Best of the History Guy: Forgotten Empires

foreign [Applause] in the long annals of human history many empires have left an indelible Mark both in the popular memory and the historical record Empires like the Roman Empire the Mongol Empire the Chinese dynasties or the Persian Empire but for every Empire whose name you recognized many other great Empires Rose and fell and largely faded from popular memory and yet in their relative obscurity are still important links in the history of humankind it one such Empire was the Kingdom of Aksum otherwise known as the Empire of Ethiopia which flourished at the same time as Rome and Byzantium and became an important center of trade between those Empires and Empires and indias Sri Lanka and the Far East and also played an interesting role in the three major monotheistic religions of the Middle East the Kingdom of Aksum deserves to be remembered the kingdom of action flourished in the First Century A.D to about the 7th Century its Center was the city of Aksum located in the highlands of Northern Ethiopia the kingdom had its roots in the so-called proto-axomite period beginning about the 4th Century BC became a force to be reckoned with by the First Century A.D by that time it was widely known as an excellent market for Ivory tortoise shells and rhino horns as recorded in the Greco-Roman peripolis of the erythrian sea a kind of traveler's handbook that covered trading opportunities in the Red Sea and Beyond as far as Southwestern India the Kingdom's earliest years or the subject of some scholarly debate but it is known that the Kingdom's written language Des is a member of the Semitic family of languages mostly centered in the Middle East other Semitic languages include Hebrew Aramaic Arabic and Acadian gas is no longer a spoken language but it is used widely as the liturgical or holy language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as well as other Ethiopian and Eritrean churches the language may have been brought over by Southern Arabic people in the 8th Century but some linguistic evidence suggests Semitic languages were spoken in the Horn of Africa for millennia the value of this early script is significant the biblical Book of Enoch survives as a complete text only in gas and Ethiopian translations of the Bible are among the oldest surviving in the world in its early years the growing wealth from trade at its Port City of adulis allowed the kingdom to expand its influence over a large part of modern Ethiopia Eritrea Sudan Somalia and Yemen the kingdom owes its growth to a shift in global trade patterns Overland routes to India and other routes became less popular when Traders learned that they could take advantage of monsoon winds to cross the Arabian Sea to India the volume of trade that came through the Red Sea ballooned and brought enormous wealth and prosperity to Traders along the Route axum would become the principal supplier of African Goods to Rome the kingdom subjugated a number of tribes in modern-day symbolia and extended some kind of dominance across the Red Sea over himyar in modern-day Yemen conquered tribes are allowed some autonomy but were required to pay tribute to Aksum often the form of heads of cattle according to axemite inscriptions as the kingdom became an Empire the axemite Kings took on the title of nagusa nagast or King of Kings whether this reflected a system of sub Kings is not yet clear by the mid 4th century axum was at its height was in that Century that the kingdom became using the name Ethiopia according to inscriptions it was also in that Century that action played a role in the decline of the once powerful Kingdom of kush Kush was a Nubian Kingdom that had for a Time installed pharaohs that ruled over combined Egyptian kushite Kingdom by the 4th Century Kush was a shadow of its former self and a dispute led the axomite king Azana to attack and possibly sack the capital of Mero the kingdom of axum is possibly most famous for its enormous Steely large decorated obelisk-like columns that have been built in the region for centuries hundreds of The Monuments around the city of action today in Steely Fields many of them marking the sites of underground burial Chambers the three largest of these called The Royal Steely or the 79 foot tall Azana Steely the Fallen 108 foot tall great Steely and the so-called Obelisk of axum the axomites left a monument at Maroa and built another at axum to document izana's victories including that over the kushites the stone had writing on it and guess Sabian and Greek thus representing a Rosetta Stone for these languages king izana ruled from the 320s to 356. Azana was the first axemite king to embrace Christianity being converted some time between 325 and 328. he advocated for Christianity in his own kingdom less than two decades after the Roman emperor Constantine the Great converted the conversion of Ethiopia was according to tradition the responsibility of a single man from mentions of Tire according to the Roman historian terenius rufinius as children fermentius and his brother went with her uncle on a ship to the Red Sea where the crew was attacked and killed by Pirates because don't tell good stories involve Pirates and the boys taken captive they were given to the king of Aksum is on his father as slaves but gained failure with the king before his death and were freed izana's mother begged them that they stay as zazana was too young to rule and she needed help teaching him and managing the kingdom when Azana took the throne for Menches was an important advisor to the kingdom fermentius traveled to Alexandria to talk to the bishop there who consecrated him bishop and promised to assist him in aksum's conversion on his return He baptized the king and shortly after founded the original Church of our Lady Mary of Zion in Aksum a rebuilt version of which still stands today this became the site where Ethiopian Emperors and later Emperors of abyssinia were crowned the Ethiopian Church enjoyed significant autonomy but did follow the church in Alexandria to split from the Roman Church following disagreements after the Council of calcedon in 451. the kingdom began minting its own currency during the reign of the king in dubus at the end of the third century and continued minting coins