Five Ancient "Innovations" that Set Humanity Back 

That’s 3 ….. well, 2.

Glad to know I wasn't the only one hearing things😂 Even turned cc's on quick just to make sure

Beat me to it lol

I'm so glad the editor just completely ignored him 😂😂

I had to rewind to see if I had heard it correctly

Nah, media controlled by 1% in general. Social media are just quickest and easiest to manipulate, but fox lies and co are just as toxic and even more dangerous...

Public forums has existed throughout the history along with its toxic societal impacts, if you have problem with it now then your problem is with the Internet, which allows it on a unprecedented global scale without the need of identity, credibility and accountability.

Both a great boon and a great curse

@@RadenWA Public forums used to be physical spaces where your nonsense could have real life consequences and where idiots were laughed off the stage. Here you can parrot your bullshit to anyone willing to listen with 0 consequences. The village idiots used to be isolated in their own stupidity, now they can connect with any village idiot around the world

@@RadenWA You and I both know that the internet is an incredibly deceptive place to the point that scams abound.

In some cases, there were right. It has many properties that could help cure many diseases. Ironically, it's all temporary since it will also poison you horribly.

Considering the lead poisoning, mercury poisoning and everything else, it's no surprise everyone was a blade wielding lunatic... "We're not conquering you! It's a mercy killing! The past IS the worst!"😂

It's still used as a gold extraction method in 3rd world countries

Apparently heavily used by the Mayans

@@micahgelfand8282 any gold empire used mercury as their main extraction method after getting the gold out of the rock

That bugged me too. The Romans, for instance, were _experts_ at torturing humans. The use of crucifixion with the T-shaped crossbeam on an upright pole was pure torture and they knew exactly how to make it incredibly painful for a really long time. It's said that some crucified men would hang up there for many days ... putting the nail through the lower part of the hand where it meets the wrist would put it right through the sciatic nerve, causing a shooting fiery pain, plus the radius and ulna would keep the spike from ripping out ... there's much more to it than that, but I'm getting depressed typing it out. He might be referring to torture as a form of getting information, but it still doesn't seem correct that it "started" with the Catholic Church in the 1300s.

Yeah that sounds like antiCatholic propaganda

​@@daffers2345the earliest archeological evidence for torture (that we are aware of at least) comes from like 7000 BC and it's mentioned in ancient scriptures that predate not just the Catholic Church but even the earliest parts of the Old Testament, so it's definitely bullshit.

@@igorbednarski8048 I believe you! I'm just pointing out that it didn't start with the Catholic Church, so I think the video is wrong :/

@@daffers2345 well, yeah, my comment was not a criticism of your comment, it was a criticism of the video

Similar correction: Roman concrete isn't superior to modern recipes. A lot of modern concrete contains rebar (steel bars or grids) that help give it tensile strength. Roman concrete did not have this, and as such wasn't that great under tension. The upside is that Roman concrete lasts longer. The steel in reinforced concrete expands and contracts thermally, causing gradual cracking and weakening of the concrete around it. Over decades, it will break down. Because Roman concrete doesn't have rebar, it will last a lot longer. But so will a lot of non-reinforced modern concrete.

@@huwday1131 Hated seeing his script get those wrong within 20 seconds. Simon's channels are pretty worthless for factual information.

Similar correction: ancient kohl wasn't toxic to the wearers--the preparations used protected against endemic eye diseases and were thus medicinal as well as cosmetic.

at least they didnt make it out of carbon fiber and epoxy

@@huwday1131 An addition to your correction: Using modern material spectrograph we actually know exactly what was in Roman Concrete. turns out the "secret ingredient" was just plain old seawater and Quicklime instead of slaked lime.

People still drank alot more water than many think they did though, as natural springs are pretty safe

That was limited to larger towns and cities, where waste could get into wells. Even then, it was weak brown ale at around 1-2%. Wine was common enough, but you wouldn't start the day with it unless you were wealthy.

Your wrong. You’re quoting false history and things you think are true. Learn before you saybthings

​@@jasongermany5786"your wrong"...so entertaining seeing a person who can't even use proper grammar scold others 😂

Tainted water did kill and there are famous instances of it but it was not a huge issue until the early 19th Century and even then, only in industrial cities such as London.

lead containers were thought of as elite products compared to the commoners' clay vessels haha!

