Full transcript
0:03okay so we are in the module one right of this class and so I just wanted to talk a little bit
0:11about some of the components of prehistory and also um ancient Mesopotamian civilization and
0:20ancient Egypt which is kind of the the beginning of this kind of section so let's talk a little bit
0:25about each one when we start out this section the thing that we're really talking about with
0:31regards to these prehistoric societies is a time period before written record right there
0:38was a time whenever oral tradition was much more important than written tradition and so
0:46um we have this period of time where we have all of these kind of oral Traditions that are being
0:54passed down from Individual to individual but we don't have a we don't have anything written
0:59about what this time period in society was like now of course experts researchers archaeologists
1:06anthropologists scientists and all sorts of other people right they uh go in and they they use kind
1:14of data and information to give us an idea of what this time period might have been like and
1:21what it would have looked like for people who lived in this time period and so that's kind
1:26of what we base our ideas on um what are some of the important artifacts from prehistory well
1:33let's look at those all right so um when we think of pre-history right we're going to think of the
1:39Paleolithic Age from the Paleolithic Age one of the most important artifacts that we will
1:44get from this time period is cave art here are two examples of cave art now one of the things
1:52that often happened is that people often felt that cave art showed that ancient civilizations
2:01um prehistoric civilizations had started with these kind of like caricature type drawings and
2:07then had moved into much more detailed more realistic drawings since then we have found
2:16um cave art that is very realistic very well drawn and so what we know is is that
2:25these prehistoric societies could draw realistic drawings but instead they chose often not to
2:34um and we're not really sure why we're not sure what the symbolism of these particular drawings
2:40in this particular method show we also know that cave art exists all over right we find it in lots
2:50of different places um not just in what we might think of as Europe right but in lots of different
2:58places in the world so it it was a very important feature for people in this part of prehistory
3:07one of the things that people don't know is why people did this we don't really know right there
3:14are a lot of theories about why people did cave art a lot of people believe right that it was
3:21um in order for people to feel like they had agency over the hunt right um but we're not
3:28really sure honestly we're not really sure um the book will probably tell you a couple of the
3:34theories that are more prevalent about this one of the things that researchers are are confused
3:38about is why this art was drawn so deeply inside the caves in this way right often it's drawn in um
3:47you know in the kind of the inside of a cave where it would have been very difficult to get in right
3:54um sometimes we find hand prints um on these drawings um and we're not really sure why we don't
4:03find also very many depictions of humans right this is a kind of a rare one but we don't find
4:08very many and we're not really sure why that is um some other kind of um okay so we have also then
4:16the Neolithic era so Paleolithic era is of course the kind of Hunter and gatherer phrase and then
4:22in the Neolithic Age we become very agrarian we start to domesticate animals we start to farm and
4:30um because uh the Neolithic Age um it focuses so much on agriculture and on domestication
4:39um we developed some other types of art right so for example
4:45um we have these um you know uh Neolithic uh kind of um representations right we find a bunch of
4:54different megaliths right which is just kind of stone uh architecture um this is one with
5:01a bunch of men here's there are some other ones that have what they call cromlets right
5:05which is like three-sided um megalus then we have things like Stonehenge right which are enormous
5:15these kind of enormous Stone built structures and there are a couple of things that we know about
5:21Stonehenge um and I'm I'm just going to repeat some of the information that I heard whenever I
5:27visited Stonehenge um we don't know why Stonehenge was built that is one of the most important things
5:32is that people theorize as to why this was built but we don't really know um a lot of people
5:39believe that or a lot of researchers believe that it was a place to bury loved ones they
5:45found a lot of remains human remains on Stonehenge um and they really only excavated half of the site
5:55um and they haven't excavated the other half so we don't really we're not really sure
5:59um this type of post and lentil system where you have two walls and then like a top here
6:05is very common of these type of kind of megalith features um and uh but we know
6:13that so for example the stones that they used in Stonehenge were brought from quite far away
6:19um they're they were very heavy they had to be they were carved out actually which is another
6:24really interesting feature so they weren't just put there somebody took the time to actually carve
6:31the stone and it seems that it was a group project right because it would have taken lots of time
6:36they've also found um that there was a potential Village nearby Stonehenge they found some remains
6:45there of what would have been maybe a Neolithic Village so um they think that maybe it might have
6:51been a significant sight to people that were in that Village but even if so it would have taken
6:57hundreds of people you know hundreds of years to build this site um and you know they're not
7:07they're not really sure why they know that um they think that maybe you know sometimes they
