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Was Mesopotamia the Cradle of Civilization? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from house stuff Works
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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Me,
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Speaker 1: Chuck and I are going to get to the bottom
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Speaker 1: today of whether or not Mesopotamia was the cradle of
0:25
Speaker 1: civilization like that, straight ahead. We're gonna find out if
0:29
Speaker 1: that's the case I think it is, do you Yeah, sure,
0:32
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence. You wrote a compelling argument
0:35
Speaker 1: for it, I believe, my friend. Can I set the scene? Yes? Okay,
0:38
Speaker 1: So Chuck round about eleven thousand years ago, Okay, humanity
0:44
Speaker 1: did something you could say significant. Okay, we abandon our
0:50
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer ways, which entails jumping out of trees onto
0:54
Speaker 1: gazelles and butchering them. Small tribes picking berries. No more
0:59
Speaker 1: than thirty Apparently, anything over thirty you have too much
1:02
Speaker 1: um interpersonal conflict. Really, and so I guess through trial
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Speaker 1: and error, are early ancestors figured out that you couldn't
1:10
Speaker 1: have more than thirty in a band? That thirty first
1:12
Speaker 1: dude started killing people every time. Yeah, They're like, there's
1:15
Speaker 1: always one how to thirty? Right? And then they're like,
1:18
Speaker 1: oh wait, gotcha thirty. That's good. That was a hunter
1:22
Speaker 1: gatherer Joe. Yeah. Um, let's never get old the so yes,
1:27
Speaker 1: but we we so we spent all of our all
1:31
Speaker 1: of humanity's history hunting and gathering wandering around. That was it. Yeah.
1:37
Speaker 1: And then eleven thousand years ago, during what's called the
1:40
Speaker 1: Neolithic Revolution, we stopped, we settled down, and we started
1:45
Speaker 1: raising crops. We turned to agriculture, which led to while
1:49
Speaker 1: not sitting around, clearly there's a lot of work to
1:51
Speaker 1: be done, but not moving around, a more sedentary, stable environment,
1:56
Speaker 1: right right. And it changed everything from this in fairly
2:00
Speaker 1: quick fashion. Uh, civilization, developed, cities sprung up. Yeah. Um,
2:08
Speaker 1: And what we have now today all goes back to
2:12
Speaker 1: that period eleven thousand years ago where the where we
2:15
Speaker 1: adopted agriculture. Right, So that leads one to wonder, okay,
2:20
Speaker 1: well what was the first civilization? Then it leads me
2:23
Speaker 1: to wonder, Yeah, me too, which is why I wrote
2:25
Speaker 1: this article. And you did a fine job, sir. Is
2:28
Speaker 1: it just living in cities, Chuck? Is it just creating
2:31
Speaker 1: a village based around agriculture? Is that your civilization? Huh no, Josh,
2:34
Speaker 1: But it does take a village. That's what Hill says,
2:38
Speaker 1: and that's what I say. Okay, uh, it takes a village, Josh,
2:41
Speaker 1: and let me let me break it down. It's funny
2:43
Speaker 1: for me to tell you even though you wrote this.
2:45
Speaker 1: It's a little awkward. But a civilization is uh, I
2:50
Speaker 1: like the way that one writer put it. Um. If
2:52
Speaker 1: culture is behavior, civilization is structure. Right there, there are
2:55
Speaker 1: certain things that have to be present. Yeah, So what
2:57
Speaker 1: we're talking um a class structure um um upper class
3:03
Speaker 1: usually religious leaders, where the where the ruling party is
3:06
Speaker 1: a right, religious or political or both a lot of
3:08
Speaker 1: times both back then right and um laws. It would
3:12
Speaker 1: be nice. That's an indicator, right, Um living in one
3:17
Speaker 1: place obviously, that's another indicator, like a religious and economic structure,
3:24
Speaker 1: so like trade, commerce, that kind of thing. Is there
3:27
Speaker 1: anything else? That's pretty much the basics for civilization. Okay,
3:32
Speaker 1: but it doesn't always have to be a city. But
3:33
Speaker 1: it just kind of made sense how it's always been, Yeah,
3:36
Speaker 1: because civilization has always been tied to agriculture. And agriculture
3:41
Speaker 1: means you have a you're growing crops and you have
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Speaker 1: a bunch of people tending to these crops, so they're
3:46
Speaker 1: all living in the same area and generally they're all
3:49
Speaker 1: sharing this land in some way or another provide it up.