And they didn’t die from it. The point is that lead poisoning is way overblown. It wasn’t a thing then and really it’s not a thing now.

​@@jasongermany5786You don't typically die from lead poisoning, it effects your brain function, and especially so in children who still have developing brains.

​@@jasongermany5786the life expectancy during the roman empire was 25 years

@@_gsp12now take out the % that didn’t make it past infancy….

that's the problem you see; That is hard and the interrogator and his boss don't care if you are innocent or not. They only care about conviction rates. In their minds accusation = guilty. It was true back in medieval times, it is more true then ever today.

@@OnionChoppingNinja I’m referring to torture for the purpose of gaining intel, like torturing POWs, not torturing people into making confessions, false or genuine.

@@evilsharkey8954 Same effect can be seen there - the whole Iraq War was based on confessions under torture that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Clearly Bush and whoever else wanted to attack Iraq, and wanted that confession whether or not it was true.

“Never start with the head [hit]. It makes the suspect all…woozy”. -The Joker (The Dark Knight 2008)

That depends on what information you're after. Yes, the victim will tell you whatever they think will make the pain stop - but that includes the truth, so the issue is whether you can identify the truth when you hear it. Torture is utterly useless for questions like 'Did you do it?' or 'Who were your co-conspirators?', but questions like 'Where is the bomb?' can - not _should,_ just can - be effectively answered by torture.

Not the hero that they deserved, but the hero that they needed 😂😂😂

I should have read a little further… your comment is accurate. I got all touchy when I saw the pattern welded blade in the intro too.

Agreed, my magnacut steel blade is orders of magnitude better than the best of the best older steels.

Was JUST about to nerd-out and comment something similar!

The video editor probably just has a sub to Storyblocks or something like that, its just a limitation of the job unfortunately.

​@@frostreaper1607 what does this have to do with anything?

Modern playgrounds still have seesaws 😢

According to Google translate, "ad glatium" means, "to the gladiolus". I like the idea of a gladiator poking another gladiator or a condemned criminal with gladiolus. LOL.

Yea, the statement that torture wasn't used until ... is easily refuted.

He said it wasn't common. But in ancient Greece it was thought that the only way you could trust a slaves testimony was if it was given thru torture

​@@DILFDylFyea but they don't have the lions anymore

Did you not catch the part where he mentioned crop rotation as the later solution to S/B's issues?

I did catch that. However, he failed to mention the fact that farmers burn their crops every year. That is part of what keeps crops fertile. However, rotating crops, or neglecting to, is what determines if land remains suitable for crops.

@@ThatBaritoneGuitarGuy partly true, partly not. Peas, beans etc only add nitrogen to the soil, nothing else! Chemical fertilisers damage soil microbes, so are not good, despite the video's claims, but what is in them gives a good idea of what crops need, they are generally called "NPK" fertilisers, Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium. Nitrogen will actually suppress the growth of any plants other than leafy greens, causing the plant to produce only the leaves, not the fruit/seed/tubers. Legumes do NOT add potassium or phosphorous to soil. Ash adds potassium (pot ash), phosphorous can be added with animal manure or chemicals

Also read that the nitrogen fixed by the legumes don't get used by other plants until the legume dies back. Some people thought just simply intercropping legumes with their crops is enough.

I'm glad I didn't become a big fan of fishing, because my grandfather taught me how to put lead weights on my fishing line by using his teeth to spread open or clamp down a weight instead of using needle nose pliers. I think I might have done that perhaps five or six times during my childhood, at the most. But I do remember that it always left a distinct metallic sweet aftertaste in my mouth. I get it about pure lead, but I believe I read somewhere that even a pure meta has a patina layer of oxidized lead wherever it gets exposed to oxygen. I may have that wrong, but I believe things like lead fishing weights or lead drinking cups will have a film of oxidized lead on them.

In reference to gold.... quote, "but if you do,".... do what?? Seriously, I've always been told gold was inert, as it's outer electron shell is full/complete. I have no idea how one would make it behave otherwise. Also, I'm curious. Some eastern cultures consume both gold, and more commonly, silver metal hammered into very thin flakes. Supposedly for a positive health effect. I've never read an impartial analysis of the practice. Have you heard of this practice? And if so, what do you know about it?

