Ancient Civilizations Youve Probably Never Heard Of 

Scam! You don't need a VPN, it's just Snake Oil!

Flexible abacus seems more accurate than 'crude' abacus. And PLEASE! These cultures had NOTHING to do with Christianity. PLEASE use BCE/CE!

@@victoriaeads6126 I can't challenge your proper use of the New Age timeline designation... I do, however, find it amusing that it "triggered" you enough to actually comment on it...😆

Jesus Christ a 2 minute ad in a 16 minute video. At least most RU-vidrs only make us skip 1 minute of a. Video lol.

Look up Squatter Man Symbol and Anthony Perat

😂😂😂😂

Yeah honestly

A channel about famous quotes?

Because he's real name is fredrico.

Oh DIP

I second this

@@ghiggs8389 Thirded! Would love a whole series of these, though that may not be realistic. There are other societies known to have existed in the ancient Near East, however, which are barely known despite their having been almost certainly key in the development of agriculture long before is generally understood to have happened. As with so many other issues, however, a lack of attention to them means no funding to look for more sites.

Agreed although I actually knew about the Nok because they were mentioned in a history text book during my middle school years and the Vinca are mentioned in the book Noah’s Flood.

The Taklamakan civilisation in Xinjiang, in western China in what is today the Taklamakan Desert. They were a Caucasian people similar to those in centra Asia or India today and the best record of them is in the Uramqi Museum in Uramqi, Xinjiang, China. This agricultural area turn to desert either through climate change or by destroying the soil and the people either went away or died out.

I have heard it said that forests precede civilisations and deserts follow them. The world today is losing arable land due to soil degradation and its productivity is only maintained by a once only supply of fossil fuels. The seeds for today's civilisation's collapse have been planted and seem to be fruiting now as I type.

Thanks

Not all heroes wear capes 🙏

I reacently learnt through other channels here on YT how much ancient African Culture has been destroyed and deliberately ruined to deprave Africa of it's history. Made me want to cry... I vaguely remember the name of a city. Rapta, I think it was.

It’s likely just that the first metallurgical culture that the Nok encountered were iron-age, already past bronze. They could’ve simply skipped ahead technologically, leading to a miss of extra stratification that arose from agriculture and the bureaucratic monarchal systems required for an empire

@@bendover9813 Which Iron Age culture would they have encountered at the time they were around?

well the one thing we do know is the great humor coming out of Nok, Nok Jokes.

​@@Pushing_Pixels if I were to guess - it'd be something like: if they only picked up iron smelting in approx 700BC (as per video) and they came from somewhere further north (as per the video (if I understand correctly)) then the answer to "who could they possibly have learned iron smelting from" .... is _every_ other culture in or around the mediterranean, _all_ of whom had had iron smelting for at least 500-1000 years before that.

100%

Vinca was the one I'd heard of, but maybe that's because I read too much feminist literature as a kid. Marija Gimbutas, Merlin Stone, Eisler, people like that. These were some... strange women. Gimbutas had some starkly nativist sympathies (she's been slandered as a N-zi); all of them were hostile to Christianity. With modern genetics and linguistics, Gimbutas was rehabilitated in her take on the Kurgan invasion; I guess the others might get some new respect as well.

I'd heard of the nok before, but that was it

​@@dima97Heisenberg?

I grow vinca in my garden, so I was surprised at that recognition!

So true. Everything’s so sensationalized and cheesy these days. I hate to admit that I get caught up in it far too much. So lucky to have Simon keeping it objective and free of sensational “narrative “

Because Civ III is best hehe

aren't we all

I remember learning about ancient Egypt, Sumer, Babylon, Greece, and Rome in grade school

Lol I went to public schools in Louisiana so all I learned is that Jesus was American and white and he destroyed all other civilizations with his magical 1911 that he invented

I would argue (on your behalf) that ceramic and even glass are forms of stone and is clearly better than metal where you need high temperatures and resistance to rust.

we can also add the quality of the ores into the mix of usefulness as well, and the alloyed material you get from initial refining. and we can look at the PreColumbian Native Americans; North Centeral and South to see how quality plays a role, there where some civilizations that dabbled in smelting, certainly it was not just panned gold and copper that the Native Americans used, but they did not use iron often. it was used, it was known how to beat a chunk of iron into a tool, presumably even known to some degree how to smelt it. But only one stable civilization actually smelted a lot of the stuff, and it was not used for much, just fixing stones together, there where reports from early contact of some Native America loggers using iron tools as well but not often. Quality matters a lot, it matters less when you have the smelting process down but it matters a lot to even get to the point of smelting and refining.

