Ancient Mesopotamia Part 1: The Sumerians (4100 - 1750 BCE) 

Beer and sex. Ah, civilization.

Child: But Father, someone said that our civilization was spawned by ancient aliens. Father: Oh you sweet Sumer child.

We goin’ back to Uruk with this one, boys.

Sargon of akkad has Been real quiet since this dropped.

In my school years I was fascinated with Sumer, such a unique civilization whose legacy we still use (e.g. sexagesimal system for time). Unfortunately Internet wasn't widely available then, so it was extremely difficult to find information on it accessible for a kid.

Dad joke coming: Q: Gilgamesh, where did you come from? A: sumer (points), over there Good overview, as always.

How accurate would those illustrated city scapes shown in the beginning of this video have been?

I was thinking about Sumerians last night and that I would like to watch a video on them... Dave knew

been waiting for this one

I've never been this early😊 Love this guy and his information

Hello I am a 12th grade student and I want to become the first in my region. What is your advice for me to become a doctor in the future, God willing?!

Why i feel a sense of proud as an iraqi 😅

Some theories claim that their languages is similar to Turkic languages and many similar words are common between them

it was around that time that things really started going bad for the humans

Prof you're awesome

ticle

Ooh, boy, I can't wait to get to the part with the aliens 😁

Has Billy Carson watched this video?

Debunk shout out to Chris White’s “Ancient Aliens Debunked” 🌙 🗿 🤙🏽

I saw this and thought Dave was going to rail on how stupid the Mesopotamians were and tell us all the arguments against them.

lets go 😇

You just out of the blue drop a video with title and no context? Is this a new series you’re doing or what?

There isn't enough out of Gobekli Tepe and Karahan to cover?

third lol

🤮

Epic of Gilgamesh also had the flood myth way before Noah's story became part of Abrahamic religions.

Professor Dave coming in hot with the Sumerian content to even further discredit Billy Carson😂🤘🤘

The thumbnail had me thinking I had somehow screwed my yt algorithm 😅😅😅

Yes! Simple and factual history rehashes! I’ve been looking forward to something like this for a while. Can’t wait to get the rest!

Not enough debunk material on ancient aliens… Thanks for this.❤

Sargon of Akkad ! Thumbnail bringing some flashbacks

It's mindboggling how such a sophisticated society can grow and thrive for a thousand years and more, only to disappear.

I always found jt fascinating how their form of recording is literally the only form of writing that becomes more permanent when it is cooked at 500 degrees under a burning pile of building

Thanks for this Prof!

And people have spent their entires live studying this one area.

"...forces the city's young people to labor for him." This feels familiar. At the beginning of the pandemic, our then-ruler decreed that food service workers like me were "essential workers" and could not shelter in place, requiring us to carry travel papers in case we were stopped for violating curfew. Fun times.

Sargon of Akkad has a birth story almost exactly like what later became Moses’ birth story.

Thank you Dave for this Video!!

Awesome!!! Thanks buddy ❤🤘🏻

the only youtube intro i geniunly enjoy ✨

I’m really excited for this series!! :) Learning about the Dead Sea Scrolls and ancient Mesopotamian religions in my mid-teens really opened my eyes and started me down the path of deconstruction. Knowledge is freedom 💯

Dave, i love you but can you NOT use AI in your videos please.

Carl is putting in the work

Didn't make this a soulja boy parody. 1/5.

Why did you change the thumbnail?

Will you ever debunk conspiracies about Tartaria?

Great video, thank you very much , note to self(nts) watched …… <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="769">12:49</a>

Yeah, liked that a lot. Enjoy the history of stuff. Also, some science history of would be great. I doth my Dave cap to you, Sir.

I love the fact that you're talking about history but the AI art gotta go. It's too exaggerated.

Using CE and BCE is just cringe, change my mind.