@@jackreisewitz6632 You've been told wrong. Gold has one electron in its outermost shell. If its outer shell was completely filled, it would be a gas like helium, neon,argon, krypton, xenon or radon. That it isn't shows gold atoms can stick together to form crystals. Granted, it's not very reactive, but will react with powerful reagents like "agua regia" (mixed nitric and hydrochloric acids) or by anodizing.

@@lordkelvin100thompson8 Actually, even xenon will react with fluorine, forming at least three compounds, xenon difluoride, xenon tetrafluoride, and xenon hexafluoride. Elements in a particular row of the periodic table tend to become progressively more "metallic," which in the case of the noble gases means more reactive, as you go down the row toward heavier elements.

I think other people outside of China had thoughts equally brilliant before the 5th century look at the roman mosaic at 2:25 for instance, showing a horse harnessed around the chest and head and with nothing around the neck ......there are other mosaics out there showing similar methods of harnessing horses and a pretty detailed head harness you can see at the "Pferdekopf von Waldgirmes".....it's alo not limited to Romans - Celts and Germans also used those....

ah sorry, I thought he said 5th AD and not BC not sure about outerchinese usage of similar harness types during that time ...although I know of the existence of a quite developed looking head harness from earlier bronze age Denmark..... edit: there are also pre-silk road coins with harnessed quadriga horses - like Syracuse Tetradrachms from the 5th *BC*

but fun fact, parrots throats are fully enclosed, so if you want to handle a parrot, you should hold it by it's neck & never by it's chest, as you will suffocate it if you hold it by it's chest, but have no risk of suffocating it by holding it by it's neck

That's where we also learn that tickle torture was reserved by the Chinese for royalty and people of high status as it did no physical harm.

Aboriginals also. Now Australia has bushfires every year

Finns in Finland did it too. Small patches of the forest was burned and rocks were moved from the area, making low rock walls around the area. You can still find random rock wall in our forests some times, showing where there used to be a field.

@@liquidpixel2055 Not necessarily agriculture, but certainly slashing by burning.

​@@liquidpixel2055cane farmers also used to burn the fields before harvesting to get rid of rats and leaf litter. Not common now but happen all the time 20 odd years ago when I was a kid

I lived on schofield barracks in Hawaii in the 1970s. Right off base was miles and miles of sugar cane fields. Every autumn they would burn the fields *after harvest* (so they didn't burn up all the usable crop *before harvest)* We used to call it black snow because our housing area always received a shower of ashes every time they burned another section.

Most of this video is pretty bad, the horse thing doesn’t belong, it’s a list of innovations that helped not hurt. Torture is ancient, punishment has always been part of human culture and ‘other groups’ have always been fair game. Most of the last section is just anti-Catholic rhetoric, most of the inquisitions and harms blamed on the church were carried out by the state (often for political gain, not religious reasons). The writer of this video just googled a few topics and probably did none of the research in the making of this video.

Absolutely correct! Just full of anti-Catholic bigotry

Not to mention the fact that Torture in the post Roman world was still used EXTREMELY often, even prior to the Reformation. I mean, there are some estimates that put 2% of every generation in Western Europe dying of Torture, meanwhile 1% was actually executed after found guilty. (~800-1500~)

@@moregumy That's not how you spell 'facts' kiddo. You can't be bigoted towards that murderous, full of pedos and war criminals organization, it anything Simon was way too soft...

yes, but the jury is not still out on chemical fertilisers, they are absolutely a more serious problem in the damage they cause to the soil than slash & burn has any potential to be. He screwed up badly on that one, suggesting they are a better option!

@@mehere8038 And modern fertiliser from fossil fuels are a finite resource. What is worse is that the earth can only grow enough food for 3 billion people and that fertiliser production, and food production has been dropping, and likely to continue shrinking. This means that by 2100 there will likely be billions of people fewer on earth.

