The army of Ramesses III managed to turn them away; their attacks were most effective in the Levant where Canaanite cities like Ugarit and Hazor were destroyed, in Cyprus, and in Anatolia where the Hittite Empire collapsed about 3,200 years ago.
It's crazy how entire cities and empires can just be destroyed. All this destruction must have been messy and complicated, causing problems for many people.
A diplomatic marriage between Ramesses and a Hittite princess sealed the treaty and strengthened ties between the former rivals.
I find it interesting how the first ever recorded peace treaty was a marriage. I wonder was it forced or actually a wanted thing.
The Trojan War was for a long time considered a myth of the ancient Greeks.
The Trojan war was a huge part of the history. I wonder why it was even considered a myth. I remember learning about this in school and classes, along with in movies.
may have recently been decoded by the cryptographer, Yajna Devam, as discussed in 2.13 - Sanskrit. If his claims are validated by Indian linguists and historians, then the Indus Valley Civilization would be understood as a proto-Indo-Aryan culture, which would push the arrival of Sanskrit and "Vedic" culture back over a thousand years; or perhaps even suggest it developed in the Indus Valley instead of arriving from elsewhere
It's crazy finding out what these scripts mean. If these can be decoded, it will change history, which is a HUGE thing. So many historical things can happen just from one script of symbols/words.
. (Note: there is a persistent rumor that Sumerian is a mysterious language that has never been deciphered.
I'm curious how this rumor came to be. Was it just a easy explanation to finding out the language, or who decided this to be a rumor.
While there is no clear evidence of palaces, kings, or warfare, Caral had monuments and sunken plazas that seem to have been used for community rituals. Coordinated projects such as the building of extensive irrigation systems
I think it is really interesting how this place had no signs of kings or rulers. That means that potentially there were leaders of some sort, but more importantly everyone worked as a community. I feel like this probably wasn't as common back then. There were also things like mutilated bodies and warfare items that were not found, suggesting there might not have been much violence like that.
As in Uruk, families responsible for storing grain accumulated social power, although they lessened the sting of the inequality by brewing beer and baking bread for the people.
I kind of just find it crazy how the "inequality" can be changed by brewed beer and bread. It's similar nowadays where providing services or goods to the community could also change or lessen the feeling of inequality.
These are defined as effects that are not the main point of the economic activity, and are typically NOT reflected in prices or other economic measures.
It's interesting how economic changes and innovations can lead to non-economic results. I think you would also be able to do non-economic things like cleaning up their yard. This makes the whole block look better, possibly upping the property values.
The large stones visible in this photo of Stonehenge are "Sarsen" stones erected by the people who were replaced by the Bell Beaker culture.
Maybe it's just me but I have always wondered what is the point of these stones. Were they for a use or purpose? Were they a sacred space for something like worship?
This means that the people who built most of Stonehenge between 5,100 and 4,600 years ago disappeared and were almost entirely replaced by a new, Yamnaya-descended population, just a century later.
Just the fact that these people disappeared basically without a trace is really interesting to me. Where did they go?
What if people who gathered plant foods noticed that seeds they dropped in camp grew into the very plants they had found and brought back home with them?
I feel like this could really be an actual reason and it seems interesting. I feel like majority of people spend time trying to find out other complex reasons for this but it actually takes more thinking and being more creative to come up with the idea that it literally could have been an accident.
The empire lasted roughly another century after his death and during this period Akkadian (a semitic language) replaced Sumerian as the common tongue of the entire region.
I find it interesting how another language can just come to be, replacing a whole other language. I also wonder who took over this empire continuing after his death. Who kept it up and running?
As discussed in the previous chapter (3.13 - Caral), the first urban culture in the Americas, Caral, seems to have used knotted cotton cords known as quipu. These were apparently so successful that they persisted for up to six thousand years, encoding information in a three-dimensional system that as of 2025 has only been partly decoded.
This is so strange to me. I find it very interesting how today we just use words and letters to speak to each other, I can't imagine trying to communicate without these things we use today. It would take so much time and intelligence to communicate with physical things such as stone scripts or metal cords.
In order to organize the building and maintenance of the irrigation system, and to keep records of the extensive grain business, the people running the Temples developed cuneiform writing on clay tablets by about 5,200 years ago.
I think it was crucial back then to have a form of document and writing. Without this, records of the entire business wouldn't be kept track of, causing confusion, chaos, and maybe even trouble for some.
a 5,300 year old mummified body discovered in a melting glacier in the Alps between Austria and Italy in 1991. Ötzi was about 45 years old at the time of his death, and had lived on a diet of ibex, chamois, and red deer meat, einkorn wheat, roots, and fruits. Ötzi’s genes show a very high proportion (over 90%) of Anatolian farmer ancestry
I just find it really interesting how a mummified body over 5,300 can be discovered and still tell a lot of information. Like the age of death and his diet.