Stone is ubiquitous, but you don't use just any stones, you need flint or vulcanic glass - amorphous silica oxide rocks. It's like earth is ubiquitous, but good clay isn't, fertile soil isn't.

@@catherine_404 I've coincidentally been reading a paper which suggests that anhydrous glass is comparable to steel. Most stony asteroids are basically crushed basalt and obsidian. The Sun has long ago baked all the water out of them. That will suck for colonists but if miners bring their own water, it'll be happy-hunting for, basically, Superman's obsidian

Self-expression is a primary hallmark of humanity, if you ask me. The act of creation, of making something with one's own hands, as well as the desire to leave something behind, seems to be as old as what we'd call "anatomically modern humans. I find it super cool too that some of the oldest musical instruments we've found are nearly as old as the oldest rock art.

​​@@semaj_5022or maybe they are all just complex rituals for social communication, learning and mating? I love art too but this perception of it being something special that makes us human is so oblivious to how behavioral patterns in social animals often become specialised and complicated... If you look at the bigger picture it makes sense that self expression, is a tool for communication, not some transendant gift of humanity 🙄

@YolandaHalfAlmonde I wasn't saying there's some "higher purpose," just that it's an extremely human thing to do. While plenty of ancient art and expression likely had a purpose, you also can not discount that not *everything* has a purpose. Sometimes, we do things simply for no other reason than wanting to do them or because they're enjoyable to do. While many things are likely enjoyable because they confer an evolutionary benefit to derive pleasure from them(eating, play, sex, etc.), not everything is going to have such a purpose. Though in that vein, I propose there's likely at least one evolutionary reason we may get pleasure from making things. Having a sense of accomplishment and a desire to share our creations with others likely ensures both individuals stay motivated to keep making things, and innovations are able to spread through a population. The pathways that allowed tool technology to take root, spread, and improve likely also helped art and music spread and develop, alongside helping to cultivate and reinforce creative thinking, which would be beneficial in both tool making and creation of art.

i think it's easy for us to forget that people have always been *people* -- we've always created art and stories, we've always had petty squabbles over nonsense, we've always cared for the ill/injured/elderly, we've always been insatiably curious. we find art and instruments everywhere we know humans (and even some of our prehistoric brethren) lived. evidence suggests that humans sang before we spoke. there's little that gets me more emotional than things like the handprints of children in ancient clay or toys just like the ones we give children today -- carved animals with wheels they can pull along on string or the little ducks embroidered on clothes in king tut's tomb. we have always needed and created art, and i think remembering that tells us far more about how humans have always existed than many would assume

It was good to see something more obscure, not the usual suspects.

How about cultures that relied on degradable materials like plant and animal products, and they lived in environments which destroy such materials. There barely anything left of such cultures.

@@catherine_404 To leave nothing behind, not even a stain on the landscape - isn't that what we now think is the ideal way to live?

Yes, they were. Greeks, Romans and Egyptians had archaeologists of their own.

Roman were pretty new if compared with Egyptian. Don't mix them.

@@-rate6326 They still had people digging up the past and being amazed by it.

@ every major civilization had peoples like that. Records from them didn't survive. Roman didn't exist when most of these civilization existed.

@ Assyrians too. Ashurbanipal built what can only be described as a museum, cataloguing old tablets the Assyrians and Babylonians had dug up and attempting to translate them to his neo-Assyrian Akkadian dialect

Yeah, but gotta realise that the word 'alloy' didn't mean 2 knobs of goat shit back then 🤔

@@kevwills858 I'm using modern terms. People who smelted copper ore usually did so either by advancing from the Copper Age or by learning from their neighbours, and any that smelted it to copper learnt that when they added some weird rocks to the mix, the result was way better soon enough to never really do it for enough time to warrant the "Age" moniker.