@@coweatsman What fertilisers are from fossil fuels? I'm not really aware of that issue, can you enlighten me? I am aware that phosphorous is a mined, limited resourse & like "peak oil", "peak phosphorous" is thought to have passed & supplies will be exhausted within the next 50-100 years at current use/growth of use rates, maybe less! & I'm also aware that Nitrous Oxide, a greenhouse gas 200 times more powerful than CO2 & also ozone destroying, is primarily from chemical fertilisers & I'm aware that crop land globally is degrading overall & therefore yields dropping where that is happening & that chemical fertilisers play a bit part in this process (erosion being the other huge issue)

No its not

@@blckspice5167 Slash and burn agriculture lasted longer than industrial agriculture will, now faced with degrading soils, and short of fertiliser production and only going to become worse in the decades ahead. Modern agriculture is the use of land to turn petrochemical products into food. The problem is #PeakOil which occurred in November 2018 which the media forgot to tell you about.Brace yourself for a rough ride and enjoy the empty supermarket selves we are now seeing.

Anything that adds life back to soil can help. The peels decomposed and the microorganisms that broke them down excreted the constituent minerals and nutrients. You can also revitalize dead soil with coffee grounds, manure, kitchen scraps, charcoal, etc.

Tribes in the Amazon used terra preta ( charcoal sticks embedded in the soil ) to keep nutrients in. Has anyone tried it today?

The best option is actually livestock. That is in fact the ONLY option that's been found to work on mine tailings or volcanic rocks, where the soil has been turned into just dirt & rock, with no living microbes left. In those settings, manure is the best option, as it is full of the microbes the soil needs, but by depositing it via the livestock, rather than via truck, it means the livestock trample it into the existing soil as well & stir everything up, so as to bring it back to life, particularly when the liquid from the urine is added into the mix. If you were to dump the orange peels onto the land, add some hay & then bring in some cattle to eat all of that, it would take only 1-2 weeks before the soil would be restored. The orange peel alone will take a minimum of 3 months before it reaches that same point reached within 1 week if cattle are allowed to process the peel via their rumen microbes

Please, PLEASE tell me what worms have to do with any of that

​@@DILFDylFworms crawl around inside the soil , loosening it so rain can soak in . They poop , so that adds to the soil. And when they die the bodies add also. Birds and animals hunt and eat the worms , their poop and dead bodies add to it as well

Yea, and the technique is very definitely not “lost.” Strange that this myth is popping up more and more often lately.

Bulat Steel has come close, visually it looks like Damascus too. But it's like a Chinese knock-off of a Russian AK-swries. Looks and performs similarly, but not quite.

Same with Uranium.

Modern makeup isn't any better. A lot of the dyes and waterproofing are toxic and contain heavy metals.

i had to rewind to see if i had just mis-heard the first time hahaha

I think it's Ethiopia or Somalia, but somewhere they use the black core material from alkaline batteries as eye shadow. They collect used AA, AAA, and C batteries and split them open and mash the cores in some paste and rub it on their eyes. But the cosmetics at the drug store really arent much better. They use all kinds of heavy metals and petroleum byproducts.

@@PhilLesh69 Yes. Cosmetics and other toiletries in the US are barely regulated, and have toxins and carcinogens in them that are banned in the EU and Canada. Once in a while they find lead in lipstick, for example. They don't have to list ingredients. (US does a great job with drug safety)_

The thing is, those poisons from back then we're also carcinogens, people just didn't live long enough to get cancer. In fact most acute poisons are suspected to cause cancer in chronic exposure to them

@@tp6335 Not really. The low life expectancy is misinterpreted. It represents a high infant mortality. If one survived to 18 the chances were good that you would live to 40, 50, 60 or more. You could not run a society where everyone died before 30.

The scale which would eventually coat the inner surface of lead pipes in Roman (and modern) times rendered the water comparatively safe.

My grandpa had one lead pipe that he used to bonk field mice with

Crime and Punishment is actually Chapter 2 again, according to the title card ha

tomatoes - which the Ancient Romans definitely did not have.... and they were aware of the dangers of lead poisoning. Thank you for mentioning the lime coating, I was going to.

There are still lead pipes in use all over the world right now. They're only dangerous when they're new.

Honestly this entire episode isn't exactly well-researched. Whoever the author was did a poor, superficial job

@@Tinil0 Even the opening bit about Roman Concrete and Damascus Steel being unmatched today are wrong as we know how both were made and how to reproduce them. The odd thing is that I think there is an episode recorded by Simon about Roman Concrete and how it's self repairing works which I guess is the proof that Simon does so many of these that he forgets loads.

