Lost Cities Bedtime Stories: Pompeii, Angkor, Great Zimbabwe, Mesa Verde, Petra... (3 hrs+ ASMR)

[Music] [Music] hello everyone in 79 haiti a volcano in the south of italy mount vesuvius did at first it projected only small stones for a few hours but suddenly in the middle of the night the eruption began to release very hot and fast ash clouds all around the volcano these clouds traveled way too fast for people to escape and we're way too hot for their unfortunate victims to survive several roman towns and cities on war near the gulf of naples were hit and their inhabitants surprised many of them in their sleep two cities pompeii and herculaneum were entirely engulfed in the swarms of burning ashes and in a few hours as the eruption still raged on they were buried under several meters of ashes the romans tried relief efforts but it was too late to save the inhabitants who were still present at the time of the disaster and the two cities disappeared from the map news of the tragedy traveled all across italy and around the roman empire it caused a strong impression but years passed and time began to bury bombay and herculaneum in memories like volcanic ashes that buried them into the ground decades passed then generations and the names of the two cities now only appeared in accounts and obscure records that most people were not aware of when the western roman empire fell four centuries after the disappearance of pompeii the memory was gone and the city was lost a millennium passed new kingdoms appeared in the south of italy and life went on oblivious of the dead city that weighted and 20 feet of soil until it was rediscovered better preserved than any other ancient roman city and it revealed treasures of information about roman urbanism and daily life tonight we're going to travel to ancient towns or cities that have known a similar fate they were not always buried underground others were overwhelmed by the jungle forgotten in the sand or just abandoned in a remote region and they were rediscovered centuries later apart from pompeii we will go to asia and the city of angkor in cambodia to africa and the remains of great zimbabwe the name given to the ancient capital of the kingdom of zimbabwe and to north america to explore a dwelling in colorado called cliff palace also known as mesa verde after the national park where it is located it was built by ancestral puebloans these places and their history were not always entirely lost sometimes the locals living nearby knew about the ruins but they all rise to fame and their historical significance and the extent or the beauty of their remains were exposed to the world each of them has a story that i will tell you i already told you about lost or nearly forgotten cities in past stories so i edited some of these stories after the new ones if you didn't hear them yet the journey in the video will continue to petra in the sands of the jordanian desert to scarabre in scotland a manor in egypt the city of the heretic pharaoh hikinaton and two maya cities like tikal i had to leave many other cities aside on all continents so if you are interested i could make more stories like this one about lost cities in the future for tonight's video i have partnered with slumber which is a relaxation and sleep app i've been working with since i came back last year they have several of my stories available on the app and dozens more audios including soothing sounds sleep meditations or more history bedtime stories by other narrators for example about easter island they had more every week they trusted what i did when my channel was much smaller than it is now and i appreciate the partnership i have had with them for almost two years one thing i like in the app is the possibility to customize ambient sounds in stories i know that some of you would like to have more of them in the background of my videos unfortunately i cannot please everyone with youtube's functionalities but on slumber you can add river sounds or a crackling fire or light music to any story including mine you can set the experience you want and also turn off your screen so there are many possibilities to explore in the app and if you wish to give it a try we have agreed on a one month free trial for my subscribers instead of the standard seven days this way you can have more time to enjoy it and decide if you want to subscribe to it if you do the yearly subscription costs a bit more than three dollars u.s dollars per month and that can also be a way of supporting my channel but in any case you can try it free of charge for 30 days from now if you use the link in the description now we are ready to begin our exploration journey so make yourself comfortable you may sit or lie down in the comfort of your bed and let the sound of my voice guide you through this long journey into the past let's start our first story of the night is about pompeii i already told you how the city was suddenly buried underground in a matter of hours but when it happened in the first century bombay was certainly not a small town it had a population estimated at 20 000 people which was a considerable figure for a city in the antiquity much less than rome and it's hundreds of thousands but that still made pompey an important and prosperous side with all the characteristics of a modern roman city main avenues converging to a forum temples baths an arena and many houses large and small where the refinements of roman knife were available at the time when the roman empire was thriving and growing but bombay existed long before rome emerged as a superpower it was founded about at the same time in the 8th century bc by the askins the people from central italy shortly after this first settlement entered the orbits of the hellenic people from greece greek cities were exploring the mediterranean sea and establishing small colonies around it together with the phoenicians in the 6th century bc the city flourished its surroundings were fertile because there were volcanic ashes one of the reasons of its prosperity which was the presence of the volcano nearby would also cause its disappearance centuries later maritime trade by the greeks and the phoenicians also benefited pompeii and a small port was built near the mouth of the river sarno on which bombay was located it was progressively turning from a small settlement to a prosperous little city in the 6th century bc the dominant force in italy was the etruscans they rarely conquered cities militarily they controlled them and pompeii entered the etruscan orbit like the young city of rome did it had etruscan kings for a period under the etruscans a market square that would later become the forum was built as well as a temple to apollo the cult that had been introduced by the greeks but this early prosperity didn't last in the 5th and 4th centuries four reasons that are not precisely known large areas of the city were abandoned and it changed masters the etruscans had declined and they were replaced with the same knights and italic people who lied to rome until this alliance was broken and a series of wars the same night was raged in the south of italy after these walls pompeii fell under the influence of rome it still had autonomy but it became an increasingly romanized city and it was a light to rome under rome's protection pompeii bloomed again it expanded beyond its previous limits and many public and private buildings were added including a theater area with anodian and a large theater anodion in ancient greek and roman cities was a separate building dedicated to music it resembled a theater that smaller and it had a roof for acoustic purposes apart from cultural facilities a temple to jupiter was also built the basilica the basilica in roman cities was a large public building for gatherings of all sorts it had multiple functions the term basilica became associated with churches centuries later because many churches in the roman world adopted the same layout of a central nave flanked by isles separated by rows of columns and some basilicas were turned into churches rome was a republic and in the first century bc it had emerged as the new superpower of the mediterranean world but it didn't govern all of its provinces the same way and it had not adapted its political structures to its new size yet many italian cities that were quite close to rome geographically that had been allied to it for decades or even centuries were vessels with a bit of autonomy but known of the rights enjoyed by roman citizens several cities revolted at the beginning of the 1st century bc including pompeii because they had grown tired of being second-class allies to rome without any of the status and influence or the right to vote in the republic that came with roman citizenship these revolts were repressed militarily and the cities were crushed pompeii was besieged and captured by the roman army but ultimately after prominent rebels were dispossessed of their properties the inhabitants were granted citizenship the roman republic expanded its citizenship beyond the limits of the city of rome to the rest of italy and these cities were fully integrated into the roman world pompeii became a roman city which it culturally was already but now it was also political it was officially a colony of rome with a similar social organization the same set of laws and citizenship for the individuals who were lucky enough to be free and have at least a bit of possessions in pompeii like in the rest of the roman world and that remained true until the eruption there was also a large population of slaves or foreigners and of course women who didn't enjoy the same status of citizen this short war at the beginning of the 1st century bc didn't stop pompeii from growing and becoming a cultural center in the region the following century and a half until the tragedy was probably the best period the city had ever enjoyed it was an important passage for goods in the south of italy more buildings were added including an amphitheater or they were enlarged and refurbished pompeii had more places for entertainment than any other city in its region not only for high culture and shows this included taverns or brothels that also were a part of daily life for the romans who lived in cities the population continued to rise and it reached 20 000 in the 1st century 80. the pax romana was in place and the ravages of war were no longer to be feared the city was wealthy and its prominent families lived and enjoyed the roman way of life relatively close to rome the center of the largest empire the world had ever seen in 64 the emperor at the time it was nero even visited the city the whole region of bombay around the gulf of naples was peaceful and prosperous but its inhabitants were used to minor earthquakes the horizon was dominated by mount vesuvius from which a column of black smoke constantly rose to the sky but it had been the case for centuries and nothing else than occasional minor shakes had been recorded until february 62 17 years before the disaster a more severe earthquake happened all around the gulf and did serious damages to pompeii some buildings had to be repaired fine frescoes inside the wealthy houses were repainted broken blades were replaced and life returned to normal or even better because several wealthy families took advantage of the repairs to install the last refinements of roman life into their homes like heating systems and window glass in 7980 in the late summer or atom non vesuvius woke up from itself sleep one of the most violent eruptions recorded in european history began and it lasted two days on the first day for 18 hours a reign of small rocks fell around it on more than 10 miles around the volcano this was alarming and maybe some of the inhabitants decided to evacuate based on the limited number of victims found centuries later under the ashes but at this point even though the air was filled with ash and small rocks fell everywhere this first phase of the eruption was not life-threatening many inhabitants hoped it could pass and decided to stay and indeed the first phase ended but for the worst at night or early in the morning of the second day the eruption turned explosive a cloud of super-heated gases dust and fragments of rock razed so high in the sky that it reached the stratosphere molten rock and hot ash were projected all around in quantities that defy imagination more than a million tons per second when the eruption reached its explosive phase the energy released at once was equivalent to dozens of atomic bombs such explosive eruptions that release massive energy and quantities of material in a short time have been called vesuvian after mount vesuvius they are far more deadly and hard to escape than slower eruptions that release lava over a long period of time but the worst for the inhabitants of bombay was the deadly hit and dust wave that the volcano released this flowing mixture of burning gas and rock fragments is called the pyroclastic surge on average they reach 100 miles per hour but the velocity can sometimes be as high as several hundred miles per hour in other terms they cannot be escaped on foot when the surged rich pompeii all remaining inhabitants were killed almost instantly their houses were covered in a thicker and thicker layer of ashes the roofs collapsed and the dense rain buried what was a vibrant city only two days before and up to 20 feet of volcanic material in the days following the once eruption sky was cleared of dust and ashes the relief effort was organized to hit the victims but it was too late a few survivors who had probably taken their distance before the explosive phase of the eruption and maybe looters had already approached the site on which the tops of some of the higher buildings emerged here and there the city was gone and it was buried too deep its surviving inhabitants too few to clean and rebuild it the site was abandoned and memories of the tragedy began to fade away in the 5th century many generations later other eruptions of mount vesuvius dropped even more material on the side making it entirely disappear for good the roman empire had collapsed and the memory of bombay only survived in roman archives that no one studied in detail for centuries hidden under ashes that had become soil pompeii waited for its discovery the city had been damaged by the eruption but the quick accumulation of material had protected a lot of elements including frescoes on the walls and works of art organic elements like fruits or the bodies of the victims decomposed underground and disappeared leaving cavities like molds that would later be filled with plaster to recreate their shapes the city may have been found the first time by the end of the 16th century when an underground aqueduct was dug nearby but it didn't draw attention and the secret remained kept for another century the real rediscovery and exploration began in the 18th century not only of pompeii but its sister city herculaneum too which had known the same fate the site was so vast that it was not entirely unearthed some parts of pompeii still remain underground for preservation the lack of air or moisture allows a little to no deterioration of the structures and artifacts whereas as soon as they are exposed they are at risk of deterioration by the climate or man pompeii first became famous in the 18th century and contributed to the renewed interest in roman antiquity the neoclassical style was about to emerge and pompey was an inspiration for it it also challenged the idea of the antiquity that scholars or educated people had at the time a lot of erotic art and material was discovered frescoes or statues that shocked the more prudish mentalities of the 18th and 19th centuries and also they didn't fit at all in the idealized picture of roman antiquity as a period of restraint that was not sexualized at all so many artifacts were kept hidden for a long time but it is not the only occurrence when archaeological finds have challenged preconceptions and be rejected because they were considered unacceptable another example is with the greek statues many greek statues and temples were actually painted and colorful we know it because paint pigments have been found on them that the image of greek antiquity that the western world had created and that still