*The Enuma Elish would later be the inspiration for the Hebrew scribes who created the text now known as the biblical Book of Genesis.* Prior to the 19th century CE, the Bible was considered the oldest book in the world and its narratives were thought to be completely original. In the mid-19th century CE, however, European museums, as well as academic and religious institutions, sponsored excavations in Mesopotamia to find physical evidence for historical corroboration of the stories in the Bible. ***These excavations found quite the opposite, however, in that, once cuneiform was translated, it was understood that a number of biblical narratives were Mesopotamian in origin.*** *Famous stories such as the Fall of Man and the Great Flood were originally conceived and written down in Sumer,* translated and modified later in Babylon, and reworked by the Assyrians ***before they were used by the Hebrew scribes for the versions which appear in the Bible.*** ***In revising the Mesopotamian creation story for their own ends, the Hebrew scribes tightened the narrative and the focus but retained the concept of the all-powerful deity who brings order from chaos.*** Marduk, in the Enuma Elish, establishes the recognizable order of the world - *just as God does in the Genesis tale* - and human beings are expected to recognize this great gift and honor the deity through service. *"Enuma Elish - The Babylonian Epic of Creation - Full Text - World History Encyclopedia"* *"Sumerian Is the World's Oldest Written Language | ProLingo"* *"Sumerian Civilization: Inventing the Future - World History Encyclopedia"* ("The Sumerians were the people of southern Mesopotamia whose civilization flourished between c. 4100-1750 BCE." "Ancient Israelites and their origins date back to 1800-1200 BCE.") *"The Myth of Adapa - World History Encyclopedia"* Also discussed by Professor Christine Hayes at Yale University in her 1st lecture of the series on the Hebrew Bible from <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="530">8:50</a> to <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="870">14:30</a> minutes, lecture 3 from <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1710">28:30</a> to <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2495">41:35</a> minutes, lecture 4 from <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="0">0:00</a> up to <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1290">21:30</a> minutes and <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1440">24:00</a> up to <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2130">35:30</a> minutes and lecture 7 from <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1460">24:20</a> to <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1510">25:10</a> minutes. From a Biblical scholar: "Many stories in the ancient world have their origins in other stories and were borrowed and modified from other or earlier peoples. *For instance, many of the stories now preserved in the Bible are* ***modified*** *versions of stories that existed in the cultures and traditions of Israel’s* ***older*** *contemporaries.* Stories about the creation of the universe, a cataclysmic universal flood, digging wells as land markers, the naming of important cultic sites, gods giving laws to their people, and even stories about gods decreeing the possession of land to their people were all part of the cultural and literary matrix of the ancient Near East. *Biblical scribes freely* ***adopted and modified*** *these stories as a means to express their own identity, origins, and customs."* *"Stories from the Bible"* by Dr Steven DiMattei, from his website *"Biblical Contradictions"* ------------------------------------------------------------------ In addition, look up the below articles. *"Genesis <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="61">1:1</a>-2 --- not a creation ex nihilo"* - Dr Steven DiMattei *"Yahweh was just an ancient Canaanite god. We have been deceived! - Escaping Christian Fundamentalism"* *"Hammurabi - World History Encyclopedia"* (Hammurabi (r. 1792-1750 BCE) was the sixth king of the Amorite First Dynasty of Babylon best known for his famous law code which served as the model for others, *including the Mosaic Law of the Bible.)* *"Debunking the Devil - Michael A. Sherlock (Author)"* *"The Greatest Trick Religion Ever Pulled: Convincing Us That Satan Exists | Atheomedy"* *"Zoroastrianism And Persian Mythology: The Foundation Of Belief"* (Scroll to the last section: Zoroastrianism is the Foundation of Western Belief) *"10 Ways The Bible Was Influenced By Other Religions - Listverse"* *"January | 2014 | Atheomedy"* - Where the Hell Did the Idea of Hell Come From? *"Retired bishop explains the reason why the Church invented "Hell" - Ideapod"* Watch *"The Origins of Salvation, Judgement and Hell"* by Derreck Bennett at Atheologica (Sensitive theists should only watch from <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="420">7:00</a> to <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1050">17:30</a> minutes as evangelical Christians are lambasted. He's a former theist and has been studying the scholarship and comparative religions for over 15 years) *"Top Ten Reasons Noah’s Flood is Mythology - The Sensuous Curmudgeon"* *"Forget about Noah's Ark; There Was No Worldwide Flood | Bible Interp"* *"The Search for Noah’s Flood - Biblical Archaeology Society"* *"Eridu Genesis - World History Encyclopedia"* *"The Atrahasis Epic: The Great Flood & the Meaning of Suffering - World History Encyclopedia"* Watch *"How Aron Ra Debunks Noah's Flood"* (8 part series debunking Noah's flood using multiple branches of science) *"The Adam and Eve myth - News24"* *"Before Adam and Eve - Psychology Today"* *"Gilgamesh vs. Noah - Wordpress"* *"Old Testament Tales Were Stolen From Other Cultures - Griffin"* *"Parallelism between “The Hymn to Aten” and Psalm 104 - Project Augustine"* *"Studying the Bible"* - by Dr Steven DiMattei (This particular article from a critical Biblical scholar highlights how the authors of the Hebrew Bible used their *fictional* god as a mouthpiece for their own views and ideologies) *"How do we know that the biblical writers were* ***not*** *writing history?"* -- by Dr Steven DiMattei *"Contradictions in the Bible | Identified verse by verse and explained using the most up-to-date scholarly information about the Bible, its texts, and the men who wrote them"* -- by Dr. Steven DiMattei