3:53
Speaker 1: So that's a city. Yeah. It did give him more
3:55
Speaker 1: time though, Like I said, it was hard work, but
3:57
Speaker 1: it's clearly gives them more free time than say, hunting,
4:00
Speaker 1: hunting and gathering when you're constantly on the move. Not necessarily. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I remember one of my heroes, Dr Jared Diamond, who
4:06
Speaker 1: wrote that essay the greatest mistake in the history of
4:09
Speaker 1: mankind or human kind, the greatest mistake in the history
4:13
Speaker 1: of the human race. Yes, Dr screech right, um. He
4:18
Speaker 1: argued that no, no, no, like you, you spend four
4:22
Speaker 1: hours out of your day hunting, hunting, and gathering, and
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Speaker 1: the rest is leisure. I don't have anything to tend to.
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Speaker 1: It was his big argument that that agriculture was a
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Speaker 1: huge mistake. Well what's the deal though, with you saying
4:34
Speaker 1: then that science and art sprung out of the free
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Speaker 1: time from the agricultural lifestyle. I'm very glad you asked that, Chuck,
4:43
Speaker 1: because this is a very important point. Okay, because uh,
4:47
Speaker 1: and that that that um stood out to me too
4:49
Speaker 1: when I was back rereading this article. Right, Um, we
4:53
Speaker 1: were able because of the advent of civilization. We were
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Speaker 1: able to pursue things like science, pursue things like math,
5:03
Speaker 1: create calendars and astronomy and all that um, because there
5:07
Speaker 1: were people who were toiling on behalf of others who
5:10
Speaker 1: weren't toiling. Uh to say, the ruling class were the
5:14
Speaker 1: ones who created science, who don't okay, because they make
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Speaker 1: half the toil. They didn't even have to go hunt
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Speaker 1: and gather nothing but free time exactly. Okay, that makes sense. Well,
5:24
Speaker 1: and you mentioned the calendar in time that was specifically
5:26
Speaker 1: the Babylonians, which is part of Mesopotamia. They invented minutes
5:31
Speaker 1: and seconds, right did I? Well, come, I'm kidding Mesopotamia.
5:38
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and let the cat out of the bag.
5:40
Speaker 1: They were the first civilization. Yeah, you'd think they had
5:43
Speaker 1: everything right there. Modern day Iraq is that right? Yes?
5:46
Speaker 1: And a little I think a little bit of Iran
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Speaker 1: between the tigers and the Euphrates River very fertile at
5:52
Speaker 1: land there wasn't it. It was thanks to the early
5:56
Speaker 1: farmers because they re routed the water, Is that right? Yeah?
6:00
Speaker 1: I mean they had a lot it was. It was fertile,
6:02
Speaker 1: you know, around the river. But these guys were building
6:05
Speaker 1: canals like twenty miles out in founding cities where they
6:08
Speaker 1: ended so long ago, it's amazing. Yeah, this is about
6:11
Speaker 1: four thousand BC that Mesopotamia really started to grow up. Um.
6:16
Speaker 1: And Mesopotamia is Greek, I believe for land between two
6:19
Speaker 1: rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Right, Um. And it was actually
6:23
Speaker 1: a series of independent although affiliated city states Syria, Babylonia
6:31
Speaker 1: and Summer sumer sum Sumaria. I've seen both ways sumer
6:37
Speaker 1: and Sumeia. But remember Um in Ghostbusters, Gozo is a
6:43
Speaker 1: Sumerian god? Which one was Gozo or Gozer goes? Yes,
6:49
Speaker 1: the lady in the suit is that a suit? It
6:54
Speaker 1: was some kind of suit alright, So Chuck, like you said,
6:57
Speaker 1: Um that that one scholar Matthias Tomzak said that if
7:01
Speaker 1: culture is behavior, then civilization is structured to that behavior,
7:06
Speaker 1: and that kind of underlie underscores the point that we
7:10
Speaker 1: had certain things, certain elements that that formed the basis
7:14
Speaker 1: of civilization floating out there in the ether, like hunter
7:17
Speaker 1: gatherer tribes engaged in religious ceremonies and rituals um and
7:23
Speaker 1: and there were some sort of structure to their bands.