exists to a large extent nowadays is an ancient greek aesthetic made of white marble sobriety that evokes perfection and elegance the idea that they could be covered in flashy colors and that the greeks had a tacky taste based on modern standards this is maybe funny but also unacceptable so the way greek antiquity the ancient greek aesthetic is put on display from museums to movies is very much influenced by the idealized vision of it or for a part the fantasy that was elaborated in the past centuries but archaeology has progressed a lot and conceptions can change for example nowadays the depiction of sexuality in the ancient roman society has become almost a cliche in films or novels in the 18th or 19th centuries that was almost unthinkable because of the mentalities and the fact that it would have been a stain on an idealized past the ruins of pompeii are open to the public and this is probably the best place in the world to visualize in space what a roman city was like in the first century from its monuments and public spaces to private houses the roofs are missing but the layout and the streets the colonnades the decorative elements that have all been frozen in the past almost 2 000 years ago create an extraordinary and moving experience our second story tonight takes us far from italy to east asia and another wonderful city that was not buried by ashes but by the jungle anger and if bombay had 20 000 inhabitants in the first century angkor was on a different scale it may have had 750 000 to 1 million inhabitants at the time of its splendor during the european middle ages and this would have made it one of the largest pre-industrial cities in the world angkor is located in cambodia a small country between thailand and vietnam but the map of this region has changed considerably over time it has been redrawn by the rise and fall of several kingdoms and later by colonization from the 9th to the 15th centuries cambodia was at the center of the khmer empire that extended well beyond its modern frontiers and angkor was its capital the empire began modestly it was founded near the site of angkor as a small kingdom at the beginning of the 9th century and it expanded regularly with periods of conquests and a few setbacks until it reached its peak its golden age in the 12th and 13th centuries after that it entered a long period of decline the exact reasons are not known with certainty they may include religious conflicts the kingdom began as hinduist but later a growing part of the population and some of the kings converted to buddhism or it could be foreign pressure or an ecological breakdown because of droughts followed by violent floods that decrease agricultural production and there could be the great plague of the 14th century too it's probably contributed the plague started in china around 13 30 and traveled westward all the way to europe that it reached in 1345 on its way it decimated populations all across asia in any case angkor was progressively abandoned it fell to the neighboring kingdom of hayutaya the precursor to modern thailand and by the 15th century almost no one remained in what previously was one of the most populated cities in the world and also one of the largest thousands of buildings including large temples all the irrigation system and the roads were overwhelmed by the forest the gigantic city disappeared and the reveal of vegetation only its largest and most spectacular temple angkor wat was still visible and maintained by a few people until archaeologists began to unveil the scale of the site more than 400 years after it had been abandoned what makes angkor extraordinary is the profusion and beauty of its temples there are hundreds of them some very big others no bigger than a smaller house the males were incredible builders it has been estimated that the site of angkor contains more stone than all the monuments of ancient egypt combined including the pyramids during its rise and golden age the khmer empire was extremely wealthy thanks to a productive agriculture and a large population they had mastered irrigation and the site of angkor reflects this there was a complex system of canals that distributed water all across the site today only temples and a few bridges remain because they were made of stone but around them there were thousands and thousands of houses including the king's residents that were made of perishable materials like wood like in other ancient civilizations for example egypt the use of stone was emitted to religious buildings the rest mostly disappeared angkor had a low density of population but it was very large with satellites photographs and research on the ground the urban sprawl has been estimated to at least 400 square miles on this large area several architectural wonders deserve a quick exploration the largest and the most famous structure is angkor wat which is a temple complex that was initially dedicated to the god vishnu from the hinduist pantheon but as i said earlier there were various religious influences in the khmer empire and buddhism gradually replaced hinduism so by the end of the 12th century angkor wat was transformed into a buddhist temple its shape and architecture reflect the golden age of kimer art it is called a temple mountain because it has this typical central elevation that germinates at more than 200 feet the central mountain that is entirely in stone and ornamented is surrounded with rectangular galleries that are each raised above the next they give to the monument a sense of power and also harmony it is perfectly symmetrical this mountain shape is a representation of mount nero in hindu and also buddhist traditions mount neru is a sacred mountain with five peaks that is considered to be the center of the physical and spiritual universes a place where dimensions meet it is mythical in the sense that it doesn't refer to a particular identified location on earth but many temples well beyond the khmers in india and southeast asia reproduced this sacred shape this central elevation that represents the mountain angkor wat is the only monument in the city that was never actually abandoned never lost it was occupied and maintained as much as possible by a small buddhist community but they didn't have the means to preserve and restore it in the 16th century it was visited and described by portuguese travelers but when archaeologists arrived in the 19th century and were astonished by the spectacular monument it was in bad condition with the forest having invaded parts of the complex since then angkor wat has been restored and cared for it has become a national symbol for cambodia another spectacular temple but for other reasons is ta prom it was founded in the 12th century as well as a buddhist monastery and a center of knowledge a type of university but unlike other large temples at angkor this one was left in much the same condition in which it was found with trees growing out of the ruins their roots run everywhere and seem to embrace what remains of the temple to hide it or to protect it this creates a very atmospheric eerie scenery at the prom temple is flat as opposed to temple mountains like angkor wat with five successive enclosing walls that surround the central sanctuary the outer wall encloses a very large area enough to support a substantial town at some point in the past but the area is now covered in forest it is believed that the site was once home to more than 12 000 people with an additional 80 000 in surrounding villages working just to provide supplies and services to the temple yet another major temple is called the bayern and it also is impressive not as large and not as high as angkor wat but it also has a prominent central elevation and this one is covered in a multitude of stone faces that look serene and smiling they cover its towers and its central peak watching in every direction this temple was buddhist from its foundation and it reveals a more baroque style of khmer architecture in total it has about 200 faces that could represent the king who founded it or the bodhisattva of compassion in buddhism a bodhisattva is a person who is on his path to buddhahood that is to say awakening and nirvana the ultimate spiritual goal in buddhism it is as much an example of the path to follow as it is a sign of hope for those who follow the teachings of the original buddha apart from the heads the temple is very richly decorated with the profusion of baroliaf and inscriptions that depict everyday life historical events scenes from the hindu mythology despite the temple being buddhist this is a testimony of how religious beliefs mixed and coexisted the empire had buddhists and hinduist kings who successively founded new temples and ordered changes and renovations creating this variety of sanctuaries with their different styles their different shapes and their different ornamentations i told you earlier that angle had not been entirely lost because angkor wat was occupied continuously and its existence was known to the local mayor it is the extent of the site its variety of structures and its historical significance that were rediscovered starting in the 19th century it remained cloaked by the forest until the end of the century and was progressively explored over several decades this made it rise to global fame in the 20th century in 1931 there was a colonial exposition in paris where the different french colonies were represented with pavilions and the colony of french indochina of which cambodia had become a part of had a massive reproduction of anger what as its pavilion this pavilion remained as the symbol of this exposition and did a lot to popularize angkor wat in the west in the 20th century restoration and study of the sites were suspended several times during the second world war and then entered the regime of the khmer rouge in cambodia but it resumed in the past 30 years and since then the site has been opened to growing numbers of visitors which doesn't go without raising problems for its preservation but is also a major income source for cambodia and on the side which is very large the density of tourists is not high enough to distract from its extraordinary fantasy and profusion it remains a city of dream for our third city of the night we're going to travel several thousand miles again and go to southern africa to zimbabwe at the time of the european late middle ages when angkor was flourishing in cambodia another kingdom the kingdom of zimbabwe rose to prominence in the south of africa it left the ruins of its capital called great zimbabwe nowadays that was a political and probably a major trade center that dominated the region until the 15th century its study by archaeologists also revealed the wealth of local crafts and also imported artifacts such as chinese porcelain or arabian coins indicating that the city was connected to trade routes that extended far to the north to arabia and to the east zimbabwe is a term that comes from the shona language it could mean houses of stone or venerated houses the country now called zimbabwe reclaimed its name after its independence and the shona people are an ethnic group that forms the majority of the population in zimbabwe their ancestors founded several kingdoms in the region they have a specific language the sauna language but they are also part of a wider cultural area and group of languages called pantu there are hundreds of bantu languages and dialects in the southern third of africa from cameroon to south africa almost a third of the african population has a bantu language as a mother tongue but it mean they can always communicate easily in their native language because they have diverged over time all bantu languages descend from the common proto language which is believed to have been spoken in what is now cameroon in central africa at least three thousand to two thousand five hundred years ago the dates are still discussed and uncertain speakers of this ancient language began a series of migrations to the east and to the south carrying their culture and the practice of agriculture with them they had a strong influence in the regions where they arrived at least linguistically and bantu peoples came to occupy a big part of africa south of the sahara with a lot of diversity there are several hundreds and two ethnic groups that spread from central africa to southern africa then two languages with the most speakers are swahili which is spoken in the east especially around the african great lakes and often serves as a second language for communication between different nationalities or communities in this region there is also zulu in the east of south africa and shana comes third the formation of states in southern africa is not very well documented because there was no writing system so all we can do comes from oral tradition but it is not always very reliable after dozens of generations and it doesn't always help date events or precisely locate sites and also thanks to archaeology which provides more factual elements archaeological excavations in the region suggest that the formation of states in zimbabwe began before the rise of this medieval kingdom of zimbabwe for example the great zimbabwe site had been occupied as early as the 7th century 500 years earlier there were also posterior kingdoms after the fall of great zimbabwe and this is probably one of the reasons for it it was succeeded by the kingdom of mutapa which is better documented from outside sources because it came into contact with the portuguese in the 16th century mutappa extended far beyond modern zimbabwe it had a vast territory in what are now zambia mozambique and south africa on top of zimbabwe but what makes the kingdom of zimbabwe from the middle ages and its capital standout is the building of large stone structures that it left behind urbanization happens only when agriculture is productive enough to support a population that doesn't produce food and the building of large structures this requires an accumulation of wealth this is what happened in zimbabwe in this period the capital was supported by a large food production from cattle especially it received taxis or tributes from dozens of lesser rulers in the region these vessels had their own minor zimbabwes that left ruins of a smaller size and it controlled the very lucrative trade of gold and ivory to the coast on the indian ocean they traded with a coastal kingdom called kirwa along the coast of africa that connected them to international trade routes originating in china and the muslim world the middle east which explains the discovery of artifacts that came from other parts of the world the building of great zimbabwe spanned over 300 years its biggest part is referred to as the great enclosure which is a circular structure with very high stone walls as high as 36 feet of dry stone which must have made this building an impregnable fortress maybe it served as a royal palace or stronghold apart from the great enclosure the site includes an older group of ruins called the hill complex which was seemingly abandoned in the 13th century maybe it was an earlier center of the city until it was replaced with newer buildings there are also several groups of ruins called the valley complex where apparently the city center moved in the later period it is unclear whether these different sectors corresponded to different functions like religious political or economic or whether they were different palaces built by successive kings to leave their mark on the city among the numerous artifacts found in the ruins several stand out there are these imported products that revealed to trade connections and also elaborate items made locally with ivory iron gold or copper like weapons and jewelry the most notable artifacts are eight statues of birds cut in stone the zimbabwe birds which have become a national emblem of modern zimbabwe their exact function is not known it seems they were made to be placed on top of monolith and it is sold they represent eagles that were protective spirits and messengers of the gods in china culture let's now leave africa and continue our tour to america and breathtaking city in a cliff in colorado mesa verde or cliff palace cliff palace is the largest of several cliff dwellings built by native americans in north america and