@@kevwills858 The **only** way to make bronze is to alloy copper. The chief impediment to bronze age production was lack of tin (which is significantly rarer than copper). The earliest (known) currency was electrum coins (made of alloyed gold and silver) from around Illyria. You can't just assume that ancient people were stupid. In all likelihood, the average ancient was more intelligent than the average modern, because back then your stupidity would get you killed while now stupidity is subsidized.

The aboriginal peoples of Australia and New Zealand aren't a singular culture, though. They have an array of various tribal identities and cultures that are in no way homogeneous. Calling the aboriginal peoples of Oceana a singular culture is like saying that Indigenous Americans were all one culture.

@@SkunkApe407 Oh that was by no means what I was trying to say but I can understand how it came off that way. I'm well aware that there are hundreds of First Nations in Australia. I just thought it would be cool if Simon could bring some attention to those cultures. Literature often calls Aboriginal Australians (as a group) the "longest continuing culture" but doesn't actually ever say "this Nation has history dating back X amount of years and these Peoples have history going back Y amount of years" so it's a bit difficult to actually find that information.

@@-el-gato no worries. You are correct, though. The aboriginal Australians are incredibly fascinating people. The same goes for any Polynesian peoples, as well. It is mind-boggling to think that those folks were able to venture out of Asia on primitive, yet simultaneously advanced boats, and populate the most far flung and remote land masses on the planet. Truly awe inspiring stuff.

​@@SkunkApe407 human migration to southeast asia and oceania came in many "waves". new zealand was first inhabitated by maori people in like 14th century CE, far later than aboriginal australia.

@@rizkyadiyanto7922 and your point is? All you've done is further prove my point that the various peoples of Oceania are not one in the same. What, you think that human settlement of the Americas was a one-and-done migration? It happened in waves, as well. Most landmasses were populated that way.

Bada bum bum tssssh!

No

@@L33Reacts Yes

... and then insane Korean emperors did their best to bring Korea back to the stone age

I was wondering about the zodiac; this is a big thing on the OldEuropeanCulture blog. The zodiac matters if you are a farmer. You better plant your crops in the correct season

That would sit very nicely with Vietnamese lore. The lore said there was initially 100 tribes and at some point half of them left sail to the sea and half stayed inland.

Makes you wonder what an archeologist 2000 years from now would make of key chain logo or a partly preserved billboard.

Many indigenous American tribal groups saw a similar jump from stone tools to iron when Europeans started venturing into the Americas. It is entirely reasonable that a similar scenario has played out in other parts of the globe.

I like the idea of symbols being a form of written name. It reminds me cattle brands to denote ownership

Can't let Africa have anything

@@JcoleMc the rest of the world had already begun using iron tools prior to the Nok culture's adoption of the technology. It isn't "taking" anything from Africa. Especially not when talking about a single, short-lived culture. Try dropping the victim mentality for a minute. You might actually learn something.

With respect, you could easily find these things independently?

A cubit is the distance between a man's elbow and the tip of his middle finger. A hectare is ten thousand square meters.

@@JodyOwen-we6oo for some reason my brain will not commit conversion tables into long term memory. I am always hoping one day the information will be presented to me in some novel way and I will all of a sudden get it. Apparently today is not that day.

@@SkunkApe407 I had somehow never even heard that a Cubit was something so simple, if not a bit ambitious. I think I can lock that info in. I would love to say the same about hectares but I'd be a liar. I truly do appreciate it and at least today I can say I know. 🤘🤘🤘

1 cubit is 0.05864 feet. 1 hectares is 0.00476497 football field.

I also though the Vinca etchings looked like constellations.

BMAC for the win

How do you know they reintegrated then and weren't just simply wiped out by invasion, superstition or a virus ?? Utopian thinking me thinks ?

Check the mesolithic Lepenski Vir culture aswell as Starčevo and Vučedol culture. All of those are related to Vinča.

He has it all 😄, besides patience and Audio ... ✌

I'm glad somebody else noticed that too. As soon as that picture popped up, I thought "I don't know what that is, but that's not cotton."

I just left a comment about that too. I should have searched using keyword "cotton" first. As I noted in my comment, although there are several varieties of cotton, none of them look like cottongrass with one bud per stalk.

It really isn’t

Like Tiahuanaco? They were pretty advanced without much martial-imagery. Huari, yeah, was a violent empire...