for 400 years they were one of the only ancient States in sub-Saharan Africa to Mint their own currency in one of only four in the world who were emitting gold coins at the time izana began minting coins bearing the Christian cross one of the earliest examples of the symbol on coins the relative abundance of axemite coins indicates that the kingdom had access to large supplies of gold although it isn't certain what the Kingdom's sources were axomite coins are also notably pure in the supply of metals was closely controlled by the axemite state the kingdoms traded and influence was great actually my coins have been found as far afield as Indians Sri Lanka the next major expansion was under King Caleb in the 6th Century Caleb was recognized as a Christian by the Byzantine emperor Justin the first who sought Caleb's assistance and ending atrocities committed by the Hemorrhoid King against Christians in modern-day Yemen Caleb defeated and killed the Hemorrhoid king and the kingdom remained a tributary under the ax Mike General abraaha and his son mazruke nazruk's brother revolted with the help of the assassinated Persian Empire leading to a series of wars that were eventually won by the Persians Monroe hay a modern historian cites these wars as one of the factors and the Kingdom's collapse thanks to the worst cost and loss of prestige the Kingdom's decline was caused by many factors in addition to strength loss fighting the Persians the kingdom may also have been affected by the plague of Justinian probably the first appearance of Bubonic plague which killed millions in other parts of the world in the early 7th Century the growing dominance of the Islamic empire in the region isolated the country from other Christian States and largely into their trading empire but unlike Christian Europe action was not on bad terms with its Islamic Neighbors Muhammad began preaching publicly in 610 but the ruling tribe of Mecca persecuted his followers in the middle 610s Muhammad advised his adherents including his daughter to seek refuge in Aksum in an episode known as the first Hijra the king of axum is said to have refused A mechan delegation which is after return there are different accounts of the effects of the Exile with some Islamic accounts suggesting that local axomites embraced Islam while some Ethiopian accounts instead suggested some of the Exiles converted to Christianity other ancient Christian kingdoms such as nobation mercurian elodia to the Northeast would eventually become Islamic but Aksum and its successors remained Christian despite their relationship with Islam as early as 640 attacks were made at the Port of adulis and the kingdom was forced to abandon the city of Aksum and Retreat inland this marked the end of the Kingdom's trading empire however the kingdom remained formidable and continued to expand South for several centuries according to Ethiopian tradition the kingdom was conquered by a Jewish Queen named Judith in the 10th Century but contemporary Scholars doubt whether she was really Jewish still there is evidence of burned churches and rule by a female usurper in contemporary documents another factor in the Kingdom's decline might have been climatological with a collapse of the trading empire that was over farming on the terraced hillsides which led to an erosion crisis that cascaded into a food shortage and the favorable rainy season seems to become less reliable in the 9th and 10th centuries the kingdom collapsed completely by 960 replaced by the kingdom rule by the local agawa people called the zagwe dynasty which lasted until 1270. it was overthrown by yakuna block who claimed to be descended from a survivor of Judas Purge additionally during this new Ethiopian Empire the Cameron the ghost or Glory of Kings was compiled and written and considered to be a reliable historical work by the Ethiopian Church the work is a national epic describing the fandom of Aksum containing the genealogy of the kings of akshum and the story of how the Ethiopians stopped worshiping the sun and moon to Worship the Lord God of Israel the bulk of the work tells the story of the biblical Queen of Sheba whom it identifies as mcketta of Ethiopia As Told in the Bible she visits King Solomon in Israel and is impressed by the wealth and knowledge there but it then breaks from the biblical narrative by stating that she and Solomon conceived a child the son menelik visited his father as an adult but refused to remain in Israel so Solomon sent the firstborn Children of the nation's Elders with him to Ethiopia upset with their lot these stuns stole the Ark of the Covenant and thanks to divine intervention escaped Solomon's agents it weaves together a narrative that the kings of Aksum and later Ethiopia were a single line descended from Solomon as far back as 900 BC and the Ethiopian church still claims the ark is in their possession the Church of our Lady Mary of Zion modern scholarship on the work is lacking but there is a possibly ancient Jewish population in Ethiopia known as the beta Israel their origin remains uncertain and even oral Traditions suggests several possibilities many of them have in the modern era immigrated to Israel in the 1930s the Italian invasion of Ethiopia led to Italian soldiers taking one of the three Royal Steely the one called the Obelisk of Aksum in five pieces to Rome as a trophy where it was erected under the orders of Benito Mussolini it was kept there until its repatriation finally began in 2003 the pieces were so large that only the anatov 124 Russian plane could carry it among other difficulties it's been reconstructed and now stands in its original home at action the solomonic dynasty was removed from power in 1974 and today the once great Kingdom of Aksum and its ruins are spread throughout several modern States his name is barely remembered its moderate influence is obscure but in its time it was mighty the Persian philosopher Mani the founder of manichiism described as one of the four Great powers of his time with the others being Rome Persia and China and of course of that list the kingdom of action was the one that is far least remembered today but it the important role that it played in the development of some of the world's great religions and is once powerful trading empire