it is contemporary to angora and great zimbabwe it was built and inhabited in the 12th and 13th centuries by the ancestral puebloans who were they among the different ancient native american cultures the ancestral puebloans lived between four modern states of the united states utah arizona new mexico and colorado from the 8th to the 14th century because in the 14th century ancestral puebloans who lived in utah and colorado abandoned their settlements and migrated south in the 17th century they settled most of them in new mexico where the majority of their descendants now live pueblo peoples with smaller communities in texas and arizona the history of pueblo people started long before that they can be traced as a specific culture with enough characteristics to separate them from other groups since at least the 8th century when they had a lifestyle based on agriculture combined with hunting and gathering and they developed an early architecture with characteristic villages that were crescent shaped or in straight rows made of houses with a flat roof aligned close to one another villages or pueblos in spanish is the reason they were given this name by spanish who explored north america from the 10th to the 12th century their villages and weddings became made of stone and mortar and their architecture diversified with towers or small dams to retain and use water villages became larger and houses sometimes gained a second floor in the 12th century also called the great pueblo period they also developed these large cleft weddings that could have served as defensive places to hide and protect their harvests because they also had communities built in the open with now multi-storied villages that used a variety of materials stone wood natural fibers and adobe these cliff dwellings were built in shallow caves and under rock overhangs in canyons they leveled the ground sometimes took the rock to enlarge the surface for their wedding and use the space to build a village inside the cliff stones were shaped and walls were made thick enough to support multiple stories circulation in these villages was as much vertical as it was horizontal the entrance door two houses was generally on the second floor and they were ventilation holes with ladders to go up or down inside the houses the floors were made of wood and the insides were often decorated with petroglyphs that is to say signs carved in stone or paintings like villages in the open cleaved weddings had a public space a platter in front of the houses where women would grind corn men would make tools or children would play mesa verde is the largest of these dwellings and its main building material is sandstone it is believed it had a population of about a hundred people living in 150 rooms but beyond its modest population it is also believed that it was at the center of a larger community that included a smaller villages all around that would have made it a small social and political center one question raised by these cleaved weddings is why the trouble of building such structures when the majority of ancestral puebloans lived in regular villages it could have been for protection against intruders because in the 13th century climatic conditions may have worsened in the region and reduced food production leading to conflicts vegs were probably very vulnerable to attacks they could be attacked from any side whereas cleaved weddings were much harder to invade and they gave a sense of security maybe the occupation of mesa verde for approximately 70 years in the 13th century has been indicated by a tree ring dating of the wood they used in the construction around 1300 the settlement was abandoned together with others as the ancestral prevalence left colorado the reason for this could be several years of drought that pushed them to look for more welcoming careers to the south starting in the 12th century and for about 300 years north america was hit by a long period of droughts which is believed to have caused the collapse or the transformation of different ancient native american cultures just the puebloans the mississippian cultural area to the east was also strongly affected and in so more welfare and migrations in this period in the case of ancestral puebloans there could have been other reasons maybe an attraction to mesoamerican societies from mexico they had contacts with them or the soil nutrients may have become depleted due to many years of farming in any case cliff palace or mesa verde was abandoned because the life was no longer viable there and for centuries it was left to wild animals hidden and protected from the elements under its rock overhang it may have been found maybe multiple times by all the native american groups but no one lived there since it was officially rediscovered in 1888 by ranchers while they were out looking for stray cattle the rediscovery happened after about 600 years and since then it has brought a lot of information about ancestral puebloans their way of life their techniques their ingeniosity it is located inside a national park the mesa verde national park in colorado these are the four lost cities i wanted to tell you about tonight but our exploration continues with more of them from all the stories that you may have missed petra in jordan anatolian underground cities in turkey in cappadocia scarabray in scotland a manor in egypt and major cities like tikal and there are several lost cities i had to leave aside for later like machu picchu or carol in peru or mo enjodaro in pakistan so if you want more of these stories please let me know in the comments i hope you enjoy these other stories and i'll speak to you soon with another topic over the most famous view of petra is the entrance to what seems to be a greco-roman temple carved into a cliff but there is much more to pedra and this is what we're going to explore together with the history of its creators the nepatians nowadays petra is located in jordan halfway between the dead sea and the gulf of aqaba on the red sea this region is fairly arid it is not as desertic as other parts of the middle east like a big part of the arabian peninsula but it receives a little rain and mainly during the winter the environment is rather hostile but the site where the city was built offered two big advantages there was a supply of water and a very particular geography with large rock formations that could hide the city and make it easy to defend it had only two or three access ways one to the northwest but only through a very narrow mountain trail maybe there was one to the south too and the main one to the east was through a narrow passage between two cliffs called the shaft at the end of this narrow gorge stands petra's most famous structure called alcazney the treasury we will take a look at it later but in reality there are dozens of structures and petra once had twenty thousand to twenty five thousand inhabitants in the antiquity making it a significant city at the time it had thousands of citizens houses marketplaces shops temples it provided entertainment there was a theater too and shelter to the caravans that traveled along trade routes to arabia syria the persian gulf the red sea and the mediterranean sea the golden age of petra was in the first century's haiti and the builders of the city as we know it were an ancient arabian people the nabathians thanks to their ingeniousity their wealth too because they participated in antique trade routes their art and their openness to foreign cultures they built this wonder of the world and they inhabited it for centuries as the capital of their kingdom and later as the capital of the roman province their kingdom had become but they were not the first to settle here we don't exactly know who lived on the site that there are traces of neolithic farming just north of it around 7000 bc and petra is also probably mentioned under another name in egyptian campaign accounts from the second millennium bc during the new kingdom when enchanted ships pushed its frontiers well beyond the valley of the nile and expanded eastwards as far as we know petra had no monumental architecture yet back then and petrol may have been a halt for caravans because it was well located to benefit from several trade routes in the antiquity there was incense from arabia silk or spices that came from the persian gulf and many more riches gemstones fabrics dyes gold petra was at the crossroads of caravan trails connecting the persian gulf with the mediterranean and arabia to syria and it is probably because of this advantageous location and the characteristics of the site that the nepatians claimed it as theirs and settled there around the 4th century bc the exact time is unclear but we know that by the 2nd century bc petra was their capital and they had started to build it and turn it into the wonder that we know of today so who were the nebarians they were a bedouin tribe that lived a nomadic lifestyle until they settled you probably heard about the bedwinds they are a rap people but they are called bedwins because of their lifestyle bedwin comes from badawi which means desert dweller as opposed to hardir the term for sedentary people there were many different tribes of bedwins and historically they lived in the desert regions of north africa the arabian peninsula and the levant on the wide area they shared and still share because they haven't disappeared the culture of herding camels and goats the nabataeans were one of these tribes that roamed the arabian desert and for centuries they would go wherever they could find water and pasture for their cattle some bedouin tribes took part in the business of caravans we don't know under which circumstances but this may be the reason why they progressively abandoned their nomadic life to settle in petra and control the area around it so technically once they settled they stopped being peduins and they became sedentary on top of petra which was known as rakum they controlled the string of oasis where intensive agriculture was practiced and they loosely controlled the trade routes crossing their territory they never really had fixed frontiers that their neighbours would have recognized but rather a zone of influence and even though they had centuries of nomadic life prior to their settlement they quickly proved very good at agriculture in almost desertic areas this required specific techniques for example they would contour circles of land into shallow funnels and plant a tree a single tree in the middle of it when it rained which was rare all the water collected in the funnel would flow down to the tree and stay in the ground under it ensuring its survival and its growth they also carved tanks in rock to store water and use it all along the year they build terraces and channels for collecting rain water and not lose a drop of it this is how they manage to reach tens of thousands of inhabitants in a region that was otherwise rather hostile and where other peoples might not have been able to survive once they settled the nebadians found themselves at a cultural crossroads in the south there were arabic people nomads or sedentaries with a specific pre-islamic culture and religious belief system the main god were shipped in petra was called dushara and another important deity the goddess was alutsah alutzah was a major goddess in the arabian peninsula before islam and has been compared with the greek aphrodite or the roman venus in the east there was the persian gulf which had connections with india and as far as china or indonesia via trade roads in the north there had been prosperous finishing cities and beyond the greeks the greeks had spread their influence on almost the entire middle east when alexander the great conquered his empire in the 4th century bc and in the west there was egypt that was already influenced by greece but also had retained its specific culture and even before alexander the persian empire had dominated the region for a long time so there were layers and layers of cultural influences and technical knowledge that the nabateans could assimilate the most visible sign of that is their architecture it strongly reminds of greek monuments with the use of columns and carefully thought out proportions together with a mesopotamian influence being at a crossroads of caravans the nebateans were open to foreign cultures and it is likely that along their history they also absorbed other arab tribes petra as we know it was mainly built in the 1st century bc and 1st century a.d at the time when rome was pushing to the middle east and when the last 4 hours from the dalemake dynasty reigned in egypt including cleopatra in the first century bc and haiti the nabataeans gained considerable wealth from the trading business and this is what funded the building of petra their capital peaked at maybe 20 to 25 000 inhabitants and very ornate structures multiplied including the most famous ones the kazne the treasury or the so-called monastery the treasury is a name given to it in the 19th century by the bedouins in the area because they believed it contained treasures but it was originally a mausoleum or a crypt believed to be the mausoleum of a king aritas iv the greek influence is not only obvious in the architecture it also shows in the sculptures there are four figures of eagles on top that would have carried away the souls they are figures of dancing amazons that is to save female warriors from greek mythology on the upper level and also statues of caster and pollocks two mythological twins who lived partly in the underworld the world of the dead and partly on mount olympus the place where gods lived in greek myth the facade is entirely carved into sandstone it looks as if it was built but it was just excavated from the cliff and overall the decorations remind of the architecture of alexandria in egypt in the first century bc and this is not surprising telemake egypt was a major influence culturally and economically on the region at the time the outside is very ornate but the inside is not after the main entrance is a large rectangular room entirely carved in rock it measures 28 meters by 11 meters and the ceiling is 10 meters high maybe it had a decoration made of stucco but it has disappeared stucco is a type of plaster it can be muddled when it is wet as decorations and then it hardens when it dries it could also be painted but if these types of ornaments were ever present they are now gone this first room gives access to three smaller chambers that are empty too the bedouin legend says that this building was an ancient treasure room that belonged to the pharaohs of egypt it is tempting to imagine these large rectangular rooms filled with coffers of gold and gemstones but it's actually impossible because it was built as egypt was losing its independence to rome and at the time we know that the nabataeans occupied the side not the egyptians what isn't clear is whether this place was a tomb and whether it ever received the sarcophagus of a king or just a mausoleum that is to say a temple to honor the king's memory to access the treasury and the rest of the city people needed to walk through the shaft the main entrance to petra it is a narrow gorge there are parts where it is just 10 feet wide and it is 1.2 kilometer long that is to say 0.7 0.8 mile the entrance of the shaft contained a monumental arch it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1896 and it is now collapsed but it existed for about 2 000 years this shaft was to grind caravan entrance into petra and it is absolutely spectacular because the cliffs on each side are 300 to 600 feet high this entrance reminds of the strong defensive position of petra any army trying to enter the city would have had to walk in a very thin column that the defenses could have blocked and harassed from above along the shaft there are various underground chambers believe there were rooms for the guards that defended the main entrance to the city another massive structure a little further from the castle the treasury is a theater positioned to bring the greatest number of structures within view this theater is from the roman period we'll come back to that in a minute and as the passage keeps widening more structures now in ruins appeal to the visitors temples palaces tombs houses towers