousand years span of

time they went from 0% dependent on

agriculture to about 60 percent

dependent on agriculture in other words

it took them six thousand years to get

60 percent dependent on agriculture six

thousand years that's a remarkably long

chunk of time talk about incremental

whether they were doing it so slowly it

took millennia and the reason is this it

is true that per acre you can get more

calories out of your soil with

agriculture right so if I have 40 acres

and I'm doing agriculture I can sustain

myself on it but to do gathering and

hunting I probably need 400 acres so as

population densities increased increase

they reach this point where we are

forced to do agriculture we actually

think there was a shock event that that

caused the straw to break the camel's

back so to speak what had happened was

Europe had a an event called the Younger

Dryas it was a miniature ice age which

is always cool

who doesn't like those what had happened

was the Laurentian Ice Sheet melted and

we now think quite catastrophic ly for

years we just assumed it took hundreds

of years for the Laurentian Ice Sheet to

melt the Laurentian ice sheet was

massive it was the size of a really

large country it's probably it probably

covered about 20 percent of the United

States and about 20% of Canada so is

this really massive chunk ice sitting on

top of what is today the great lakes and

we now now there are some people who

suspect it may have melted in as short a

period as eight years and it's why

there's the st. Lawrence River all that

fresh water suddenly had to go somewhere

and it literally cut a straight line to

the Atlantic Ocean in the form of the

st. Lawrence River and when it did that

all that fresh water catastrophic Lee

ended up in the North Atlantic now

there's a giant underwater River in the

Atlantic of hot water and it flows from

the equator to the North Atlantic and

its surface is pretty close to green to

Iceland and when it surfaces it heats

the atmosphere so think about this Cairo

Egypt is right about north-south right

about where Austin is we're all on the

same we're about as far north as Cairo

Egypt is wrong Italy is about as far

north as New York City well I think a

Rome I don't think of a city anywhere

near as cold as New York City right

Berlin is about where Winnipeg Canada is

Stockholm is about where Anchorage

Alaska is Europe is remarkably warmer

than North America because of this hot

water current that comes to the surface

in the North Atlantic and it and it

makes Europe this pretty balmy fun place

to be in and all of a sudden all that

cold water from

lunch and ice sheet catastrophic melt

dumps into the North Atlantic it turned

off that hot water current and froze

Europe it just froze it massive ice

sheet formed over the top of Scandinavia

and Britain and the population of people

that were living there

literally had to run south and we now

know because of genetics genetics have

become so fun that the men in Europe

abandoned the place and poured into

north into what is today Iraq and

probably there was so many that it

forced the population in Iraq to to

adopt they had to increase the caloric

output of the land they were they were

using and so they had to switch from

gathering and hunting to agriculture to

sustain this massive refugee problem of

Europeans pouring into Syria in Iraq how

obnoxious the really crazy thing is it

resulted in the world's probably one of

the world's first ever cities and it was

a really large city because the women

who got left behind by those deadbeat

dads had to figure out how to survive

and historically call most cultures most

gathering and hunting cultures the men

do the hunting the women do the

gathering you're in the middle of an ice

age there aren't a lot of plants to

gather so all of a sudden the women that

were left behind had to switch over to

get to hunting because that was the only

food available right they needed to they

needed to switch over to me and so they

instead of remaining scattered they

actually went into what is today the

Czech Republic and they found in a large

town and they began working together and

this cooperative to help each other hunt

so that they could raise their families

in this massive cooperative eventually

though and this is centuries later men

start to migrate back out of the Middle

East

and into Europe and so if you're

European this is fun you're genetically

you have a huge genetic stock that down

your

you're your mother's line that's

actually native European and then your

father's line is probably mostly

Mesopotamian just to make things really

confusing

anyway um it's not part of our identity

but it's better that you know the truth

so you know that whom you hate is

yourself it just makes you more honest

keep hating yourself that's fine

whatever it takes to wake up in the

morning I prefer hot tea but it's okay

that's what it works that's what works

please you know what I mean like you got

to be a productive member of society I'm

telling you all of this because I want

to blow up this this agriculture thing a

little bit first of all agriculture

sucked once people started doing it it

meant you couldn't keep moving and it

meant you now had a monoculture instead

of eating a little bit of this and

eating a little bit of that and eating a

little bit of this like we do today with

a grocery store right the grocery store

has created the gathering and hunting

environment you can walk in oh that

looks good in card oh it's like we've

made it's like in our hearts we just

want to be gathering hunters so we made

the grocery store but before the grocery

store before we had this luxurious

convenient crazy opulent grocery store

experience and you're doing agriculture

what do we having for breakfast hon I

was thinking about cracked wheat for

breakfast and then maybe with some beer

oh what's what's for lunch how about

some bread and some beer oh cool what's

for dinner

how about wheat soup and beer all right

you're you're gonna eat a lot of

whatever you're growing because that's

what you have available so there goes

your your dietary variety not only is it

probably boring and makes you suicidal

but it's also really unhealthy for you

to make things worse the number one way

we processed wheat was we would grind

the wheat between two stones well then

we would make bread out of it so we just

basically gave you

sandpaper and then you chew on that

because the two stones are grinding

together it's not just the two stones

are grinding the weed in between them

and so by the time you're done there's

little fine particles of dust in your

bread and you eat that it takes you in a

mall off your teeth and right bread

means no teeth after age 35 as if that

wasn't enough prior to that we had

medicine gathering and hunting societies

had medicine we now think they have

acupuncture well one of the reasons we

know that is the ice ice man he was

found in northern Italy or Switzerland I

remember where but they found this guy

that was frozen he's like was five six

thousand years old

and he has these tattoo tracts all

across his back and you know they don't