@@roycsinclair I don't think he really stores any of the info in his mind at all. He just farms out concepts from his writers and then narrates it. He constantly goes over similar things across his total channels and on the more casual ones he frequently admits he has really no idea what he is talking about, he just reads the script into the camera. It's why he is so notoriously bad at pronouncing things haha.

It's all relative. They killed whole swaths of people, like Muslims and Jews, forced people to convert, tortured people in the name of their god. They'd kill even converted Christians to see if they were secretly practicing Judaism. They'd get them to point to other people, even their families, to suffer the mercy of being killed quickly. Or, perhaps you think being burned at the stake isn't torture. I have to point out that what they did is horrific and from what I read there weren't fair trials. Perhaps for a narrow swath of crimes. But not the crimes of "being" something you weren't supposed to be.

Your facts are clearly countered by angry rhetoric!

If you want a blade to be pretty and functional go for Damascus steel, if you want a blade to be top tier functional use a high grade modern still like tool steel.

​@@Wolf-oc6txtool steel is far to hard, spring steel is the absolute best for blades.

@@joeycampbell940 I used tool steel as an example because that is a metal that's used in making blades that can cut other forms of steel.

​@@joeycampbell940Roman Concrete is better for longevity, modern for force.

@@TheRatOnFire_ Modern concrete is also great for longevity. What destroys that longevity is steel rebar. We use rebar because it enables structures previously impossible. There are types of rebar that do not rust but they are far more expensive and we simply do not build structures we desire to last hundreds of years. Modern concrete is however worse than Roman concrete in contact with sea water.

"Damn you, Midgely!" I cry out as I shake my fist at the clouds.

Plastic, aluminium cookware, social media...

Reminds me of the myths around the Japanese folded steel blades (Tamahagane), which did not result in a superior blade compared to what we had in Europe. It resulted in an acceptable blade when using the decidedly crappy Japanese iron ore.

Lol same 😂

Lmfao

Professionals in the field have already consigned this lead poisoning myth to history's rubbish bin.

Plus, the household pipes (most of the pipes) were terra cotta rather than lead.

The use of sugar of lead to sweeten wine was also a major mistake on the part of ancient Romans.

Then why aren’t we using it today

@@tomhenry897 did you miss the part where lead pipes still leach lead into the water for years prior to developing a mineral lining? Also, we're very good at manipulating other metals. Lead was advantageous because it's malleable and easy to produce. Iron, which is trivially easy to make now (though we also use ABS and other materials) was not as plentiful or easy to fold into pipes as lead hundreds or thousands of years ago.

For me it was the content that did that - most of the things mentioned were advances on desired things, like the original collars on horses. Codes of law were often harsh by modern standards, but they usually were less destructive than the retribution exercised by families getting revenge for real or perceived wrongs. And the claim that torture was a medieval invention is either amazingly ignorant or simply dishonest.

​@@thomasmacdiarmid8251I'm honestly inclined towards dishonesty in this case.

take it from the comment section - lots of salt spilled by outraged historians in this one .....really fun this time 😂 but horse harnesses coming from China and toture from late medieval Europe are really a bit off look at a Tetradrachm from Gelon's Syracuse or the ancient chinese "Five Punishments" but roman concrete was better than modern standard concrete and blades from modern steel are inferior to good old ones

Yet we only just figured out how they made it! It lasts a lot longer than modern concrete.

@@atodaso1668 yeah but only on a technicality, we put rebar into the concrete to give it tensile strength and its that rebar that make concrete fail relatively quickly while also being expected to take on significantly heavier loads than a horse or two. and also more obviously, we havent had 2k+ years to put our concrete to the test to weather against time

@@coreytaylor5386 Our concrete struggles to last 150 years. It's the self healing abilities of the roman concrete that modern concrete doesn't have that make it last.

also the mentioned damascus is not better than modern steel, it was just very good for their time. Also we do know how to make the original damascus, yet there are very few places the ore can be mined from.

@@atodaso1668Try measuring how long Roman concrete survives when under the same stress modern concrete endures.