northwest of the city center high in the hills stands another monumental building carved out of rock the so-called monastery it is an architectural mix of greek and mesopotamian styles of construction there are columns which are decorative given that the monument is carved they were not necessary to support any roof like in greek structures rather than greek this style is called hellenistic which is like a synonym but the term hedonistic describes greek culture outside greece after the time of alexander the great when greek cultural influence expanded well beyond the limits of classical greek cities and their colonies the hellenistic period by convention spreads from the death of alexander the great in 323 bc to 31 bc which is the date of the battle of action when hellenistic egypt golimic egypt was defeated and the domination of rome on the east of the mediterranean began there are also traces of mesopotamian influences on the structure like the single large entrance and depressions on the facade that look like windows even though they are not there are also square shaped tower structures on either side these kinds of features are typical from mesopotamian architecture like at the treasury the monasteries inside is less impressive than the outside there is a single square chamber with a large niche in the back wall the walls were probably plastered and painted but none of this remains it is believed that this building was dedicated to another king obadas the first and it is older than the treasury it is dated from the 1st century bc and it was probably richly decorated ornamented because the king was deified after his death there are also crosses carved into the walls and this may be a clue about what happened to petra because after its peak in the first century the kingdom of the nevadians began to decline at its greatest extent the kingdom covered a large part of jordan the sinai peninsula and the part of arabia it even controlled damascus in the south of syria for a short period of time but in the first century haiti the nabataeans found themselves increasingly surrounded by the roman empire the romans had annexed egypt and palestine syria in the north was also under roman control the nabatean army was defeated in the first century bc and petra besieged but thanks to its defensive capabilities as a natural fortress it didn't fall and the romans lifted their siege a compromise was negotiated and the kingdom of the nabathians received recognition from rome against a tribute in other words it became a client kingdom of rome which was often the first step towards annexation it took time and the nabataean kingdom remained a client state for decades until 106 a.d during the reign of roman emperor trajan when it was forced to become a part of the empire a new province however the nebadians kept prospering under roman rule even though they had lost their independence the roman empire favored security and trade especially in the 2nd century and they took advantage of it emperor hadrian visited petra in 130 a.d and as the capital of a roman province the city probably enjoyed high prosperity at the time there was a roman influence i mentioned the building of the theater before but petra was never heavily romanized like other cities in the roman empire maybe because it joined the empire relatively late and it was one of the most distant provinces from rome this prosperity lasted until the 3rd century when the roman empire temporarily dislocated this is called the crisis of the 3rd century you can listen to the story about the roman empire for more details the city of palmyra in syria emerged at the time as an alternative to petra and diverted a lot of trade away from it and at the same time land trade routes lost some of their importance as a trade intensified in the red sea so petra was less central it became a part of the eastern roman empire the byzantine empire and was christianized progressively we know that some of the structures were later used as churches and this is not extraordinary many ancient temples in the roman empire were transformed into churches as christianism spread many egyptian temples for example knew the same fate it is unclear when the city was abandoned probably some time between the shrinking of byzantium and the expansion of islam that started in arabia south of petra by the middle ages the city was empty its existence was known by people living in the region but it became forgotten in the west the last time westerners visited it before several centuries was in the 12th century during the crusades crusaders briefly occupied petra or its ruins and tried to turn it into a fortress again but they had to abandon it and for centuries only bedouins regularly visited the ruins the first european to describe the ruins after centuries was a swiss traveler in 1812 then a scottish painter david roberts visited in 1839 and returned with sketches and descriptions of the ruins by the middle of the 19th century archaeologists began to explore and study it progressively unearthing an entire page of human history that had been forgotten for a large part and in the 20th century petra made its way into popular culture and tourism it is visited by about one million tourists every year nowadays and is regarded as one of the wonders of the world for its natural beauty and its architecture now let's move north to turkey because our next visits will be in cappadocia cappadocia is a historical region in the middle of turkey and its frontiers are unclear they changed a lot along a very eventful history there was a time when the cappadocia was subject to repeated invasions and this is the reason for the creation of several underground cities invisible and easily defensible shelters that could protect thousands of people and their possessions for weeks without having to return to the surface these cities curved into rock extend on miles and miles of corridors rooms and defensive structures we will visit one of them there in kuyu and see why it was dug and how it worked but before that we're going to visit another place in kappa russia the town of goureme that seems to come right from a fantasy story it includes multiple homes and churches that were carved into rocky domes in which people have been living for centuries why did this happen in cappellasia first because of the region's geography and geology capital consists mainly of a high plateau over a thousand meters in altitude with multiple old volcanoes that are now asleep to the south capitol sha is bounded by a mountain chain the taurus mountains that separate it from the mediterranean sea because of its geography and altitude it has a marked continental climate it is a dry with hot summers and cold winters the geology of capelge created extraordinary landscapes due to erosion the rock is soft and easily eroded but there are layers of different softness after thousands of years of erosion due to wind and water structures called fairy chimneys or hoodoo appeared they are tall and thin spires of rock often topped by a harder and bigger rock disappear because the softer layers are more easily eroded these fairy chimneys come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors too depending on the rocks they are made of it can take thousands of years but their days are always numbered at some point erosion makes them collapse but new ones are constantly being shaped by the wind there are fairy chimneys in many parts of the world maybe the largest numbers are found in north america especially at bryce canyon utah but there are some in scotland in taiwan in serbia france japan and also in turkey in cappadocia in this particular region they create eerie landscapes with their colors size and numbers some are in relatively deserted parts of capoeira others are surrounded with vegetation the softness of the rock means that it can be eroded but it can also be carved and the inhabitants of cappadocia started to take advantage of this thousands of years ago they used rocky domes sculpted by erosion to create small artificial caves that could serve as homes as parts of homes or even multi-story buildings with carved doors windows and stairs inside or outside in the christian era at the time of the byzantine empire they even made entire churches that were wonderfully decorated inside with colorful frescoes some of the earliest christian communities in the region date back from the 4th century and they were called anchorites which is it anchor right comes from greek anacolletes and it means one who has retired from the world uncle rights were people who decided for religious reasons to retire from the secular world from society to live a life of prayer and ascetism so they are a bit like religious hermits but the difference is that they lived in communities and there was a right of consecration there had a status this right looked like a funeral right after this ceremony anchor rights were considered symbolically dead to the world this way of life that appeared at in the first centuries of christianism is regarded as one of the earliest forms of monasticism so these anchorites in gourmet called cells for themselves in the soft rock in the 4th century and small sanctuaries were also probably carved in the following centuries but they were not particularly decorated until the 9th century not just out of a lack of interest or means to decorate churches but also on religious grounds maybe you heard about iconoclasm it means literally war on icons icons are images or image struggle the status of images in the history of christianism was been a controversial one for a long time based on the interpretation of the ten commandments from the old covenant some considered that the making and worshipping of images was equivalent to idolatry and so it should be absolutely forbidden because it deflects faith away from god and it is disrespectful humans should not have the audacity to create images themselves for similar religious reasons images are prohibited in islam in a religious context at least and religious islamic arts has always been based almost exclusively on geometrical forms architecture color floral patterns but there are no images of human beings or animals the controversy about images or icons was also present in christianity the official church in rome always accepted images of saints biblical figures and every kind of living being even encouraging it as a mean to attract believers and give them away a visual support that helps them in their quest for god over the centuries roman catholicism has developed a very rich iconography but it doesn't mean it was always accepted everywhere it is one of the things that thinkers and theologians from the protestant reformation criticized and in the first centuries of christianism this rejection of icons was particularly present in the east in the byzantine empire in the 8th and 9th centuries religious and political authorities in byzantium including the emperors launched like a war against icons against religious images and they forbade their production and even encouraged their destruction it was only temporary and byzantium produced also a very rich christian iconography along its centuries of existence but this is one of the elements of disagreement that would later lead to the separation between the church of rome and the orthodox church it was not the main reason and actually iconoclasm had already ended when they separated i'll come back to that in a future story about byzantium but it put more distance between east and west within christendom during the middle ages so returning to the churches in gourmet the ones we can admire today were painted and ornamented after the last burst of iconoclasm and this is why they received a spectacular decoration depicting the saints and religious scenes everything from the walls to the pillars and the ceilings was painted with frescoes and interestingly the creators of these churches reproduced inside the kind of architecture you would expect in a regular building the pillars or the vaults are not really necessary they help consolidate the artificial cave but instead of inventing new forms for carved churches they recreated the inside as if they were byzantine buildings but even long before these churches were carved into middle ages inhabitants of cappadocia had taken advantage of the soft rock for completely different reasons to create shelters against invaders and political turmoil the region was populated several thousand years ago already turkey is home to some of the most ancient sedentary settlements that we know of around the world and capitalisher found itself several times at the frontier between kingdoms or empires at war there were settlements during the hittite era in the second millennium bc the hittites were an ancient anatolian people anatolia is the old name of the peninsula between the black sea and the mediterranean sea that makes most of turkey nowadays and the hittite empire reached its peak in the 14th century bc at the time it included much of anatolia plus cyprus and parts of syria and lebanon it clashed with the egyptians for the control of the levant the hittites were replaced by the assyrians from mesopotamia present-day iraq then by the persian empire the achaemenids the empire that alexander the great conquered and after alexander's death when his empire was fractioned into smaller kingdoms cappadocia became a northern region of the selucid empire after celeucos one of alexander's generals the region was disputed invaded many times during the antiquity and it didn't get better after the antiquity capped ocean became a frontier region when the byzantine empire tried to contain the islamic conquest then it was overwhelmed by the turks the mongols by timur another conqueror from central asia for extended periods of time capilotians lived in fear of a sudden invasion that would wipe them out and destroy all of their possessions they couldn't defend themselves against such powerful and numerous invaders so instead they opted for hiding and discouraging invaders from trying to kill them or take them prisoners and to do so they dug entire cities underground it probably started as mere holes connected with tunnels and over time these structures turned into multi-level underground cities buried deep into the ground and that could be sealed to prevent anyone from entering this came with a lot of planning they needed ventilation food stalls individual or collective homes lightning water but they did it and one of these underground cities that we are now going to visit could shelter as many as twenty thousand people together with their livestock it is called derinkuyu and it is the largest known underground city in cappadocia it is believed that the embryo of what would become this city was carved in the 8th and 7th centuries bc by the phrygians the people that populated cappadocia at the time they dug caves in the soft volcanic rock maybe to provide shelter or storage space these caves remained as such for centuries until the late roman period when large parts of the roman empire had been christianized but the western empire had not fallen yet at the time capilousha was close to the eastern frontier and was at risk of being invaded from the east or the south but there in cuyu finally formed in the byzantine era at the time of arab byzantine wars this was raged for a long time and byzantium lost a lot of territory from the 8th to the 12th centuries at the time cappadocia was almost constantly at risk of ratios or bigger battles and the inhabitants excavated more and more to find protection from these the rinkuyu has at least five underground levels each of them being an extensive network of tunnels rooms and staircases that connect the levels it could be closed from the inside with large stone doors this mean of protection was found in various underground cities in a narrow passageway a large round stone like the stone grinder could be rolled to close the way it could be then reopened from the inside by a few men thanks to levers but it was almost impossible to move it from the outside because invaders had no grip on the stone each floor could be closed separately in case control of one floor would be lost it wasn't just a shelter for a few family thousands of people