7:28
Speaker 1: From time to time, if there was a shaman present,
7:30
Speaker 1: he probably ran the show or she um. So there
7:34
Speaker 1: were these elements to civilization, but it was in Mesopotamia
7:38
Speaker 1: where they all came together, right, and they were structure
7:42
Speaker 1: I structured. Wow, organized, Yes, I think that's the word
7:49
Speaker 1: you're looking for. Uh. You know what was also really
7:52
Speaker 1: cool I thought that you pointed out was were they
7:54
Speaker 1: the very first people to actually write things down on tablets? Yea.
7:59
Speaker 1: And this kind of shows how you would think like, oh, well,
8:02
Speaker 1: the Mesopotamians really had everything together and they like, we're
8:06
Speaker 1: gonna build humanity. Yeah, we're gonna write books because books
8:09
Speaker 1: are important. They didn't know that, no, not not at first.
8:12
Speaker 1: So yeah, in Sumeria, the first writing came about why Chuck, Well,
8:19
Speaker 1: like you point out here, it's a very boring things
8:23
Speaker 1: that they were keeping track of on on written record,
8:26
Speaker 1: which like tax records and um accounting records. But that
8:31
Speaker 1: makes sense. They were smart enough early on to keep
8:34
Speaker 1: track of their financial business for with a permanent record
8:38
Speaker 1: and new necessity is the mother of invention. They needed
8:41
Speaker 1: to keep track of their stuff, so they created writing.
8:45
Speaker 1: But then that writing led to the phonetic alphabet to
8:48
Speaker 1: where now things UM could be depicted, where there was
8:52
Speaker 1: no UM there was no picture for them. Right. It
8:56
Speaker 1: wasn't just like cal Sun Mountain, right, they could I
9:00
Speaker 1: think I think he just insulted somebody in in ancient Egypt,
9:03
Speaker 1: they could actually express abstract thought for the first time
9:05
Speaker 1: on paper, well not paper but clay tablets. Right. And
9:08
Speaker 1: that led actually to Gilgamesh, which is thought to be
9:11
Speaker 1: the first literary work in the entire world. Have you
9:15
Speaker 1: ever read it? Really? Yeah, so it's a real thing. Yeah,
9:19
Speaker 1: I mean, I know it's a real thing, but it's
9:20
Speaker 1: a real book with the plot. Is it fiction? It
9:23
Speaker 1: is fiction, although there was supposedly a real king Gilgamesh. Um,
9:27
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's it's actually it's really interesting because it
9:31
Speaker 1: kind of depicts the struggle at the time between going
9:35
Speaker 1: towards civilization or remaining hunter gatherers. You have pretty much, Um,
9:43
Speaker 1: you have Gilgamesh. He's all about the city and he
9:47
Speaker 1: runs into Inky Do in ky Do. I've heard it
9:52
Speaker 1: both ways too, Is that your c o A. Now
9:54
Speaker 1: I've heard it both ways? Write uh and incaduced like
9:57
Speaker 1: this wild man of the woods and Gilgamesh meets him,
10:01
Speaker 1: wrestles him, and uh, basically it's like, hey, you're my
10:04
Speaker 1: best friend now because you almost beat me. Let me
10:06
Speaker 1: take you to the city. So it's as much about
10:09
Speaker 1: gilgamesh Um as it is about him taming inky Do,
10:13
Speaker 1: bringing another human being out of the woods and into
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Speaker 1: the city, out of our past as hunter gatherers, into civilization.
