Bifalgorithm post

We hear about all these ancient civilizations, but when did each one happen? How do they fit together in the broader story of human history? Well, here's the whole story in a 2 minute video. First up is the Stone Age, which lasted for 2.5 million years. Modern humans hadn't taken over the planet yet, but they were leaving Africa, met some Neanderthals along the way, and then ran into the Ice Age, which kinda sucked. Nice thing about everything being frozen though, is that this created a little land bridge that let people cross into the Americas. This whole time period is called Prehistory, because writing hadn't been invented yet, so it's hard to know exactly what happened. But that would all change right around 3000 BC or BCE. Civilization became a thing. Why was this a big deal? Well, for the first time ever, we got so efficient at growing food that we didn't need everyone to be a farmer. Some people can make advanced tools instead, which helped you grow more food, which let people do more non-farmer stuff. This spiral of wealth was insane and led to things like cities, math, the wheel, irrigation, writing, and government. People were so advanced that instead of picking up rocks and calling them tools, they invented metal. Bronze to be exact, so people call this the Bronze Age. This was mostly happening in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, and Greece. Egypt somehow built the pyramids this early in human history, which is why we have so many conspiracy theories about them. Tragically, around 1200 BCE, many of these Mediterranean Bronze Age civilizations kind of just got wiped off the map. We still don't really know how it happened, but history basically went silent in this region for 400 years. During this time, though, people started using iron and not bronze, so we call it the Iron Age. Contrary to what Runescape has taught us, iron actually wasn't stronger than bronze at first, but it was way, way more convenient to make. This was a big deal, because you could make way more of it, and instead of ar arming just a few people you could arm everyone. And you could start putting it on a bunch more tools like plows and chisels and make every tool in society metalized. Right around 600 BCE, ancient Greece and ancient Rome really began to flourish. So when you hear historians mention things like antiquity or the classical period, they're referring to this period. Though this is obviously a very western-centric view because binding these specific years together to create a historical time period is sort of arbitrary for non-western civilizations. Most of the ancient Greek philosophers you hear about like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all lived in this time as well as Greek rulers like Alexander the Great. The Bible and Hindu and Buddhist scriptures were all written during this time. Most of the things that you associate with ancient China like Confucianism, papermaking, and the Silk Road happened here, especially during the Han dynasty and most Chinese people even today are called Han Chinese. The Persian Empire, Roman Empire, Carthage, Kingdom of Kush, and Marian Empire all happened here. And the Golden Age for both India and the Mayans happened around the end of this time period. This time period of classical antiquity would end when the Western Roman Empire collapsed and Europe would enter its dark ages. This happened in 476 AD or 476 CE. And by the way, when you hear these two years, they mean the same thing. Historians started using CE because it's more neutral and doesn't center around Jesus Christ. So basically, prehistory was a Stone Age before writing was a thing. All of ancient history includes the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and classical antiquity. After ancient history was the Middle Ages, from this point up until the 1500s when the Americas were discovered and the Renaissance started. And everything after the 1500s is called modern history. The Middle Ages and modern history will have to be for another video, but hopefully this quick video gave you a good overview on ancient history.

We hear about all these ancient civilizations, but when did each one happen? How do they fit together in the broader story of human history? Well, here's the w…