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Embark on a journey of speculation and discovery that will leave you pondering the intricacies of our world's untapped frontiers.
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00:00Listen to this. Neanderthal fiber technology. Nope, I'm not joking. The concept is real.
00:07In 2020, a team of scientists published a paper that redefined the way we saw our closest ancestors.
00:15A find in France changed archaeology forever, and it wasn't the first time something like this had happened.
00:21But let me start from the beginning.
00:25Neanderthals. For a long time, they fit the image of the typical cavemen.
00:30If you are now thinking of someone like Fred Flintstone, you wouldn't be much wrong.
00:34What was the reason behind this stereotype?
00:37When did we start believing that Neanderthals were not the brightest tools in the shed of evolution?
00:43In comes William King, a 19th century British geologist.
00:48He was the man who named the Neanderthals.
00:52Based on the bones King found, the scientists declared the species not intelligent,
00:57and this image stuck with the Neanderthals for centuries to come.
01:02But a piece of string, just a quarter of an inch long, changed everything.
01:06A small, dry river valley, Abri Dumaras, was the place of the great find.
01:13Archaeologists unearthed a cord fragment next to a stone tool.
01:16Such twisted fibers could have been used for everything from making clothes to fishing nets.
01:21In prehistory, this was some advanced tech, and the Neanderthals seemed to have mastered it.
01:27Scientists already knew that these early humans made tar from birch bark,
01:31and that they produced shell beads.
01:34There is even evidence of Neanderthal art.
01:37They were definitely not primitive.
01:40The string section and similar finds are changing the way we perceive our ancestors.
01:45The world of archaeology is constantly changing.
01:49Take the pyramids in Egypt, for example.
01:52Turns out, they weren't really built by an army of people who the pharaoh made work until they passed out.
02:00Herodotus, the famous Greek historian, was the man who started the confusion.
02:03He claimed, in 500 BCE, that 100,000 men took part in the construction of the Great Pyramid in Giza.
02:11He made no mention of who they were and why they were building the pyramids.
02:17That's how the myth started.
02:18Huge stone slabs pulled by humans, driven by a foreman with a whip.
02:22But Egyptologists would beg to differ.
02:26Those are the scientists who study ancient Egypt's culture.
02:29Fairly recently, they uncovered a workers' village that told a different tale.
02:34Yes, there was evidence of hard work on the workers' bones.
02:37But the construction industry is demanding even today.
02:41It took almost six years for 12,000 workers to complete the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa.
02:48Back in Egypt, three times more workers finished the Great Pyramid in around two decades.
02:53An impressive feat of ancient engineering, wouldn't you agree?
02:58Superiors looked well after the Egyptians who built the pyramids.
03:02Their diet was rich in protein.
03:04They had medical care and they got paid properly.
03:07In fact, they lived better than the non-working population.
03:11And they lived with their families near the construction site.
03:15Archaeologists know all this because they unearthed bakeries and dormitories with bread jars and other goodies.
03:21Looks like the pharaohs were okay employers, after all.
03:25And the job market wasn't that terrible.
03:28They also kept detailed papyrus records of the build and hieroglyphs.
03:32You and I wouldn't stand a chance of reading these letters that resemble images.
03:38Egyptologists had the same problem.
03:40For over a millennium, no one had used this type of font.
03:43And it's not like there was an English-Ancient-Egyptian dictionary you could open and find meanings of words.
03:49But all this changed in 1822.
03:53A couple of decades before, the French found a broken slab of black granite.
03:59The stone contained one text and three scripts.
04:01Ancient Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Demotic.
04:08The last one was also the Egyptian language, but in a simplified script.
04:12Scientists dated it back to 196 BCE.
04:16The content is a religious proclamation.
04:21A French philologist and orientalist, Jean-Francois Champollion, was the first one to crack the code.
04:28You see, people haven't forgotten ancient Greek letters.
04:31The Frenchman successfully matched the Greek letters with the ones in the Egyptian script.
04:36And voila!
04:37We were finally able to read hieroglyphs.
04:41The name of the piece of granite that made it all possible was the Rosetta Stone.
04:46The importance of its discovery went beyond archaeology.
04:49The word Rosetta Stone even entered the English dictionary.
04:53It represents a discovery that helps people understand an enigma that has been puzzling them for a long time.
04:59There are similar games.
05:01A symbol is attached to a particular message.
05:04Then you have to decode the message by replacing the symbol with a corresponding letter.
05:08In a nutshell, this is what scientists did with the Rosetta Stone more than two centuries ago.
05:14Do you know what is the oldest deciphered language in Europe?
05:18It has an unattractive name, Linear B.
05:21The script belongs to the Mycenaean Greek language.
05:24It predates the ancient Greek alphabet by several centuries.
05:28You can easily guess which script it is descended from.
05:31Linear A.
05:33The people from Crete used Linear B more than a thousand years ago.
05:41During the late Bronze Age, the Greek civilization that used the script vanished.
05:46There was no one who could read Linear B, and more importantly, no one knew it existed in the first
05:51place.
05:53This was about to change during the first years of the 20th century.
