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Today we discuss the idea of civilization, and first I want to present to you the general understanding of how we get civilization, and then I will present to you an alternative. Okay. So the traditional understanding is the Marxist
Explores traditional vs alternative views on civilization's origins, focusing on religion, trade, and hierarchy in early societies.
Key Takeaways
- Civilization did not create religion, arts, or science; humans possessed these inherently.
- Hierarchical structures in civilization are often justified through constructed mythology.
- Temple economies were early forms of taxation and resource redistribution.
- Geography and trade were crucial in the development and expansion of early civilizations.
- Mainstream historical narratives may underestimate the agency and creativity of early humans.
Summary
- Traditional Marxist view sees civilization arising from agriculture, surplus food, and a hereditary elite enabling arts, science, and religion.
- Alternative view argues humans were inherently religious, artistic, and scientific before civilization, which is a tool to justify hierarchy.
- Early temples served as religious centers and hubs for farming, trade, and redistribution of resources, forming a 'temple economy'.
- Writing and money developed to manage temple economies, record trade, and ration food.
- Civilization is framed as a device to legitimize hierarchical power structures through mythology and divine justification.
- Four earliest major civilizations—Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, and China—share key traits: favorable latitude, proximity to major rivers, and access to seas for trade.
- Trade and geographic factors enabled the growth of large cities and colonies along rivers, expanding trade networks.
- These civilizations connected vast regions through trade, facilitating cultural and economic exchange.
- China's geography is unique due to the Himalayas, affecting its trade connections compared to other early civilizations.
- The video challenges mainstream academic narratives, emphasizing human creativity and social dynamics over imposed elite control.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
understanding. This is an idea proposed by Karl Marx, and it's the dominant idea. So in the beginning, we were hunter-gatherers, and it sucked to be a hunter-gatherer because you could not find food, and then we discovered agriculture, farming that allowed for
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surplus food. Surplus just means that you have more food than you can eat. And so now you have people who don't have to work.
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Okay? An elite. And as such, they can engage in activities that improve the well-being of everyone and which create the basis for civilization. These things include religion, okay, which is just myths and stories, but also arts, dance, music, songs,
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um, paintings, and then of course you have science and technology. And with these three things in place, now you can grow as a society. Okay? You can now build cities. Why? Because now you can have irrigation and farming.
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Okay? You can now direct the river, the river flow. So you can use more farmland.
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Okay? You can now have a hereditary elite, and so these people can focus their entire time on innovation, on science, on progress.
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Okay? And then you have writing because only a hereditary elite has the time and the resources to learn how to write because remember back then writing is a very difficult activity. You have to spend your entire life learning it
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and practicing it. And then you have the idea of money and property. Okay. And together these four things are what we refer to as civilization.
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Okay. Now there are good things that come from civilization: religion, arts, and science. But there are also bad things as well, which include war, slavery, and debt.
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Okay. And that is the story of civilization that you are taught in school and that most mainstream academics understand.
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Today I wanted to propose an alternative, and I think this is a much more compelling alternative than this one.
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And the idea is this: from the very beginning, we were religious, artistic, and capable of science. Okay?
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We do not need an elite to do this for us. We are all capable of doing this by ourselves. And the examples, of course, are the cave paintings that we discussed as well as these religious settlements. Go play
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temple Koak. Okay. And as we discussed before, people come together to practice their religion, building temples, building monuments.
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And then slowly around these temples, you have development of farming in order to sustain these temples in order to practice the religion. But over time, what happens is that the temple people become corrupt. Rather than being elected by the people, rather than serve
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the people, they become hereditary. Okay? They engage in rent seeking, and so what people do is they just leave and build a temple somewhere else. Okay.
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And throughout this time, all these temples are being built. But in certain locations, the temples can also engage in trade.
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Why? Because they're the meeting place of many, many other communities. And as such, their real estate is the most valuable in the world. And so it's hard for people to leave. And the place just grows and grows and grows.
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And as this civilization grows, the people in charge create something called a temple economy.
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Okay? And this is just a primal form of taxation. Basically, what happens is that everyone brings food to the temple, and the priest then redistributes the food amongst everyone else. Okay.
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That allows for public works projects like irrigation, mainly irrigation, but also more temples. Okay. And because of this economy, now you need writing.
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You need to record how much food you have. You have to record who gets what food, the rations. You also need to record trade, right? How much grain you're getting from here, how many cows you're giving over
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there. Okay, they have a running system. Then you have money, and as this civilization develops, a strict hierarchy emerges, and the hierarchy goes against the natural order. Also remember that people at any time can just choose to leave. So
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how do you make people stay where they are and just follow the natural order?
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Well, now you have to create mythology. Okay? Which then you encode or write down. So that it seems as though it's coming from the gods themselves.
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Okay? Does that make sense? In other words, civilization did not give us religion, arts, and science. We already had these things. We could at any time in our history do all these things.
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Civilization is a device meant to gaslight or fool people into believing that a hierarchy is legitimate when it is not legitimate. It is meant to fool people into thinking that this hierarchical system is divinely ordained.
