Water and Classical Civilizations: Crash Course World History 222

In which John Green teaches you about water! So, we talk about resources a lot on Crash Course, and today is no exception. It turns out people can't live without water, which means it's absolutely necessary for civilization. Today John talks about water in the context of classical civilizations, but not like Greece or Rome or something. We're talking about the Maya civilization in Central America, and the Khmer civilization in what is now Cambodia. So this is an awesome video, OK?

Citation 1: Steven J. Mithen - Sue Mithen, Thirst: Water and Power in the Ancient World. Harvard University Press. 2012. p 235
Citation 2: Patrice Bonnafoux, cited in Mithen. p243
Citation 3: Mithen. p 296

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[SnoppysWingman]

Mr. Green! Mr. Green!
Since this video came out, more work has been done on the Angkor Wat civilization, and I wanted to let you guys know about it.

It looks like, as you mentioned, the baray were likely some sort of flood control system. According to Dr. Roland Fletcher and Dr. Miriam Stark (two archaeologists from the University of Sydney and the University of Hawaii, respectively), the eventual collapse of this civilization was likely caused by the drastic environmental changes that took place during the 14th and 15th centuries. During periods of drought, the river was not high enough to fill the baray, so was redirected to empty directly into the city/fields. When the droughts ended, then... Yea. No more city.

And yes, we archaeologists literally are using pictures from space. It's called LiDAR, and it's awesome.

[MundoYui]

Historical correction: the calendar shown while talking about mayan calendars is actually Aztec (called "piedra del sol"), which is located in central Mexico, not the yucatan peninsula nor within mayan territory or cultural influence area. Many see them as the same thing (like some could say Nubians and Egiptians are the same just because they both live near the Nile) but they did had different architecture, language, religion, ethnicity and art.

[TristanPEJ]

2:46 is an Aztec calendar stone, not Mayan. Also at 4:33 the weapon held is a macuahuitl which is also Aztec and not Mayan.

[VanaeCavae]

I am starting to realize that John Green has a Mongol fixation.

[xloud]

Phoenix is a tribute to old-world hydrological engineering! The Gila and Salt rivers were diverted by a series of canals built by the Hohokam Indians around 1000 years ago. Those canals are still used today to supply water to homes and agriculture in the Phoenix area.

[verward]

Have water problems? Hahaha peasant!
- the Dutch. 

[historygeek]

When your job is to build canals, and someone asks you what you do for a living, but you don't want say that you're a laborer so you say: "I'm a hydraulic engineer."

[sion]

This is by far my favorite episode of your ongoing history section. Choosing those two cultures that most may not know about beyond their names in the case of the Maya and the explanation of how they worked with the land that they end up settling was great.

[HZArnel]

J. Green we need more of your history videos. I've already watched it all, some of them twice. Top quality.

[fakjbf]

Actually we do have more water. As you said when talking about Yucatan, the water table is too low to be accessed by primitive technology. But now we have modern technology, which can access it much more easily. Also, we can turn salt water into fresh water (though it's extremely expensive and rather inefficient). Some wealthy cities in the Arabian Peninsula such as Dubai use this, and probably others all over the world as well. Therefor, the amount of available water is in fact going up as we find new ways to extract it, it just not at the same pace as our population growth.

[geeshnee]

My life-partner is Cambodian, and the correct pronunciation of Khmer is "Ku-m-eye" or "C-my" if you'd prefer. Thanks for all your hard work at Crash Course. Big fan!

[Nonsense]

this episode was nice, but next week... a episode about Israel? The Comment section will be... magnificent.
The amount of disagreement, trolling, racism and pure classic insanity will be outdoing every other episode by far. As far Day exceeds night...

[yyangcn]

Why does that whole part of Mayan lord controlling water in order to demand tributes reminds me of Mad Max?

[TheSgtkite]

Thanks for the Shadow of the Colossus reference thought bubble!

[andreapayneconnally]

I am 33 years old. I took AP exams years ago. I love these videos. They're short, fun, colorful and something I can easily listen to in the background at work. I even had these on when I was finishing my dissertation. I would be perfectly ok if every teacher in america used these videos as a launching point to a specific topic. Starting a series on the maya. There's a video for that. Doing a series on Norse mythology? theres a video. Introducing the scientific method? there's a video. Roughly 10 minutes of class time and it introduces topics students will spend days to weeks learning.

[thegod]

If a historian has a child you might notice that the child's name is awful. "The baby of 2015"

[FortuitusVideo]

Speaking as an alien, precious metals are still precious and useful without humans. Guh, humans have such big egos. 

[stoogeman]

I feel that instead of having an "open letter" El Niño, that time would have been much better spent explaining with it actually is and how it happens. But that's just my opinion John Green.

[ashleygillett]

Belize is a separate country from Guatemala!!! There are maya in Belize too...

[Onychoprion]

Watching Crash Course History has been a great source of joy and terror for me. Joy because I've grown to love history, and terror because, well, it seems everything points to an imminent collapse of modern civilization, because we have a combination of the things that, individually, felled earlier civilizations:

1) Increasing wealth disparity
2) Over-reliance on unsustainable resource consumption
3) Impending water crisis ... es ... crises? crisi?

Oh, and around 16, 000 nuclear weapons along with a few nation-leaders crazy enough to use them....

I guess the upshot is that the 21st Century will be interesting!