Happy Nowruz! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down the most incredible inventions and discoveries from the land of Persia, now known as Iran.
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00:00 "The Persian Empire created some of the most astonishing feats of engineering the world has ever seen."
00:06 Welcome to WatchMojo,
00:08 and today we're counting down the top 10 inventions and discoveries from the land of Persia,
00:12 now known as Iran.
00:14 "This is part of their great history."
00:17 Iran is the oldest country in the world,
00:19 with sovereignty dating back to 3200 BCE,
00:22 predating even Egypt.
00:24 In the 6th century BCE,
00:26 Cyrus the Great merged the Median and Achaemenid Empires,
00:30 and created the first Great World Empire.
00:32 In 1935,
00:34 King Reza Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty adopted the endonym Iran.
00:38 A multiplicity of ethnicities make up the Iranian mosaic today,
00:42 including a majority of Persians,
00:44 as well as Azeri, Kurds, Lur, Baluch, Turkmen, and numerous others.
00:49 Over the centuries,
00:50 this astonishingly influential country,
00:52 now officially known as the Islamic Republic of Iran,
00:56 has contributed many important inventions to the world,
00:59 from the sublime to the everyday.
01:01 Considered to be the world's oldest monotheistic religion,
01:08 the prophet Zarathustra,
01:10 or Zartosht in Farsi,
01:11 founded Zoroastrianism 3,500 years ago in the city of Yazd in modern-day Iran.
01:17 Zoroastrianism is a religion that pins good versus evil,
01:20 and adheres to the mantra of "humata hukta havarshta,"
01:24 which means good thoughts, good words, good deeds.
01:27 Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.
01:31 There you go. That's it.
01:34 Zoroastrianism influenced the three Abrahamic religions,
01:37 Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
01:39 and served as the spiritual foundation of ancient Persia
01:42 under the Arab conquests in the 7th century.
01:45 Satan, heaven, and hell were all Zoroastrian concepts,
01:49 later embraced by Christianity and Islam.
01:52 But aspects of Zoroastrianism remain in Iran to this day,
01:56 including the celebration of Nowruz, or New Year,
01:59 which coincides with the spring equinox.
02:01 European landscapes like the Netherlands famously have included windmills,
02:13 but the first recorded mentions of their use
02:15 date all the way back to Persia in 500 CE.
02:19 Windmills have been a part of religions' landscape
02:22 and have been used throughout many centuries.
02:25 The ingenious design of vertical-axis windmills
02:28 harness the power of nature to grind grain and pump water,
02:31 leveraging wind energy to propel agricultural output.
02:34 The windmills believed to have been erected at least 1,000 years ago.
02:39 With a design inspired by ship sails,
02:41 reeds were densely woven together into paddles
02:44 and then anchored to a central axis.
02:46 These wind catchers drew cool air down,
02:48 while pushing warmer air up and out.
02:51 Shapur I founded the Academy of Gwandi Shapur in 221 CE
03:05 at the behest of his wife, Azadakt Shakhpannu.
03:09 In the following centuries,
03:10 this cultural and academic center became the first teaching hospital in the world,
03:14 enabling young physicians-in-training to learn the ins and outs of medicine
03:18 under more experienced doctors.
03:20 These institutions not only provided essential medical services to communities,
03:24 but served as hubs for training future generations of healthcare professionals.
03:28 Another huge contribution to the history of medicine
03:31 was during the Islamic Golden Age,
03:32 when the Persian physician, astronomer, and philosopher Ibn Sina,
03:36 known in the West as Abyssinia,
03:38 wrote his encyclopedia, The Canon of Medicine.
03:41 The point is, this text was so important,
03:44 it was still being used around the world over 500 years later.
03:48 Iran boasts one of the oldest and most sophisticated taxation systems in the world.
03:56 Developed during the Achaemenid Empire around 550 BCE,
04:00 the Persian Empire's financing structure funded extensive infrastructure projects,
04:04 including the construction of bridges and roads
04:06 like the famous Royal Road that connected Persia to modern-day Turkey.
04:10 Extending over 1,500 miles of the empire,
04:13 he would call it the Royal Road.
04:16 The Shahs or Kings Cyrus I and Cambyses commanded gifts from subjects,
04:21 but it was eventually Darius I who formalized taxation through a mix of land taxes,
04:27 tribute from conquered territories,
04:28 and a centralized bureaucracy to collect revenues.
04:31 Number 6. Postal Service
04:38 Cyrus the Great created the foundation of what would become Persia's postal service,
04:43 Shahparghani, to connect travel and communications between the cities of Babylon,
04:47 Akhbatana, Persepolis, and Susa.
04:49 Darius I further built the Persian network of roads,
04:53 which were then used by riders and horse-drawn wagons to send messages,
04:57 effectively creating the modern postal system.