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Okay. So that's the argument I will make to you today. Before I continue, are you clear about this framework? This is the traditional framework. This is what you've been taught in school.
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The problem with this framework is that it assumes that we're all stupid. And if we're all stupid, it's hard to explain how we did the cave paintings, how we built Kabe, okay? How we did Ko. It assumes all
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these things. This new understanding is that we're all capable of creativity, but eventually, because of social development, we have these large cities, and now the people in charge need to create civilization in order to justify the hierarchy.
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Okay. All right. So having said that, let's look at the four earliest major civilizations in our history, and they are, of course, Egypt, Mesopotamia, which is modern-day Iraq, the Indus Valley civilization.
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This is also referred to as the Harappan, okay, Harappan civilization because their capital is Harappa. And then the last one, of course, is China.
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Right? Now the question then is why is it that these four are the early civilizations, and they have three unique characteristics. Okay.
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The first is their latitude. They're actually in the same latitude. They're not too hot and they're not too cold, which makes them perfect for agriculture. Okay. That's the first characteristic. The second characteristic is that they are by major rivers. Right. So
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Egypt is, of course, by the Nile. Mesopotamia has been called the Tigris and the Euphrates.
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Indus Valley, of course, has the Indus River, and China has, of course, the Yellow River. Okay, that's the second major characteristic.
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This allows you to build a fairly large city. Okay, because now you can solve the water and transportation problem. Okay, and also agriculture. And the last characteristic, which is the most important, is they're by the sea or
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they're by the ocean, which allows them to engage in trade. Okay, transportation bringing in new goods, new people, and new ideas. So,
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Egypt has the Mediterranean as well as the Red Sea. Mesopotamia goes into the Arabian Sea, which goes into
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the Indian Ocean. And so India is the same situation. Okay? Goes into the urban sea and then the Indian Ocean.
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China, of course, goes into the Pacific. All right? So what will happen over time is that because of the trade location, they're able to build a very large city, okay, over time. So,
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but then what will happen is that as a larger city becomes larger and larger, they will develop colonies upstream and downstream of the river. Okay.
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So they will build more colonies, and this is how you get civilization. Okay, you always have a major city, and as it becomes too big, you have other
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places in order to expand your trade reach. Okay, so the priority is trade, and as you can see what's happening is that these now these areas are able to connect the entire world, right? So Egypt is able to
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connect Europe and the Levant and Africa. Okay. Mesopotamia is able to connect Anatolia, Asia, Central Asia, and then Indus Valley is able to do the same thing.
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Okay, China is a special case because of the Himalayas. So there is trade actually between China and these other parts b
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civilization. Let me ask you this question. Looking at this map where is the most strategically located place? You guys know it's here, right? Does that make sense you guys? This is right in the center of global trade. And guess what? This place
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is where human civilization began. This place is what we call Samaria. Samar, okay? And this is where writing was invented.
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Okay? And this is where a lot of trade happened because if you just look at this map, Samaria is what connects everyone to everyone else. Right? If you're in the in civilization and you want to get through Egypt, you have to
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first transport your goods to Samaria, which then overland takes it to Egypt. Same thing with Egypt. Okay? Same thing if you want to reach everywhere else.
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Does that make sense? That's why Samaria was um the first major civilization. Okay? and they invented writing as well as irrigation as well as a lot of technology. And there's been a lot of debate about Samaria because one thing
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that puzzles scholars and historians is the language that Samarans speak is not the same as the surrounding areas. Okay?
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So that's why a lot of historians believe that the people in Samaria came from somewhere else and that may be true. Why? because this is the major trade route, right?
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And it's possible that what happened was that different people came together in this area to trade and they form their own language. That is possible. Okay. Um also scholars have been surprised or amazed at the rapid development of
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Samaria and that's why okay I don't know why why but there are some people on the internet who believe that aliens came to Samaria and created humans okay these aliens called are called the anunnaki and it's a really stupid idea and what
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you learn in this class is that if you put humans together and they need to do something they will do it very Okay, does that make sense?
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Okay, necessity is the mother of creativity. It's because they have to come together to trade during an act that they create their own writing system.
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Okay. So, if I were to take different people from from the world and just dump them on an island, you guys would really quickly be able to develop your own language, your own writing system, your own civilization because again,
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necessity is the mother of invention. All right. All right. So that's the general framework we're working with.
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Any more qu any questions before I cons continue? Okay, good. All right. So let's do the PPT.
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All right. So in this class I want to talk about how because of civilization development they start to uh promote writing and promote mythology. Okay. And what I will show you is that by studying mythology properly, you can actually uh decode or
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uncover or reveal the history of the civilization even though it may be lost to us. Okay. All right. Let's continue.