That's funny you wildly misspelled the word time. Unless "channel" is time in a language I'm unaware of 😂😂

@@slayingroosters4355 what 🤨

@@Carveila he said ps you need more channels, I'm implying that Simon doesn't possibly have enough time for another channel 👍🏿

@@slayingroosters4355 I dunno how you misspelled "clones" as "time", but here we are.

What he needs is better researchers, a lot of this information is either half truths or outright incorrect.

if you click on the video description they're all there ( 11 currently )

Then why arnt we using lead pipes today

@@tomhenry897 The short answer : PVC is cheaper, easyer to transport and easyer to work with. But you still find lead pipes in many old buildings that are perfectly ok.

@@tomhenry897 There is something else : in the European Community, some 15 years ago, the plastic industry lobbied to pass a law telling that the water should have less than a fixed threashold of lead in drinking water. The threashold was so low that, at the time, no detector on the market was precise enough to detect so few molecules. So, if someone says to you "you have to change your lead pipes to PVC ones", say no : they just want your money and you will not be poisonned (except at the end of your life if you live more than 500 years...). There is a HUGE caveat to my last advice : if the water in your area is not alcaline but acid (which is quite uncommon but not rare) : run to change your lead pipes. Ask the local authorities about the acidity of your water or make yourself a measure before taking any decision. PS.: I used to be in the trade of fighting against lead poisoning for the French State for some years. All the professionals were against this EU law at the time because we wanted the money not spent on useless works put into changing perfectly good pipes but still going to tackle risks : mainly removing lead paints which are a very real danger.

The exact materials and production methods are lost to history, but we have backwards engineered how to reproduce a similar result. However, it doesn't really matter because they are not as good as modern steel and concrete.

As far as I know, Damascus steel has not been reproduced, only the look of it has. At least the metalworkers I know say what they call Damascus steel made now isn't the real thing.

I think lead is more soluble in hot water (like a cooking pot) than in cold water (like water pipes).

In most cases, mineral deposits in the water, mostly lime, coat pipes. Therefore the lead doesn't have any direct contact anymore with the drinking water after just a short period of usage. So Lead pipes were bad, but actually not as bad as people think.

I heard that was the problem with Flint. They had lead pipes, but it wasn't originally a problem because the water they got from Detroit had an additive that maintained a protective layer inside the lead pipes. When they switched to their own water supply they didn't include the additives and the protective layer started flaking off and contaminating the water with lead.

@@battlesheep2552 To my knowledge the new water source was corrosive, which removed the natural protective layer and than leached the lead from the pips. Something similar happened in the late middle ages with tomatoes: People used silverware to eat that contained lead and mercury. Usually wasn't a massive problem due to the oxidation layer that stoped the metal to leak into people's food. However, tomatoes are slightly asidic, so they leached the poisones metals out of the silverware. When people fell ill after eating tomatoes they believed that tomatoes were poisonous

@@marvinamann4969 I heard that same thing about tomatoes as well. It's a "new world" food, so it'd never been an issue before for Europeans. Apparently richer people used pewter plates and cuts, and those were what leached lead. (I don't know about mercury)

All the tap washers I've ever installed or replaced had a plastic-rubber seal against a brass, steel, or harder plastic seat. Where are you using lead washers?

It's simply a matter of what's better for scale. Farming is how we went from a few million sapiens to half a billion but via innumerable and horrible famines.

@@Taospark no, it's a question of whether we should have ever scaled. Should we act like lions, apex predator in the eco-system, or should we act like bacteria, destroying the eco-system via overpopulation, then moving on to colonise a new one when the first one dies?

@@mehere8038 On balance, it's a clear argument to say that scale enabled more cognitive challenges and more survivability of our species. It just also came with much higher stakes not just in the number of people who have routinely lost their lives due to farming shocks like famine, drought, or war but that we can now destroy a planet not just one ecosystem.

