Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Interesting History Things #3

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May 1, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

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Interesting History Things #3

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	Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Interesting History Things.
	And we start with a very interesting curiosity, an intact Ottoman war camel found in an Austrian cellar.
	This was doubtless a result of the Siege of Vienna in 1683, where Mustafa Pasha and approximately 200,000 Ottoman Turks and allies besieged the city of Vienna, a Holy Roman property at the time, and were defeated by the Holy League, notably led at the time in the battle by the Polish Richard the Lionheart, Jan Sobieski.
	DNA analysis shows that this camel, which is the first intact camel skeleton found in Central Europe, was a Bactrian dromedary hybrid, which was popular in the army.
	Now, I don't know anything about camels, and I didn't even know that was possible, let alone that it was popular and common.
	This is interesting because Bactrian camels come from the Gobi Desert, where it can get very cold, whereas dromedary camels come from Arabia, where it's very hot.
	The animal also had bone defects that suggest that it wore a harness and was ridden.
	Believe it or not, this is not the first camel skeleton found in Central Europe.
	Many are from the Roman era, but this is the first entire skeleton.
	But given that it was only about 330 odd years ago, I'm not surprised that skeletons found from Roman camels were incomplete.
	So this camel was born from a one-hunt dromedary mother and a two-hunt Bactrian father.
	And such cross-breeding was not unusual at the time, apparently, as hybrids were easier to handle, more enduring, and larger than their parents.
	And these animals were especially suited to military use.
	They are absolutely certain that this was bred for war.
	The Tulin skeleton shows symmetrical wear and tear consistent with being ridden, but not the evidence of strain expected of a beast of burden, which implies this is a well-cared for and valuable animal.
	And I'm sure it was.
	And you might be wondering why on earth would anyone take camels into battle?
	Well, the reason is that camels scare horses, at least horses unfamiliar with camels, as Cyrus the Great showed in his conquest of Lydia.
	Cyrus managed to rout the Lydian cavalry using his baggage camels, which frightened the cavalry off and allowed him to win the Battle of Thimbra, which paved the way for the Persian conquest of the Lydian Empire.
	The town the skeleton was found in was never captured by the Ottomans, so it was probably taken there after the war, traded for, or something like that.
	And Dr. Gallak said the surprising discovery was a highlight in his scientific career, describing it as an archaeozoological treasure.
	Isn't that nice?
	But do you know what's not nice?
	Destroying historical artifacts.
	For fuck's sake, I wish people had just stopped doing this.
	The amusingly named Supernatural Halibut Pole was erected around 1880, and Elder Art Matthews says it's a huge loss for the community.
	The pole appears to have been destroyed in an act of deliberate arson, and unfortunately the firefighters were unable to save it despite trying.
	Even though this totem pole was only 135 years old, it's still a historical monument, and it's always a shame to see these things destroyed for any reason, let alone just an act of wanton destruction.
	And now, the good news!
	The lost tomb of Jesus?
	Scientists claims he has virtually unequivocal evidence that could help explain the whereabouts of Christ's remains.
	Evidence also points to Jesus having married and had a son, geologists says, but his findings are likely to prove controversial.
	Really, do you think so?
	So Dr. Arya Shimron says he carried out new tests that suggest that it is likely that the Talpiot tomb, a burial site found in East Jerusalem in 1980, was a family grave for Jesus of Nazareth, his wife Mary Magdalene, and his son Judah.
	This was dubbed the Lost Tomb of Jesus in a 2007 documentary movie directed by James Cameron.
	The chamber contained nine burial boxes or usuries, inscribed with the names Jesus, son of Joseph, Mary, and other names associated with the New Testament.
	The inscriptions and approximate dates of burial have led some to suggest that the Talpiot tomb means Jesus married, that he fathered a child and that the existence of bodily remains means that the resurrection could never have happened.
	I'm glad that this is what we needed to prove that the resurrection could never have happened.
	Spoilers for any Christians out there, I suppose.
	But yeah, no, this is the proof that Jesus wasn't resurrected.
	Not the fact that that's impossible.
	The controversial claims were refuted on a variety of grounds at the time of the film's broadcast, not least on the basis that the names were all relatively common at the time.
	They were indeed, actually.