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All right. So, um, one principle that I want you to learn about human history is that it's a constant process of inversion. Okay. And what I mean by that is that as humans progress or as humans as human society grows and grows they
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need to constantly re innovate in their system and they do it through inversion. So um during the caping era it was an egalitarian society uh which was fluid which was dynamic and they were animistic which which meant that they
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believed that um everything had god in it. Okay, they were all part of God. And then agriculture, you had the mother god of civilization because you needed fertility, right? The mother goddess um is able to give you more children as
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well as help you grow crops. But over time as as societies became larger and larger, they start to go war with each other.
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Okay? And now the male overtakes the female. Rather than worship the mother goddess, they now worship the sky god.
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And before during the mother goddess, it was assumed that the mother goddess serves us because she's kind, she's compassionate. But now the sky god, we have to serve the gods. Okay. Um and then as society becomes more hereditary,
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what happens often are civil wars where the prince kills the king. Okay. The son kills the father in an aversion. Okay.
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The last process is that um over time as society becomes more populated you need a bureaucracy. What happen will happen is that the bureaucrats will collude together to steal power from the king.
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Okay. The servant rules the king. Okay. So this is a major pattern of historical development that that I want you guys to remember. Remember that history is a constant process of inversion. Okay.
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where the old order is being dethroned by the new order. Okay. So that's one idea I want you guys to remember. Okay.
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All right. So basic uh framework we're working with is that before we saw that the mother goddess where women were in control and they focus on balance and harmony, okay, and fertility. And their understanding of the mother goddess is
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that she's kind and she's she's compassionate. Okay. So you don't really have to work that much. You just have to uh respect her and she will provide you with a lot of babies and a lot of good food. Okay. Now we go to the sky god and
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different societies have different sky gods but they're basically the same concept. So in Egypt they have Rah. In Babylon they have they have Marduk. In Greece they have Zeus. In Rome they have Jupiter. Right? And the sky god demands
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struggle and toil. Okay. to rape, exploit, control the earth, to take the mother goddess and to control her. Okay?
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And you do that by building canals, by building farms. So it's a constant process of exploitation. Okay? Not only exploiting nature, the mother goddess, but you're also exploiting each other.
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You go to war, you conquer other people, you enslave them. Okay? It's a constant process of sacrifice and discipline.
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Okay? So this is the major transition. All right? So the four major civilizations we talked about, as you can see from this map, they're the same latitude, right?
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China's over here. Again, because of the Himalayas, they're blocked from the rest of the world. Okay? But these three areas, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Inis Valley, you can see how close they are to each other and how they can easily
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access each other through the sea, right? And once they are able to access each other, they can then access other parts of the world as well. So right from the beginning guys this is really important. Western society was
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integrated through trade through communication and so the ideas the people were always in exchange with each other. Okay. So you cannot understand development of Egypt in isolation from Mesopotamia and the Indis Valley. Okay.
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They were all um influence each other. Unfortunately, because of Western prejudice, you're often taught that these things are separate from each other. Okay? But they existed in dialogue with each other.
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All right? Um so the critical civilization is the Middle East. Why? Because of the fertile crescent. Okay.
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So um Samaria Sumer is where we where we can sort the cradle of civilization because as I mentioned to you it is the center of all global trade. It's where all civilizations meet as but as you can also see it's also extremely fertile.
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Okay. So this this is this has historically been the wealthiest part of the world. Strategically is the most important part of the world and it's still true even today. Okay. That's why you have all these wars in the middle
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Middle East. That's why America is so supportive of Israel. Okay. So as I mentioned to you um what will happen is that because of trade Uric will become a large city and then as the city becomes larger and larger it
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will establish colonies elsewhere as well and these will become the major city states of Mesopotamia and for thousands of years they will fight each other until um Sarum Akad unifies this uh region. Okay.
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Sumer is impressive. Um, they're known for their canals. They're known for their irrigation. And again, scholars are sort of mesmerized by how they're able to do this. But one thing that you learn this class is that when humans
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come together for religious purposes, they're capable of doing amazing stuff. These are zagurits. They're temples.
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Okay? And these zagurites were the center of their civilization. Remember that also they start off with a temple that then builds out outwards. Okay? And these zagrates are important because they are literally considered the home of their gods. And these places are
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sacred. So only priests are allowed to go inside it. People can deliver gifts to the gods through the priest. But the people themselves are not allowed to interact with the priest. That's how the priests are able to keep control over
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the cities. Okay? And the priests themselves are considered servants of the gods. This is kuneao form, right? This is kuneao form which is the first writing system ever invented. Um what's interesting about this is how they did this. So what they
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did was this. They just took clay from the river beds. Okay? And then before it hardens, you just take a read and you write down some marks in the clay. And then what you do is this. You just put
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out in the sun and then it hardens, right? And it's it's there forever. That's why we still have them today because rock does not decay. Okay? And that's why we know more about Samaria than we know about other places.
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Um for most of agricultural history we celebrate the mother gods. Okay. But then as I mentioned over time as society um becomes larger and larger the men start to take control and so they in they inverted the mythology of the
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mother goddess. Now the sky god who is monarch here kills the mother goddess to create the world. Okay. A process of inversion.