05:57A British archaeologist by the name of Sir Arthur Evans excavated a vast palace complex at Knossos, Crete, Greece.
06:06This was the center of the Minoan culture that created the enigmatic script.
06:09The palace boasted some 1,300 rooms.
06:13They had colorful paintings of dolphins, griffins, and bulls.
06:17All of these captivated the archaeologists' imagination.
06:21But their biggest find was at first overlooked.
06:24Thousands of slabs of baked clay.
06:27The fire that brought down the palace helped preserve the tablets.
06:31It was impossible to read the slabs, though.
06:34They were written in an unknown language.
06:36The scientific community had to wait for another half a century before Michael Ventress cracked the code.
06:42He was an English architect and cryptographer.
06:45Ventress studied Greek and Latin.
06:47While attending the famous archaeologist's lecture, the young man decided to solve the puzzle of Linear B once and for
06:54all.
06:54He managed to do so in 1952.
06:58One of Ventress' most amazing discoveries was that the script was an archaic form of Greek.
07:04But cryptology still hasn't solved the code of Linear A.
07:07Anyway, this writing system will remain a mystery until a motivated young person like Michael Ventress comes along.
07:14They wouldn't have to be a professional archaeologist.
07:17Basil Brown certainly wasn't.
07:19Yet in 1939, he discovered the richest early medieval tomb in Europe.
07:24This happened in Sutton Hoo in the southeast of England.
07:29This wasn't an ordinary tomb made out of stone.
07:32It was a full-size ship, three times as long as a London double-decker bus.
07:37And that's not all.
07:39Apart from its main purpose, the ship was full of riches.
07:42Deluxe hanging bowls, feasting vessels, gold and dress accessories, and luxurious textiles were just some of the treasures found.
07:50Archaeologists were also amazed by the silverware from distant Byzantium.
07:54You probably know this city as Istanbul, Turkey.
07:57Even in our age, it's several days' drive from Sutton Hoo.
08:01Just imagine how much time and money it cost to import a silver plate in the 7th century.
08:07That's when the ship went down, according to archaeologists.
08:11The English couldn't have done it.
08:13At that time, there was no England.
08:15The people living in the British Isles at the time were the Anglo-Saxons.
08:20Perhaps the ship from the grassy mounds in Suffolk belonged to one of their kings?
08:24We will never know.
08:26The local acidic soil did away with any possible evidence, or no one laid there in the first place.
08:32It could have been a cenotaph, which is a monument constructed to honor an important person.
08:38The archaeologists still don't have a definite answer.
08:41But what they have found at Sutton Hoo shed light on the Dark Ages.
08:46Before the discovery of the ship, they knew little about what had been going on in Britain after the Romans
08:51left.
08:53Now, the image of the early Anglo-Saxon society was much clearer.
08:57Perhaps the English soil will be the site of the next great breakthrough in archaeology.
09:04It was hot in the tropics, a type of heat unknown to the men aboard the Niña, the Pinta, and
09:10the Santa Maria ships, led by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus.
09:16It had been months since these men left their home cities in Europe, and until then, Europe was all they
09:22knew.
09:22They were given a difficult and even dangerous task.
09:25Spain hired Columbus to find a new western route to Asia.
09:29They needed new routes for trading and buying spices, but it was far from a simple job.
09:35I mean, crossing the ocean never is.
09:39Little did those sailors know that their lives were about to change forever.
09:44Land in sight!
09:45Someone must have shouted on board.
09:47But when they finally stepped on that new foreign land, they discovered they were not in Asia.
09:53They had landed in the Americas.
09:57You've probably heard this tale before.
09:59Historically speaking, Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492.
10:04But what would have happened if Columbus' ship had faced a lethal storm in the Atlantic Ocean and had never
10:10made it to the new land?
10:12What would today's history look like?
10:16First things first, nobody discovered anything.
10:19When we say that the Americas were discovered, we're kind of ignoring the millions of people who already lived there.
10:26You see, the Americas were only discovered from Europe's point of view.
10:30Columbus would only have discovered something if when he got there, he was faced with acres and acres of empty
10:36land.
10:37But that was not the case at all.
10:40Second, Columbus was not the first explorer to land in the Americas.
10:45Believe it or not, the Vikings approached American shores in the 10th century.
10:49Their expeditions have been well-documented and accepted by scholars.
10:54Here's what might have happened.
10:56Around the year 1000 CE, Viking explorer Leif Erikson sailed to a place called Vinland.
11:02Cute name, huh?
11:04It's now a region in Canada called Newfoundland.
11:07But his crew didn't stay too long.
11:10They arrived to find 10 Native Americans napping under their overturned canoes.
11:14They attempted some trade, but I'm guessing the Vikings weren't too friendly and the Americans didn't really like them.
11:21The Vikings' account of the encounter shows they felt outnumbered and menaced.
11:26So they sailed a way back to their land.
11:29That makes sense, right?
11:31As I said earlier, there were millions of people living in the ginormous continent of the Americas.
11:36Any foreigner would be outnumbered there.
11:40Now take a look at what North America looked like before our buddy Chris got there.
11:45It was not divided into the normal states we're used to.
11:49And if Columbus had never arrived, the United States would probably never have been united to begin with.