give it a unique role in history that deserves to be remembered but there's still so much we don't know many questions still unanswered and the the Forgotten history of the kingdom of oxim reminds us of the enduring complexity of world politics and how much history there still is out there yet to be uncovered foreign A.D on the banks of the Niger River a great battle was fought between two successor states of the Fallen ghanan Empire and victory in that battle would give rise to a Empire that would last 400 years one of the wealthiest empires in history would eventually at its height cover 500 000 square miles and include tens of millions of people and yet because this occurred in pre-colonial Africa we have very little record just oral history that thin Reed that connects us to a nearly forgotten past and tells us of a great battle that spawned a magnificent empire history that deserves to be remembered while there are some scattered records of the Malian Empire the story of the battle that birthed the Empire exists only in a poem told by the griot the storytellers of West Africa the African versions of Homer in the great epic poem The sundiotic keita according to the poem The King magam the handsome was visited by a soothsayer who told him that if he would marry an ugly woman that she would bear him a son who would one day be a great king when two Hunters offer magden a woman so ugly that they call her the Buffalo woman because of the hunch in her back the king remembers the soothsayer and takes her as his second wife and she Bears him a son Sundiata but when the King dies it is the son from his first wife that becomes king and he is so jealous of sundiara that he mistreats Sundial and his family in sudiata his mother and sisters are forced to go into exile but in Exile Sundiata grows to be a great Hunter and strong as a lion but the king of another kingdom Sama Oro of the so-so described as an evil sorcerer attacks his brother's Kingdom and drives his brother into Exile and the people cry for the return of the exiled Prince Sundiata Sundiata manages to gather together the armies of several smaller tribes and confronts samororo in battle and in the battle defeats Sama Oro with a poisoned Arrow he then goes and conquers Sosa and founds a great empire being given the title Manza or King of Kings now the poem is full of symbolism but what we can Divine from the poem and what we know from other histories is that in the wake of the collapse of the ghanan Empire sometime around the middle of the 12th century a kingdom called so-so started expanding and in 1205 a king named Sama Aura came to power in Sosa and started raiding throughout West Africa now in 1234 an exile Prince from a much smaller Kingdom called the kaniaga LED a coalition of city-states to retake his kingdom and then in 1235 to lead the combined armies in a battle against Sama Oro called The Battle of Karina Samurai Was Defeated and he disappears possibly killed in the battle but sundiara continues on to defeat Sosa and found the great Empire of Mali it is difficult to overstate how extraordinary this new Empire was governed as a confederation of Kingdoms where multiple kingdoms got to select their representatives to The High Kings Court it would eventually cover more than a half million square miles all of West Africa from south of the Sahara Desert to the rain forest including the Great Highway of Commerce the river Niger east to west it went from the coast to the Great Bend in the river so large that it said that if you started walking from the coast you would walk eight months before leaving the empire in its day it was only exceeded in size by the great Mongol Empire and it was unbelievably Rich it had copper mines it was the end of the salt Caravan trade but it had gold mines so rich that nearly half of the gold in the old world came from those Malian gold mines when the king of Mali went on the a hard the great pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 he spent so much gold that he devalued currency throughout the continent he was by some calculations the wealthiest person in all of history and among all of its other things the great kingdom included the huge city of learning and trade called Timbuk2 larger than London in its day perhaps the most extraordinary tale of the Mali Empire was the king Abu akari II who in 1310 was so curious about what was on the other side of his western shore that he gave up his throne and took a fleet of 4 000 ships to try to cross the ocean and see what was on the other side nearly 200 years ahead of Columbus and there is some circumstantial evidence that he might have made it to the Americas although historians are skeptical on the subject the great Malian Empire was the first of the West African empires to draw the attention of both Europe and the Islamic world and through its extensive Trade It impacted not just the whole African continent but all of the known world with its art and its architecture and its amazing wealth and while the Empire would start to decline by the end of the 14th century the Empire would still be around clear till the middle of the 1600s and yet because this Empire came in the pre-colonial era we don't know much about it records were only kept as oral histories and pre-colonial Africa is both understudied and much of its history was destroyed by the impacts of colonialism and that is too bad because the story of The Great Battle of Karina fought by The Lion King sundiada to found the amazing Malian Empire is history that deserves to be remembered [Music] while Europe was in the Middle Ages across the world on the Yucatan Peninsula the Mayan civilization was in its prime well most of the pre-contact Mayan history was destroyed by the Spanish Invaders there are a few stories that we can tease out of the remaining texts and one of those is the rise of a particular group of Maya called the Itza and they're long and influential history in the area they ruled from their Mighty city of chitsanita which is today one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in the Yucatan and they were the last of the Maya to capitulate to the Spanish Invaders 150 years after the rest of the Maya civilization had collapsed the rise the Magnificent civilization and the eventual