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Um so to understand this process we will read the most famous epic from Mesopotamia called the enuma allesh and alesh means from up high. So it's a bible basically it's like what god told us and this is a story of the
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creation of the world. Okay. So what's really important to understand is that all the stories are written down in stone. Okay?
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And again guys, they didn't have to do this because everyone was able to memorize the story line for line and that's what we did historically. So why did they um write this in stone? For propaganda purposes, right? It's the
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same as in today's world, you go see a film. When you see a film, you're mesmerized. You're hypnotized by the beauty of it. And you must think that this film must be the gods speaking themselves.
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Okay? You don't think about, okay, how do they put this together? Your mind doesn't think like that. Your mind's like, oh my god, this is an image before me. Therefore, it must be true. Okay?
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And that's why they wrote stuff down for propaganda purposes. Now, what's interesting is that there's different writing systems around the world. So, in Mesopotenia, they had the these K tablets, right? But in Egypt as you may know they have papyrus. Okay, papyrus
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are just are these these plants they take out they take out the plants and then uh put them together in the sun.
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Okay, and then they become like these scrolls that you can write on in China of course have the paper. So what's interesting is that when the need arises for writing we always find find of like creative ways to express ourselves in
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writing. Okay, papyrus scrolls don't really last that long. That's why we know less about Egypt than we know about Mesopotamia.
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All right. So the Emirash was written on K tablets. So let's go over um the story the Enimash.
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So um in the beginning there are two major gods. Absu and Tiiamat. Absu means fresh water. Tiiamat means salt water. Okay. Fresh water of course is the river. Um salt water is the ocean. Okay. When they come together,
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they create all possible life, including their children, the new gods. Tiiamat and Absu create these new gods, but they're children. So, they're really loud. And Absu is like, "You know what?
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These children are really annoying. I want to kill them." Tiamat overhears this and Tiamat tells her children who rebel and kill Absu. But then Tmat's like, "You know what? They killed my husband." So now she's pissed. Okay. So
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she decides she's going to go kill her children too. She has a general and there is this huge army and they start start to attack the their children.
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These children are um thrown back by Tiiamat. So they elect a new champion called Murdoch, the thunder god, the sky god to lead them into battle against Tiiamat. And in the final battle um um Murdoch who's al also
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called BL he kills Tiamat. Okay. Now what happens afterwards is really interesting because after he kills Tiamat the mother goddess he takes her body and then from her body he builds an entire world. He builds both the sky and
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the planet earth. Okay so let's read some lines. be out rested serving the corpse in order to divide the lump by a clever scheme. He split her into two like a dried fish. Okay, so he literally cut her like a fish. One half of her he
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set up and stretched out as the heavens. He built the sky from her body. He stretched the skin and appointed a watch while the with the instruction not to let her waters escape. He crossed over the heavens, surveyed the celestial
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parts and adjusted them to match the absu nominates abode. So Absu was the husband who was killed. Be measured the shape of the Absu and set up Ezra a leprecha of Escala and Escala Ezra which he had built in the heavens. He settled
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in the shrines anu ll and l. Okay. So what's important to understand is this.
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He's doing this to the mother goddess. Okay. So not only is monarch proclaiming a new order but he's also proclaiming new values. New values of struggle, exploitation, toil. Right? Before the mother gods was a religion of balance and harmony. Don't
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destroy things. Worship the animals as they're your friends. If you kill them, make sacrifices to them. And now this new religion is no, destroy the world and make it yours. Okay? So, this is a civilization that practice irrigation,
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right? Because irrigation really is about controlling the earth. All right. Let's continue. All right. So what happens now is that after Marduk um creates the world he has to establish a bureaucratic order okay an order a hierarchal order so he says he fashioned
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heaven stations for the great gods and set constellations the patterns of the stars he appointed the year marked up divisions and set up three stars each for the 12 months okay so he's bally building a calendar the idea here is
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that all these were bureaucratic inventions in Samaria in order to better govern the people What this myth is doing, the eminish is doing is proclaiming that the bureaucratic world is divinely ordained.
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Okay, this didn't come from the priest. It came from the gods. The priests are just the messengers.
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All right, let's continue. All right, so now that Mark has built this world, he's like, you know what? I'm tired and I want a place to rest. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to build a house
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which is my temple and then I'm going to make slaves in order to serve me. And these slaves are called humans. Okay?
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That's why we're invented to to serve the gods before we understood that the gods served us helped us or loved us.
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And now we must become slaves to the gods. Beneath the celestial parts whose floor I made firm, I will build a house to to be my luxurious abode. Within within I will establish a shrine. I will found my
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chamber and establish my kingship. Okay. All right. So now he's going to turn humans into slaves. He conceived the desire to accomplish clever things. He opened his mouth addressing eel. He counsels that which he had ponder in his
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heart. I will bring together blood to form bone. I will bring into being Lula whose name shall be man. Okay.
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All right. The gods, by the way, are called the Anunnaki. Okay. That that that's why there are conspiracy theorists on the internet who say that we're invented by the Anunnaki.