	You should probably Google Jesus Barabbas and see exactly what Barabbas means in Aramaic.
	I'm not going to spoil that.
	I'll probably do a video on that at some point in the future, so I won't really spoil that for you yet.
	But the question isn't really, was there a man called Jesus around the first century who claimed to be a prophet?
	The question is, which one is the Bible referring to?
	On the 10th Ossary, there's an Aramaic inscription that says, James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus, adding weight to the suggestions that the names are those of Jesus Christ and his family.
	Dr. Shimron thinks that this is very, very powerful evidence, and it might be.
	It might well be that this is the person who claimed to be Jesus Christ.
	Interestingly, Jesus and Joshua are actually the same name.
	It's Yeshua.
	And Yeshua was not an uncommon name, and prophets, self-proclaimed prophets, were not uncommon in this time period.
	So is this the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth?
	Well, maybe.
	Does that prove he was the Son of God?
	No.
	If anything, it would actually be proof that he was not.
	And so from the good news to the bad news, at least for this poor man who was sacrificed for a noble woman's burial.
	Archaeologists in South Korea have unearthed an ancient tomb with the remains of a young man and woman lying next to each other.
	Far from being a romantic scene, the burial represents a human sacrifice in which the man was killed to be entombed with the woman according to researchers at the Cultural Heritage Administration in South Korea.
	I guess the patriarchy works in mysterious ways.
	The tomb dates from the late 5th or early 6th century and was found near the coastal city of...
	Fuck you, Korea.
	Exactly, son.
	Yeah, I can't pronounce that.
	The site was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Silla, which flourished for nearly a millennium from 57 BC to 935 AD, producing 56 monarchs, intricately crafted gold ornaments, and beautiful Buddhist temples.
	Unfortunately, I know virtually nothing about ancient Korean kingdoms, so I really have very little to add except that this woman was clearly someone of very high status, as she wore a belt which appears to be decorated with gold earrings and gold leaf.
	And you don't get that unless you're a somebody.
	Apparently, throughout the Silla kingdom, women enjoyed a relatively high status.
	The dynasty produced three reigning queens.
	Researchers believe the tomb was built for the noble woman since no accessories were related to the man, a strong indicator that he was the human sacrifice.
	And this is not the first case where a male sacrifice is buried in a female's tomb.
	However, male sacrifices were often buried in the room where the artifacts were, as guards, so to speak, for the dead.
	It's noted that this is the first time a male human sacrifice is placed adjacent to the noble woman.
	The man could have been a servant, bodyguard or lover, says Li Han Sang, professor at Daejeon University, an expert in Silla history.
	This discovery is important because it shows an unknown type of burial of the living with the dead in the Silla period.
	And it also puts another nail in the coffin of the theory that women were always terribly oppressed by men all throughout history, all around the world.
	For our next article, we have ancient skeletons found in India provide new insight into the mindset of the world's earliest humans.
	You guessed it, this is indeed talking about the Indus Valley civilization.
	Archaeologists in India have found a group of skeletons from one of the world's most ancient civilizations, a discovery which could provide clues to the origins of the first human settlements.
	Experts say the well-preserved skeletons belong to two adult males, a female and a child.
	They were discovered in a cemetery at the village in Hisar, a large Indus Valley also known as Harappan site, that has been worked on by a team from the Deccan University since 2012.
	Forensic experts are going to try and reconstruct the DNA of these people, but regardless of the outcome of the DNA research, scholars already say that this find has shed new light on the Indus Valley people.
	Researcher Malavika Chaturji said the toys found during the excavation includes figurines of animals and mythical characters.
	Interestingly, there was a figurine of a dog with a leash, which shows that there was obviously domestic dogs around this time, and there also found figurines of unicorns too, giving us an impression about their mythical state of mind.
	Although this could be the unicorn might well be based on an ancient extinct species of rhinoceros, I think it's called Elasmotherium or something like that, that had long legs and a single large horn protruding out of the forehead.
	They apparently also found some material like pottery with grains of food and shell bangles located near or around skeletons which enabled them to conclude that settlers believed in reincarnation.
	I'm not really sure how this leads them to conclude that the settlers believe in reincarnation, but it's entirely possible they did.