fall of the Itza is a an epic Tale the Beowulf for Gilgamesh of mesoamerica it is history that deserves to be remembered the Mayan civilization unlike the nearby Aztec or Incan civilizations was itself never an Empire or ruled by a single leader instead the Maya were bound culturally and linguistically but were made up of numerous ethnic groups and tribes and were in general ruled by more powerful cities states or local Lords the political Patchwork nature of the Mayan civilization played a large part in their history one of these groups called lineages houses or tribes was the Itza it isn't known for sure when or where the it'sa originated but it seems that they arrived in the Yucatan at the end of them by a classic period around 900 A.D they may have come from the southern mine Highlands modern-day Guatemala and Honduras migrating during the massive collapse that marked the end of the classic Mayan period in all the narrative sources we have for the Maya the itsa seem to be specifically a people apart they were feared and hated by other Mayan groups and called those who speak our language brokenly they seem to have had unique customs and also called Rogues and disrespectful of their elders Spanish fire Andrea de avondano says that they beheaded man over 50 so that they shall not learn to be Wizards and to kill when they arrived in the Yucatan they settled at a sight of a smallish town called upbalam the name has not been positively deciphered but possible translations include seven Great rulers seven Great houses and seven bushy places shortly after they set up control the city it became known as chitsanita a name meaning at the mouth of the well of the Itza probably referring to the great water-filled sinkhole known as the sacred Senate the lowlands of the Yucatan have no rivers or lakes and said they have sinkholes that offer access to one of the most complex systems of underground caves and rivers in the world under the hegemony of the Itza tribe chichenita became the most important center of the Mayan lowlands the former centers of Kaba and yahshua were on the decline and the Itza were able to fill the Gap at its height cheats need to help sway almost over the entire Yucatan Peninsula the city controlled a port on the North Coast called the Isla Cerritos and through it the itzas became the important players in trade up and down the coast especially valuable in trade was their control of the natural salt resources and they traded for Jade gold pottery and obsidian this was the height of justinita's dominance a city of possibly as many as 50 000 people it was during this time that the greatest construction took place at the site possibly the most famous structure of the city stands over the carefully flattened ground of the city and dominates the ruins the Temple of kukul Khan the Mayan word for the snake serpent God gets a quattle also known as El Castillo or the castle the large step pyramid is a Marvel of architecture designed to see major ceremonial Center it is perfectly positioned to provide natural amplification for speakers standing atop it the pyramid was built to be a physical representation of the mine calendar each side of the pyramid has 91 steps with the last one leading into the temple at the top representing each of the 365 days in a year the nine levels bisected by stairways on each side represent the 18 months of the Mayan calendar perhaps most impressively on the equinoxes each year the light hits the pyramid in a way that creates the winding image of a snake on the stairway which slowly descends with the sun to represent cuckoo Khan's descent from the sky to the underworld signs of teeth needs as wealth are even now present in the ruins of the site the Temple of kukul Khan lies atop a second temple and within the towers Temple's main chamber lies a Jaguar Throne studded with valuable Jade and shells at its peak the temples were painted with brilliant colors very little which remains today is also home to the largest ball court in Central America the ball game played by Mesoamerican cultures was unique among ancient Sports in that it was played by many different cultures across a vast space over 1300 ball courts have been found stretching across time from 1400 BC to contact with the Europeans the ball chords Anita dwarfs any other yet discovered 550 by 230 feet its walls are decorated with detailed depictions of players the sheer size of the field was a statement of the oversized wealth and power of the city in the post-classic period another symbol that eats his wealth at their height is the enormous Temple of the Warriors and beside it the Thousand columns sum The Columns in front of the warrior Temple are carefully decorated with depictions of individuals and no two of them are the same these may have represented trophies of captured foes as well as paintings are particularly famous or renowned soldiers of the city two more much smaller ball courts stand within the complex just north of the city lies the great sacred cenite an important and sacred ceremonial site where the Maya through offerings including human sacrifices to their deities archaeologists dread the senate in the 1920s and found that the people sacrificed here seem to have come from all over the Mesoamerican region sometime during the reign the eatzes became associated with the toltecs the arrival of the toltecs traditionally separates old cheats in a complex of smaller temples and edifices in the Mayan puic style and new chitsen the side of the ball Court El Castillo and the Temple of the Warriors which have Toltec styles the toltics have a complex place within Mesoamerican archeology they've traditionally been remembered as a war-like people who ruled an Empire from the city of tula and their King was called Quetzalcoatl or kukul Khan after the Mesoamerican God much of the history of the toltecs we have come specifically from Aztec sources who revered the toltecs as an ideal Society sometime during the reign of the itzas the toltecs became involved with Chichen Itza which is evident in the Toltec style of the later and larger monuments early literature theorized the city had been conquered by the toltecs but modern studies has brought this idea into question despite the Toltec influence on the architecture