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All right. So, what Marduk does is that he takes his enemy uh Tingu and then he kills him and then from his blood uh he will create mankind. Okay. They bound him holding him before ale. They inflicted the penalty on him and severed
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his blood vessels. From his blood he created mankind on whom he imposed the service of the gods and set the gods free. Okay. Now it's really interesting for us to remember is that throughout this poem the monarch has different
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names be eel. Okay. And the reason why is that what happens in these epics is they take different traditions and they combine together into one composite story. Okay.
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All right. After the wise eel had created mankind and had imposed the service of the gods upon them, that task is beyond comprehension. For Nima performed the creation with the skill of Mardok. King Mard divided the gods of the Anunnaki.
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Okay, the gods into upper and lower groups. He assigned 300 in the heavens to guard the decrees of Enu and appointed them as a god. Okay. So now he's going to create this hierarchy. So yes, all humans are slaves but there are
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some humans who are better slaves than other humans. Okay, that's what explains the hierarchy. So as you can see the lash it was written in order to justify the existing power structure and honestly this is a concept that's still
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true today. Right? Why do we have schools? Why do we have media? Why do we have entertainment? It's to justify the existing power structure and social order. Okay.
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All right. Now we get towards the end and this is to establish that Babylon is the divine city. If it's divine, it means you can't leave it. You all want to be here. Even though being in Babylon means your
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enslavement. Okay. Let us make a shrine of great renown. Your chamber will be our resting place wherein we may repose.
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Let us erect a shrine to house a pedestal wherein we may repose when we finish the work. When Mark heard this, he beame as brightly as the light of day. Build Babylon the t you have sought. Let bricks for it be molded and
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raised a shrine. The Anunnaki wield the pig for one year. They made the needed bricks. Okay, so Babylon, the capital is a city made by the gods for the gods and then humans are there to serve the gods.
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Okay. So this is the divine order. This is the mandate of heaven. Okay. And as you will as you will see this is not just true for Mesopotamia for Babylon but also true for all major civilizations including Egypt. Okay. So
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this is a tapestry from Egypt. You can as you can see the gods are in control.
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The gods are the public masters and the kings are just being controlled by the gods and then humans just do what the gods demand of them. Okay. This is just the natural order. This is the minute of heaven. This is the way that it should
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be. Okay, now let's talk about the epic of Gilgamesh. So there are two major literary achievements of Mesopotania.
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The first is the emir lash. The second is something called the epic of Gilamash. As you can see, Gilgamash, he is a giant human. He's a king. He's considered the first king of Eric. Okay?
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And he's so big that he that a lion is his pet. Okay? Um what happens is that Gilgamesh is a king but he's a tyrant. So he takes the men to war and he sleeps with all the women. So the people cry to the gods for
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relief from Gilgamesh. So the gods create Inkadoo from uh clay. Okay. And this is very similar to the story of Adam in the Bible. And Incadoo is like an animal. But then Giggle Mash sends a prostitute to seduce him and then become
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civilized. Okay? And now Enkodu and Gamash fight. And when they fight, they realize that they can't beat each other.
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So they decide to become best friends. They're best friends now. And they embark on all these adventures together.
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They go kill um these divine beings. Um they go kill the protector of the forest. Um they kill a divine bull. The gods are now kind of pissed at them because they're disrupting the natural order. Okay. So, the gods have a
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meeting. They decide that one of them must die. So, they kill Ankodu. When Ankodu dies, Gamash is heartbroken. And he's scared because he's afraid that he will die as well. So, he sets on a quest for immortality. Okay, he goes and tries
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to figure out how to live forever. He ultimately fails. Okay. And it ends with Gil actually returning home and he sees happiness in the walled cities and his people being happy. Okay. So the moral of the story is that immortality is not
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about living forever. Immortality is about doing great things for your people so that you'll be remembered forever.
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Celebrate forever. So the irony is that even though Gilgash failed in his quest, he ultimately succeeded in his mission because because we have his epic and so we're able to celebrate him even today.
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Okay, so it's a story that um is being told. The question now is why is a story being told and one theory is that this is a concept of kingship. Being a king means not doing whatever you want. Being
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a king means to serve the people so that people will celebrate you and remember you forever and immortalize you in writing. Okay, that's a theory.
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All right, but ultimately Gilgamesh is a bureaucratic creation and I'm going to explain to you how this creation works.
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Through this creation process, we can understand how human society develops over time. So in the beginning what happens is that each region has local legends okay and these local heroes are celebrated through stories. So stories of demagogues like Hercules right and
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the epic heroism um they have these stories because each region has a local king and this local king says well I'm a descendant of Hercules and therefore I should rule over you. Okay. And what will happen is that these stories become a test for the
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king. If Hercules can fight a lion, then you are his ances uh descendant, right?
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You are his descendant. Therefore, you shall fight a lion. Okay? And that's how you justify your kingship through these acts of heroism that's relayed to you in stories. Okay? That's the first step.
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Second step is what happens is that as these different areas become consolidated into a much larger area, these stories themselves become consolidated.