10:21
Speaker 1: Because not everybody just subscribed to it at once, and
10:23
Speaker 1: a lot of people believe that Gilgamesh um is symbolic
10:27
Speaker 1: for this transition at this point in human history. It's
10:30
Speaker 1: the city mouse and the country mouse. Yeah, exactly, it's
10:33
Speaker 1: it's it's a struggle that still goes on today. It's weird,
10:37
Speaker 1: but um. Yeah, however you interpreted, Gilgamesh is arguably the
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Speaker 1: first work of literature on the planet, and that came
10:45
Speaker 1: from Samaria, Okay, which was Mesopotamia, right, all right, So
10:48
Speaker 1: that's a good that's a strike in their favor. You
10:51
Speaker 1: know what else was religion organized religion. It wasn't the
10:55
Speaker 1: first time it had happened, right, but the fact that
10:58
Speaker 1: they were all in one place all of a sudden,
11:00
Speaker 1: instead of hunting and gathering and having your own little
11:02
Speaker 1: religious ideals in small pockets of thirty, all of a sudden,
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Speaker 1: you had large numbers of people worshiping the same gods
11:10
Speaker 1: and you had these people at the top of this
11:13
Speaker 1: religious hierarchy. They were in charge. Who Yeah, they were
11:16
Speaker 1: in charge because they were the ones who knew what
11:18
Speaker 1: the gods we're thinking. And they could be like, you
11:21
Speaker 1: know this god um uh Utu, the sun god, or
11:26
Speaker 1: goes Er. You didn't want to mess a gozer. But
11:29
Speaker 1: let's say goes Er Um commands you to bring me
11:33
Speaker 1: a bunch of um wheat wheat, and uh, I'm supposed
11:38
Speaker 1: to eat it, and you're supposed to sit there and
11:41
Speaker 1: watch and not say anything. And that's why I'm a
11:42
Speaker 1: fat cat. But that's that's the hierarchy, you know, like
11:45
Speaker 1: the the they this. These priests had control immediately over
11:49
Speaker 1: these people once organized religion started, Yes, and that led
11:52
Speaker 1: to moral codes of conduct, which eventually would lead to
11:56
Speaker 1: regular law, which is another little strike in their favorite.
11:59
Speaker 1: All these things are coming out of Mesopotamia. It's all
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Speaker 1: forming a picture, josh Um. There's also some very overtly well,
12:06
Speaker 1: now there's there's some other great advances they made. Um.
12:09
Speaker 1: We talked about the calendar. Apparently the um Babylonians were
12:14
Speaker 1: the first to actually mark time beyond the sun's up
12:18
Speaker 1: of the sun's down. Yeah, they came up with seconds
12:22
Speaker 1: and minutes. They created the calendar, and then this in
12:25
Speaker 1: turn gives rise to astronomy. You can't have astronomy without
12:28
Speaker 1: a calendar and math, right eventually, Yes, so science is
12:31
Speaker 1: coming out of Mesopotamia too. And art, Yes, they actually
12:35
Speaker 1: people have been creating art for ten thousand years at
12:37
Speaker 1: that point, right, Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that art
12:40
Speaker 1: was one of the first things that humans try their hand.
12:43
Speaker 1: I mean, think about like the prehistoric drawings in the
12:46
Speaker 1: caves in France. I remember which ones, but of like
12:48
Speaker 1: the people running around hunting bison, right, and they were
12:52
Speaker 1: also telling stories to write it. Isn't that art? Yeah?
12:56
Speaker 1: Oh man, look at you. What a sensitive guy. So, Josh,
13:00
Speaker 1: was it all like super awesome ideas that they were
13:03
Speaker 1: like laying down on humanity? Surely they did some harm, right, definitely,
13:07
Speaker 1: because with advancement, it's hard not to step on a
13:09
Speaker 1: few toes along the way, right. And once you say, oh,
13:12
Speaker 1: I've got this group subjugated, but that group over there's
13:14
Speaker 1: got a lot of emmer wheat did I want to?
13:18
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna amass an army and you guys are
13:21
Speaker 1: going to go subjugate that other group, So war slaves
13:25
Speaker 1: expansion is um, all of this stuff came out of
13:28
Speaker 1: that too. Sure. And the other thing too is disease.
13:31
Speaker 1: And uh, I guess plague. Now that you have or
13:34
Speaker 1: not plague, what would you call it? Epidemics? Yeah, an epidemics.
13:37
Speaker 1: Since you have people all living in one place, it's
13:40
Speaker 1: much easier to you know, pass that thing around all
13:41
Speaker 1: of a sudden that you have an epidemic on your hand.
13:43
Speaker 1: That was another point Jared Diamond made, like, you can't
13:46
Speaker 1: you can't have an epidemic if you just are living
13:48
Speaker 1: in groups of thirty that don't really contact one another.
13:51
Speaker 1: Doctor screech exactly. Um, so chuck. It's pretty clear Mesopotamia
13:57
Speaker 1: is the creative civilization, although there are some other comer.