7:13think it might have to do with the seasons but they're not really sure and it seems that you know
7:19um enthusiasm for the project kind of tended to wane over time right because they have some
7:25um that are in the back that are not as human as well and they're not molded as well so
7:31um anyway um there's more that I could say about that but I will uh leave that here for now
7:37um the other thing that develops during this time period
7:42um is uh types of spirituality that we think of as animism right now animism from a prehistorical
7:49context makes a lot of sense right if your crops depend on rain depend on certain types of things
8:00right like sun and all of these other things and those things are all outside of your control
8:06right so flooding is outside of your control or hurricanes or bad weather or you know all of
8:12these things right are outside of your control well what happens when you want to feel like
8:19you have some control over those things will you imagine well there's a spirit in that or there's
8:24a being in that and then I can control that being by offering up sacrifices or by you know
8:31um offering something and it's a way for these these individuals right to have a sense of agency
8:40um in a world where it can feel very chaotic so animism makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways
8:47um or at least to me anyway it it makes sense for people who lived in a world that would have
8:53felt very out of control would have felt very outside of their own personal agency so animism
9:01is kind of a way of gaining control over those um over those things one of the other things that we
9:09have during this time period is people develop a lot of creation myths so they develop a lot
9:13of these stories of how their people came to be oftentimes in these creation myths we find
9:21foundational principles of those societies so we find some of the kind of important societal
9:29ideologies embedded into those creation myths um and they they tell us things about those societies
9:38so like what those societies valued or what they didn't value or how they felt that the Universe
9:44was set up it tells us lots of different things so those are also really interesting I would advise
9:49you to go and read some of the more interesting ones um and just you know see what you think
9:57um then we get to a time period that we often view as the birth of civilization
10:02which is the first real civilization now what do we mean by civilization so we were
10:11just talking about prehistory right a time before written record well civilization is
10:16a time when there is written record where people are much more urbanized so when we
10:22think of civilization we think of a couple of things we're going to think about urban
10:25planning right so people in groups working together to create things like cities to create
10:34um you know buildings and you know all sorts of the types of things that go into urban planning
10:42we also want to think of like groupings of like cultural groups right that come together to have
10:50a sense of um group identity right over like more my maybe individualistic identity right
10:58so Sumer is an is kind of a a nation right or a group of people who all consider themselves
11:07to have a kind of a collective um identity the other thing is that we think of when we think of
11:13civilization as we think of economy right so when you're in an agrarian society everything that you
11:19eat everything that you're exposed to is what you yourself either make or you can trade in order to
11:26make but when we think about civilizations we're thinking about trading with a whole other groups
11:32of people maybe trade routes um and having access to materials that you would not have
11:38maybe naturally had access to so those are some other things and then definitely when we think
11:44of civilization the other thing that we think of is war civilizations go to war against each other
11:52um and that seems to be also kind of a Hallmark of civilization
11:56the first civilization of note is Sumer and here are some of the very important
12:03um things that come out of Sumer um the birth of writing and written language comes out of Sumer
12:10how is it that people first learn to write well it comes from trade right let's say that you know I'm
12:18gonna send you three goats and a cow and you know four bits of wheat or whatever and then I send
12:27it with a servant and when it gets there we have an oral agreement and not everything that I sent
12:33arrives well maybe I changed the oral agreement how do I know that I actually heard him right
12:40right well maybe maybe he only said three and maybe I said two or maybe he said this or maybe
12:45he said that so written language develops from this desire to make sure that whatever was ordered
12:52right or whatever was the agreement between these two individuals is actually what happens whenever
13:01those goods arrive at their destination so initially little pieces of clay are stamped
13:07with images that are the products that are being developed they are then placed inside a clay ball
13:13that clay ball is broken whenever it arrives at its destination and that person can then
13:20ascertain with those little pieces of clay that they have received everything that they
13:24were meant to receive in that transaction and this is how cuneiform develops so
13:30um cuneiform is the Sumerian form of writing um it had uh kind of pictures and ideas United together
13:41um and that was a very interesting form of writing so basically an image would indicate not just
13:47maybe a word but it could also indicate an idea um later in hieroglyphics one of the amazing things
13:55about hieroglyphics is that hieroglyphics unites pictographs ideograms and sonograms
14:01right which is the the um the sound right that whatever it is it's supposed to make as well