I'm from iraq and thanks sir for the highlight of our ancient history ❤

Unrelated to this video, I would find it fascinating if Mr Dave would cover the phenomenom which I suppose Jung coined as synchronicity

Thank you for this. Really good entry level. I'll just remark my dislike of English-as-matter-of-fact pronunciation. i think foreign names, in particular here, should be kept weird: *Shoomehr, Oorook…* it's your language that's weird, not theirs.

Actually I was talking to the sumarians about wave conjugations and everything the other day

Right after I had my exam on Mesopotamian civilization 😭😭

Omg this video is amazing and so informative! I recently found out I have some family on my mom’s side from Iraq and my cousins teach me some things about the place. So now I can actually have a conversation with them. Thank you for educating me!

Prof Dave, how in the world does one go about learning to read this cuneiform language. That appears to be a lifelong pursuit. Learning to read - then interpreting text, establishing timelines, building reliable maps, etc seems like a monumental pursuit of many researches over many lifetimes. If you could share just some insight I would be grateful.

Your debunking guide to creationism is great. Please create one for moon landing and ancient aliens conspiracies, these are just awful. 10 years ago almost no one in my country (Poland) questioned moon landing and thanks to tiktok now people are coming up with such riddiculous argument that sometimes I don't even know how to answer properly, so that they understand.

Thanks, really need this for my AP (Basically, filipino version of history classes.) lesson.

eagerly waiting for the episode of anatolians/hurrians

As a frequent viewer, it was a bit of a surprise to see my own artwork used as your thumbnail.

It is also interesting to analize the ancient egiptian texts. There is a text that talks about the "golden rule" (treat others like you would like to be treated) centuris before the bible did.

For the algorithm, I comment on a science educational video too, not just videos of debunking idiots.

Joegan needs to be silenced for his blatent idiocy. Please help

Investing is not just about making money; it's about aligning your investments with your values and making a positive impact on the world.

Can't wait for the miniminuteman collab

Six or eight thousand years ago they laid down the law

Do more of this. I love it

Amazing we know that shit.

Thank you for the video

Please 1+ hours videos.

great stuff, thanks!

NOOOOO GO BACK WE'VE GONE TOO FAR

Dave is nerding out again.

... and lo, the ancient aliens descended to build man''s own monuments for him...

Good stuff. Thanks.

Is it also possible that cuneiform was based on the Egyptian hieroglyphs?

55 years ago I read that cuneiform is derived from cunnus which means fertile valley and means also wedge and refers to the shape of female reproductive features. I have no certainty on this but it sounds reasonable.