make any obvious picture it looks like a

map it looks like somebody has has made

this map on his back and then somebody

thought you know what I'm gonna look at

acupuncture and it turns out they're the

exact acupuncture sites you would do for

a person who has a bad back and the bad

digestive tract and we we know from

examining them that he had he had

stomach issues in a bad back and so it

turns out there's apparently universal

truths in acupuncture in ancient

Europeans prehistoric Europeans were

even doing it he was murdered by the way

so it's also a crime scene investigation

somebody stabbed him in the back

jerks but thank God because now we have

him to examine not morbid it's weird to

think that by the way that's the part of

Europe that my dad's my grandfather my

dad's dad's family is fun so I'm sure

I'm actually related to the Ice Man

somehow I feel like we should just

examine them a little bit more and give

him the good burial that he deserves now

let's keep them frozen that's really

cool switching over to agriculture also

means that that piece of lime that I've

planted I have to stick around and wait

for it to harvest it's not just I can't

keep moving I'm tied to that land

because I got to keep Bambi and thumper

out on my farm right but then

there's my neighbors they're a bunch of

slacker lazy bastards they haven't

planted their own field and they're

really hungry now and so they're coming

onto my field and stealing my food so I

need to smash them in the head with a

club and try and push them away from my

farm field and so we've just invented

warfare we've just invented private

property to make things worse we're now

living in these densely populated areas

or at least more densely populated areas

so if a disease breaks out we're more

likely to transmit it to each other

whereas before if a disease broke out in

the gathering and hunting band they

would just die before they had a chance

to pass it on because there was they

were so isolated from each other so

we're now having rampant diseases no

teeth or diet socks our food tastes like

crop and we're doing warfare but I

thought like probably most people that's

the key ingredient to starting

civilization next thing you know we have

government organized religion and boom

we now think based on a finding in 2007

that something else may be going on the

finding was in Syria and as you know

four years later there was this

inconvenient little civil war we found

archaeological sites in Syria where

religious monuments were built that

predated agriculture by as much as maybe

2,000 years so not predated agriculture

by 20 years or a hundred years or 200

years but possibly as much as 2,000

years one to two thousand years it's not

cloths right it might as well be a

million years away actually at that

point it means that monumental

structures weren't dependent on

agriculture as we had thought that

bringing people together into densely

populated areas wasn't apparently as

dependent on agriculture as we thought

we've since found some so archaeological

sites that are similar in Turkey and

we've been sort of going through the

ones in Turkey but we can't do any of

the archaeology on Syria in other words

I'm eager for the Syrian civil war day

and not just so that Syrians can stop

murdering each other but so we can send

archaeologists to go in there and dig

these sites up

I have a feeling that they're gonna

reveal something remarkable one of the

interesting things is we found bones and

we can test bones to see what your diet

was you really are literally what you

eat and the bones confirm that these

were not farmers they were gatherer and

hunters they really were on this pre

farm diet so it's not just we're not

just relying on carbon dating to confirm

this in any case I just want you to know

that we're we pegged the start of

civilization and how we define what it

is should be in something that we

question I certainly think we need to

throw a Hut and we need to throw it out

as fast as we can the advent of writing

that's absurdity archaeology makes that

clear just because archaeologists told

us all these other remarkable stories

what whether we peg it to government

like my original assumptions told us to

do or we peg it to the advent of

organized religion as the sites in

Turkey and Syria are clearly indicating

happened fourteen thousand years ago I

don't know I don't I don't know where to

go with this I just need the Syrian

civil war to end so we can get more data

so that's that's one of the questions

here the other one is this notion of

east-west so I want to get back to that

because I find it really strange so

think about what your your average

history class whether it was in high

school or maybe it was Western Civ one

or Western Civ two in college let's do

Western Civ one so you go in and your

textbook and your professor let's say

let's do a 16-week let's make it a

college class it's a 16-week class

you're gonna meet 32 times and in the

process you're gonna start off with

Mesopotamia right every textbook start

off with Mesopotamia why because five

thousand one hundred years ago they

started writing okay and you your

professor probably spends one day on

Mesopotamia maybe two

and next thing you know you're doing

Egypt and and you spend one maybe two

days on Egypt

the next thing you know you're doing the

Greeks and you're spending five weeks on

the Greeks and before you know it you're

doing the Romans and you're spending

like eight your late eight weeks on the

Romans and at this point you probably

have a week left after you take all the

tests out you jump into the medieval

period and quickly say it was terrible

the peasants suffered

daaad Western Civ one out of the way

Western Civ too miraculously starts in

the year 1300 and it's basically you

know Plutarch and Galileo and we have

skyscrapers and it's done we're on the

moon it's great it's great here's where

I get lost so and you've probably

already figured this out but about me by

now we want to talk about your starting

point a little bit more I mean when you

start something isn't the starting

moment kind of one of the most important

moments because doesn't it frame every

single thing you will do afterwards

now one or two class periods on

Mesopotamian the one or two class

periods on Egypt doesn't quite seem like

it's enough because listen what the

textbook and the professor admitting

Egypt and Mesopotamia founded Western

civilization even if you say no no it

happened in Syria

all right serious part of Syria is in

Mesopotamia and the rest of Syria is

immediately adjacent to Mesopotamia so

clearly the foundational moment for

Western civilization has at least

something to do with what is today Iraq

and Syria on top of it all we know that

around eleven thousand seven hundred

years ago Iraq did agriculture before

anybody else so even if you buy the

thing that I'm making I'm asking you a

question that agriculture was a key

component to starting civilization it's

still Iraq but then he but then if you

do what I do and you go no no it

government although I'm questioning this

then it's Egypt and then Iraq because