could stay underground they had stables for animals cellars storage rooms refactories and even chapels everything they needed to survive underground until the invaders were gone could be stole or found food water the underground levels were connected to the same wells they used at the surface this provided air and water the well worked like a ventilation shaft on the second level the rinkuyu has a large room with a barrel vaulted ceiling it is supposed to have worked as a school or a meeting place and there is also a large cross-shaped church on the fifth floor every time it was used the rinkuyu must have looked and felt like a giant ant farm for humans with its maze of hundreds of rooms tunnels and stairs the fifth center lowest level is 60 meters underground it seems the city worked well along the centuries it was invisible from the surface to invaders and familiar with the region they had no way to know people were under their feet and they may have thought that they had just escaped with their possessions or maybe they knew about it but it wasn't worth the effort of digging and fighting and attrition fights underground in any case the ring uyu saved thousands of lives along the centuries and there is no evidence that it was ever taken the city was connected to the surface by multiple tunnels some of them hidden under the houses or in rock formations and the tunnels stayed closed once everyone was safe underground all people had to do was wait and send scouts from time to time to check whether it was finally safe to resume their normal life once the turks took possession of anatolia and later ended the byzantine empire christians in capelloshe kept using the city it protected them during the mongol invasions and the timor raids until the ottomans solidified their empire and cappadocia was no longer invaded for a long time but for the christian minority in a region that was progressively becoming muslim it remained a refuge to escape authorities a minority of greek speaking people lived in the capperdosha until the 1920s when there was a population exchange between greece that had taken its independence a century earlier and a new state of turkey that had been created on the remains of the ottoman empire these people were expelled from turkey and moved to greece after their departure the tunnels were completely abandoned and mostly forgotten until the 1960s when they were rediscovered there are multiple underground cities in capital other than their incuj many of them are connected by tunnels between them and sections of these cities keep being rediscovered to the extreme north of scotland there is a small archipelago called orkney the orkney islands they are just 10 miles off the coast of great britain and their proximity made them easy to access from the mainland four early inhabitants of scotland the orkney islands have about 70 different islands and on the main one long before the first stones were brought to stonehenge a neolithic community built a stone settlement a village that remains very well preserved five thousand years later there were probably good reasons to settle on the orkney islands they are far north but the climate was relatively mild thanks to the gulf stream it was also probably rather safe in the 4th millennium bc invaders could have come only from the south from scotland and it probably felt like orkney was the end of the world to its inhabitants there were no forests and little wood available but on the other hand they could fish and hunt on an island that was large enough to support a small community of a few dozen people the first traces of occupation date back from 3180 bc one or two centuries before the initial circle of stonehenge was traced by windmill hill people and what explains the state of calibre is that the village was abandoned 700 years later around 2500 bc it was buried in the sand and excavated thousands of years later for this reason it has been compared with pompeii its state of preservation is extraordinary for a site that is older than stonehenge or even egyptian pyramids the site was first rediscovered in 1850 after a big storm the storm removed enough sand to reveal the outline of a village with a number of small houses without roof the site remained unstudied and unprotected for a long time but it was exposed to thefts and storms that threatened to destroy it so in the 1920s it was secured and began to be investigated at the time it was believed that the village was ancient but from the first millennium bc around 500 bc which made it important but not extraordinary because there are plenty of villages from the celtic period the reality appeared in the 1970s thanks to radiocarbon tests indicated that scarabray was from the fourth and third millennia bc and it was abandoned around 2500 as the climate in the orkney islands changed it is believed that the climate was becoming colder and wetter the village was buried in the sand and many valuable artifacts were left so maybe because of the comparison with pompeii some people imagined that it had been abandoned suddenly due to a disaster maybe a storm people would have fled as quickly as possible leaving their belongings behind but many investigators of the site disagree with this because research showed that the settlement had been buried very progressively maybe over several centuries so there is no doubt the village was abandoned quickly but we don't know why it could be anything from an attack that would have left the houses untouched or the whole population dying while they were outside no one can tell at this point a cluster of eight houses has been excavated but there were more structures that have been lost to sea erosion the village is now very close to the sea but it was farther from it when it was populated other structures are still buried and have been left underground like in pompeii this ensures that they remain preserved so what do we know about the inhabitants of scarabray this was the neolithic as discussed before and this means their tools were made of stone and other non-metallic materials they had wood bone they also used animal fur and skin ivory clay for pottery the houses they built were half into the ground and they used earth sheltering that is to say they were sunk into the ground like hobbit houses but this kind of earth sheltering existed in many different countries it can be found in iceland in ireland and it provides protection against the wind and the cold the winters in orkney were called but the wind was also a fact of life it blows constantly and storms were frequent houses that are half buried and covered in earth are very stable and also well insulated even though the inside may be a bit dark when there are no windows each house was relatively small they measured around 40 square meters that's 430 square feet and consisted of a single square room with a stone health for heating and cooking there was close to no wood in calabrese and it isn't clear what people use as fuel this is also probably the reason why the village was built with stone and left such remains neolithic villages were almost always built with wood in other parts of europe and this is why houses left on the traces so for fuel they may have used turf or driftwood or maybe dried seaweed not only the walls were made of stone they had pieces of furniture too cupboards seats storage boxes beds and the village had a drainage system including primitive toilets in dwellings the community was fairly small maybe around 50 individuals at any time and apparently it was very egalitarian too because 7 of the eight houses have exactly the same furniture in the same place as if the inside arrangement of houses had to follow very strict and specific rules the eighth house is different it doesn't have storage space or a dresser like the other ones and instead plenty of fragments of boone and flint were found there this suggests it was used as a place to make tools a workshop for the community maybe the inhabitants raised cattle it is believed that they didn't practice agriculture but maybe they did to a small extent because seeds of barley were discovered on the side remains also indicate that they ate a lot of seafood which makes sense artifacts and symbols found at scarabre also shed light on their lifestyle and on the richness of their mental there are symbols carved into stone lentils and bedposts and these symbols resemble an early form of renic writing this was most probably not a writing system but the symbols had a meaning they revealed a degree of conceptualization and aesthetism in this community and besides utilitarian tools like shovels or knives they also had a production of ornaments made of bone artifacts like beads or pins and they probably painted their bodies too a tradition that was widespread for centuries in britain until the roman conquest they could have used red ochre red occur was found in lumps in the village life was probably harsh compared with our modern lifestyle but by the standards of the european neolithic it seems scarabre was a good place to live the level of comfort and the longevity of the settlement too it lasted for tens of generations this seems to indicate that they had found a way of living that worked and they made the best out of the neolithic technologies and out of their environment this one is going to take us to an ancient ghost city on the nile for centuries it went forgotten in the sand of the egyptian desert before we go more into a detail let me tell you a quick true story once upon a time in ancient egypt during the new kingdom when egypt was wealthier more refined and more powerful than ever a new pharaoh ascended to the throne under the name of aminotepe iv there had been generations and generations of pharaohs before him many different dynasties he was from the 18th dynasty and all of them had been the guardians of egyptian traditions and religion for so many centuries that it now seemed disorder existed since the origins of time and was as old as the world and the gods themselves but aminotepe was different and instead of following the ways of tradition he broke with it with his queen nefertiti the rival couple rejected old gods especially the one whose skeleton priests were the most influential and powerful at the time amon instead they decided to worship an entity placed even above gods aton the sun disk the deity that gave life to everything this was a period of internal troubles in egypt because the population didn't like it and remain attached to the old ways and the priests of harmon and other rejected gods plotted against the pharaoh waiting for the moment to take their revenge but aminotepe didn't let this stop him he changed his name to akinaten and decided to create to found a new capital a cataton athens horizon aketon will replace thieves and mark the beginning of a new golden age for egypt now under the protection of the athen the sandisk the only deity that mattered under his rule not only did the new pharaoh try to change religious ways even the age-old egyptian art that had barely changed in 2000 years had to reinvent itself against his people against the priests akineton prevailed because he was the pharaoh and pharaohs were half gods akitan was built in a few years on the nile halfway between the per egypt the south and lower egypt the delta in the north thousands and thousands of workers were involved the new capital couldn't wait it was inaugurated and for more than a decade it became the capital of egypt from where the empire was ruled anakin attorney's family resided the pharaoh his wife nefertiti their six daughters and akinaton's other children but outside the capital egyptians remained reluctant to adopt tatan and when akinaton died his successor young faro tutankhamun abandoned the new city and returned to themes he was firmly under the influence of the priests of amon who got back their wealth and privileges as akitatun was emptied of its population the old order was restored all across egypt and the following pharaohs did everything they could to erase a kineton and his heresy from memories statues were destroyed inscriptions were hammered documents bearing his name were either burnt or rewritten egypt moved on more glorious pages were still to come like the reign of remycest ii desert sand and the passing of time slowly erased akitatan from memories more centuries passed egypt declined was invaded and annexed by the assyrians the persians the greeks the romans the arabs the turks and the existence of the heretic pharaoh his queen and their lost city fell into oblivion hakitan is now called amarna and this is the place we are now going to visit amana is located on the east bank of the nile river traditionally in egypt the east was the place for the living and the west where the sun sets the place for the dead in thieves luxor nowadays most people lived on the east bank and funerary complexes like the valley of the kings are on the west bank a mana was built on the verge inside no trace of earlier urbanization has been found and this seems logical for a new start construction began around year five of akineton's reign and probably lasted for about four years which was very short the egyptians built in stone but this was complicated slow and expensive so it was limited to the most important buildings like temples and tombs all the rest including the pharaoh's palaces were mainly built in brick bricks were dried in the sun and immediately available for buildings then they were probably covered layered with plaster to smooth the walls stone monuments are the face of ancient egypt nowadays because they lasted but the egyptians lived in brick buildings that have now entirely disappeared most of the time akita needed to be built fast and this is why stone was barely used the city was entirely made of mud brick this means it disappeared but at the same time because it was occupied only for a few years and never remodeled it provides an unique example of the plan of an ancient egyptian city the city spreaded on 8 miles 13 kilometers along the nile and it was encircled with 14 stellars that is to say stone slabs with inscriptions that detailed its founding by a canadian these stellars have been eroded but they provided precious information about the city when they started to be studied much of the city was laid out along a rival road a central avenue from north to south and the rival residencies were located to the north in the middle there was a religious and administrative area and to the south the residential district to the center there was a great temple dedicated to the aton and a smaller one between these there was another royal residence used for ceremonies apparently that was connected to the temples by a bridge or a ramp behind this royal residence was an administrative complex and in this part of the ruins archaeologists found archive tablets known as the amarnar letters they are a diplomatic correspondence and they provided a lot of information about the situation of egypt especially in relation to its dependencies in the levant in the 14th century bc to the south in the residential area lived powerful nobles who built estates there and the studio of a sculptor called tutmos was discovered and touched and revealed a lot about the art of the period a famous burst of nefertiti which has become one of the most famous egyptian antique in the world was found there in 1912. it is in berlin nowadays since the burst was discovered nefertiti has become famous as a model of beauty it is true that this burst from the 14th century bc looks incredibly realistic as if it was a classical greek sculpture with exactly the kind of facial features that the greeks and to a large part western societies nowadays associate with feminine beauty symmetry thin features a long and gracious neck there are conflicting theories about the origins of nefertiti there is no doubt that she was born in an aristocratic family but she could have been related to akhenaten a cuisine or even his sister it was common for pharaohs to marry their sisters incest was prohibited in egypt but not for pharaohs they were the one exception because it was believed that royal blood shouldn't be diluted but she could also have been a stranger maybe an anatolian princess married to young aminotepe