14:00
Speaker 1: There are definitely some settlements that have been discovered that
14:03
Speaker 1: are neolithic, um, that show signs of some sort of cohesion.
14:08
Speaker 1: Um in uh, let's see, there's some along the Yellow
14:11
Speaker 1: River in China that are pretty old. Yeah. Um, there's
14:15
Speaker 1: cattle Hoyak, which is one of my favorites. Yeah. Southern Turkey.
14:18
Speaker 1: They had temples of worship, shrines, they had art, they
14:24
Speaker 1: raised livestock and farmed and they had about ten thousand
14:27
Speaker 1: people together doing this. But what strikes me is you
14:30
Speaker 1: point out that they didn't have a hierarchy or social stratification.
14:36
Speaker 1: But that's a ten thousand people back then with no hierarchy.
14:40
Speaker 1: It's communism. Well, it's hinky as what it is, it's utopia.
14:45
Speaker 1: I bet it didn't go so well though, you know,
14:46
Speaker 1: especially in those early like savage times. Sure, um or
14:51
Speaker 1: else it did. I mean, they could have ended because
14:54
Speaker 1: of climate change or whatever. Um Or maybe they actually
14:57
Speaker 1: did have a social hierarchy. It's just not a it
15:00
Speaker 1: to researchers yet. But if if they did, they were
15:04
Speaker 1: That's really what they were lacking, was the social hierarchy
15:06
Speaker 1: that would have made them a civilization. And they had
15:08
Speaker 1: a good three thousand years on the Mesopotamians. What about
15:11
Speaker 1: Gonner Ganner Dept. That's in a Turkmenistan. Yeah, they sound
15:15
Speaker 1: like they meet the thing. They farm, they built canals,
15:19
Speaker 1: palaces and traded. Yeah, you know what kept them out? Again,
15:23
Speaker 1: I think it was the hierarchy, class structure. And and
15:27
Speaker 1: isn't that sad that class structure is a It's one
15:30
Speaker 1: of the spaces of civilization. And I think about this, Chuck,
15:35
Speaker 1: we're we're talking about how civilization it's you know, um
15:39
Speaker 1: that keeping tax records gave rise to phonetic alphabets, which
15:43
Speaker 1: gave rise to capturing abstract ideas. Right, UM, So we've
15:48
Speaker 1: we've you can see how civilization at one point when
15:52
Speaker 1: when we all of a sudden they're starting to settle
15:54
Speaker 1: down the whole there's a world of opportunity, of choices
15:59
Speaker 1: of available to us. Um. But with each block that
16:03
Speaker 1: we built upon and cemented, we also built our own.
16:07
Speaker 1: We built ourselves into a certain worldview that we can't
16:11
Speaker 1: it's tough to see out of sometimes now these days,
16:14
Speaker 1: you see what I'm saying, Like what what were the
16:15
Speaker 1: choices that they mean? Like could they have been like
16:18
Speaker 1: well we're gonna go with cattle hiak and not have
16:20
Speaker 1: a social hierarchy. But now having a social hierarchy and
16:24
Speaker 1: class uh means that you're a civilization. We can't think
16:28
Speaker 1: of it without that. And there's also a lot of
16:30
Speaker 1: benefit to studying early civilization or what constitute of civilization
16:35
Speaker 1: because it sheds light on our own Like today we
16:39
Speaker 1: have class structures. We have a ruling class that that
16:42
Speaker 1: um distributes wealth based on economic policies and tax breaks.
16:47
Speaker 1: And it's tough to see it like that because you
16:48
Speaker 1: just think it's Barack Obama, John McCain. But this is
16:52
Speaker 1: really you can look at it in that detached manner
16:55
Speaker 1: like this is a this is the class structure, and
16:58
Speaker 1: this is how they doll out the goods, and they
17:00
Speaker 1: don't dole it out equally. You know what Bob Marley
17:03
Speaker 1: said lively after yourself, Well, he said a lot of things.