they did it next anyway in other words I

I completely agree with starting with

Mesopotamia in Egypt where I'm lost is

why are you walking away from the

founders of your civilization so quickly

especially when you consider the breadth

and depth of Egyptian history the oldest

continuous lived in City on earth is the

city of Luxor it is three thousand was

found at 3200 BC it is five thousand two

hundred years old and it's been

continuously lived in that entire 5200

years I mean that's that in and of

itself is shockingly remarkable right

when you think about think about it this

way Alexander the Great went to Egypt

2,300 years ago so when he went to Egypt

right look sir was already 2900 years

old look sir was already almost 3,000

years old like just the depth and

breadth to Egyptian history how can you

cover anything worth mentioning in two

or three classroom periods let alone the

fact that you know there was the great

library and that was really late in

Egyptian history if Egypt is 6500 years

as I'm asserting with the advent of of

government then by the time they did the

Great Library which was just 2,300 years

ago they were already 4200 years old

compared to our 240 years dude they get

410 and started with Jamestown it's

still a joke you know

but there's another really weird big

problem here so there is this other

civilization that just completely got

left out I mean it gets talked about a

little bit when you were doing the

Greeks and gets talked about a little

bit when you're doing the Romans but

just barely it's all and it's almost

like oh geez okay I guess we have to

talk about it

the Persians and then when they get

portrayed in our movies right the leader

of the Persians is this tall gay black

man right because everybody hates tall

men gay men and black men so they made

him the most evil imaginable person the

world has ever seen a tall gay black man

which is ironic since he's fighting the

Greeks the men who not only wore skirts

but they wore them so that they could

have quick access after battle you know

right what was forget the Greeks Julius

Caesar the Roman his name wasn't Julius

Caesar by the way it was Gaius Julius

Kaiser but it's okay you don't need to

know that what did his men say of them

they said Julius Caesar is a husband to

all women and a wife to all men anyway

back to Persia so first of all Persia is

on the Iranian Plateau

the Iranian plateau is named by it

because that's where the Aryans ended up

as in the Aryans as in the thing Hitler

was obsessed with as in right what we

think of as the quintessential human you

go I don't yeah whatever it's not true

you know it right I mean our society

thinks that the the average European

male male to be precise is the the

neutral person in the universe the the

perfect person the person that we look

to the person so much so that they have

to include one of these in every movie

right so there's the seven years in

Tibet like they wanted to tell a story

about Tibet they're like oh god people

watch it unless we include a Nazi here

let's put this German into that he

really wasn't Tibet but no one cared but

then they made the whole movie revolve

around Brad Pitt so that you could be

lured into watching a movie about Tibet

all right Last Samurai

they had to stick Tom Cruise in there

somewhere so you would go watch the

movie about the Japanese being amazing

they didn't need a white guy to make

that happen but of course if their white

guy isn't there it's so bad it's so bad

this thing that I'm talking about that

they made a movie about the British

stealing the Enigma machine the way they

got it was they captured a German sub

they didn't it didn't think they caught

the damn thing and when they when they

got on board they had an Enigma machine

just for the record it's not the British

or the Americans who cracked the Enigma

code during World War two it was the

poles who did it and right before Poland

was conquered they sent all their data

to the British because they were you

know it was like their last all right

we're gonna get conquered but we're not

gonna we're not gonna go down without

hurting you first and the British had

this data that the poles had been

compiling and they just needed a machine

to have that last piece to crack the

code they needed a machine and so the

British go and they capture the sub the

Hollywood movie it's an American sub

it's an American Crew that captures the

German sub really you couldn't have made

they speak English they they're white

you couldn't have made them English how

alien are the English to us that we

couldn't make a movie that was at least

remotely somewhat similar to history so

back to the Persians the Persians those

Aryans whom you hate so much that you

you cast them as tall gay black men the

Persians did really amazing things

kourosh Cyrus the Great that when the

Romans transliterated K the Greek letter

kapa which looks just like a K they

transliterated it as a C because in a

lot and C's pronounced cuff always they

never in Latin you don't forever

pronounce cut the C as a saw it's always

cut that's why it's Kaiser not Caesar

you just badan it's CAE it's not CEA how

do we get Caesar out of that anyway and

then AE was probably pronounced I that's

why it's Kaiser so Cyrus the Great is

this Persian who 2600 years ago comes up

with this brilliant idea he wants a long

story short he wants to create a massive

multicultural Empire and he almost does

it before he dies I mean he does do it

but not not it doesn't reach its

high-water mark it'll get bigger after

he dies by the time they're done they

had actually conquered the Indus River

Valley and they had named one of the

satrapies India after the Indus River

which is today in Pakistan just to make

things confusing

they'd conquered Central Asia like

almost all of it Kazakhstan Uzbekistan

Turkmenistan that whole zone they

conquered it all of Persia all of

Afghanistan the conquered Egypt the

entire Middle East except for the

southern part of the Arabian Peninsula

Turkey and they even conquered huge

swathes of what is today Greece Greece

and even a little bit of Bulgaria they

put this empire together and then

instead of subjugating everybody in

taking slaves and taking tribute and

plundering people's cities they went

welcome welcome to the Persian Empire

you're now members which means you get

the benefits of the Empire and instead

of saying okay we want you to all learn

Persian they said keep speaking whatever

language you speak that's great

instead of saying okay we all want you

to have our religion they reserve a

strand and you're

worship our God Ahura Mazda before it

became a car company instead of doing

that they said not only do you have

freedom of religion not only will you we

let you worship your own gods and have

your own religion we will actually fund

your temples we will actually do the

maintenance on your temples and if your

temples are in terrible disrepair

we'll help you rebuild them this is this

becomes a biblical story at this point

right the Jews show up and they go hey

the neo-babylonian empire when they

conquered Palestine and took us into

slavery they blew up our temple of

