Crash Course World History 1

Introduction

This video series provides a simplified run through of key (but cherry picked) phases of world history. The combination of each of these should provide a good starting point to understand the overall timelines of world history. In this sense it is fairly organised. However, it is not comprehensive, nor does it help one design a clear timeline, despite providing a lot of building blocks to this end. I have tried to watch each of the videos and note down some of the key takeaways from each of them.

Videos

Agriculture
- 15,000 years ago humans were hunter gatherers. Hunting provided a more protein rich (better) diet than foraging. Fishing had the best RoI because it was easier to get meat and it was safer. Thus civilisations drifted towards the shore.
- Agriculture arose independently in multiple locations. It's main benefits were relative independence from natural climate (rain/flood etc) and grain surplus which allowed for job/role specialisations for traders etc.
- Herding is a great RoI activity linked to agriculture. But domesticable animals were only natively present in places around the fertile crescent and the rest of Eurasia, giving them a big advantage in creating agricultural societies.
- The agricultural revolution likely happened as a cyclic process of improving agriculture and increasing population pressure which necessitated more agriculture. This compounded with the benefits in terms of trade and development which agriculture allowed.

Indus Valley Civilisation
- Definition of what is a civilisation vs what is uncivilised is unclear. The origin of the term "barbarian" is from the ancient Greeks calling all non-Greek speakers barbarians, because other languages sounded like "bar bar bar" to them.
- Some placeholders of civilisations are:
  1. Surplus food production
  2. Specialisation of labour
  3. Social stratification and order based on shared values (religion / laws)
  4. Traditionally always associated with rivers (no longer needed today)
- Rivers are important because the land is flat, we'll watered and nutrient rich.
- Key facts:
  1. Flourished around 3000 BC, but was trading with the Mesopotamian civilisation as early as 3500 BC.
  2. Had the most calories per acre for any ancient civilisation and was the largest of the ancient civilisations. This is mainly because the Indus rivers are very reliable and stable in terms of water levels.
  3. Languages haven't yet been decoded.
  4. Harappa and Mohenjodaro are most famous cities (out of 1500 sites), with dense, multistory buildings. Uniform bricks and perpendicular streets imply a well organised government.
  5. Centralised drainage (below housing and away from people). Houses oriented to catch wind for natural cooling.
  6. Largest building in Mohenjodaro is the great bath.
  7. Seals used for trading contained a pictorial language, and are found in Mesopotamia, whom they traded with. They largely exported cotton cloth.
  8. Despite it's size, it's a peaceful civilisation without weapons or signs of war.
- Decline:
  1. It faded away around 1700 BC. The Indus Valley people didn't become present day Indians or Pakistanis.
  2. Might have been overrun by conquest from the caucuses. Might have been destroyed by an earthquake and drying tributaries. Or environmental disaster of some other kind.

Mesopotamia
- Key facts:
  1. Place where writing and taxes were first developed.
  2. Meso = land & potomoi = river. The rivers referenced here are the Tigris & Euphrates.
  3. Flourished around 3000 BC.
  4. Economy ran on a form of socialism (3000 BC - 2000 BC), where farmers put all grain in common store. All workers of other forms were paid a uniform amount of grain from this common store.
  5. There is a constant battle between cities and the overall country. On the whole the city states win. There are many bits of literature (Epic of Gilgamesh [http://www.aina.org/books/eog/eog.pdf](http://www.aina.org/books/eog/eog.pdf)) which are a clear reference to these battles.
  6. The city of Uruk had an extensive canal system and monumental zigurats (temples).
  7. The priests had a lot of power and importance. There was also a lot of slave labour to make irrigation useful.This resulted from people's lack of understanding of natural phenomena + the unreliability and flooding of the Euphrates and Tigris.
  8. Around 2000 BC the power shifted from Gods (priests) towards royalty. Kings gained importance as they were high ranking military officials or rich land owners who took power from priests through marital / sexual relationships. This also started with the original civilisation being conquered and slightly new cities being set up. This was also the beginning of taxation, and a more capitalistic society.
    a. Most important of these kings is Hamurabi, the king of Babylon.
    b. Hamurabi's claim to fame was his law code which established wages and punishments among other things.
  9. The neo-assyrians introduced the first empire around 1000 BC. They conquered all of Mesopotamia. What defines an empire here is the fact that it included people of multiple different ethnicities and cultures, not just one kingdom. They had a powerful and brutal army.
    a. Their God was Ashur, and the king was considered the messenger and the selected one of the God.
  10. The fertile crescent (mesopotamian region) is very fertile, but lacks all other resources (metals etc). Therefore it ends up trading a lot. Therefore it creates the world's first territorial kingdom.
- Writing
  1. Writing was done in the language cuneiform. This mainly recorded transactions, like wheat for goats.
  2. It creates a class distinction (think educated vs uneductaed of today), since only the elite needed to know how to read and write.

Ancient Egypt
- Key facts:
  1. Lasted from 3000 BC to 300 BC. Because of this huge time period, it is perhaps the most influential of the ancient river valley civilisations. Note that this is longer than any other civilisation has lasted by about a thousand years.
  2. The Nile was the key river for this civilisation. It was very reliable and made the soil so fertile that agriculture was incredibly easy and reliable. It was also easily navigable, allowing easy trade of wood and gold along the river. They used basin irrigation, which was much simpler than systems used along tougher rivers.
  3. Because life along the Nile was quite easy, Egyptians thought of the afterlife as a happy continuation of this life. They built grand structures everywhere and had an optimistic view of their dead. This was different from most other ancient civilisations.
  4. The old kingdom (2650-2150 BC). Glory period where the pyramids were built, the sun God Ra was created etc. Pharaohs (kings) were thought of as Gods. They acted calm and benevolent (like the Nile).
    a. The pyramids show a high degree of social and political control and order. They were built between 2550-2450 BC.
    b. People believed that Gods like Ra were very powerful (Sun and Creation God). They also thought Pharoahs become Gods when they die. So it made sense to please them while they were alive. To the point of building pyramids. Cats were also believed to have divine powers.
    c. Ended because of droughts and infighting.
  5. Middle kingdom (2050-1650 BC) had new pharaohs from downstream Nubia. They even had new omnipresent Gods (Amen). New temples were made for Amen-Ra.
    a. Lot of power exchanges as a function of conquering and getting conquered. All of this was still restricted to kings from within areas of Egypt only.
  6. New Kingdom (1550-1050 BC). There was a lot of expansion and exchange outside of Egypt. This happened in the form of empire building outside of Egypt. Both military and trade based expansions were done.
    a. Expansion also led to the downfall through clashes with the Assyrians, Roman's and finally Julius Ceasar.
- Writing:
  1. Hieroglyphics for sacred scripts.
  2. Demotic script for contracts etc.

The Persians & the Greeks

Buddha & Ashoka

2,000 Years of Chineese History

Alexander the Great

The Silk Road & Ancient Trade

The Roman Empire

Christianity

Fall of the Roman Empire

Islam

The Dark Ages

The Crusades

Mansa Musa & Islam in Africa

The Mongols

The Indian Ocean Trade

Venice & the Ottoman Empire

Russia

Columbus, de Gama & Zheng He

The Renaissance

The Columbian Exchange

The Atlantic Slave Trade

The Spanish Empire

The 7 Years War

Captain Cook

The American Revolution

The French Revolution

The Haitian Revolutions

The Latin American Revolutions

The Industrial Revolution

Capitalism & Socialism

Nationalism

Imperialism

World War 1

China's Revolutions

World War 2

The Cold War

Decolonisation

Globalisation 1

Globalisation 2