archaeologists emphasized that chitsunitsu is neither uniquely Mayan nor uniquely Toltec but is an active blend of ideas from the central Mexican area and traditional Mayan Concepts that the Mayan relationship with the toltecs is still a matter of interpretation in fact some Scholars suggest that the Aztec description of the toll Texas so tangled in myth that the toltecs might not really have existed as described at all sometime during their time in the Yucatan the eatsers had to have abandoned Chichen Itza they found a city of shakenpudum this foray Into the Wilderness of the Yucatan may have lasted over 200 years although its veracity is uncertain they were eventually chased out of shaken putum apparently by another group of Eatza according to the Chronicles after that they lived for 40 years under the trees in Ash and poverty they eventually returned to Chichen Itza in the 10th century well the money had many written histories during the Spanish Conquest much of what was left behind was systematically and deliberately destroyed only a few late Maya texts survive in which the coalescing indigenous and Spanish Traditions combined to present a muddled memory of Mayan history one of these is the chilomb the name representing an author chilam meaning priest and balam meaning Jaguar among the miscellaneous Mayan and Spanish parts of the text it also relates the story of the decline in Fall of Chichen Itza sometime around the turn of the Millennium the Mayan ruler amakat tutul Shu founded what historians call the league of mayapon an alliance between chitsunitsa ushmal and mayapan Diego de Landa a Spanish Bishop involved in the destruction of much of the Maya codices wrote that mayapon was founded by valorius captains of the Itza while ushmal was formed by another Mayan tribe the shoe of the three cities Chichen Itza was the largest most important the league of mayapan effectively ruled the entire Peninsula but was beset by internal and external conflict what little we know about chitsanita's Falls entwined with oral history and myth and comes from a handful of the Chalan balam books especially the one found at the city of bani the narratives are fragmentary and have been described as incoherent but parts of the story can be understood gives a date that the head chief of the chitsanita was driven out because of the treachery of hunak sale and the city was depopulated what precisely this treasury was is a mystery involved was definitely the city of Ishmael Chuck possibly mythical king of Chichen Itza and hunak's sale leader of the city of mayapan origin is unknown but one story we have from his life is that he survived being thrown into the sacred cenite at Chichen Itza many people were thrown into the Senate as part of ritual sacrifices but there was a custom that if someone survived then we pulled or would climb from the Senate to give a prophecy about the upcoming year who knocks sale possibly as a prisoner was thrown into the Senate and the following day gave a prophecy leader of the Chichen ITA then helped terrain sail to become leader of mayapon the events leading up to hunak sales treachery or even foggier in a tail remnants into the Greek legend of Troy a prince of Chichen it has stolen other's wife precipitating the war a telling of the story survived the conquest or white flower was a princess meant to be married to all Uli El Prince of ushmal but the princess had fallen in love with Khan ache or black serpent a prince of chichenita who on her wedding day brought his Warriors to the festivities and stole her away to avenge a Uli El and hunaksale raised a band of Warriors from Central Mexico seven men is named in the Chillum balam and with them sought to destroy chitsunita but when hunak sale arrived the Itza had already fled ahead of him it isn't clear if there was a fight or if the city was sacked there's some evidence that the city was sacked near this time but some Scholars have suggested chitanita had ceased to be an important center decades before mayapan Rose to prominence theita were said to have gone into the heart of the forest of tashu lukbul near Lake patane were still at Lake patane 400 years later when they told Spanish priests they had come from Chichen Itza myopan then took over Undisputed control the peninsula and remained in power for another 250 years until further infighting brought down the league of mayapan entirely in the mid-1400s Chichen Itza remained an important ceremonial and pilgrimage side even after the conquest though they did not call themselves itsa likely it's a descendants helped to fight tenaciously against the Spanish before the Yucatan was subdued in the 1540s Maya pen itself sometimes called the last great city of the Maya was built to mimic the great City and two has a temple of kukul Khan similar to El Castillo though much smaller at its height it may have been a city of 12 000 people in patane where the ethnically itsamaya lived today the Itza founded a city called No Japan meaning great Island unlike batang the Spanish called it tyasal the corruption of Thai ITA meaning place of the ITA and today it is known as Flores guacamawa while they remain busy building an empire of 230 000 square kilometers inside under four different kingdoms supported to the Itza which was at its height when Cortez landed in 1519. after the battle of Cintas shortly after the landing the Itza sent Cortes several princesses as an offering of Peace in one of these princesses Marlene teen would play a role in the fall of the Aztec empire the Utah were an embattled Empire during the conquest as the Spanish encroached on the kingdoms Cortez executed the last Aztec King while he was traveling through it's a territory in 1523 and he celebrated mass at no japeuten with Khan EK that December after the fall of most of the Mayan world in the 1540s the itsa remained independent instead fastly refused to submit to Spanish rule or to convert to Catholicism the heavily forested and remote nature of the patan area contributed to the itza's continued Independence as the rest of pre-colonial mesoamerica fell one after the other the Spanish rule they defeated the Spanish armies and to conquer them in 1622 by Ambush and as late as 1696 Spanish priests peacefully to the last it's a king and no Jay