Solomon were you serious that you'll

rebuild our stuff and the Persians go

absolutely and so the the Jews show them

the plans I go here this is what the / -

Babylon is destroyed and the Persians

like what the hell that's a man-made

Mountain how did they destroy that they

really hated us they stuck in an upgrade

and the Persians went well we have to

rebuild it I guess but they realize the

only people on earth who had the ability

to build something like that were the

Egyptians so they went and grabbed

Egyptian engineers brought them to

Palestine and with Persian gold built

the Second Temple of Solomon that the

Romans eventually destroyed to punish

the Jews all right this is that empire

that Persian Empire it was a it was an

empire of Tolerance it was an empire

that celebrated the different cultures

if you get a chance to go to Iran it's

very hard to do because it's hard to get

a visa go to go to pester police

Persepolis and Persian they call it

tough to jump she'd there is the

staircase called the OP Adana I'm

probably totally mispronouncing it

staircase go go and look at it and what

you will see is you will see men dressed

in their native dress carrying gifts

they're carrying tribute to the emperor

darius but the men don't look like

they're in despair and beaten down the

men are in their native dress and the

reason the

the Persians did this is they wanted to

show the diversity at one point there's

a group of men who are holding hands

they're walking in chain holding hands

because the Persians wanted the

symbolism of we're in this together

Armenians and Jews and Arabs and

Babylonians and Assyrians and Egyptians

and Greeks and Taj --ax and Afghans and

Indians it's one Empire but it's many

people and the way they codified all

this a Bill of Rights the world's first

ever Bill of Rights

it not only guaranteed freedom of

religion but it guaranteed you know

slavery they banned slavery they

outlawed it and so we won't do this we

won't reduce whole populations to

subservience if you go to New York City

go to the UN building as you're walking

in the front door above the door and six

languages is a text English is one of

them so you can read it that text is

that first ever Bill of Rights from 26

centuries ago it's written also in

Persian by the way which is only fitting

since the Persians made it my point in

bringing this up is this is the idea

that you some of you anyway I have

embraced of multiculturalism this is the

idea that some of you have embraced with

the notion the United States is a

melting pot this is the idea that some

of you embrace that you should have the

right to have your own religion and it's

from Persia it spreads from Persia to

the Greeks when the Greeks execute

Socrates one of the things that they

nailed him for one of the reasons he got

the death penalty was defaming the gods

in other words the Athenian democracy

didn't have freedom of religion like the

Persian Empire did when they were

executing Socrates for defaming the gods

the other one was corrupting the youth

by giving them bad ideas and making them

question the civilization they lived

because he thought it was deeply flawed

so how did Persia get left on this story

now Persia does collapse but then it's

resurrected if it doesn't just randomly

collapse it's destroyed by a guy named

Alexander the Great

but then he gets resurrected and that

resurrection is so utterly complete that

you can go to Iran today and find

Persians named Iskandar Alexander

because they don't even though he

destroys their empire the Persian Empire

sub one they replace it with three more

there will be the slow kids and after

that the Parthians and after that the

sustain Ian's and so even though they

have to replace their empire they don't

see him as a villain they see him as an

integral part of their history somebody

to be celebrated

somebody extraordinary because they saw

this as this merger of civilizations

that they had become a little bit Greek

in the process of Alexander conquering

them and the Greeks had become a little

bit Persian in that process as well that

it wasn't it was a mutual exchange of

ideas and information we don't look at

it that way we see it as this evil dark

gross Empire being destroyed by our hero

Alexander a megalomaniac who believed

that Zeus was his dad which is why he

took 15,000 men on a violent rampage

through a stable Empire and destroyed it

and burnt their capital destroying their

library in the process wiping out

history that we'll never be able to read

because it's gone because he was a

narcissist but somehow he's the good guy

and they're the bad guys even though

they're clearly the victims here but

there's something even stranger in all

of this so in the aftermath of Alexander

the Potala means are gonna build a great

library and then maintain it well the

great library becomes the massive

repository for the world's knowledge in

a way it was our first ever attempt at

an Internet right one location you could

go to

find everything there was that was known

and they got to a million books it was

an extraordinary experiment and it

lasted a long time the library was

founded right around 290 and it was just

BC and it was destroyed in 391 ad so

we're talking six hundred and eighty

years

she's almost seven centuries and at that

place they made one incredible discovery

after the other the fur world's first

ever static rocket the world's first

ever mechanical play you turned it on it

was steam powered it would do scenes and

sounds all right they invented geometry

that's a great library Euclid did it and

he can go on and on they figured out the

size of the earth not only did they know

it was a sphere but they knew its size

they figured out that the earth wobbled

it's does one full wobble every 26,000

years think about that in one year

you're only measuring one twenty six

thousandth of the wobble they had done

such amazingly precise star measurements

that they after a few years of

observation noticed this imperceptible

wobble it's called the parallax goes on

and on well I bright was in Egypt that

was literally the heart of Western

civilization and the brain and somehow

we don't think of Egypt as being in the

West even though Egypt is we give it

credit as being one of the two founding

civilizations there was the Egyptians of

the Mesopotamians but somehow Egypt gets

left out now it is true the Great

Library gets burned which means we're

gonna have to start over again but the

place we're starting over again is

actually in the Persian Empire because

just before the Great Library gets burnt

in Alexandria the Persians had decided

they wanted a library of their own and

the escape the people who escaped from

the Roman Empire with their books trying

to get away from Theodosius the Roman

Emperor who decides to to purge Roman

Empire of all its long Christians

including its non-christian ideas he's

by the way the guy who ended the

Olympics no we won't do that anymore

pagon like everything had to go all the

knowledge all the traditions if you look

at the text of the time period of

Theodosius Emperor Theodosius he treated