14:08um the other thing that's important from ancient Sumer is metallurgy which really
14:13is an important facet during this time it is one of the things that
14:18distinguishes Sumer from other ancient civilizations is that they were able to
14:23outfit all of their Warriors in bronze um and so that's kind of another kind of facet of this
14:33um you know in um in ancient Mesopotamia we have these type of religious structures that
14:41are an important part of their civilization that are called ziggurats so that's kind of
14:46another cultural artifact from this time period um and we also have this um kind of
14:52a beautiful piece right that shows us some of the differences in the hierarchical societal systems
15:00um of this time period which is a really interesting thing so we have War and Peace
15:04on one side and each side shows a level of society obviously with the top level being the King right
15:10his head even breaks through the ceiling a little bit um and it just shows us some of
15:16these different levels of society and so it's a kind of interesting picture and window into that
15:22Sumer is not the only society that comes from Mesopotamia or that is a part of this
15:27ancient Mesopotamian kind of grouping of societies one of the other ones is Babylon
15:34and here we have um the Stella of Hammurabi now why do we study the Stella of Hammurabi
15:40rather than other legal codes that exist in this time um one of the reasons why we study
15:47it is because it is the most complete written record of ancient law from this time period so
15:53that's kind of one of the important things one of the interesting things about Hammurabi's Code
15:58there are a couple of really interesting things um I've seen it in person and it's much taller
16:04than I thought it would be um which was really interesting but some of the kind of interesting
16:10things about Hammurabi's Code are all of um you know first as a written record it takes
16:18the law of the land out of the arbitrariness of a ruler and it codifies that law now Hammurabi
16:26was ruler of many different provinces and his idea with this code was okay we're going to collect all
16:34the laws from all these different provinces and then we're going to get them all together and
16:37when we get them all together then we'll have like a unified kind of people a unified law
16:43um which is a great idea um and it also it's a great way of making a kind of codified system that
16:52takes the law out of arbitrary decision making into a certain type of societal expectation right
17:01the other thing is that Hammurabi's law code tells us a lot about how different
17:07members of society were treated because the laws changed based on who you are as
17:14a person in that Society so that's also kind of another interesting component
17:19um one of the other things that we get from ancient Mesopotamia that's an important
17:22artifact is the Epic of Gilgamesh it is the first known epic now Gilgamesh is rumored to
17:30be a Sumerian king I've heard some historians say that this is fact right we find Gilgamesh
17:36as a record among the Sumerian Kings other people say that it's not as sure right it's a bit like
17:45maybe it's a bit kind of like the legend of King Arthur right could Arthur have been a real king
17:49that existed in England well maybe but we don't we're not 100 right on whether or not that's true
17:59um there are people that say yes people that say no so you know we're gonna we're gonna leave it to
18:04the experts but um so we don't know that Gilgamesh was a real Sumerian king we know that we find
18:09him in the records of the Sumerian Kings but this story is very interesting for a couple of reasons
18:15one of the main reasons why this is so interesting is because it sets up a kind of schema right or a
18:21pattern a a kind of formula for other epics to then follow and the two main things that we get
18:30that that other epics will then reproduce is one we have a hero on a quest who goes on a series of
18:38Adventures and two those quests always have to do with a question of immortality or mortality right
18:51so in other epics we will see those two principles play out right in Gilgamesh is epic he goes on on
19:00a long series of Adventures he is kind of a a bad King right and uh so the gods sends someone
19:08down and there's this big contest between him and inknadu and we don't know who's gonna win and it's
19:15kind of civilization versus nature potentially and then you know they end up becoming friends
19:22and then ignadu dies and Gilgamesh despairs over life and he begins to realize that he is mortal
19:29and so he goes on a quest for this Immortal flower that is going to Grant him immortality and he goes
19:36to the land of you know the Immortals he finds this flower at the bottom of a lake right and
19:43he manages to pluck it out and then the flower of immortality is stolen from him right and so
19:51he goes on his way still mortal right um it's an incredibly interesting and fascinating story
20:00um and um we have records of all of these things because other Mesopotamian societies
20:06consider themselves attached to Sumer so other ancient civilizations right like Babylon and the
20:15Chaldeans and the acadians these other groups um they consider themselves apart like kind
20:23of you know Heirs of Sumerian society and so they protected these Legends for that reason
20:30um the other ancient civilization that we get during this time period is ancient Egypt we have
20:34a lot of really important artifacts from this time personally I find ancient Egypt to be fascinating
20:42um their obsession with death is so interesting but let's just talk about some of the kind of
20:49important artifacts that we get from this civilization of course we have
20:54um these kind of pyramids right that are are part of something that's very well known from
