Understanding Mesopotamian Civilization.

[rachard]

"Assyria were the nazis of the ancient world"
**Dies by an alliance of 3 states ganging up on it**

[conversiontherapist]

You make a really good point of how old the ancient civilizations are and a lot of the time this isn’t really emphasized. Nowadays, many people think events like the American Civil war are old. However, the time gap between that and WWII is nearly the same as WWII to us today. These modern events are much more clustered together than these ancient civilizations and events that happened thousands of years apart.

[sinistercrusader]

When the world needed him the most, he returned.

[AlexanderDiviFilius]

Despite being an alternate history channel, I like how you talk about real history. You approach topics in a different way to most mainstream YouTubers.

[thathankasaurus]

Most excellent reference to the Greeks camping in the ruins of Nineveh in Xenophon’s Anabasis, the story of ten thousand Greek mercenaries that found themselves on the wrong side of a civil war and their long journey back home against all odds. I too was entirely blown away by that story and highly recommend Anabasis for anyone looking for an incredible read that is becoming increasingly obscure.

[michalsa]

One very interesting thing about Summer is the fact they wrote the history of their own destruction. As the cities were conquered one by one they wrote a cry song for each city and her people. Also the way how Summer was discovered is incredible. The historians pulled Sherlock Holmes on that one.

[rayffis]

You have tremendous skill minimizing "nuance loss" when presenting complex ideas. Thanks for doing the work! Much appreciated.

[nexalacer]

You commented early in the video about how the fear-based religions resemble something you’d expect from a victim of severe child abuse. That reminds me of some material I read from scholars studying what they called psychohistory. Their fundamental premise is that you can trace how civilization has developed based on the history of childhood. I think you might enjoy their discussions.

[Terroreyes-jl]

Take into account that area of the world during that time was not vast deserts, it was vast plains.

[Thomas-uq]

There are a few non-trival mistakes/misconceptions here.
-There was no major 'Sumerian' revolt against Assyrian Empire at any period. The old and middle iterations never controlled southern Mesopotamia, and by the era of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Sumerian had been extinct as a (living) language or polity *for nearly 1000 years*.
-The Assyrian homeland *did* have relatively favourable geography, at least compared to the south, being located on the Jazirah steppe, where dependence on irrigation for farming was less absolute, gradating to defensible foothills and uplands.
-Assyria was never conquered by Syrian (Aramaen) peoples at any point, though they did later grow to a demographic majority in the original Assyrian homeland, but this happened due to the Assyrian Empire's own policy of mass-deportations, and the increasing adoption of the Aramaic language (only distantly related to native Assyrian dialect of Akkadian) due to its far superior writing system.
-The Mitanni have *not* been proven to be an Indo-European people, their language Hurrian is still considered an isolate due to lack of data.
-Not really a mistake, but you could have mentioned the Neo-Babylonian Empire itself was ruled by an elite of foreign descent, the Chaldeans (we only know they came from the Zagros moutains, so they could have been IE, but nobody knows).
-Mesopotamian society withering away *without a fight* under the Achaemenids is rather an oversimplification.. there were several Babylonian revolts against the Persians, the last one being a contemporary of Alexander the Great... more than 2 centuries after Cyrus conquered the region. It could* be argued that Mesopotamian culture was essentially Syriac/Phoenician by this time, but that's another topic.
-The 'least innovative of all major civilisations'? Granted, it's certainly near the bottom-tier, but I'd argue that Egyptian Civilisation was considerably more static and conservative, the evidence leaves practically no close competitor for this 'prize'.
-The banking system of Mesopotamian religion was actually considerably enlightened, all debts were periodically wiped clean by royal/priestly decree in regular intervals, to prevent the destruction of the independent landed-peasant class, who formed the core of Sumerian, early Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian armies. I'd recommend reading Michael Hudson's "Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical World" for an introduction to this topic.

[FirstnameLastname-cwok]

I’m upset and I can’t sleep, but here you are to cheer me up. By the way, you have inspired my senior thesis. I’d love to speak with you about it if you would be willing.

[Crown_]

I'm a simple man, I see a new whatifalthist video and I press like, now I'll watch the video.

[thedude]

The Nazi comparison is not inappropritate, as according to oral traditon, when the last Assyrian king found out that the Babylonians and Medians had defeated all his forces, he set his palace on fire with himself and his family in it.

[JG-vhoy]

10:50 “Mesopotamian society had no conception of history...”
12:30 “[The priests] were often the biggest land owners, as well as being the historians...”

[Ornolu]

Find someone who loves you as much as Whatifalthist hates lil pump

[freeman]

Man, I love your videos. I have mild ASD and the way you edit and narrate your videos are so conducive to my sensibilities, it’s almost like I made them myself!!!!

[noahtylerpritchett]

While archery always existed, the immense contributing factor to the rise of the last Babylonian empire is the mega ass use of archery.
While it has been used, the Babylonians used it basically on a industrial level scale. Which had a immense advantage to the javelin throwers and sling tossers,
Especially some of the arrows that had iron tips. Even if it didn't kill a soldier it help the Babylonians by injuries which soldiers might die days later of injuries.
It's possible some of those archers are Arab mercenaries giving the Babylonians said manpower source for archers.

[homeworld]

15:48 An interesting summary. I've heard the hypothesis that gunpowder making castles obsolete did a great deal to unify Europe, turning it from hundreds of small fiefdoms into a few large empires. Always been sympathetic to that idea and here you take it a lot further.

Oddly, it makes me think of the pro-gun people in the US, insisting that by disarming the populace the state will inevitably become more authoritarian and people will lose their freedoms. Maybe they have a point? Also makes me wonder for the future. If wars could be fought mostly by robots/drone (presumably manufactured and controlled by large central governments) with little need for human labor then that could tilt the balance back in favor of a more stratified, authoritarian society?

[ThePoliticrat]

I wish Spengler and Toynbee had more knowledge of Mesopotamian culture when they wrote their books. Unfortunately, there was little by way of written and archeological record at the time they wrote their respective studies.

Mesopotamia is, perhaps, the high culture I find to be the most alluring from a knowledge point of view.

[Imcoolschools]

As a Chaldean this is vary interesting to learn about my roots I know that most Chaldeans including me are now catholic and can still speak Aramaic