the the pre-christian Romans as if they

were aliens not as if he was the

descendant of them right it's like who

they they try to destroy all the

pre-christian statues so they they would

find a statue to Emperor Marcus Aurelius

they'd melt it it was they were purging

the earth of everything pre-christian

they wanted to erase it

well that pre-christian stuff included

Aristotle and Plato and Aristotle ease

and Sophocles that included heron and

Euclid and Aristophanes and they were

doing this at the same time the Persians

were greedily gobbling that stuff up and

adding it to their collection of

knowledge and starting a new library at

Gandhi shapour but then that brings us

to the next really weird moment in this

east-west divide this Western

civilization thing where we've left it

out and I didn't discover it until I was

probably about 18 or 19 I'll just admit

I was already obsessed with history I

realized something and that was I didn't

know anything about the Middle East

during the medieval period I knew a

little bit about ancient Egypt I knew a

little bit about Mesopotamia and you I

remember who murabbi

right in his crazy code everybody's

blind and toothless good I was sick so

that was that was what we focused on of

course not

Cyrus the Great and his hey worship the

gods you want I will support that

monetarily

no no we focused on Hammurabi I knew I

knew a lot about Rome I was obsessed as

a kid and I knew a little bit about the

Greeks I didn't know anything about the

Persians right like they hadn't yet made

the movie so I didn't know they were

tall gay and black I knew a little bit

about the Vikings

I didn't know anything about medieval

medieval Middle East and I found this

book on it I went to library and I found

this book and it was written by certain

Sir John Baggett glove Basha his name is

John glove but you know how sometimes

people get a little carried away with

their names and start adding stuff to it

so Sir John Baggett glove Basha Basha is

a title

obviously so sir and he had he'd been in

the British military and when the

British pulled out of what it was then

called Transjordan Palestine but they

got renamed Transjordan and then they

got renamed just Jordan

so it's today it's the Kingdom of Jordan

when the British pulled out of Jordan he

stayed behind he went to the Jordanians

and went I don't ever want to leave I

was born British but in my heart I'm an

Arab let me stay anyway yeah we need

skilled officers and he became a general

in the trans jordanian army and he

stayed behind and he he wrote a series

of books and i got a hold of one of

these books and I read it and I couldn't

believe the hole in my knowledge base

and then went fun another one of his

books and I read it and I started trying

to fill this hole the hole was the herbs

the Arabs it turns out had invent had

built this massive empire overnight that

embraced knowledge and was shockingly

tolerant it was similar to the Persian

Empire in fact it's really remarkable

because if you look at the area that the

Arabs conquered they conquered

everything from Spain to Pakistan when

they built their empire it was like the

Persian Empire plus most of the Roman

Empire combined so it was bigger than

any empire that had preceded it one of

the things that's remarkable about it

was the majority of the world's

Christian population was in that empire

60% of all of Christendom was in that

Muslim ruled Arab Empire in the in its

first couple of centuries there were

almost no Muslims in the Arab Empire

they were the rulers but they were like

5% of the population because they didn't

force anybody to convert

so not only did they end up with the

majority of the Christian population of

earth but they were majority Christian

also and it was okay they were tolerated

that Christian population was tolerated

it tolerated and integrated into their

society because they were a tolerant

Empire now what's remarkable about this

is they began to advance human knowledge

the lens invented by Abe Nell - the same

guy who invented the camera he's also

the guy who realized that light

travelled in finite speed at a finite

speed in waves and could be broken down

into its constituent colors and that all

objects in the universe exert gravity on

each other he also invented the world's

first ever scientific method he stated

Newton's first law of motion 600 years

before Newton dabbled in calculus 600

years before Leibniz in Newton stated

Kepler's first law of planetary motion

500 years before Kepler there was a Miss

Tina the guy who invented modern

medicine he's also the guy who came up

with the idea of singularities he

effectively postulated Big Bang he's the

guy who kicked off phenomenology that

was Searle and Heidegger will later on

take on and develop further right there

was this huge blossoming of scientific

and philosophical knowledge in that time

period Nick Halden the father of

political science the father of history

the father of sociology the herbs

invented literary studies where you

would you would look at literary sources

for the purposes of trying to figure out

what the truth was

- for the purpose of trying to

understand in other words the English

departments all their existence - these

guys how can that much be carved out of

your historical knowledge when all of it

is Western that's that's the key to this

the knowledge that the Arabs were

building off of was Western the

knowledge that they made was Western and

the answer is that what we did was we

intentionally

we created this east-west paradigm to

divorce the Arabs and the Persians from

the rest of the West

that this was an intentional thing right

al Flores me invented algebra algorithms

zero Arabic numerals well you can't you

can't jettison these guys they're too

much of our foundational understanding

of the inner verse right what would we

be without algebra and algorithms to

mine your internet activity in and then

launch really nice ads directly aimed at

you customized for you to get you to buy

stuff you don't need how many times have

you flipped open opened an app or

something and saw they add that was

exactly about what you were just talking

to to somebody scrapie here's what

happened in a nutshell Europe had gone

through a phase of massive intolerance

under the leadership of the Romans

especially epitomized by Emperor

Theodosius the first Theodosius the

first declared that the Roman Empire was

a Christian only Empire in other words

he was a fundamentalist Christian who

decided to jettison any concept of

tolerance that existed in the process he

set into motion this idea that it was

Christianity versus the rest of the

world now the Romans had already had

enormous trouble with the Jewish

population right and they ultimately

burnt or destroyed the second temple of

Solomon in the process but for that

matter the Romans had had trouble with

the Christian population we all know

about Romans feeding Christians to the

Lions but Rome is now converted to

Christianity and now they've taken all

that intolerance that they had been

directing towards Christianity and other

directing it towards everybody else