for diplomatic reasons what we know is that she had at least six children with a canaton six daughters and she was elevated to a higher status than probably any queen before her she appeared almost as a core agent she was called the mistress of upper and lower egypt on stairs and some egyptologists even believed that she may have become a female pharaoh for a short time or during a regency during the transition between akinaton and tutankhamun her beauty was praised everywhere but this was really common in ancient egypt texts and statues were not meant to be realistic they served to celebrate their subjects however this was less true during the parenthesis that is the reign of a canadian because for one or two decades egyptian art painting sculpture changed markedly at least the representations of the rival family the style evolved towards a highly realistic or even unflattering way of depicting people the pharaoh is shown almost feminine with a curvy body a prominent stomach and a very long face maybe this is what he looked like and there has been theories that he could have been affected by the disease or a genetic condition but these pictures of akinaton are in stark contrast to traditional representations of pharaohs they had a traditionally very masculine features muscles large shoulders thin waist the art of a mana sometimes look almost like a caricature and in this context the best of nefertiti seems to belong to another period or style but it doesn't so it is not impossible that she was effectively an embodiment of classical beauty however revolutionary and surprising the revolution started by again attend it probably shouldn't be understood as just a spiritual move maybe there were more political power struggles behind it first because if he managed to impose an entirely new god to egypt it is probably because he was supported by the army the egyptian army under the 18th dynasty was a considerable power at the time egypt was at the top of its prosperity there were no internal threats and the frontiers had been pushed away in every direction especially to the east in the 11th and to the south in nubia egypt still had enemies but they were far away and the kingdom could maintain a numerous and powerful military sometimes dynasties were even created or continued by generals who grabbed the throne along egyptian history it happened many times don't believe it remained hereditary for so long so having support from the army was crucial for pharaohs and especially support against another major political force the priests in particular at the time the priests of amun temples in enchanted egypt were very powerful institutions they were economic centers they owned a large part of the land and their high priests could be extremely influential to the point of threatening the pharaohs themselves entering the new kingdom the one cult that gained prominence was the cult of amon by far the most worshiped and wealthiest god of them all amon was a minor deity during the old and middle kingdoms the priests of ra or azires were probably much more influential and the moon was a local lady based in thebes and its surroundings but in the new kingdom the capital moved to thebes and the wealth and influence of the priests of ammon became major over the generations the moon almost absorbed other gods and of course egypt remained polytaste but in upper egypt religion became close to an equivalent of worshiping a moon so maybe the choice to break with tips and to create a new religious order was also a power move a polar grab or a reaction against the rampant transformation of egypt into a theocracy ruled by the priests of amun the new religion imposed by a kenneth was not really monotheism which is the fact of proclaiming that a single god exists and other girls are irrelevant it was more what experts call monolateristic the fact of were she being a single god even though others may exist their existence was not denied but they didn't matter that much to a kineton even in a kitten other deities were rivered in fact if not officially then by at least some of the people who lived in the city but despite the creation of this new capital and all the powers that pharaohs had the cult of death never really replaced all gods and when the pharaoh died traditions immediately came back in fourth two thousand years couldn't be erased in fifteen maybe there was a regency maybe by divertity it's hard to know because many records of the time have been destroyed to erase the memory of a canaton but in a few years the capital has moved back to thieves the priests had recovered their wealth and influence and the city of akitatan was abandoned maybe it was partly destroyed to make it disappear quicker but as it was made of brick and occupied for such a short time it's hard to know the site didn't fall completely into oblivion there are also traces of occupation nearby 15 centuries later during the roman and early christian periods but bit by bit the ruins became invisible from the nile sand covered everything and the memory of the city was lost it is only in modern times starting with napoleon's expedition in egypt and then many more scientific missions including the german one that unearthed nefertiti's burst a century ago that the history of amarna the modern name of the city and the lives of akinatorn and nefertiti came back to light the ruins are unimpressive nowadays they are not really visited only archaeological missions keep working on the side in the hope of better understanding this very particular unique moment in the history of ancient egypt before we go back in time we're going to start our exploration just today because it's important to understand how the maya were discovered and how it influences our vision of them the maya were never a single people with a common sense of identity like for example the ancient egyptians or the ancient greeks maya is a modern collective term given to the peoples who lived in the region where the civilization flourished but they never considered themselves a single population and differences remained between these peoples as far as we know but we're going to see that a lot remains unknown when it comes to the maya there was not a single state in the region like an empire that would have unified different peoples it is more like the ancient greeks the phoenicians or the etruscans to take references in the antiquity maya peoples and cities had a civilization in common they knew each other they traded they went to war and they made a diplomacy but it doesn't mean they were unified under the same ruler the region where they lived consists of the south of mexico all of guatemala and belize and parts of honduras and el salvador in this maya area there is a diversity of landscapes the climate is tropical that there are planes forests and even mountains a big part of the area is the yucatan peninsula and this is for the most part a vast plane with hills some parts are densely forested others are covered in scrubs and there's a lot of coastline on the caribbean sea and the pacific ocean this area is part of a larger region called mesoamerica meso means in the center of war in between but mesoamerica is a different concept from central america even though it covers broadly the same area mesoamerica is a region but it is mainly a cultural or civilizational area and the term is used by archaeologists and historians it is considered a cradle of civilization there are others around the world a cradle of civilization is a location where advanced civilizations have emerged independently it doesn't mean they had absolutely no contact with the rest of the world but they had their autonomy and they did not replicate a cultural heritage from another part of the world it is generally agreed that the region called the fertile crescent from mesopotamia to egypt is one such gradle of civilization and so are ancient china and ancient india mesoamerica is another one where for several thousand years different peoples have risen they have adopted cultural traits and technical knowledge they have developed these traits eventually and transmitted them the gradles of civilizations are the places where the first cities were built the first writing systems were invented where many discoveries happened before they spread to the rest of the world however it's never obvious what constitutes a civilization there is always something subjective in the concept we consider civilized certain societies also because they have characteristics that we have as a society and because the left remains especially their architecture when there are no physical remains buildings or writings there cannot be a civilization in our view and it's understandable because there is not much to study in that case but let's bear in mind that the term civilization is not obvious it contains a part of judgment the criterias most scholars agree on when defining a civilization are the presence of agriculture the existence of cities metallurgy a society with a hierarchy people belong to different classes and their roles are different within this society and also the existence of monumental architecture the maya check all of these boxes and so did various civilizations that existed at the same time war followed them in mesoamerica in the entire region these cultures also shared specific traits like an advanced astronomical knowledge the practice of human sacrifice on a much bigger scale than anything we know of in any other ancient civilization around the world and a certain vision of the world they believed the world was divided into three parts the celestial realm the earth and an underworld and that the world was divided into four divisions aligned with the guard in all directions the maya area covered about a third of mesoamerica and there were a lot of contacts with neighboring cultures such as the olmecs the mixtex or the aztecs it is estimated that the first sparks of civilization appeared in this part of the world around 8 000 years ago when the early inhabitants of mesoamerica domesticated plants which led to the establishment of sedentary societies based on agriculture they made a lot of discoveries similar to what other societies that they were not in contact with also made around the world pottery metallurgy weaving but the maya like other mesoamerican cultures had relatively few domesticated animals and he didn't use the will including when the first spanish explorers arrived in mexico in the 16th century they found societies that had reached a relatively high level of technical knowledge maybe similar to that of the late roman empire but all transport was still made by a small boat or by foot and there were no horses actually there had been horses in america several thousand years ago but they went extinct and then they were reintroduced to america by the europeans it is unclear exactly when the maya developed their civilization but traces found in belize and mexico point to around 2000 bc that's 4 000 years ago and this is the time when settlements appeared where pottery and little figurines were made probably in small villages these villages grew and some of them began to form cities with large temple structures we will explore various cities tonight some very famous like tikal or chichen itza but one of the earliest documented cities is called nagabe it is in guatemala nowadays habitation began on the site of nagbay around 1400 bc and by the 8th century bc the city had already very large buildings including a pyramid and several palaces i will tell you later about my architecture and urbanism too because one feature of maya cities is that structures were connected by roads causeways and cities could be connected between them too there is evidence from murals that were excavated a few years ago that they had a writing system already by the 3rd century bc at this time by the 3rd century bc so that's more than two thousand years ago and about at the time when the romans were fighting the punic walls there was a very large city called el mirador a few miles away from nakbay el mirador is to name the modern name of the site the maya name of the city has been lost and this site was discovered deep in the jungle of guatemala in 1926 but it received little attention until it was mapped for the first time in the 1960s and explored in the following decades to the amazement of archaeologists the site of el mirador revealed a city that may have had several hundred thousand inhabitants at the time of its peak of its splendor which means maybe more than rome at the same period of time it was probably one of the biggest cities in the world during the 3rd century bc and period we call antiquity this site revealed a lot about how the maya lived and planned their city it has several thousand structures including monumental architecture up to 72 meters high that's about 230 feet the entire center of the city which covers an area of 10 square miles was apparently entirely planned before construction because the buildings are perfectly aligned not only between them but with the course of the sun and the cardinal directions a lot of the big structures are artificial platforms the soil has been elevated and leveled and these platforms are topped with sets of three pyramids there are 35 of these structures so that's 105 pyramids including one of the largest in the world called la ladanta when the city was populated these structures were faced with cut stones and decorated with stucco stucco is a decorative construction material it can be shaped or sculpted when it is wet and then when it dries it becomes very hard like stone ancient stucco was generally a mix of lime and sand with water there is also an abundance of ghostways passages everywhere some are several meters above ground and they connected the main buildings the most puzzling thing about this city is how populated it was feeding an urban population of a hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand these are estimates of how big the city was at its peak this requires a huge food production and the region where it is located is not fertile most of the time tropical forest soils contain very little nutrients and the nutrients present are often washed away by rain and go somewhere else it is not only a feature of central america for example the soils in the amazonian forest are very poor and when the forest burns it may take a very long time to grow back and it may even never come back and turn to a desert if the nutrients are taken away by rains so how did the maya do to feed such a city they developed a system that was very productive by transporting mud from swamps several miles away from the city thousands and thousands of tons of mud were moved transported and put on artificial terraces for intensive cultivation the mix of mud rich in nutrients and forest soil was very fertile and suitable for crops like corn or beans when the ground was depleted of nutrients they just added another layer of mud to reinvigorate it like a fertilizer the city of el mirador apparently thrived more than 2 000 years ago but in the second century haiti it was completely abandoned together with other cities in the same area it isn't clear why this happened maybe there was an external threat like a war because the remains of a large wall circling most of the city were discovered and these walls date from the last decades of occupation another respect that could have made its decline could be soil erosion due to deforestation the maya were probably big destroyers of forest space not just for a vital space where to build their cities and cultures but also for their architecture decoration and art the more their civilization became refined the more plaster and stucco they used to cover their buildings including their houses their floors or even ceramics because this coating would be easily painted and it had decorative qualities that the production of these materials required a lot of wood to burn for example archaeologists estimated that the production of one tonne of lime cement required about 5 tons of limestone and 5 tons of wood so it is likely that the deforested area around the city grew larger and larger meaning that the supply of food was increasingly far and this soil without vegetation could have been washed