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The Last Nomads

thedial.world

24 pointsThevet7 comments

A bit tangential, but I wonder if anyone else (in the US) discovered they had a big hole in their knowledge of the "old world" and its history?

I feel like I understand these pictures a bit better after learning some history

I discovered this hole recently, in my 40's ... I thought I had a good education, but I don't recall learning anything about Europe or Asia past some very cursory stuff in 8th grade. Like "Genghis Khan created the largest land empire", and that's about it

I feel like I didn't understand movies like "Gladiator" because I didn't know who any of the peoples are, but maybe you're not supposed to understand it, and are just watching the fights

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I have mentioned Fall of Civilizations of before, and the latest episode is nearly 7 hours on the Mongols!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFwMDuAnS4

One primary thing it impressed on me was the thousands of years of conflict between "settled peoples" and "nomads". I didn't realize that was such a huge theme lol

i.e. how steppe nomads rose and fell in cycles, over thousands of years, e.g. from the Xiongnu to the Huns to Tatars and Mongols - probably in accordance with weather

Regarding the Mongols, it's a bit crazy how they intersected with the Chinese, Persians, Arabs, Russians, and Europeans in such a short time period

And when their technological advantage eroded, all those civilizations basically "started" or started again

I think the geography was one of the big missing parts, and how that affects agriculture and the nomadic lifestyle

And how that gave them a devastating advantage in war (killing soldiers almost like killing animals)

But then that advantage disappeared, and over hundreds of years, they had to retreat into the most undesirable land.

I also find it interesting how easy it would have been to lose knowledge of all these peoples

Fall of Civilizations is a great. The production value is unbelievable and I’m mystified how someone got it off the ground.

The last Nomads seems like a strange title as the Bedouin are going strong everywhere in the Middle East I have been.

I like the production values, and the narrator is especially good at leaving spaces. When I watch other videos, it seems like they are trying to recite facts as fast as possible, and they don't take enough time to explain the terms / names / stories

And the sources

But IMO the main thing that sets it apart is the contextual knowledge, especially of geography, agriculture, materials, historical weather patterns, etc.

I was saying that I felt like I had a big hole in my knowledge.

But it also occurs to me that the field of history has advanced greatly since I was in high school in the 1990's, so it probably wasn't possible to make Fall of Civilizations then

I think all the technologies adjacent to say "Google Maps" (fine-grained global mapping, historical data sets) have increased our knowledge of history

And a lot of that tech is not very old at this point

I'm European but know very little about the Caucasus. There's a whole lot of history to cover and only so much time.

Yeah I think what I realized is that I learned history as a bunch of names, places, and dates

But I am bad at remembering that kind of thing. There is infinite history of that sort

On the other hand, now I feel like if I wanted to understand the Caucausus (which I know little about), I would look at

- the geography, and how that shaped the weather, animals, and plants

- how weather, plants, and animals shaped agriculture (or the lack of it)

- how people made money, e.g. surpluses from agriculture

- new technologies developed there, or lack thereof

- rival civilizations, and wars (which are also affected by geography and weather)

- language and writing

- major leaders and religions

I was struck by how much of history was had "the problem of succession", i.e. brothers fighting for their father's power. This was universal, all of the world

From that lens, democracy looks like a big achievement

And I was also struck by how big a deal CLIMATE was. On the scale of 250 years, the climate doesn't change that much; but on the scale of 1000-2000 years, it changes quite a lot. And many economies can only survive in a 100 or 500 year window. The system has broken down A LOT!

I'm sure tons of educated people know all this; I just found a hole in my education.

But also, history is biased toward those currently in power -- they want to make it seem like the current state of affairs was somehow inevitable or ordained, and lasted a long time, and will last into the future

But in reality, power is fleeting and fragile

I was naive about that, but I think many people all over the world are. Basically because propaganda and ideology "works"

there is a huge number of cultures in the old world that preserve ....chunks....of there ancient practices.....maps, and the internet only reach so far, and the planet is full of mountainous and other terrain that leads off into dead end ish, areas, vast dead end ish areas, where things muddle along as best they can, roads and other infrastructure are absent, unreliable, or seasonal. The real key for these groups survival is to have nothing that anybody wants directly, or more unfortunate to happen to live on top of something that can be exracted like oil or gold. Right now there is a two way disruption happening with technology (phones,solar,etc) that is drawing people out of there remote areas, but also bringing benifits that make life much easier, simply light at night, and the ability to market there goods to the world. Herders on the mongolian steps, bought up ex soviet all terrain ICBM missle carriers and turned them into mobile base camps, bristling with solar and satelite links. The Tuareg are still doing there thing, but again taking advantage of heavy all terrain trucks and instant messaging. At the other end of the spectrum there are the Amish, resolutly staying put and maintaining there culture, with just a calculated adaptation to modern technologys....there kin, the menonites living something like nomads.

have nothing that anybody wants directly

Yeah I definitely thought about that ... it is a bit crazy. Avoiding conflict is definitely a way of surviving

The Amish are an interesting case study in avoiding conflict ... I buy produce at the farmer's market from the Amish, so I read about their culture, real estate, etc.

I learned that they're pacifists, which makes sense

e.g. they refused to fight in World War II on behalf of the US, which caused some problems

But yeah it does not reflect well on the rest of us. I watched all of Fall of Civilizations, and yeah it wouldn't be that inaccurate to say that history is a continuous series of power struggles and succession problems! (and technology too, but arguably technology is primarily used to win wars ...)

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