aslam is born shortly afterwards the

Emperor Theodosius right is the late 300

early 400s and then Islam is born in the

early 600 s so there's about two

centuries later Islam comes into being

and so all of

religious intolerance that have been

brewing in the Roman Empire gets focused

on Muslims at a time when the Muslims

are conquering whole swathes of the

Roman Empire and so the Roman Empire

sees itself is the victim of these

people but here's the twist

that period of time that I just referred

to where I said that Muslims were

conquering the whole whole swathes of

the Roman Empire we have actually undone

that we've undone that conquest and

here's how we've done it about five

hundred years ago a German historian

came up with the concept of the

Byzantine Empire the original name of

Constantinople was Byzantium when the

Romans got there they turned Byzantium

is to Byzantium and so that's where we

get the term Byzantine Empire as in from

his aunt or in this case zantium

Constantinople had been called

Constantinople for centuries by the talk

by the time the Roman Empire collapsed

in 1453 and it was about a hundred years

later that this German historian came up

with the term Byzantium the Roman Empire

he's told us died on April I'm sorry on

September 4th 476 ad he gave us a very

precise date so this is when the Roman

Empire died so then when the Roman

Empire was conquered by the Ottoman

Empire on May 29 1453

it wasn't the it wasn't the Roman Empire

that the Ottoman Empire conquered it was

the Byzantine Empire something that

never existed at the moment that the

Roman Empire is surrendering on may 28

29 1453 it called itself the Roman

Empire in other words the Roman Empire

collapsed and then years later it gets

renamed whoa

just its last thousand years of

existence it would be like if the United

States changed its capital from

Washington DC to San Francisco right

because that's what the Romans did they

got they move their capital

Constantinople and then

a thousand years from now historians

come back let's say we change our

capital San Francisco next year

Trump decides to do it we moved the

capital of San Francisco and in a

thousand years from now a historian

comes back and renames the United States

from that moment that our capitals in

San Francisco on and he calls the United

States the the Republic of yerba buena

which you all love yeah sorry I was just

meant it's meant everybody loves mint

there was the original name San Cisco so

I came up with that for those of you are

wondering what I was really implying

well right so San Francisco was called

yerba buena at the time that the United

States and invaded it and conquered it

and they went this is a terrible name

good mint there good good herb who would

call a city that and then flip the name

to San Francisco because it sounded

cooler I have to admit I kind of agree

but do you see what I mean like it's

weird like wow you're going back and

resurrecting this ain't this old name we

don't use it anymore and you're calling

the whole Republic after that weird name

that doesn't get used anymore where did

this come from and here's where it came

from I told you it was a German who came

up with this in 476 ad there was a

German named odovacar I'm not a cool

name Otto and order Walker had

decided that he was going to take over

Italy that's tough for the Roman Empire

though because Italy was like the

symbolic core of the Roman Empire for

all intents and purposes the Roman

Empire's capital was in Constantinople

it did have a secondary capital in

Ravana and it had two Emperor's there

was the Emperor of the East and the

Emperor in the West the Emperor in the

east was Emperor Zeno in the Emperor in

the West was this guy named Romulus

Augustus an order of ocker takes his

armies up and down Italy conquers it

captures Otto Vakar caught forces the

Roman Senate to of the West cuz there

were two Senate's to

to Emperor's to sentence forces the

Romanum sent Imperial Senate to form up

and then he gets it for in front of them

on April 4 476 and he goes I am creating

the Kingdom of Italy

I am the new king he didn't say and I'm

taking it out of the Roman Empire he's

you know Italy will remain as part of

the Roman Empire I'm just the new king

I'm just the German king of the Kingdom

of Italy which is still in the Roman

Empire but now there's no need to have a

Western Roman Emperor so he tells

Romulus Augustus who I think was like 16

take off your robe he had a purple robe

he takes it off the Senate agrees to

this they vote for this to happen they

take off the robe they stick it in a box

they call FedEx FedEx comes and picks up

the box and they deliver it to

Constantinople with a note saying they

probably emailed it saying we don't need

two Emperor's Emperor Zeno is enough

Romulus Augustus is abdicating in fact

what happened on September 4 476 is

wrong sort of the Roman Empire sort of

reunified it it's switched back to

having one Capitol one Emperor the it

still had to sentence the Western Roman

Senate died somewhere in the early 600

we're not exactly sure what year it died

with such a whimper we don't know it

didn't even vote to dissolve itself that

just sort of dissolved and never came

back

Emperor Heraclius was Emperor when it

went away that's all we know government

shut down they run out of money and they

just stopped they stopped meeting stop

doing their job so they raised the debt

ceiling or change the calendar to

accommodate the fact that they weren't

allowed to have debt so that they could

have a year with ten months in it and

forever ruin my understanding of the

names of the months right just so

irritating acht is 8 October should be

the 8th month and there it is the 10th

month really really anyway why is this

important

okay great question so this German is

rewriting history to make it so that the

Roman Empire doesn't die at the hands of

the Ottoman Empire a Muslim Empire it's

the Byzantine Empire that dies at the

hands of the at the of the Ottoman

Empire and instead the jerk the Germans

destroy the Roman Empire and the reason

he wants this to happen is there's a

institution called the Holy Roman Empire

now when Napoleon Bonaparte destroyed

the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 he

declared the Holy Roman Empire is

neither Holy Roman nor an empire and by

the way I agree it was definitely not

holy it was very much not Roman although

it did have parts of Italy and it was

into an empire at all it was a

confederacy it was a confederacy of

German and Italian states mostly

city-states they were sort of clumped

together they the kings in the Holy

Roman Emperor Empire with the electors

would elect an emperor and the Emperor

did have some sway he did have some some

control over things but not not in the

way that you would think of an emperor

like we're not talking star wars Emperor

here we're not even talking like Emperor

Theodosius Emperor we what we're really

talking about is like president the

Confederate States of America right

there's there's 11 States and we're not

really sure how closely linked they are

and the guy doesn't really actually do

much except get statues erected to them