Humans were out of balance for a very long time before the Agricultural Revolution. Humans drove most of the Ice Age megafauna to extinction before the first farms. Agriculture just allowed humans to pack people much more densely

@@mvalthegamer2450 true in some cases, or maybe in all as humans figured out where they fitted into ecosystems. In reality though, in cases like Australia, they can't even figure out for sure when megafauna went extinct, cause there's evidence that contradicts itself & when the last large predator went extinct, which usually results in a complete ecosystem failure, in Australia, there was no such thing, because humans were embedded in the ecosystem as the apex predator & keystone species, keeping everything completely stable. When white ones arrived, things totally changed & kangaroos started to go into "boom and bust" periods with overpopulation & then mass die offs, but all evidence says they were totally stable in population for millennia before that. Dingo introductions & Tasmanian tiger die offs on the mainland that accompanied it 5,000 years ago being the only really clear change to the ecosystem after the changes that occurred to the plants 120,000 years ago & the impacts of the 15,000 year long iceage mega drought. Not all human communities were causing destruction, a lot were living in harmony with the ecosystem, as a part of it - and not just in Australia

Field burning makes sense when land is nearly free, or is communal property. Once private ownership was both enshrined in law and actually enforced it no longer makes sense.

@@knurlgnar24 field burning really only made sense when there was a surplus of land, and the burning of it was used to clear woody debris that made plowing more difficult. it was a lot less labor intensive to burn tree stumps to clear a field than to dig them out and then figure out what to do with them.

Tell that to the Aussies dealing with bushfires every year! Morons

There is a way to take the biomass leftover from crops and turn it into a thing called biochar. When that is tilled into the soil it actually makes the soil an almost perpetual self replenishing soil.

@@PhilLesh69 no, it doesn't. all it does is accelerate the natural composting process. so for 9 years, you are getting the nutrients from the composted material still in the process, and the biochar, then after that 9 years, the composted material is used up, just as I said. 10 years after his neighbors started burning, they were back to buying just as much fertilizer as my grandfather was. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

why on earth did they leave it in the sun for days & then burn it? That makes no sense whatsoever! How it is done in Australia is the cane is burnt to remove snakes & other dangers (& in days past, to remove the spiky bits that are like cactus on the cane leaves that are a problem for hand harvesting), then once the pests are cleared, the cane is harvested, with raillines built through all the farms, so that the cane can be IMMEDIATELY loaded & transferred to the factory for processing, because even 1 hour between cutting & processing results in a 50% loss of productivity/sugar that can be harvested. After processing via chopping & squeezing to extract the juice, the waste is used to power the processing factory, plus returned to the cane fields or other places as mulch, with nutrients from the mulch leaching over time into the land it's placed on

@@mehere8038 the stubble has to dry out before you can burn it properly they still do it in parts of Eastern Europe........ofc not with sugar cane, lol....

@@mehere8038 That is more or less how it has been done in the past here, but now the little rail lines, which we used to call "dummy-lines", are handled by tractor, hauling a trailer, sometimes two of them in tandem. The cut cane would only be left for a couple of days, so that the leaves would wilt, and burn better. The sugar levels would remain the same, even though the moisture content was diminished a little bit. After squeezing, the left over cane used to be called "bagasse", and used for making insulation, ceiling tiles, and various construction products. A lot of it was also used to to run the boilers in the sugar factory here, too. I don't know if they are still allowed to do that, but they used to.

​@@feldgeist2637 um, you don't understand what sugarcane burning is about lol. I grow sugarcane in my garden, I know how it works! You do NOT want sugarcane to dry out! The liquid in sugarcane is the sugar! Any drying means sugar losses! Sugarcane is traditionally burnt while in the ground growing. The process was discovered in an industrial action, where workers objecting to working conditions set fire to the fields to destroy them & result in the landowners losing everything. Result was unexpected, the sugar was just fine, just the snakes & spikes were removed, improving conditions while leaving the cane fine. The fires remove the dead, dried leaves, leaving the growing stems protected by their thick skins & sugar inside untouched, but all the rubbish that was making them hard to harvest gone. Today, fires are still used in much of the world, particularly where hand harvesting occurs, but also in some machine harvesting cases, cause removing the dried stems makes cutting the living ones easier & allowed higher density crop planting & harvesting. Fire reduces the quality of the cane though, so for this reason it is undesired. In years gone by though, people really didn't care that the sugar wasn't pure white, the ash content in it didn't reduce it's value in the way it does today. Drying to burn occurs later in sugarcane, the "drying" is done via extracting all liquid from the cane, leaving only very slightly damp bio-mass, that can be fed into electricity generators to power the operation. When I harvest my cane at home, it's super heavy, moist blocks, that I then press, resulting in about 1-2 litres of liquid (sugarcane juice) per stem & fibre waste that is very light weight & touch dry. I know if I have fully extracted the sugar or not, because if I did, when that waste is placed on my garden as mulch, it will act the same way as commercially bought sugarcane mulch. If on the other hand I was lazy with my pressing & moisture remains, it will mould up with rain, even though it appears fairly dry initially. It will also be heavier, due to the remaining liquid. I use a hydrollic press that is basically a car jack, capable of lifting or applying over 1 tonne of weight to crush the cane, in an area of a 10cm circle