17:07
Speaker 1: Don't know your past, you don't know your future. That's
17:09
Speaker 1: true right there. I don't think he was the first
17:11
Speaker 1: guy to say that either. But Chuck, there's one question
17:13
Speaker 1: that's remained unanswered. This this is awesome. Tell me this
17:17
Speaker 1: isn't awesome. It's pretty awesome. Why did we start farming? Well, Josh,
17:22
Speaker 1: there are different theories, but the one that you found
17:26
Speaker 1: that I love is from an archaeologist named Patrick McGovern,
17:30
Speaker 1: and he believes that once humans got their first little
17:34
Speaker 1: nip of that sweet, sweet alcohol from what fermented fruit
17:40
Speaker 1: or grain or something by accident, probably the first time.
17:43
Speaker 1: Once they got that taste of intoxication, they would stop
17:47
Speaker 1: at nothing to recreate it. And he contends in a
17:50
Speaker 1: book Uncorking the Past Colon the Quest for wine, beer,
17:55
Speaker 1: and other alcoholic beverages. That the Neolithic Revolution happened and
18:00
Speaker 1: agriculture was born because people wanted to grow things to
18:03
Speaker 1: make alcohol. Yeah, and it makes a lot of sense, Chuck,
18:06
Speaker 1: because if you think about it as hunter gatherers, um,
18:10
Speaker 1: we had food already, and we had figured out that
18:14
Speaker 1: you could live in bands of thirty or less. There
18:17
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily an urge to live in civilization. We're tied
18:20
Speaker 1: to a sedentary lifestyle through agriculture. But it leaves that
18:24
Speaker 1: door open, like why would we go, Well, I've got
18:27
Speaker 1: some food over here, and I have tons of leisure time,
18:30
Speaker 1: but I'd rather stick right here and spend all of
18:32
Speaker 1: my time farming for food. But this McGovern hypothesis about
18:38
Speaker 1: you know, alcohol providing the basis of agriculture, it makes
18:42
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. It answers that question. Well, that's
18:44
Speaker 1: the age old question and archaeological circles is what came first?
18:49
Speaker 1: Beer or bread? Yeah, so you're growing these crops, what
18:52
Speaker 1: were they doing? Are they making bread with it? Or
18:53
Speaker 1: are they making beer? They were making neither. They were
18:55
Speaker 1: actually making a um fermented combination of me and some
19:00
Speaker 1: sort of fruit wine about ten percent alcohol is that
19:03
Speaker 1: what they said? And this is we're talking like seven
19:07
Speaker 1: thousand BC, nine thousand years ago again along the Yellow
19:11
Speaker 1: River in China, people are making this some sort of
19:13
Speaker 1: fermented um alcoholic beverage. And they were so clever about this, chuck,
19:19
Speaker 1: you have to have some sort of malt sugar to
19:23
Speaker 1: to allow the fermentation process to take place, right, So
19:26
Speaker 1: what did they do? This is what they did. They
19:27
Speaker 1: had obviously no knowledge of chemistry at the time none,
19:30
Speaker 1: so they would prehistoric humans would uh mixed clumps of
19:35
Speaker 1: rice with their saliva in their mouth. They chew it up,
19:38
Speaker 1: break down the starches in the grain in their mouth
19:42
Speaker 1: and convert it into malt sugar and then spit that
19:44
Speaker 1: up into the homebrew and apparently all the yeasty, foamy
19:49
Speaker 1: stuff would float to the top and they would use
19:51
Speaker 1: these really long party straws, crazy straws to drink the
19:56
Speaker 1: alcohol from the bottom of the thing. And they still
19:58
Speaker 1: use similar uh jugs to drink out of in China.
20:04
Speaker 1: It bro Yeah, that's like making booze nine thousand years ago.
20:09
Speaker 1: And um McGovern would know, he's a molecular archaeologist. He
20:14
Speaker 1: pretty much pioneered the field. And if you have an
20:17
Speaker 1: old pottery shard that you want analyze to take it
20:20
Speaker 1: to him. And so he started noticing time after time
20:24
Speaker 1: that with all of these um shards of pottery, he
20:27
Speaker 1: kept finding tartaric acid, which is a UM. It's an
20:30
Speaker 1: acid present in wine. UM. And he would find some
20:34
Speaker 1: other stuff too UM. And actually in Goner Deppie he
20:38
Speaker 1: found some vessels or he was asked to analyze some
20:41
Speaker 1: vessels and um. He found a contaminant of beer, a
20:46
Speaker 1: natural contaminant of beer. UM. And he also figured out
20:49
Speaker 1: that these little scratched, these cross hatch scratches in the
20:52
Speaker 1: bottom of the play pottery were designed to absorb this
20:55
Speaker 1: contaminant which occurs in crystal form, so it would just
20:59
Speaker 1: sink to the bottom, me get stuck in these cross hatches.