Wow!

Euuuuuuu phrates river

Professor Dave, make engineering content please, (Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering in separate playlists like your other videos, etc), you already know Physics and all foundations. Please!

Prof dave how about gobekli teki in malta? Sorry for the spelling

Oh they were more than friends.. more like friends with benefits

Thought he was talking about Sargon of Akkad (Carl Benjamin).

Can you do an episode addressing the absurdity of the book of Mormon origin story?

Very strong beards in this society

Who is that well-groomed man at the end of the video? Your brother, perhaps? 😂

Come on Sir, you can't spit out quality videos all the time, there is no time to do anything else :)

I love these videos. This reminds me of another video I watched a while back that talked about Göbekli tepe. It is a nearly 12000 year old structure found in turkey. Would be amazing if you could make a video about it. From what I know, the place seems to indicate that whoever was living at this time and place were in a transitional period from hunter gatherer to the early agricultural society. That's about a thousand years before the earliest recorded evidence of agriculture in the world.

Ahhh, not the Hunter-Gatherers😂😂😂iykyk

The thumbnail was originally made for the anti-feminist right-wing youtuber Carl Benjamin, who goes by the username Sargon of Akkad. I think you should change it to avoid associations that you might not want.

💯🖖

i got the mesopotamia mania🤡

aw man i am not first again

Enkidu is so real for that

So it begins...

"iltam zumrā rašubti ilātim litta''id bēlet nišī rabīt igigī ištar zumrā rašubti ilātim litta''id bēlet iššī rabīt igigī šāt mēliṣim ru'āmam labšat za'nat inbī mīqiam u kuzbam 7ištar mēliṣim ru'āmam labšat za'nat inbī mīqiam u kuzbam [š]aptīn duššupat balāṭum pīša simtišša ihannīma ṣīhātum šarhat irimmū ramû rēšušša baniwā šimtāša bitrāmā īnāša šit'arā eltum ištawša ibašši milkum šīmat mimmami qātišša tamhat napalsušša bani buārum bāštum mašrahu lamassum šēdum tartāmī tešmê ritūmī ṭūbī u mitguram tebēl šīma ardat tattadû umma tarašši izakkarši in-nišī inabbi šumša ayyûm narbiaš išannan mannum gašrū ṣīrū šūpû parṣūša ištar narbiaš išannan mannum gašrū ṣīrū šūpû parṣūša qa-a-at in-ilī atar nazzāzuš kabtat amassa elšunu haltatma ištar inilī atar nazzazzuš kabtat amassa elšunu haltatma šarrassun uštanaddanū siqrīša kullassunu šâš kamsūši nannarīša ilaqqûšim iššû u awīlum palhūšīma puhriššun etel qabûša šūtur ana anim šarrišunu ma-la-am ašbassunu uznam nēmeqim hasīsam eršet imtallikū šī u hammuš ramûma ištēniš parakkam iggēgunnim šubat rīšātim muttiššun ilū nazuzzū epšiš pīšunu bašiwā uznāšun šarrum migrašun narām libbišun šarhiš itnaqqišunūt niqiašu ellam ammi-ditāna ellam niqī qātīšu mahrīšun ušebbi li'ī u ayyālī na-am-ra-i-i išti anim hāmerīša tēteršaššum dāriam balāṭam arkam mādātim šanāt balāṭim ana ammi-ditāna tušatlim ištar tattadin siqrušša tušaknišaššum kibrāt erbêm ana šēpīšu u naphar kalīšunu dadmī taṣṣammissunūti an-nīrīšu bibel libbīša zamar lalêša naṭûmma ana pîšu siqri ea īpuš ešmēma tanittaša irīssu libluṭmi šarrašu lirāmšu ad-dāriš ištar ana ammi-ditāna šarri rā'imīki arkam dāriam balāṭam šurkī libluṭ"

coooool

I thought this was a continuation of the anthropology/archaeology series for a moment.