​@@otpyrcralphpierre1742 your info makes no sense whatsoever. Why would they want to burn it after the sugar had dried out? What good would that possibly do anyone? From Australia's sugar research site, disadvantages of burning cane before harvest - Harvest must be completed within 24 hours to avoid deterioration. Under hot and humid conditions, significant deterioration can occur within 10 hours, and within 16 to 20 hours if conditions are cool and dry. - Removes a valuable source of organic matter for the soil. There is also extensive discussion about the reduced quality of the cane produced from burning, due to increased ash & discolouration, so why on earth would it be burnt AFTER harvest, when there is zero benefit to that but huge disadvantages & yield reduction????? & no, sugar levels do NOT remain the same at all, I will post the details on that separately, as I seem to have removal issues when I talk about burning related stuff for some reason

Don't kid yourself. We have all kinds of setbacks, side effects and unintended consequences that are built into our modern society. It took me years to figure this out, but you might be viewing "ancient times" through a distorted lens. It is only ancient times to you and me. To a roman, the moment that he lived was also the modern times of his age, too. Every human being experiences modernity because the future hasn't happened yet. They have the pinnacle of technology at their hand, not ancient antiquated outdated technology. That's just how we think of it, from our perspective a thousand years later.

Just for example. A person born after 2000 actually has a statistically shorter lifespan than a person born thirty, forty or more years ago. Life expectancy has actually contracted in the last couple of decades.

@@PhilLesh69 as said in the video, people used equipment that choked their horses for millenia, and nobody in that timeframe seemed to have thought "This seems inefficient, how can I make it better?". Things are terrible these days, but at least our culture is obsessed with improving things, so they get less terrible over time.

The contracting life expectancy is due to climate change, political corruption and extreme concentration of wealth.

And sometimes we even succeed in actually things better, but the jury is still out for a whole bunch of unanticipated side effects that almost certainly include stuff that hasn't shown up yet. Still, it's usually better than living in the 1700s.

*didn't

@@email5023 Unless you think it killed her, in which case it took 70 years.

What was she prescribed it for? Was it in combination of some other items? Was this in a Western Country?

@@josephteller9715 Milroy’s Disease. Not that I am aware of. New York City.

@@fredblonder7850 re didn't/doesn't, didn't for past doesn't for present So if you're saying that looking at her now/present day, she seems to be fine, then "doesn't" is correct. If she is dead/you are referring to any possible impacts in the past, but excluding today for whatever reason, then "didn't" is correct. I'm not sure which one applies here, only you know that

Cows are setting us back much worse

@@Loralanthalas No wonder so many liberals are addicted to opiates - their stupidity must really be painful.

@@Loralanthalas Can we just blame squirrels? I do believe most of our politicians are squirrel hybrids, but they just don't play in the road enough.

@@Loralanthalas Cows? Leave your mother out of this and have some respect for her.

@@mutantryeff I will 100% go with that. If they could be bothered to focus they may bother to actually read the laws their lobbies have written for them.

You malign Wikipedia. Look up these issues there, and you'll see better scholarship.

relatively recently yes. Using material spectograph it was determined the lime was Quicklime instead of Slaked Lime and sea water instead of fresh water.

Nope. Just an increase in barbarity.

No kidding. If there were severe repurcussions to illegal actions, crime rates would plummet.

@@mjflitexept there were still enormous amounts of crime at the times these methods were used.

Is that the argument through Koch Bros used to burn and clear the Brazilian rainforest to make room for USDA cows?