The story of CIVILIZATION

Last class we did Greek theater, and remember I said that Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are really prophets of democracy. They see themselves as teachers who teach Athenians how to practice democracy. We also said that there are three major benefits to democracy. 1. The first major benefit is kings

We will do Greek theater today. As a society, every society has a problem. The problem is how do we organize the thinking of the people within our society? How do you create an identity? In modern society there are three institutions that create a collective identity for society. * The

We are starting an overview of Greek history. Remember the story so far? We talked about the Bronze Age, where Mycenaean Greece was trading and fighting with the rest of the world. Then the Bronze Age Collapse happened, and Mycenaean Greece came to an end. Because of its destruction, this

Today we start Greek civilization, and it is incredible what Greek civilization is. It is the greatest, most creative, most significant civilization ever in human history. The Greeks really created Western civilization, and not only were the Greeks the greatest civilization, there's really not been a second great

Today we will discuss the Bronze Age Collapse. I want to paint you a picture of the world in about 1200 BC. In this world, the center of this world is what we call Mycenaean Greece. Across from Mycenaean Greece, across the Aegean Sea, is what we call Anatolia. Today

Marija Gimbutas, who is an anthropologist, makes the argument that for the longest time, for most of its history, Europe was egalitarian, peaceful and artistic. But today, we are a patriarchy. There's a lot of inequality, and we're always at war with each other. What changed?

The story so far is that 200,000 years ago, we humans, Homo sapiens, were born in Africa. Then about 50,000 years ago, because of climate change, we started to spread around the world. We went into Europe, then into Asia, then we crossed the Bering Strait into North

The main message is that for most of human history, we have been peaceful, egalitarian and artistic. About 300,000 years ago, our species, Homo sapiens, was born in Africa. Then 50,000 years ago, because of climate change, we started to spread around the world. Throughout most of our

We discussed three prehistorical sites, including Göbekli Tepe, Jericho and Çatalhöyük. The argument I made to you, which is the general scholarly consensus, is that what compelled the transition to agriculture was the religious beliefs of the people at that time. It was humanity’s religious impulse that drove our

Why did humanity transition from a hunter-gatherer society to agriculture? In the traditional paradigm—“paradigm” is a very sophisticated English word, and all it means is story or model or understanding—we transitioned because we were first hunter-gatherers. We lived in groups of about 20 to 50 people,