Speaker A
So, Google Mash was basically different heroes. um one come one king comes to dominate a region then then what happens afterwards is that as the region becomes larger and larger you need a bureaucracy. So bureaucratic priests come into power. They add in morality
Speaker A
and messaging control the people and the king. Okay. The major message is the king must serve the people and then the priests control the king. Um but what will happen is that these different bureaucrac bureaucratic factions will fight each other and they will have
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different versions of the story. Okay. So bureaucratic priests take power the morality and messaging changes. Okay. As different bureaucratic priests take power. Okay. The must the king must learn humility. So this is a hard thing to understand but it's really important
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for us to understand otherwise you can't understand the Bible and um other literary equations. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you an example to help you better understand this process of storytelling. All right. So
Speaker A
let's imagine three universities Ohio State University, Connecticut and Mberry. And they all have their own local legends. Okay. So in these places something happened that capture the imagination of all the students. know maybe Ohio State University, Michael James gets drunk the night before
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examination and he still matches passive and the students are like that's a great story. Okay, but what happens over time is that because it's such a great story as story as a story is told more and more becomes exaggerated.
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Why? Because it becomes exaggerated. It's much more interesting. It's become much more memorable. Okay? And over time people add color to it to make it even more memorable. If you don't do that, the story becomes forgotten. Okay? So
Speaker A
only way to keep a story alive is by constantly exaggerating it and bringing color to it. So let's see what happens over time the story becomes Michael James gets drunk before every examination and he scores 100. Okay, that's an exaggeration. And then over
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time naturally through the oral tradition the story becomes even more exaggerated. Michael James bet his professor that he could get 100 on the exam while drunk. After James finished the exam he bombed on the professor.
Speaker A
Okay, flew up on the professor. The professor could not do anything because James had got 100 on the exam. Okay. All right. So, human beings just do this naturally. Something happens. They think it's they think it's interesting. Then
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it becomes a legend, becomes a story. Okay. And this happens everywhere. So, Connecticut College, a football player scores a winning touchdown. Okay? And then it becomes exaggerated. The guy scores touchdown every game. And then even more exaggerated, the guy hits a
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home run to help his team win a championship. And then later that that day, he scores a touchdown to win another. Okay, so it becomes more exaggerated. And then let let's look at the last one. At Middle Berry College,
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Pat Jack drives can take a piss. Okay, he just does that for no reason. Becomes more exaggerated. He goes to a new city every day to take a piss. Okay, and then it becomes even more exaggerated. And now you add color detail to it. Pat Jack
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drove to Canada and accidentally pissed on a sleeping beer. Okay. He ran up a tree without his pants and forest rangers had to come rescue him.
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Okay. All right. So, this is what happens naturally. The story becomes funnier. The story becomes more colorful, more detailed, more exaggerated so that we're able to remember it. Okay.
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And then over time, what happens is that these stories become consolidated, combined together to form a new story.
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Okay? Harvard's most legendary student was Pitbull James. He once rolled an exam that no professor could pass. He once hit a home run with one arm. He once pissed on sleeping bear just so he could knock down the bear with one punch.
Speaker A
Okay, so it becomes even more exaggerated becomes consolidated just as the epic of Giggamash. Okay, but then what happens is the bureaucrats take over. Okay, the people in charge take over and they have to change the story in order to better control people.
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And there are different versions of this process. So, so let's look at three. All right, you're at this one line and you change the story, right? In the first version, when he became a billionaire, he gave it all to Harvard. Okay, so
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obviously Harvard wrote this story to say, you know what? I don't we don't care what you do as long as you give us money. Okay, that's the first version.
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Second version is when he wrote he found his true love, he settled down in the woods, right fulltime. Okay, so this is signaling the primacy of writers over athletes. Okay, the the smart over the brave. The third is the bear ate him.
Speaker A
Okay, so you punch the bear and the bear decides to eat him, which is like don't be a stupid athlete. Okay, and and so when you add these actually lines, you make the story less interesting, less colorful, but you do so in order to
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better control how people think. And this is a process that we see throughout human history. So think of these classics of these Chinese classics, right? Sangu Romance of Three Kingdoms.
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Yeah. Uh CG, right? Journey to the west, right? Banners of the water margin. If you read them, they're not that interesting. But before you can imagine that they were interesting but the bureaucrats took them and changed them into boring stories that they can now
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teach school children to brainwash them. Okay. Does that make sense? Okay. So that's a process of civilization.
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All right. So another example is he assolds theogyny and he's talking about Greek mythology. Okay. Greek religion.
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So the process goes like this. At first, Gaya, who is like the mother goddess, and Chaos, they give birth to the gods. Ga marries one of these gods, Uranus. Okay? And they give birth together to 12 titans.
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But um Uranus doesn't really like children, so he beats up his children. So these children with help from the mother decides to rebel against Uranus. The youngest son, Cronis, kills Uranus.