patan but in 1697 a Spanish Army under Martin de Ursa governor of the Yucatan came to the city and officially forced the ITA to submit to Spanish rule there was a short fight but the use of an ore-powered attack boat caused heavy casualties and forced the itsa to surrender they were one of the last indigenous cities to be conquered 150 years after the Spanish conquered the Yucatan the story of the ITA is one of greatness of decline of tenacity in the ever-changing political landscape of Mayan culture they managed to cling to an extraordinary amount of power for more than a thousand years and while much of their history has been lost or destroyed or mythicized what remains is the story of a determined and crafty people who have indelibly left their Mark upon this Earth their famous pyramid at Chichen Itza connected with the perhaps now Infamous Mayan calendar has become a famous icon of their people today only a few thousand ethnic eats survive and only a few of those still speak the language version of Maya perhaps this you is a dozen still speak it fluently the great city of Chichen ITA had already been abandoned by the time the Spanish arrived in the Americas and by 1588 it was being used as a cattle ranch American Explorer John Lloyd Stevens published a book with illustrations of the city in 1843 which would lead more explorers and later photographs of the overground ruins in a long time since much of the site has been excavated the great Senate has been dragged for Mayan artifacts and parts of the site have been restored it is now one of the most popular archaeological sites to visit in Mexico received two and a half million visitors in 2017. 2007 Chichen Itza was voted one of the new wonders of the world the itsa and their once magnificent civilization are literally etched in the stone there and in the minds of the millions of people who now come to see the city that they left behind [Music] the name China traveled down the Silk Road in Antiquity and eventually came to be used as the name for the large nation that covered most of the Eastern Coastline of Asia the name China was probably derived from the name of a single ancient Chinese dynasty that of the chin whose brief rule over unified China marked the beginning of the age of Imperial China the chin dominance over other Chinese States though years in the making was accomplished in just nine years under a single King known today as chin cheer Huang and the rise to power of the first emperor of China deserves to be remembered the Zhou dynasty gained power around 1046 BC after overthrowing the previous Shang Dynasty though the Joe became the longest lasting Dynasty in Chinese history after about 300 years their actual power began to decline local Warlords took power over tiny five times and the Joe were helpless to stop it the kingdom eventually coalesced into seven major Chinese states by the 5th Century BC known as the Warring States period the Zhou held little power could do nothing to stop their subject from fighting amongst themselves many famous Chinese lived during this tumultuous time such as Lao Tzu Confucius and Sun Tzu the future Huang was born around 259 BC to Prince Yen of the kingdom of chin at the time the princess being held by the Joe State as a political prisoner meant to ensure peace between the two states Yen was something a minor prance and Son Of The Heir Apparent Lord angu and a concubine but angu had no legitimate sense to his wife in fact angu was only the heir parent because his long-lived father the bright King still ruled and had outlived angu's older brother e Yen stood little chance of becoming King entered the merchant Lou bouue according to the records of the grand historian woo way saw in Ian an opportunity for advancement in power he convinced Ian to begin a campaign of flatteryman to endear him to anju's wife the lady of the Glorious son eventually the two convinced her to ask her husband to recognize Ian as her adopted son and his heir and goo agreed the birth of the first emperor has been marred throughout history by an accusation that he was not the legitimate Heir according to the records of the grand historian's wife was a courtesan named Zhao ji zhouji had been a concubine of lubuway buway gave up zhaoshi who took up with e Yen but not before according to the historian becoming pregnant with buway's child that accusation has been repeated uncritically by later writers but has actually wasn't written until more than a hundred years after the emperor's death written by a dynasty that was actively hostile towards the memory of the first emperor so it might be nothing more than political slander the prince was given the name Yin Zhong when Zhang was two his great grandfather the bright King attacked Joe where Ian and his family were still prisoners Ian was sentenced to death but escaped when the servant disguised himself as the prince while bouway and Ian slipped out the city the bright King was also responsible for the end of the Joe the Joe made a preemptive attack to Stave off an impending Invasion but the chin pushed it back and defeated the show King who died in their custody shortly thereafter They seized eight of the nine tripod cauldrons seen as symbols of the Mandate of Heaven the last flew away before they could capture it chin Scholars wrote that nowadays the house of Joe has been destroyed the line of the sons of Heaven has been severed there is no greater turmoil than the absence of the son of Heaven the bright King died in 251 BC after ruling for 57 years Lord angu was crowned but died just three days later he's generally thought to have died of old age or Illness but conspiracy can't be ruled out Lube away became Grand counselor on the elevation of his Protege e yen but een II died quickly after ruling for only three years no explanations given for his sudden death but bouway and his former lover zhaoji became the region so the 13 year old Zhang buway hired a scholar from the state of Chu called Lisi to teach Zhang which he would later come to regret she was ambitious and like buway saw opportunity for advancement in chin competition for power in the state was very real we deliberately delayed Zhang's manhood ceremony and distracted xiaoji by introducing her to Lao I who pretended to be a