21:01
Speaker 1: So he's like, these are beer bottles and this is
21:04
Speaker 1: like the four thousand years ago or six thousand years ago.
21:07
Speaker 1: That's awesome. You know what else, Uh Sumerians, which was
21:11
Speaker 1: part of Mesopotamia, they worshiped the goddess of fertility, Nina Harra,
21:16
Speaker 1: and they consider her to be the inventor of beer
21:19
Speaker 1: and the goddess of fertility too. That's pretty funny. That's
21:23
Speaker 1: funny because I thought Paul Massan was the goddess of fertility.
21:27
Speaker 1: That's good. And also, Josh, you know what we're saying.
21:29
Speaker 1: And how they Sumerians wrote down things on clay tablets,
21:33
Speaker 1: some of the first folks to do that. They actually
21:36
Speaker 1: wrote down the recipe for beer was one of the
21:38
Speaker 1: things they wrote down. So they had like the first
21:40
Speaker 1: brewers handbook. Basically, they had tax records Gilgamesh and a
21:45
Speaker 1: good beer recipe you need and I don't know, that's
21:48
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. And his his hypothesis is also backed up
21:52
Speaker 1: by the really rapid spread around the world of fermentation.
21:56
Speaker 1: Right um, after these I think the Chinese shards, uh
22:00
Speaker 1: that show that fruit and mead mixture are the oldest,
22:05
Speaker 1: and then after that it kind of spreads fairly quickly. Yeah,
22:08
Speaker 1: pretty cool. And if you look at their staple crops
22:11
Speaker 1: that that may that constituted early agriculture, you can brew
22:15
Speaker 1: from all of them. Yeah, there was some corn millet
22:18
Speaker 1: rice beer company was that some weer company had found
22:21
Speaker 1: some concient recipe and they for beer and they were
22:25
Speaker 1: able to recreate it. Sweet. Yeah, I wish I could
22:27
Speaker 1: remember the name of it. Someone will tell me it's
22:29
Speaker 1: not flag Porter is it? I don't know. Maybe flag
22:33
Speaker 1: Porter great beer. I'll look into it. All right, Well, Chuck,
22:37
Speaker 1: that's about it. Uh, we still haven't quite gotten to
22:40
Speaker 1: the bottom of whether Mesopotamia was a credile of civilization
22:43
Speaker 1: or not. I say yes, I say yes, But as
22:47
Speaker 1: you point out, scholars still debate what is a civilization
22:50
Speaker 1: in the first place, So so who are we to say? Um,
22:55
Speaker 1: that's about it. I don't even recommend reading the article.
22:57
Speaker 1: We pretty much covered it. But there is a search
22:59
Speaker 1: bar how stuff worth dot com all sorts of cool stuff. Um,
23:03
Speaker 1: how about listener mail Josh. This is a long one,
23:08
Speaker 1: but it's worth it because this is one of the
23:11
Speaker 1: best ones we've ever gotten. That's two full pages, well
23:14
Speaker 1: sixteen point for my old eyes, uh, Josh and Chuck.
23:18
Speaker 1: Strange as it may sound, I was. I actually discovered
23:21
Speaker 1: a secluded tribe. A few years ago. While I was
23:23
Speaker 1: sailing solo around the world, somewhere around uh Vanua to
23:28
Speaker 1: Vanua too in the South Pacific, I was hit by
23:31
Speaker 1: a huge storm. Uh snapped my mass like a match
23:34
Speaker 1: stick and treated my boat like a bathtub toy. He
23:37
Speaker 1: had to strap himself in the boat, so he didn't
23:38
Speaker 1: get watched overboard, gets tossed around for what seems like days,
23:41
Speaker 1: ends up washed ashore like a castaway, not like a castaway.
23:45
Speaker 1: He was a castaway as a as a castaway. The
23:48
Speaker 1: Little Mary Anne was his boat. It was completely wrecked.