04:59 In fact, the United States Postal Service's
05:05 "Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays these couriers from their swift completion of
05:10 their appointed rounds" stems from Herodotus' description of the Persian messenger system.
05:14 In later years, the Seleucid and Parthian empires further developed the postal system
05:29 by capitalizing on Persia's highways, facilitating trade, diplomacy,
05:33 and cultural exchange across the Silk Road and beyond.
05:36 Number 5. Sulfuric Acid
05:39 Part discovery and part invention, the Persian astronomer, mathematician,
05:44 and geographer Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi first produced the king of chemicals,
05:49 sulfuric acid, in the 8th century.
05:52 Al-Razi extracted sulfuric acid by dry distillation of minerals with iron sulfate and copper sulfate.
05:58 Metal processing and fertilizer production are just some of the uses of the chemical,
06:02 and this landmark in modern chemistry potentiated multiple later scientific breakthroughs.
06:07 Al-Razi would also go on to discover alcohol as well, which is decidedly ironic given the
06:12 modern-day ban on alcohol in the Islamic Republic of Iran post-1979.
06:17 Number 4. Algebra
06:20 During the aforementioned Islamic Golden Age, which lasted from the 7th to the 13th century CE,
06:26 the Persian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer Muhammad ibn Musa al-Hawarizmi
06:31 developed algebra, the fundamental branch of mathematics that solves problems through
06:35 equations and symbols. Algebra's impact on human civilization through advances in physics
06:49 and computer science cannot be overstated. In fact, the terms algebra and algorithm are
06:55 derived from the Baghdad-based al-Hawarizmi's name, who thrived during the Abbasid Caliphate
07:00 around 800 CE. Now that's an impressive scientific legacy. Al-Hawarizmi's name,
07:06 when latinized in the title of the book, became algoritmi, and this is the origin of the word
07:13 algorithm.
07:14 Number 3. The Refrigerator
07:16 The yakhchal, or ice pit, emerged around 400 BCE. These vast egg-shaped domes with subterranean
07:23 storage spaces contained enormous quantities of goods. Built with a special insulation technique
07:28 using a combination of materials such as mud, clay, straw, sand, egg whites, goat's hair, and ash,
07:35 these architectural breakthroughs warded off the crushing heat by using evaporative cooling
07:39 techniques. Cold air entered the structure through the subterranean space and flowed
07:44 through the base as its cone shape pushed heat upwards, thus enabling the domed structure to
07:49 stay cooler than the outside environment. This ingenuity helped preserve food and ice from the
07:54 winter season, even during the blazing heat. Many of these structures still remain standing.
07:59 Number 2. Qanat
08:02 Given the country's mountainous terrain and climate, ancient Iranians developed the Qanat,
08:07 a water management system. This consisted of gently sloping underground channels to flow
08:16 water from its source through to houses and fields via a sequence of vertical shafts,
08:20 thus powering the irrigation required to build a growing empire. Supplying water to settlements
08:26 in hot and dry climates, Qanat spread across the imperial realm. Predating the Achaemenid era,
08:32 the Qanat in the city of Ghanabad dates back approximately 2700 years and provides drinking
08:37 and agricultural water to its citizens to this day. These systems remain commonplace in Asia,
08:43 Africa, and the Americas. Before we unveil our top pick, here are some honorable mentions.
08:53 Polo. Invented more than 2500 years ago as a training exercise for cavalry.
08:58 Animation. Millennia-old moving images on a pottery vessel in Shakhre-Sukhte, Iran's burnt
09:11 city. Bakgaman. The ancient Persian game called Senet gradually evolved into modern Bakgaman.
09:19 Lute. This precursor to the modern guitar traces its origins back to the 3rd century CE.
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09:45 Human Rights. Despite the Islamic Republic of Iran's many documented human rights abuses,
09:54 Iran played a crucial historical role in the development of human rights.
10:08 Created in 534 BCE and predating the Magna Carta by roughly 1700 years, the Cyrus Cylinder is
10:15 broadly recognized as the world's first charter of human rights. Built out of clay, the canister,
10:21 inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform script, was discovered in the ruins of Babylon in Mesopotamia
10:26 in 1879 and kept in the British Museum in London. After freeing the slaves, giving conquered people
10:32 the right to choose their own religion, and establishing racial equality, Cyrus defined his
10:37 ideas of justice, recording them in the cuneiform script in the baked clay cylinder known as the
10:42 Cyrus Cylinder. The Declaration has been translated into all six official languages of the United
10:48 Nations, and its provisions mirror the first four articles of the Universal Declaration of Human
10:53 Rights. While today Iran faces its share of socio-economic and political problems, it is
10:59 rooted in the nation's geopolitical importance to countries around the world. Nothing can take
11:05 away the Iranian people's contributions to the arts and sciences, and its place as a hub of
11:10 innovation and advancement.
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11:32 [Music]