in 1965 in counties named after him

sometimes forts so this German wants the

Holy Roman Empire which is this German

Confederacy to have legitimacy if the

Germans destroyed the Roman Empire then

it's the Germans who are the heirs to

the Roman Empire so then the name Holy

Roman Empire has some meaning but then

to make things more interesting the

Ottomans had as their specified goal to

create a new Roman Empire their goal was

to create a Muslim Roman Empire

their goal was to replace the old

decrepit corrupt dying Christian Roman

Empire with a new vibrant Muslim Roman

Empire that's why they wanted

Constantinople so badly because once

they had the capital of the Roman Empire

that would not only become their capital

and it would become a splendid capital

but it would also be enormous

symbolic gesture we have Rome it's done

we've done it we've made this Muslim

Roman Empire so deep legitimize the

Ottoman Empire it became useful to have

oh no you thought you conquered Rome you

didn't you conquered the Byzantine

Empire we Germans we took out Roman

thousand years ago sorry you missed it

right we were literally in the act of

rewriting history to mean something it

didn't mean to be something it wasn't

for ideological reasons to create this

east-west divide this east-west divide

that is so weird

catch this crescent moon and star is the

symbol of the Ottomans for sure who else

the Pakistani flag has it but why does

the Pakistani flag have it it's the

symbol of Islam it's also the symbol of

the city of Constantinople the last

capital of the Roman Empire when the

Muslims took that as their holy symbol

the crescent moon and the star it had

been the symbol it had been the banner

for the capital of the Roman Empire in

other words the Muslims weren't creating

something new they were taking something

that existed and when that's cool we'll

take that for ourselves if you look at

the original coins that the Muslims

minted they have an emperor standing

with a cross on one hand and an globus

Kreuziger and globus Crusader is a globe

with a cross sticking out of it the

original Muslim coins had two crosses on

it and the Muslims didn't see any

contradiction and the fact that they

were minting Roman coins

they didn't have any Arabic script on

them anywhere the civilization that the

Muslims created had indoor plumbing

sewage water was pumped out they created

a coffee industry a sugar industry they

created they resurrected ice cream it

had existed in some shape or form went

out of existence the Arabs brought it

back it wasn't really ice cream with

sherbert it was ice with with fruit

juice in fact that's why we get the word

sherbert from its from Sharbot which is

just juice and Arabic right coffee comes

from the Arabic word Dawa sucker comes

originally from a Hindi word but through

Arabic which is just sugar sucker sift

zero comes from Arabic algebra algorithm

Admiral apricot all those are Arabic

words they were brought in zenith nadir

so all brought in to our language and

then rich and our language in the

process so I'm gonna go back a little

bit though I want to talk about one

other weird thing in this story so you

know the Vikings

so just disclaimer I am a quarter

Scandinavian so when I talk about the

Vikings like enormous chunks of pride

come welling up and it's if I sound

gross it's because I am right just just

for the record I can't help it

who here doesn't like the Vikings nobody

raised their hand okay so some of you

are dishonest oh okay there that's good

thanks

really appreciate they were really mean

so the Vikings go on this tear now that

terror that they go on is shockingly

similar to what the Arabs do except that

the Arabs do it suddenly and they end up

conquering a huge Empire in the process

well the Vikings do takes about three

centuries so it's not very sudden and

the Vikings had a little bit of a cruel

edge to them just for the record whereas

the arabs just

they didn't maybe they weren't so into

the cruelty thing but they had one thing

really in common and that was that they

thought of their homeland as merely a

starting point that it was sacred there

was there was some religious value to it

but from an economic standpoint from a

political standpoint it wasn't very

useful and the reason is think about it

what is today Saudi Arabia is the

starting point for the Arabs there are

no rivers like right there oh my god

crappy piece of real estate are you

functioning with no rivers where do you

get your water how do you do agriculture

like oh my god you wouldn't even know

the name Saudi Arabia if it wasn't for

oil because the place is basically

uninhabitable and the Arabs kind of saw

it that way they're like oh god here I

go another day and River free land

the Vikings saw Scandinavia the same way

they they saw it as a chunk of land that

you could get trees from you could go

fishing from you could raise dairy cows

and parts of it but you couldn't farm it

it's just too cold and as a result it

was actually really crappy land so one

of the goals really it's one of two

goals that the Vikings had when they

began leaving Scandinavia and attacking

places like Scotland and Ireland in

England and Germany and France and

Poland in Spain in Italy and Russia in

Lithuanian Estonia and Latvia and

Finland their goal was to get some

agricultural land to just be able to to

get out there and work the soil and

plant some plants and eat some

vegetables because they were really sick

of fish beef and cheese wheels the other

thing that the Vikings were really

interested in was trade they really

thought unlike today in the United

States that trade was the pathway to

wealth all right that your ability to

interact with other countries in a

peaceful manner where you would exchange

goods would generate huge amounts of

wealth now one of the reasons why the

Vikings turns

violent was they were having a hard time

trading with the rest of Europe because

Europe was 1200 years ago extremely poor

by extremely poor I mean sharla money I

didn't have any gold so he had to mean

to all his coins and silver like Europe

just didn't have any resources Paris was

a city of 10,000 people right like UT is

five times bigger the Vikings

turned a little vicious on their

neighbors not just to grab their land

but also to steal goods worth selling

and one of the reasons they did this was

they wanted to be able to trade with

homeland according to the Viking sagas

the Vikings were originally from Persia

and he wanted to go back to Persia and

trade with them but by the time they're

getting back to Persia in the in the

800s Persia has already been conquered

by Muslims so they're actually arriving

in Muslim Persia and those those those

Muslims not only had street lamps lit up

by oil and not only did they have silk

and linen and cotton but they were

experimenting with modern technology

like modern medicine and modern

agriculture and private property

ownership and different ways of doing

metal for example what the Arabs had

realized was that the Indians knew how

to make steel not iron steel and so the

Arabs would go to India they buy they