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Okay, then Uranus marries Ria and now Cronis is king, but he's afraid that his children will eventually rebel against him just like he he rebelled against his father. Therefore, he eats all his children. Ria, the mother is upset about
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this. So, she decides, I'm going to give birth to Zeus in secret. So, she runs off to an island um and she gives birth to him in secret and he leaves Zeus there to grow up. Okay. Eventually he
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grows up and then he goes back to Cronis. He becomes cupbearer to Cronis and then poisons him. Okay. And that's how Zeus becomes the ultimate king.
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What's really interesting for our purposes is that this myth influences the origin story of major historical figures. Okay. So if you look at these major historical figures, you will find that it's a very similar story. So sir of Akid uh who found the Aadian Empire,
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Ramis and Reheis who founded Rome, King David founded Israel and Genghask Khan of the Mongols. Okay, they all share the similar origin story. So where do we get this origin story from?
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Okay, so going back, we're seeing three layers, right? So the first layer is the original layer, which the animistic layer. Okay, so different gods come together and they create humans. The second layer is when Cronis rebelss against Uranus and establish the
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kingship. Okay? Right. The third layer is this. The third is the most interesting. Usually when you're king, you need a general.
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And what often happens is that the king likes to hire a foreign mercenary to be a general. Why? Because first of all, he's of low birth, right? Therefore, no legitimacy. Second, he's a foreigner and therefore he doesn't have any global
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factions behind him. But often what happens is that this foreign mercenary is so talented that he's able to build a little faction to overthrow the king and become king himself because he's really talented. This is true for Gangask Khan.
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This is true for King David of Israel. This is true for Sar of Akit. Okay? So there are lots of historical figures like that. Even in Chinese history, you have quite a few historical figures like this as well. So the founder of the Song
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dynasty was this sort of person. The problem though is that once you keep him as king, he has a legitimacy problem.
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He's of low birth. He's a foreigner, right? So what do you do? You create a myth of Zeus, right? That Zeus himself was of low birth and a foreigner, but not really because he's a secret son of the king. Okay? And that's why you have
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these stories to legitimize the uh the king. All right. So again um this follows the dynastic cycle. Okay. So in the beginning the high priestess who represents the mother goddess she has a consort and so they establish a
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hereditary elite but this hereditary elite makes people unhappy with the system. So then one um prince or one of the sons decides you know what I'm going to form my own political faction. I'm I'm become a warlord. I'm going to
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overthrow the queen and the king. Okay. And so he slays the consort and marries the high priestess. Okay, which is following the pattern of the mythology, right? Then what happens is that after warlord dies, his son relies on a
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mercenary as general. The mercenary is often a foreigner and of low birth. mercenary slays the warlord and makes himself king. Okay. Okay. Does that make sense? This is a pattern that we see over and over in history. This explains
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why the myths are constructed the way they are. Okay. So another way a metaphor that we can use is think of myths and stories as like house renovation.
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Okay. So when you renovate a house, you're adding different layers to it. Okay? That that's literally what's happening.
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Okay. Um, so we we will look at one last story to show you how this writing process works. Remember they met writing in order to basically gaslight the people. So even though um Samaria Mesopotain is developing really quickly
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as you can see from this map, it's still a very diverse place. Okay, they have different forms of industry and economy.
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So maybe in the green you have agriculture but in the red it's pastorial meaning it's you're raising animals sheeps goats you're going over the place okay so there are two different types of agriculture the first form is you are sanitary you just stay
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one place and you grow your food you grow your crops you grow your plants the second is pastoral where you're going around and you are um uh feeding your sheep and your goats okay if you're a king or if you're a priest if you're
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bureaucrat Do you prefer agricultural people or pastoral people? Agriculture. Obviously agriculture. Why? Because it's better. It's easier to control them.
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Okay. So, what they do now is um they're going to create these mythologies to convince people be to give up the free happy lifestyle of a pastoralist and become an enslaved farmer. Okay. All right. And the question is how? Well,
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this is how this is called the debate between the sheep and the grain. Okay?
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So, the sheep and the grain have this debate and they appear before the gods for judgment. The sheep says I am I'm the better one. The grain says no, I'm the better one. Okay, so this debate the sheep says this
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and king of the gods make me descend from the holy place, my most precious place. All the yarns about O2, the splendor of kingship belong to me.
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Second, king of the mountain embosses the king's emblems and puts his emblem in order. He twists a giant rope against the great peaks of the rebel land. He the sling, the quiver, and the long boughs. The watch over the elite troops
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is mine. Sustance of the workers in the field is mine. The water skin of cool water and the skinnos are mine. Sweet oil, the fragrance of the gods, mix oil, press oil, aromatic oil, cedar oil for offerings are mine. Okay, so I'm the
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sheep. Look how great I am. Okay. I provide clothing for people. I provide sandals. I have oil which makes people more fragrant. I also provide food for your soldiers. So, I'm great.