20:59ancient Egypt these pyramids were tombs right they were um a place where um ancient pharaohs
21:08would have Lane to rest and they would have taken with them everything that they needed
21:13in the afterlife ancient Egyptians believed that the afterlife was the most important thing that
21:20would happen to you and that it continued on and on and on forever and so not just Kings and or not
21:27just pharaohs but all ancient Egyptians that had the money to do so they would spend their entire
21:35lives preparing for the afterlife laying up money and laying up things that they would need in the
21:42afterlife which is really fascinating and these tombs were good examples of um how people would
21:49kind of Honor themselves or kind of create spaces for themselves in the afterlife now
21:53of course eventually the Pharaohs went away from this type of structure a lot of Architects think
22:01right that maybe the early pyramids were based out of ziggurats right so just like maybe four or five
22:07cigarettes like kind of put together and they have this kind of like step pyramid or whatever
22:11that is maybe an example of that other people believe that maybe the reason why the pyramids
22:16are in this shape right is because the Sun God right he emerges from a pyramid of sand you know
22:24and so maybe that's that's why and of course we know right that the Pharaoh became the sun
22:30god in the afterlife right so um maybe that's it's symbolic but of course they were also like a giant
22:37come rob me sign like right in the middle of the desert and So eventually the Kings went away from
22:45um these types of pyramids and they eventually moved towards structures that were hidden
22:50um in a series of like kind of in a valley in a series of labyrinths right almost uh underground
22:57um in an area that now we call the Valley of the Kings
23:01one of the kind of interesting things about these
23:06um preparations for death right is that because people believed they would do what they were doing
23:11in everyday life they would just do it in the afterlife we have all of these beautiful beautiful
23:17um drawings and pictures of what everyday Egyptians actually did in their real lives
23:24it's incredibly fascinating and so we have uh frescoes like this one right
23:29um that show us like people on the hunt or people doing their everyday lives and it
23:34that's that to me also is just really interesting and they took you know into these tombs they took
23:40things that they would use in their everyday life right into the tomb and so that's another
23:45great thing that we have right if you go to the British museum they have a whole you know section
23:50that's ancient Egypt and you can go in there and you can see people's artifacts from their everyday
23:57lives like you know a makeup kit a shaving kit um all of these different kinds of things that
24:02people would have just used in their everyday existence um in ancient Egypt and so that's that's
24:08really it's just very fascinating now ancient Egypt was a um was a little bit different from
24:16uh ancient Sumer and ancient Mesopotamia in that ancient Egypt um had a couple of it has a couple
24:23of components that make it different from other ancient civilizations the first is is that even
24:28though it goes through various periods um you know uh it basically went 3 000 years pretty
24:36much unchanged as a civilization right so they were a very very stable ancient civilization
24:43um and the other thing is that they were uh what we call a Theocratic socialism right so
24:52um their the structure of their society was social theocracy so the King was considered
25:00God right that's the theocracy part and he was the ruler of that system but it was a socialist
25:07system where people did not receive money um right because money had not been minted
25:12or created uh the lydians are the ones that do that right so so and of course we have the
25:18Phoenicians right who make the alphabet but um we have uh you know the Egyptians
25:25um they uh when you worked in ancient Egypt you received a certain like a like a food stipend
25:31right and you would go every week and you would get your food stipend and then you would use
25:38that food and trade it for other things so let's say you were somebody who was really well off or
25:43like really you know kind of well to do in the Egyptian system um you could trade extra barley
25:51or extra you know grains or whatever it is that you had gotten those extra for your household
25:55that maybe you didn't need and you would use that to trade it for other things of value right maybe
26:02better wigs right the Egyptians are really well known for how beautiful their wigs were
26:08um or you know other types of things so now there are lots of other things in this
26:12section but I'm just going to leave it here for now um and we'll just uh really quickly
26:19this is a slideshow that I used for one of my Humanities classes so I just want to show
26:24you all guys um how we would connect all of these kinds of things together so when we're
26:29thinking about these societies they're not living independently of each other they know the other
26:38groups exist and they're there's trade going on there's lots of things happening and these
26:45societies are interacting with each other and as they interact with each other they influence
26:51each other which is totally natural right so we have these um you know this kind of curos which
26:58is a structure that we will look at next time in ancient Greece but you can see the clear influence
27:06of that of ancient Egypt in these early Greek Heroes right so we have this ancient Egyptian
27:13statue right here and then we have these ancient Greek structures and you can see that
27:21they have a kind of early ancient Egyptian influence so they're trading with Greece they're
27:27going to Greece you're you know the grecians are going to Egypt and trading with Egypt and