by rains so that the city created a desert around it plants were immediately cut when they tried to grow back in any case around the second century 80 the city was progressively abandoned the same site was partially reoccupied several centuries later and some of the ruins repaired maybe vegetation had time to return to the area but the second occupation was short-lived and it ended for good around 980 then over more than one thousand years the forest slowly covered the surroundings and the city itself making it disappear from memories what had been one of the largest cities in the world was erased even the locals didn't know the ruins were there or they knew only about a very small part of them until the 20th century when the site was rediscovered and its magnitude revealed and mirador once was one of the highlights of human civilization in the entire world among the remains found at el mirador were numerous ceramics that revealed the refinement and also the writing system of the maya their language did not entirely disappear in our days it evolved linguists estimate that four thousand years ago around 2000 bc there was a single maya language called proto-mayan and it would have been spoken in a small region north or west of modern guatemala as the maya area of influence spread this language evolved into different mayan languages that are part of the same family these groups of languages include wasting mammian or yukatakan there are more of them and they kept diverging during the pre-columbian period maybe people speaking languages from these different groups could understand each other to some extent war catch words a bit like nowadays spanish and portuguese or danes and swedes can understand each other more or less even without speaking exactly the same language because their mother tongues have a lot in common there are about 30 different languages all coming from proto-mayan that still exist today they are spoken in the south of mexico and central america but despite the divergence in languages a lot of maya texts from what archaeologists called their classic period dates can be different depending on the schools and the sources but it was roughly from the 3rd to the 10th centuries haiti in the 1st millennium the peak of maya civilization so most of the texts from this period are written in the same language all across the region a language called cholan and this is independent from the local language cholan may have been to the maya what latin was in medieval europe the mean of communication or a prestige language spoken by the elite and scholars it seems joland served as the diplomatic language or the language for trade too and this language was written the mayas had books and engraved texts too unfortunately most of the books were destroyed by order of the catholic church after the spanish conquest in an attempt to convert all the natives to christianism and only three or four of these books survived there is one in madrid one in dresden and one in paris these mayor books are called codices codex in the singular and they are folding books they were made from the inner park of certain trees the maya did not produce sheets of paper with wood bulb or other plants like papyrus they used park and they developed that technique around the 5th century these codices were written by scribes the one surviving codex considered the most valuable the most important is the dresden one it is called dresden codex just because it was acquired by the rival library of saxony in the 18th century and it stayed there it contains 74 pages and measures about 12 feet and folded the pages are covered in rituals astrological information and very ornamented astronomical tables and these tables contain information on eclipses equinoxes and solstices the cycles of mars and venus and they probably helped the maya plan the calendar year the agricultural cycles and their religious ceremonies these codex also provides a lot of information about their gods and their goddesses the madrid codex is longer 122 pages and contains mainly almanacs and horoscopes it is believed it was used by maya priests to plan for their rituals and the paris codex contains prophecies and a description of the maya zodiac these texts are all from the last centuries of the maya civilization when it had passed its peak we'll come back to that later but they provide a gold mine of information on their view of the cosmos their astronomical knowledge and their language itself the maya writing system has a superficial resemblance to ancient egyptian writing in the sense that it uses a combination of syllables representing the sounds this is how for example english is written letters from syllables and their arrangement gives words so there are syllables and also hieroglyphs ideograms where a drawing represents a word or a concept as an example the maya word for jaguar is balaam and there are two ways of writing it it can be with the head of a jaguar which stands for the word or it can be with three syllables the signs for ba la and ma that combine to form the word remaining codices are extremely rare but there are many more inscriptions in stone that have been discovered in total there are more than 10 000 individual texts that have been recovered it is only since the end of the 20th century that scholars have become able to read most of maya texts it has taken decades to decipher the written language and research is still going on in that field the study of codices suggests that they were written with small brushes the remains of pellets and martyrs for pigments were also discovered and this gives precious indications on how the scribes worked on these documents there are representations of female scribes in maya art suggesting men and women alike could be literate but commoners were not and it is likely that only the aristocracy had access to this knowledge there was also apparently a status attached to the function of artist or scribe some texts are signed and so are many sculptures which were sometimes signed by various persons but let's return to their history for now we have seen how large cities had appeared several centuries bc and like el mirador they declined at the beginning of our era the reasons are not known with a certainty it may have been wilds epidemics maybe erosion of soils or a combination of them but many urban centers were abandoned in the first and second centuries haiti and then a resurgence called the classic period as opposed to the pre-classic for what came before began in the 3rd century haiti about at the time when the roman empire was at the peak of its might on the other side of the atlantic ocean to explore this classic period we're going to move to another major maya city called tikal located in the north of guatemala tikal is the modern name given to the archaeological site like el mirador the city was likely called yak's motel by it is also in the heart of the rainforest but the site was discovered earlier in the 1840s at this point thousands of structures have been identified at decal from tombs to palaces to pyramids but only a fraction has been studied the city was abandoned in the 10th century and it fell into ruins but its history is one of the best documented in the maya region thanks to all the inscriptions found across the site they have been studied for decades already tikal already existed before the first and second century decline of maya cities but it survived at this period and it flourished for centuries especially by the end of the so-called classic period in the 9th century the city was the capital of a successful kingdom the politics of the maya region have been compared with ancient greek cities or italian cities of the renaissance there were city-states with a main city and smaller ones in its area of influence the city-states competed or collaborated between them tikal may have reached several tens of thousands of inhabitants anything ranging from 10 000 up to 120 000 to population peak being in the 9th century like el mirador it is only through intensive agriculture the fertilization of souls that it could reach that population it is estimated that up to half a million people could have lived in its area of influence eighty percent of them in smaller cities and villages that were connected to tickle by a dense network of roads in the pre-classic era around 400 300 bc when nagabe and el mirador that we visited before were shining tikal was a medium-sized city it couldn't compare with them but there were already planned buildings including pyramids tikal may have benefited from the decline of these larger cities either gaining some of their population or because it vanquished them because at the beginning of the classic period it took off and together with another city called kalakmul it became a major center of influence in the maya world inscriptions in the ruins describe how often it was at war or it made alliances with other cities an indication of the importance of decal is that in the third century it had diplomatic relations with the city of teotihuacan far north teotihuacan was in the valley of mexico outside the maya region in the 4th century the ruler of the city built a large palace that is forever extended further until it became the center of a complex called the central acropolis integral it was one of the most developed areas of the city in the 5th century an impressive system of fortifications with ditches and earthworks were built to protect not only the city but its surroundings to where agricultural activity took place later in the mid 6th century it seems tickle was defeated by an alliance of two rival cities kalakmul and karakol during decades no new structures were built and according to texts engraved in stone the king was captured and sacrificed by his enemies a long succession crisis followed and lasted until the end of the seventh century when new monuments reappeared it seems that at this point tikal had woken up under a new king and defeated kalakmal after this the city of kalakmul never again erected a monument celebrating a military victory and it seems it was the beginning of the end for it by the 9th century the crisis hit the entire maya region and led to the collapse of the maya classic period we will come back to that collapse later and decal was not spared the population concentrated closer to the city but satellite cities apparently began to take their independence from it we suppose it all we know it because they began to erect their own monuments in the 9th century it seems tikal was hit by the same plagues that had made el mirador decline deforestation erosion and nutrient loss that could no longer be compensated the population collapsed rapidly and at the time warfare was endemic in the maya region the last big monument was erected in 868. remains found in the royal palaces suggest they were occupied by 9th and 10th centuries squashers the squatters blocked some of the doorways in the rooms they occupied and they left rubbish after 950 the site was almost entirely deserted and only a handful of people lived in huts built among what was beginning to fall into ruins it must have been an eerie environment back then this final inhabitants abandoned the city around the 10th and 11th centuries and the rainforest claimed the ruins progressively covering the vast desserty career that the city had created around it it is believed that the most likely cause of collapse at tickle was overpopulation and the failure of agriculture but this fall is also the symbol of what happened across the entire maya world at the same time urban civilization collapsed and never fully recovered tickle or what remained of it spent the next thousand years under the cover of the rainforest until it was explored however it was never entirely forgotten by the locals indigenous populations knew about the ruins during the entire period so what we call discovery in that case is just the arrival of western archaeologists at the site the study of tikal revealed the refinement of maya culture during this classic period it was also a reality in rival cities like kalakmul or kopan the first impressive feature is direct architecture the maya produced a vast array of structures and this tells a lot about this society because the planning the construction the decoration all of this required a central organization a certain degree of prosperity political means to mobilize such a workforce and a specialization of craft only a complex society can do this the pyramids were temples and they concentrated in the center then the rest of the city grew around it sometimes chaotically the central structures were carefully placed but further development could be messier as the city expanded along the centuries the elite the rulers the aristocracy the priests they lived in the center in palaces that were abundantly decorated with sculptures frescoes all of this painted on plaster or modelled instago the art and the decorative features we know of are essentially royal or aristocratic it is likely the rest of the population didn't have access to this the maya art tradition is considered the most diverse in terms of a variety of subjects and techniques in all of the americas because they were regional styles and a multiplicity of objects and ornaments turned into works of art the maya had apparently a preference for the color green or blue green one of the most precious materials to them was a apple green shade and they created a wide range of objects from it statues jewelry or masks the aristocracy practiced a dental modification that is to say they sharpened their teeth and they sometimes wore encrusted jade in their teeth sculpture was abundant and especially on face aids of course only four temples and palaces stucco was brightly painted so that in contrast to the ruins of their cities that now look very gray because the paint has gone vermicity during the classic period was extraordinarily colorful and ornamented frescoes were also very common inside the buildings the walls were coated with plaster and painted with cream black and red another important resource was obsidian it served utilitarian purposes for everyday life for example for knives or arrows but it could also be sculpted or crafted into decorative objects that had no function as a jewel this is lesser known because they have been mostly lost under the wet and hot climate but textiles were also important to them we know it from their depiction on murals textiles were high value items made of cotton and dyed the clothing of the nobility could also include jaguar belt and other types of fur and there are more examples there were countless forms of ceramic art too bone calving metal wear another remarkable aspect of maya culture is mathematics and astronomy the high degree of development in these fields is found in all mesoamerican civilizations but the maya pushed it further we use a base 10 system for numbers which means we have 10 numerals including 0 and we combine them to infinity to indicate quantities after each 10 we add one to the left and the numbers we use come from arabic arabic numbers replaced roman numbers progressively in the middle ages mesoamerican cultures had a base 20 system also called vegesimo as opposed to our decimal system numbers were marked with a system of dots and bars one dot is one and one bar is five and you can count from one to nineteen without using twice the same numeral up to four it works with dots then five is a bar six is one dot and one bar seven two dots and one bar nineteen is four dots and three bars this system was already in use across mesoamerica around 1000 bc but the maya adopted a symbol for zero this may have been the earliest known occurrence of the concept of an explicit zero in the world this is disputed because it could have been introduced earlier without any connection in the babylonian system but it shows the capacity for conceptualization that the maya had acquired at first the symbol for zero in their texts was just like a placeholder indicating the absence of anything and progressively it developed into a numeral used to perform calculation another illustration of their curiosity is their knowledge of astronomy they observed the motion of celestial bodies meticulously and they recorded data on the movement