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In the gown, my clothes are white wool. The king rejoices on his throne. My clothing um is worn by the king himself. Isn't that proof that I'm the greatest? My body glistens on the flesh of the great gods. After purification, priests, the
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incarnation priests and the babe priests have dressed themselves in me for my holy lustration. I walk with them to my holy meal. Okay. So the priests when they make sacrifices, they sacrifice the sheep. Not the sheep. The priests are
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not going to sacrifice grain. They sacrifice sheep. Okay. But your hero plow shield binding and sharps are tools that can be utterly destroyed. What can you put against me?
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Answer me what you can reply. Okay. So that's the argument from the sheep. The grain says, "When the beer dough has been carefully prepared in the oven and the mash ended tended in the oven, Nikicoa mixes them for me while your big
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bully goats and rams are dispatched for my banquet. On the thick legs they are made to stand separate from my produce, your shepherd on the high plain eyes my produce endlessly. When I am standing in the furrow in the field, my farmer
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chases away your herdsmen with his cudel. Even when they look out for you from the open country to the hidden places, your fears are not removed from you. Fang, snakes and bandits, the creatures of the desert want your life
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on the high plane. Every night your count is made and your tally stick put into ground so your herdsman can tell people how many eels there are and how many young lambs and how many goats and how many young kids. When gentle winds
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blow through the city and strong winds scatter, they build a milking pen for you. But when general winds blow through the city and strong winds scatter, I set up as a equal to iskar. I am grain. I am
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born for the warrior. I do not give up the churn the vat on legs. The endorsements of shephering make up your properties. What can you put against me?
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Answer me what you can reply. Okay. Well, what Green says is first of all, you don't need to protect me. I can protect myself. There are no animals that want to eat me. Okay? And I'm bountiful. Okay? So, I'm independent.
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you do less work, you get more of me. Okay, that's the argument. And of course, the gods say that grain is better. Even though people who raise sheep and goats, they're stronger, they're more free, they're more independent, but kings don't want that.
Speaker A
So they they create these stories, these mythologies in order to brainwash people out of their freedom, of their independence.
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Okay? And that's why we have writing. That's why they invented writing. Okay. Does that make sense to you guys?
Speaker A
Yes. All right. Any questions? Um, so my first question is like earlier you mentioned that there are three ancient civilizations that are very close to each other like Egyptian and uh That's right. So they Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
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Yeah. And so my question is like are there any connections between the the the distance and how they made all of this myth and their their methodologies of creating the gods? Okay, that's a really good question. Um so um it's
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almost impossible us for to answer how much they influence each other. Okay. um because even if they were not in contact with each other, they would still come up with the myths that they had come up with in order to justify their
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hierarchy. It doesn't make sense. So mythmaking is just a natural part of the human process.
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So do they share these stories together? Probably. Okay. But what's important to understand is that these elites are also interested in differentiation.
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So if I'm in Egypt, I need to prove to my people that I'm superior to the people in Mesopotamia in this valley civilization. And that's why I create the pyramids, right? Okay. If if I'm at Mesopotamia, I need to prove that I'm
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superior. That's why I create the zero gods and the epic of Gilamash, right? So the actual process it's it's hard to say. Okay. So another way of thinking this is how much are you influenced by American popular culture?
Speaker A
probably a lot but how much? Okay, also you whatever whatever influence that you have you still also refract it for your own personal needs as well. Okay, so that's a great question and you know scholars spend a long time decades
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trying to figure out what the actual influence of each culture is on the on the other culture and from my perspective it's not important. We just have to assume that there is influence that these c cultures aren't caught out
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of each other. But ultimately at the end of the day, what do they come up with has to be unique to their own culture.
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They want to prove that their culture is superior and they want to um and they have to address local needs as well.
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Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. And I have another question is that uh I don't know how familiar you are with the Chinese culture but in our uh Chinese uh culture there is a god who created the earth like is his name is pangu
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like there there is this mythology of of how pangu creates the earth and so my question is like you can notice that in the Chinese culture pangu is a male and he is the one who sacrificed himself to
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in order to create the earth and in other myths like uh in in Egyptians that the creator is this female character. So so in your opinion like do you think there is like what what is the why is this different between
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Okay. Yeah. So it's hard for us to say what the original myth was. Okay. The process is this. In the very beginning all m all gods should be asexual.
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Okay. So they are almost they're either nonsexual like it's not male or female or they are uh both male and female.
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Okay. Because in all traditions um the god has to be a balance of forces right? So the male force and the female force. That's why we have ying and yang.
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But over time what will happen is that they will change certain characteristics to reflect better the hierarchy. So maybe in the beginning when females were in charge um Pangu was a female character but over time they'll change it to a male character. All right. It's
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almost impossible for us to go back and um rebuild or reimagine what it was like originally.
Speaker A
Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Okay. Any more questions, guys? Okay. Great. So um I hope this makes sense and uh next class what what we're going to do is we will talk about the steps people okay the people in the
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steps this is civilization so people who do agriculture but remember that throughout most of um human history the major conquerors were people from the steps okay so gangask con came from the steps so we'll be discussing them next
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class okay all right thank
Topics:civilizationMandate of Heavenearly civilizationstemple economyhierarchytradereligionMarxist theoryEgyptMesopotamia