buy steel ingots from from India and

they'd bring it back and they'd make

steel tools steel swords steel armor and

that gave them an edge on everything and

the Vikings were like oh my god we need

a piece of this how do we get into this

and interestingly enough they began

enslaving northern Europe and taking

those slave populations and selling them

into the Persian Empire in exchange for

this technology and these goods but then

something remarkable happens and that is

they start to succeed in actually

conquering chunks of land they conquer

northern part of northern France they

they will conquer England twice they do

it lose it and get it back all right

they kept the first time they capture it

is under Knut the great and then the

second time they capture it is under

William the conquerer

well one of the things that happens to

the Vikings as they're conquering by the

way they invented Russia the Vikings

invented Russia the word Russia is a

Viking word

it's from ruse are us and what had

happened was the ruse for a tie a viking

tribe that had gotten hired by what are

today ukrainians ukrainian lords to

create order in the area the roof show

up they beat everybody up they create

order

right and then they realize why are we

submitting to these Ukrainians we're

taking over and the next thing you know

the Roose are ruling Ukraine the

original Russia and before you know what

they create Russia and then all today

Ukraine wants nothing to do with Russia

the irony is too weird a group of these

Vikings end up in butter balls which you

know today is solder Gaza it's in Spain

it's on the Ebro River in northern Spain

and the Vikings took it from the Arabs

when the Vikings conquered northern

France they dumped their Viking

languages and switched over to French

when the Vikings did the ruse thing they

dumped they dumped that and they

switched over to Russian right because

it just peasants were to uneducable you

couldn't teach them Swedish so you just

learned their language it was easier

well when they end up in in northern

Spain capturing this Muslim town from

the Muslims the next thing you know the

Vikings are dressed like Muslims they're

talking like Muslims they're adopting

Muslim society and eventually they get

it in their head why stop here let's

keep going and they go and in 1050 they

conquer Sicily Hrothgar

the Viking rough car the Norman you know

it's Roger the first he conquers Sicily

they decide because the Muslims on

Sicily Arabic was the dominant language

in Sicily at the time they decide to

adopt Arabic ways the coins that are

minted by the descendants of Hrothgar by

this

to the first right up until Henry the

six there were a few Sicilian kings the

coins on one side have Latin on the

other side have Arabic so these guys are

Catholic Vikings

ruling Arabic Sicily which by the way it

was a multi-ethnic place to begin with

there were Greeks and there were

Phoenicians and there were Romans and

then the Arabs came and they sort of

mingled with them now there's Vikings

running around Sicily and just adding

another weird nation into the mix and

the Vikings by the way start marrying

into German royal families and the next

thing you know there's like Sicily is

basically ruled by these Germans who are

mixed Viking and mixed German and it's

very complicated in the mix this guy

comes about his name is Frederick the

second not the great that's a different

guy frederick ii friedrich ii friedrich

spoke Latin French Sicilian it was six

languages Arabic and two other languages

he read Arabic ducks he he he conducted

scientific experiments because he had

learned from Arabic he had learned from

Arabic text he is reading the scientific

method he embraced this Arab

civilization and he began advancing it

by the way this is the 13th century he

wrote his own scientific treatise on

falconry he appears twice in the book he

had himself painted and he puts himself

twice his own book he wrote it in Latin

just for the record but the guy that he

cites the most the guy the biggest

source is an Arabic thinker friedrich ii

is so intent on being the sky that's

between the two civilizations between

this Arab civilization and this

Christian civilization that not only

does he continue the policies of

tolerance towards Arabs that his

predecessors had he actually will take

on the Pope in Rome himself and he got

excommunicated I think it was three

times

he ends up as the Holy Roman Emperor so

he owned basically everything from

Southern Denmark to Sicily just this

huge swath of land right through the

middle of Europe now owned in a loose

sense because the Holy Roman Empire

which he's the leader of was really more

of a confederacy but he's also the king

of Sicily in other words through most of

history when the East and the West

clashed together the people at the

center knew that both sides were just

part of the same civilization especially

when they were in the Mediterranean when

when the Greek philosopher and historian

Hecate ass made his first atlas he said

there are three continents Europe Asia

and Libya Asia was today what the Middle

East is including India by the way he

included India in that Libya is nor is

just Africa it was the Greek name for

Africa and in Europe was approximately

what Europe is today he didn't see those

as three dividing lines that separated

the three he himself was from Asia

according to the way he defined it he

was actually born in the Persian Empire

he was ethnically Greek but born in the

Persian Empire he didn't see that as a

contradiction there was nothing weird

about that that was just how things were

he saw Europe Asia and Libya as regions

within a whole today we see Africa

Europe and Asia as three separate

distinct places with you know might as

well be a thousand foot tall wall

dividing them and there are European

countries that now wish there was as

people are pouring in well of course the

people are pouring in because of the

wars United States in Europe has waged

in the Middle East destabilizing the

whole area and now the European whoa

whoa whoa what are you coming here for

and they're like well cuz you blow up my

house yeah I'd be great if you stayed

over there the Mediterranean was always

a highway it was never a divider it

didn't separate but what happened was we

started to get into the mindset that

there was this separation

and Europe really pushed Christian

Europe really pushed for the separation

and of course no single event did this

more than the Crusades because at the

moment that the Crusades happened

Christian Europe made it clear to to the

rest of the West that there was no way

to reconcile that the division was too

great that Christian Europe was willing

to do anything and everything it could

to take Jerusalem back including just

absolute cruel depravities and the

Crusades right they would they would

slaughter whole populations they went on

these rape fests at one point they

captured salahuddin sister and they

raped her to death for no other reason

than just to antagonize him of course

they'll pay because he kicks their ass

afterwards but right that recalcitrant

division is the division that we're