23:51
Speaker 1: And uh, that was probably a mistake to name it
23:53
Speaker 1: after a Gilligan's Island episode. You're just asking for it. Uh.
23:57
Speaker 1: And so he did not know how long he'd been
24:00
Speaker 1: round And turns out he was there for about a month. Wow,
24:05
Speaker 1: castaway on an island, So listen to this. On the beach,
24:08
Speaker 1: A cargo container washes ashore from China. He was able
24:12
Speaker 1: to open it up eventually, and there was a plethora
24:15
Speaker 1: of Chinese consumer goods, look like dollar store type stuff.
24:19
Speaker 1: He said. That's when he noticed behind me, turned and
24:23
Speaker 1: saw fifty mostly naked people standing on the beach and
24:26
Speaker 1: more emerging from the jungle. I was apprehensive. I had
24:30
Speaker 1: seen no signs of civilization, and I thought I was
24:32
Speaker 1: alone on the island. They approached me and they started
24:34
Speaker 1: to chant. As it turns out they were singing to me.
24:37
Speaker 1: I was dumb struck, and they formed a semi circle
24:39
Speaker 1: around me and chanted what sounded like Joe from So
24:44
Speaker 1: it's amazing. This better be real. If someone sends us
24:48
Speaker 1: in like a Snopes thing that I'm gonna be really pissed. Uh.
24:51
Speaker 1: He They started holding out their hands and gesturing for
24:53
Speaker 1: the stuff in the container, so he started passing it out,
24:56
Speaker 1: obviously to be like, you know, here, I have things
24:58
Speaker 1: for you. Uh, come in peace, he said. It was
25:01
Speaker 1: like I was Santa Claus and this is their first Christmas.
25:04
Speaker 1: They were tearing into everything. It turns out he had
25:06
Speaker 1: been watched ashore and on island inhabited by a cargo
25:09
Speaker 1: cult and I was the first white person they had
25:12
Speaker 1: seen for generations. The last ones were during the Second
25:14
Speaker 1: World War and had left behind modern conveniences like metal
25:18
Speaker 1: pots and knives and some broken walkie talkies who the
25:22
Speaker 1: elders used to communicate with each other. They learned how
25:25
Speaker 1: to use thesewakie talkies. He said. He lived among them
25:28
Speaker 1: for about a month until someone finally came and rescued me.
25:31
Speaker 1: I was revered as a living god. They waited on
25:34
Speaker 1: me hand and foot, and the shaman would hand mi
25:37
Speaker 1: awaukie talkie occasionally and began chanting into this all I
25:40
Speaker 1: chanted into mine. It always made him laugh and seemed
25:44
Speaker 1: to heighten his status in the tribe. The rescue boat
25:47
Speaker 1: finally came. They helped going away party for me ceremony
25:51
Speaker 1: and Uh discussed. He later discovered the island had been
25:55
Speaker 1: a staging ground for military ops during World War Two,
25:58
Speaker 1: and the military had won the heart to minds of
26:00
Speaker 1: these natives, so they weren't you know, aggressive toward toward
26:03
Speaker 1: white man. And the chance they greeted me with on
26:06
Speaker 1: the beach turned out was a derivation of Joe from USA,
26:10
Speaker 1: which is what their forefathers have called soldiers. There is
26:13
Speaker 1: no way this is true. You don't think so it can't.
26:16
Speaker 1: This is from Barry, and Barry says, you know, it
26:19
Speaker 1: was nice being treated like a god for a little while,
26:22
Speaker 1: made for a great vacation. And he brought me back
26:25
Speaker 1: and said it was true, and that he still never
26:27
Speaker 1: completed his round the world trip. That is Yeah, that's
26:31
Speaker 1: the best one ever, definitely, even if it's not true.
26:35
Speaker 1: The creativity Barry. Someone writes back and says that was
26:39
Speaker 1: on a T shirt. He really upset. I forgot about
26:43
Speaker 1: that man. That kid took us, didn't Yeah, the Hiku kid.
26:45
Speaker 1: We took him behind the woodshed, didn't wit yep. So
26:49
Speaker 1: if you have a non lie email that you want
26:51
Speaker 1: to send us, you can ship it off in a
26:55
Speaker 1: cargo container to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
27:05
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
27:07
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
27:11
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot
27:13
Speaker 1: com home page. H