	So it's long been thought that Julius Caesar, the great military leader who conquered Gaul and ended the Republic, suffered from epilepsy.
	And re-evaluation of his symptoms has led scientists to believe that he was actually suffering from strokes.
	Possible cardiovascular explanations have always been ruled out on the grounds that until his death he was supposedly otherwise physically well during both private and stately affairs, researchers wrote in the study, which is indeed the impression you get if you read about Julius Caesar.
	He seems pretty fit and healthy, except when he's having one of these episodes.
	Francesco Galassi, a medical doctor at Imperial, who conducted the analysis with Hutan Ashrafian, a surgeon at the college, say that there are a number of symptoms that mini strokes can explain better than epilepsy.
	For instance, Caesar was known to have suffered from depression towards the end of his life, which may have been the result of damage to his brain from strokes.
	Honestly, I mean it could have been, obviously.
	But honestly, I mean, it could have been the result of almost everyone he loved having been killed in various invasions or civil wars that he was largely responsible for.
	I mean, you know, it's there are a lot of reasons that Julius Caesar could have had depression.
	I mean, I dread to think the number of people that he saw killed.
	I mean, he was stabbed to death by the Senate, kind of implying that he wasn't exactly the most popular person around.
	And maybe that was upsetting.
	But Caesar reported symptoms of headache, vertigo, and later on mentioned giddiness and insensibility when he could not stand up as the senators honoured him.
	There may have been social reasons why the military leader and chosen heir Octavian believed he suffered from epilepsy and with good reason.
	Epilepsy, as they say in the sidebar here, was referred to as the sacred disease amongst the Greeks, because the people suffering from it were meant to be the subjects of divine favour.
	It's not unreasonable that Caesar would claim to have epilepsy rather than some other disease that seemed like epilepsy.
	I mean at the end of the day he wasn't master of public relations.
	So I mean it's you know I can't say either way obviously because I'm just some guy reading an article but it's definitely a possibility either way I think.
	I guess the reason that I lean away from it being strokes and more in the realm of epilepsy is that my uncle recently had a minor stroke and he was very infirm afterwards.
	I suspect that that is not something that Caesar would have been able to keep covered up given his prominent position in Rome.
	And finally let's talk about marriage.
	A good man it seems is often hard to find but amid widespread conversation about declining marriage rates in the US and much of the developed world it's worth pointing out that despite appearances a male-female imbalance isn't really what's going on.
	Indeed it's not.
	I'm sure regular viewers of my channel have got quite a good idea of why marriage is falling out of favour.
	So in what's known as the marriage squeeze hypothesis, demographers and economists once thought that gender imbalances amongst those in their prime marrying years exerted a profound influence on marriage rates.
	It was a good theory but like many good theories it doesn't always square with empirical data.
	After World War I France was devastated demographically.
	During the war years there were some roughly 8.7 million Frenchmen between the ages of 20 and 50.
	Some 8.5 million enlisted in the military.
	Roughly 1.4 million died.
	After the war there were about 40% fewer single French men for every unmarried woman compared to before according to a recent paper on the topic.
	According to the traditional marriage squeeze thinking, French marriage rates in the years after the Great War should have collapsed and instead they soared as they have after other bloody conflicts.
	I guess French men were just suckers for punishment.
	As you can see by this graph, after the Napoleonic invasion of Russia with the Grand Army, after the Franco-Prussian War, World War I and World War II marriage rates spiked and then you can see in the late 60s, early 70s, marriage rates plummet.
	I wonder what ideology rose to prominence in that period of time.
	After the war French women apparently married younger men and other research suggests that French women were much more likely to marry below their class in the aftermath of the war reflecting the scarcity of male partners.
	More recent papers suggest that the post-war marriage boom is merely the flip side of the sharp decline in marriages seen during the war.
	Authors theorise that after World War I, those marriageable men who put off marrying during the war helped supercharge the institution after 1918, when they arrived home and realised that they didn't get killed in battle and now they didn't have any more excuses.
	Of course this doesn't apply to the modern US whatsoever.
	There is barely a gender imbalance at all in the US and obviously the marriage rates are still plummeting.
	Scientists are going to keep fumbling around until they just ask men why they aren't getting married.

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