eunuch and had two secret Sons with the queen dowager Zhang was prevented from taking the throne when he turned 20. first by the sight of a tailed Comet considered the first certain record of Halley's Comet and then by the death of his grandmother when he was 22 Zhang visited the grave of his ancestor the warring Duke who was famous for throwing out scheming ministers but wait could not have missed the symbolism and allow Zhang to be crowned chin though was at a Crossroads One Source said that in chin the question is always the same are you the empress and Loud eyes man or lubues Lao I made his move after Zhang's coronation using the queen dowager's Signet ring to convince Royal Guards to follow his orders in an attempted coup down captured thou I and had him pulled apart by chariots ice family was killed as well including the secret Sans joji was put under house arrest buway was replaced by Lee c and shortly after killed himself starting in 230 BC chin attacked and captured the weak state of Han and then turned on to the state of Joe which they defeated by spreading rumors at the show General was disloyal the competent General was killed and shows lesser generals were defeated by the chin the kingdom of Yen was next on Chin's list The Heir Apparent was Yin din also known as the red Prince the red Prince feared for his kingdom and hired a man named Jing hey to assassinate Zhong he convinced a chin General who had fled to Yin to commit suicide so Hague could take his head to Yong as a means getting close the red Prince also gave hay a map of yin's defenses with a thin knife rolled inside the dagger was coated with a dangerous poison hay would only have to Nick the king to kill him Jing hey succeeded in getting an audience with Zhang and brought a young boy to carry the map while hay carried the box that contained the General's head in the throne room no one except the King was allowed to be armed and no one was allowed on the king's Deus without his express permission as they approached him the youth became so nervous that he froze Jing hey left it off saying that the boy had never seen such Splendor he set aside the head and took the map himself as Zhang unrolled the map the knife was revealed hey grab the king's sleeve but a tour and the King jumped backwards Zhang struggled with his huge ceremonial sword while his paralyzed nobles with Dawn they yelled for the guards who were outside the room the king hid behind a pillar and finally yanked the sword free he stabbed hay in the thigh hey through the dagger but missed hitting the pillar instead both Jing hey and his accomplice were killed Zhang was Furious and he ordered his armies to attack Yen desperate for peace the king of Yin had the red Prince killed as an apology which brought the kingdom a short reprieve before the chin Army's attacked again chin conquered the state of way next by destroying the dams that protected Way's capital from flooding by the Yellow River only five years in Chen's enemies had gone from Six States to just two 's next Target was Shu the largest of their foes Chu surprised the first Army that invaded forcing Zhang to pull his best General out of retirement after a series of battles Shu fell in 222 BC and only the state of Chi remained chin had already bribed the counselor of chi to stay out of the earlier Wars cheese armies were ill-prepared but the Qin Army bypassed them completely arriving by surprise on the young King's doorstep he surrendered without a fight all six Kings have been chastised as they deserved Zhang said all under Heaven is brought to heal in only nine years chin had become this whole power in China to recognize his accomplishment Zhang and his ministers came up with an entirely new title they dug into Chinese myth and combined the term Huang which referred to the mythical three sovereigns and D which referred to the ancient five Emperors because now he had outshone even those legendary rulers Wang di came to being Emperor and Zhang changed his name to Chin Shi wangdi or first emperor of the chin he declared that his dynasty would last for ten thousand Generations oversaw massive government reform seemed to keeping his disparate Empire United Lee c was the driving force behind his change he thought that the tradition of empowering incompetent children and family was a mistake and instead created 36 provinces run by government appointees who earned their jobs by Merit defensive walls that had stood between the states were torn down and the many Northern fortifications were extended and reinforced into a single fortification the first Great Wall of China the ween wall was mostly made of rammed Earth and used natural obstacles as often as possible coinage was standardized across the kingdom as was a unit of gold hundreds of miles of road was built to support movement trade and tax collection perhaps most importantly the chin standardized and sympathized Chinese writing across the Empire primarily so Chin's laws could be understood everywhere they even standardized the length of axles so all wagons would fit into the road's ruts that wasn't to say that all was peaceful purges against those who had fought or disagreed with the chin persisted one man xiaoji and Lee had played a very minor role in Jing Hay's assassination attempt and would have been killed except that he was a talented musician he was blinded instead but allowed to play before the emperor Jian Lee kept playing for the king until for one performance he was within arm's length taking his chance he swung his instrument which had been filled with lead he was easily disarmed and killed the Qin empire was highly legalistic with a complex system of laws that offered the wealthy many opportunities to pay in place of punishment in order to fill the Kingdom's coffers it was accepted policy to torture witnesses to clarify their testimony neighbors were encouraged to implicate neighbors to reduce their own punishments or get paid mutilation was common from cutting off noses and toes to punitive tattoos another punishment was hard labor to build the roads in the Great Wall one writer called the Qin government the first police state in history like all rulers Huang found that he was not immune to mortality already construction had begun on his enormous Mausoleum