of the stars of the sun of venus mars everything that was visible to the naked eye their study of the stars was not so much for the sake of making scientific discoveries or even for the measuring of the seasons it was essentially about astrology they believed that time worked in cycles and that prophecies could be made by the priesthood if they understood thanks to the position of celestial bodies where they were in the current cycle there was the belief that events that occurred during a particular astronomical event like an eclipse or under a particular configuration of the sky would happen again when the same conditions would prevail a lot of this understanding comes from the codices we talked about before this obsession with astronomy and astrology made them establish eclipse tables and calendars and develop an astronomical knowledge that was actually more accurate at the beginning of the second millennium of our era than what the europeans dear rabbs or the chinese had for example they had measured the cycle of venus which is 584 day long with an error of just two hours venus was associated with war and maya rulers would wait for the rise of venus in the earth sky to launch a military campaign hoping that it would help them eclipses which are not frequent events were expected with fear because they were seen as events that could bring disaster upon the world so their calendar was central to religious life and actually slightly more accurate in the measuring of the years than the julian calendar the julian calendar was a reform of the roman calendar proposed by julius caesar in 46 bc and it remained in use in most of europe until the 16th century the base unit of the calendar was one day and then multiples of 20 and 18 formed different periods the maya had no weeks with days with seven days they had a reference period of 20 days followed by 18 of these periods so that was 360 days making about a year and then there were other cycles always multiples of 20 20 years 400 years and so on the end of this cycle was charged with meaning and seen as the beginning of a new era the longer the cycle the most significant its renewal religious beliefs were also very important and to explore them we are going to move to yet another mythical city this time in mexico and from the late period of maya culture chichen itza chichen itza is a late maya city located in the yucatan peninsula and its exploration by archaeologists in the 19th century contributed a lot to the interest in maya civilization the core of the city developed between 750 and 980 at the time when cities from the classic period were already into decline or close to chichen itza rose to prominence in the yucatan region as a city-state in the 10th century when it controlled the northern half of ukraine and it remained the center of maya culture long after other major cities had declined and it seems it was never entirely abandoned there were still people living inside or nearby when the spanish arrived what distinguishes chichen itza from other cities is its variety of styles and probably a very diverse population it is believed nowadays that the presence of non-maya styles in the city is the result of cultural diffusion in mesoamerica once the maya civilization declined because some of the buildings indicate an influence from mexican styles regions that were never part of the maya region a particular feature of northern yukatan is that the surface is a relatively arid there are no visible rivers but there are rivers running underground and their water is accessible thanks to sinkholes called cenotes or c nodes these sinkholes results from the collapse of bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath they provide plenty of water to the population and there are various around the side the most famous is called the sacred sea note the cenotes agrado and the study of human remains from it confirmed that it was probably used as a place of sacrifice many objects of gold and jade were found at the bottom and wounds on the remains are consistent with human sacrifice chichen itza had its golden age between 900 and 1050 a.d it became a powerful and wealthy center that became one of the largest maya cities ever thousands of structures remain on the side in a relatively good state and they provide a variety of examples of maya styles of architecture and all the styles adopted by the maya an example of this is a temple of kukulkan also known as el castillo the castle it is a pyramid that consists of a series of terraces with the stairway is a picture of the sides to the temple on top the construction started maybe in the 7th century during the classic maya period which makes it undeniably a maya monument but the style is influenced by other cultures from mexico it ended in the 9th or 10th century chichen itza was never entirely lost under the vegetation because the site was still occupied when the spanish arrived in yucatan and also because the north of the peninsula is not covered in heavy rainforest like other maya regions the importance of temples religious buildings in each and every maya city reflects the importance of religion and what needed to be done to preserve the world in their view the maya were polytheists and they believed in a supernatural realm populated by a large array of gods and goddesses they saw the cosmos has a very complex and structured there were 13 different levels in the heavens nine different levels in the underworld and their world our world the mortal world was in between as the maya civilization advanced and became more literate and codified the religion evolved to the first intermediaries between men and spirits or gods were shamans but the cast of shamans evolved into a priesthood that belonged to the elite priests were wealthy and powerful in line with their importance in this society they performed public ceremonies with music incense burning ritual dance and sometimes human sacrifice the maya practiced human sacrifice it isn't clear to what extent there are no signs that they sacrificed human beings on a large scale during all of the classic period when their civilization was at its peak in this sense they were no different from other mesoamerican cultures human sacrifice was a common practice all across metro america it seems the maya never did it on the same scale as the aztecs for example the aztecs rose and an empire several centuries after the maya period and they performed mass sacrifice sometimes hundreds or even thousands of people sacrifice at once we don't know to what extent the maya sacrificed human beings but it seems to practice increased after their civilization began its decline they also sacrificed ritually after ball games that were presents all across mesoamerica the captain of the losing team would be beheaded to us this sounds horrible it is horrible in our modern social system but probably not so much in theirs firstly because the mortal world was just a temporary stay anyway they were convinced that death was just a passage to another world second because these sacrifices were performed for the greater good in their view they would appease the gods and bring favors to the living they would also ensure that the world would go on as it was so who or what were their gods there is a tradition in the old world that associates deities with specific functions pantheons may be very different from mesopotamia to india ancient greece or in norse mythology but gods from all these pantheons had something in common they were in charge of a particular field while justice death love the sea they were supposed to have different powers and even personalities not really in my vision the function and importance of each deity could change with the calendar and even the function attributed to individual guards or galaxies could change depending on the movement of celestial bodies gods could take different aspects depending on the period and they all had four different manifestations associated with the cardinal directions we don't precisely know the maya pantheon but there were deities like idsamna the creator of the universe who could also be a sun god it changed the spect with the ghouls of the sun there were four paratunes creatures that supported the four corners of the mortal realm and four more performing the same function in the heavens there were various storm guards and also nine lords of the night one for each realm of the underworld a lot of information about this mythology comes from a text called the popovu which was written by maya people in the 16th century so after the spanish invasion and translated to spanish but there were many more deities some entirely forgotten and others that were probably specific to a particular region or city of the maya world at the end of the classic maya period so that's the 8th 9th centuries the maya began to worship feathered serpent ages this worship was spread all across mesoamerica the name of the feathered serpent in the yucatan so in chichen itza was kukulkan the temple of el castillo in ginchanitza was devoted to it the cult of kukulkan was influenced by a similar god from central mexico quetzalcoatl one thing that apparently stayed unchanged during the entire maya civilization was the importance of priests in the society the cosmos and the mythology were very complex anticipating the movement of celestial bodies and time cycles was crucial and the priests well the guides that helped rulers and commoners navigate this very complex and dangerous world now it may have worked both ways priests elaborated all this complex system this complex mythology because it served them very well maybe but they were definitely a part of the elite in a society that was strongly divided the maya society evolved constantly over several thousand years and it grew more and more complex by the seventh eighths or nine centuries the population had grown a lot and there were hundreds of cities with their political hierarchies their reliances and their wars it seems this relative prosperity made the wealthy segment of the population multiply we know it through the multiplication of palaces and large houses maybe even a middle class appeared made of artisans or low ranking breasts but overall the vast majority of people were commoners farmers servants slaves at the top of the society were the kings they were supreme rulers and over time they became half gods they would sometimes also be the high priest of the most worshipped ages in the city their power was hereditary and passed to their male hair except when there was no male available and it could be passed to a queen to avoid the extinction of the dynasty hells and kings had to be military leaders too and would better prove their value by taking captives to show their legitimacy around the king was a court formed by the high aristocracy and priests they themselves came from this aristocracy each independent city state had its court and it was an important patron of art and monuments building commoners had a less comfortable life of course they accounted for more than 90 percent of the population but because they were never represented and their lives not documented we know relatively little about their lives maya society was based on birthright but it's not impossible that individuals could reach a better status and even become wealthy themselves without being part of the nobility for example when they made their fortune in trade little is known too about the status of women this society was fiercely battery alcohol and they were probably limited to domestic activities however there could have been exceptions maybe there was an independent city called tonina it is in mexico in the region of chiapas where a queen created a matrilineal system that is to say the throne was passed from mother to daughter the particularity of the maya civilization was this urban collapse phenomenon that kept happening we have seen it all along the story cities could flourish and grow for several centuries sometimes but at some point there was something unsustainable in the system that made them collapse and be abandoned the rise and decline of a city is also something that was very common in the old world but it didn't mean the city disappeared entirely except in very particular cases when they were destroyed by their enemies like for carthage for example by the 10th century a broad decline took place in most of the maya region and many large cities were abandoned not all of them for example chichen itza survived this decline but most of the cities that had dominated the classic period in the first millennium like tigal karakumal palenque they collapsed the reasons for this massive setback are not perfectly known there are hypotheses first there was the environmental issue cities depleted their surroundings from nutrients and they ruined the soils due to erosion which ultimately made them unsustainable after several centuries but this had happened before and it doesn't explain a general collapse in the region so it may have had to do with endemic warfare between cities maybe caused by overpopulation in any case by the end of the 10th century the majority of cities had visibly declined their area of influence had decreased and their population had dropped when they hadn't been entirely abandoned chichen itza lasted longer until the 11th century and after the decline of chichen itza it seems there was no longer any dominant power in the maya world this new period that lasted until the arrival of spanish conquistadors is called post classic it is a period of decline in the sense that the big architectural and cultural achievements were now over but it was not the end of the maya the different regions of the maya area went even more fragmented culturally but new cities of more modest size appeared when the spanish arrived in the yucatan they found towns and marketplaces that were maybe the shadow of maya classic achievements but the maya peoples were still there with a culture that differentiated them from the rest of mesoamerica the first contacts happened in 1511. a spanish caravel was wrecked in the caribbean and a maya lord captured a dozen survivors on the coast of yucatan two of them managed to escape and the others were sacrificed at first the spanish focused their conquest of mexico further north against the aztecs they captured their capital tenochtitlan in 1521 and after that they attacked to the south starting an invasion of the maya urea that was fragmented into multiple kingdoms and city-states it took 20 years until 1546 to control all of yogatan but the last maya city fell much later in 1697 ending the last independent remnant of one of the most ancient civilizations in the world the spanish invasion brought disaster upon the maya the conquest of cities was one thing but poor treatments slavery and even more the spread of diseases that were unknown in america made the population drop dramatically nobody knows exactly how many died that the population of mesoamerica was estimated at around 20 million when the conquest began and a few decades later there had been a 70 to 90 drop in this population this was not limited to mesoamerica it also happened in the caribbean and the regions of south america that were colonized in the 16th century maya culture suffered its biggest setback ever in the 16th century and it persisted essentially in remote villages that continued to manage their own affairs because the colonial authorities could not control them these communities still exist today their numbers have grown again since the 19th century and there are millions of mayan language speakers who live in this territory they have been resilient to the introduction of the spanish language and catholicism in and some of these communities still try to preserve their heritage we have reached the end of our journey for tonight if you are still conscious you can now let go and fall asleep to the soft sound of the rainforest you are perfectly safe and you will wake up happy and full of energy in a few hours i'll talk to you soon for another adventure over you

Channel: The French Whisperer ASMR

Views: 967,542

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Id: PAMzUGSLOBM

Length: 225min 38sec (13538 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020