11:55After all, there were hundreds of first Americans living in these lands,
11:59and they lived amongst their own tribes, quite different from the Europeans.
12:04It's not accurate to think that there were no political systems going on in the Americas before Europeans arrived.
12:10We just need to understand that they were different from what we're used to today.
12:15When Europeans arrived, they imported their belief systems with them,
12:19from religious beliefs and language systems to things as simple as clothing habits.
12:24If the Americas had developed on their own, maybe their sense of fashion would be completely different today.
12:31You see, Europeans had a developed sense of fashion by the time they arrived in the West.
12:36They wore things such as this and this.
12:39But those don't really work in the tropics, do they?
12:42For them, fashion had to do with showing a certain economic status.
12:47While in the Americas, that didn't exist.
12:51For Native Americans, clothing was mainly functional and related to the weather.
12:56In warmer climates, Native people would wear short-like cloths to cover their intimate parts.
13:01They would walk bare-chested and use shoes known as moccasins.
13:06Yes, similar to the moccasins you probably own.
13:09In colder climates, they would resort to using leather and fur parkas.
13:13Of course, there was always the special clothing used for ceremonial purposes.
13:18So I'm guessing that if Columbus never reached the Americas,
13:21brands such as The Gap, Hollister, and Forever 21 would have never existed.
13:26But we could live with that, couldn't we?
13:29Here's a wild thought.
13:30Let's say that by the 1700s, Native Americans had developed complex engineering skills.
13:36They built big boats, maybe a bit smaller in size than the traditional European ships,
13:42and decided to venture across the ocean.
13:45Let's say they were the ones who arrived on European shores,
13:48in places such as Spain and Portugal.
13:51They carried gifts and goods with them for trading, of course.
13:54This was also a common practice amongst them back home, known as potlatch.
14:00Sure, they were received with suspicion by the Europeans, who had only ever traded with Asia.
14:05But with this inverted encounter,
14:08a different type of relationship began between Native Americans and Europeans.
14:13Since Europeans didn't claim ownership of the Americas,
14:17the people from the so-called New Land weren't considered inferior to them.
14:22Actually, they stood side by side as equals,
14:24each one with their own power and set of knowledge.
14:27Native Americans taught Europeans a new type of ruling system,
14:31a more decentralized one.
14:33So modern-day structures of government would look really different.
14:37Maybe Europeans decided that four years was a long time for someone to hold decision power,
14:42so they implemented smaller and more frequent elections.
14:47Oh, and the landscape of European cities also changed a lot.
14:51Instead of huge statues made of copper and bronze,
14:54showing men and ships on their way to the Americas,
14:56the Europeans built totem poles in honor of their alliances with first Americans.
15:02In terms of medical and medicinal knowledge,
15:05they had a lot to exchange about.
15:07While Europeans were making advances in traditional medicine,
15:11Americans had developed an impressive knowledge of herbs that could heal a series of things.
15:16Before they knew it,
15:17Europeans were selling different varieties of plants in their pharmaceutical establishments.
15:21They had one big barrier, though.
15:24Language.
15:25Since Europeans never arrived on American shores,
15:28they also never taught their language to Americans.
15:31So maybe in this scenario,
15:33both cultures brought in their best linguists
15:35and tried creating a new language from scratch.
15:38Something that could be comprehensible from both perspectives,
15:41and that could encompass both of their worldviews.
15:45The implications of this on modern-day life would be really profound if you stop to think about it.
15:51Let's say that this newly created language involved some symbols and drawings in it.
15:56You see, Native Americans often told stories using symbols known as pictograms.
16:02They were quite literal sometimes.
16:04As you can see, a mountain was represented by, well, a mountain.
16:08It's crazy to think that this system of communication has been around for 5,000 years,
16:14since it was actually invented by the Sumerians.
16:17And hey, maybe even our laptop keyboards would come equipped with these symbols,
16:21and you could write more visually hybrid and fun emails than the ones you write today.
16:27The American landscape would have also changed.
16:30You see, if neither Columbus nor any of the other European dudes that went after him
16:35reached the so-called new land,
16:37Central and Latin American cities would look completely different than they do today.
16:42Maybe the bustling empires of the time,
16:45such as the Inca, the Maya, and the Aztec, would have grown immensely.
16:49To be fair, they were already pretty big by the time Europeans got there.
16:53Some pre-Columbian Maya cities were as big as medieval London and Paris in terms of population.
16:59But oh my, the Mayan Empire would have grown so much that it could have spread out all over of
17:06Central America.
17:07They could have developed their pyramid building craft up to the point that they managed to build
17:12an even larger pyramid than the Giza Pyramid in Egypt.
17:15So tourists would come from all over the world to visit.
17:19Ah, and in South America, let's just say the region could have turned into a huge forest, bigger than the
17:26Amazon.
17:27The Inca could have spread through the Andes and then into the mainland.
17:31Places such as Brazil and Argentina never existed.
17:34But in their place, there would have been dreamy tropical settlements,
17:38which would have become a worldwide reference in sustainable living.
17:42Put on the street where they are.
17:42You had a great place at伊ivo-Global.
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