and the thought of his death troubled him greatly a scholar claimed that beyond the Eastern Seas lay islands where the gods lived and the emperor gave him a lavish budget to build a fleet and go find the secret to immortality on one of his tours the emperor faced his third assassination attempt a disgruntled nobleman from a conquered State hired a strong man to throw a huge rock down a hill and smashed the emperor's wagon but they smashed the wrong wagon Zhang retreated to his Palace for safety later in his role Lisi convinced the emperor to destroy books that could lead his subjects to believe in a false golden age of the past and thus spun discontent in their own lives the emperor ultimately ordered many Works destroyed though copies of them were kept for the Imperial the most dangerous books were considered poetry philosophy and history books written in other states modern Scholars think that the Tale in the records might be exaggerated but that some books were burned and that many more of them may have been destroyed after the fall of the dynasty the emperor was still obsessed with finding immortality he had a garden Bill where he tried to lose himself in nature and he built a huge network of tunnels that were meant to keep his whereabouts secrets so he could attain Enlightenment by divesting himself of Earthly concerns he had an army of Alchemists and Scholars researching immortality but grew frustrated when he found that several of them were lying to him hit hundreds interrogated and he sought leads and ultimately had 460 of them killed though this accusation too has faced modern scrutiny as it isn't mentioned in any Source but the Hostile records frightened by what he felt were ominous Omens the emperor decided to take another tour of his Empire he brought Lee c as well as his young 18th son who High he died on September 10th 210 BC of an unknown illness possibly caused by a concoction meant to be an elixir of immortality that contained Mercury the emperor wrote to his eldest son prince fusu who had been exiled to the Border forgiving him and asking the boy to bury his father who has Tudor Xiao GAO received the note and instead convinced too high to take the throne Lee c was brought into the conspiracy and the three of them drafted a new letter for the eldest son the letter reprimanded fusu for his failures and ordered him to commit suicide fusu obeyed the conspirators chose to hide the emperor's death until they could reach the safety of the capital they allowed no one to see him and had a fish cart stationed nearby the wagon to mask the smell of The Emperor's body when they reached the capitol they announced the emperor's death and crowned who High claiming the emperor had chosen him as successor LED purges that targeted huhai's siblings and anyone else loyal to the first emperor rebellions broke out all over China who High had little control over armies and so ordered the thousands of laborers at his father's tomb to take up weapons and fight back an invading Forest Lee c tried to direct the king but only found himself arrested and killed by Xiao GAO Chin's armies fell apart without leadership some even defecting when huhai finally tried to take control of the Kingdom Xiao GAO ordered Royal Guards to attack the emperor's estate and who Hai was forced to kill himself made a new plant princeling King and publicly gave up any claim to control the other states hoping that would be enough to save the kingdom it seems that GAO had underestimated his princing however and the young king took his first chance to stab and kill the minister only 46 days after he was crowned the prince surrendered to the army of Luben who had once worked on the first Emperor's tomb Ben burned the chin Capital including the Imperial libraries and left it to rot Ben would soon become the first emperor of a new Dynasty the Han Ben's dynasty was aggressively anti-chin but actually maintained many of the changes that the Qin instituted and built a scholarly class to run the Imperial government it did loosen many of the strict legalistic practices of the chin and focused heavily on the demonization of the former Dynasty which seems to have given chin Shi Huang his poor historical reputation although in the 20th century Scholars have begun to rehabilitate the ancient emperor for centuries it was believed that the emperor's tomb was lost or destroyed over the Millennia although artifacts of terracotta were common it wasn't until 1974 that locals digging for a well found most of a terracotta figure and that caught the attention of the alien Chairman Mao today the Terracotta Army some seven thousand realistic soldiers arranged around the emperor's tomb for one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in China the emperor's tomb itself seems to have been found but not yet opened shinshi Wang's 10 000 year Empire in the end only lasted a couple of decades and other Emperors would rise and take China in different directions but in many ways the first emperor unified China in ways it had never done before and his reforms and changes not only solidified the Empire but set the groundwork for the modern nation state of China today by emphasizing bonds of culture Chin's rule was certainly not without controversy and towards the end of Israel became so personally obsessed with finding immortality that he neglected all the things that he had built but the Empire that had so deathly used things like conspiracy and subterfuge in spying to rise to power was in the end brought down by those same activities brought Low by the competing Ambitions of its ministers but though its rule was only brief the Qin dynasty had significant impacts on history and culture world history would simply not be the same or not for the emperor of the Terracotta Army I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guys short Snippets of Forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that Thumbs Up Button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Applause] 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Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 78,527

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy

Id: nVVvhnQGeCg

Length: 50min 37sec (3037 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 10 2022