5 Strangest Ancient Accounts of The Edge Of The World
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- Опубліковано 4 чер 2024
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Edited and Image Curation by Manuel Rubio - check out his amazing channel: @ArtandContext
Thumbnail Art by Ettore Mazza
Art by Lachlan (Feature History)
Art by Bilal Erlangga
Stock footage from Storyblocks and Artlist. Music from Epidemic Sound and Artlist.
Excerpts from:
The History of Herodotus
Translated into English by G. C. Macaulay
The Periplus of Hanno
Translated by Wilfred Harvey Schoff
Germania by Tacitus
Translated by Alfred John Church, William Jackson Brodriff
Weilue Translation from China and the Roman Orient: Researches Into Their Ancient and Mediæval Relations
by Friedrich Hirth
Ammianus Marcellinus in three volumes. Vol.2 Translated by Rolfe, John Carew
00:00 Herodotus on The Edges of the Earth (430 BC)
05:01 Hanno The Navigator on West Africa (5th Century BC)
08:48 Tacitus on Scandinavia (98 AD)
13:23 Ancient China on Rome (240 AD)
20:05 Rome on Ancient China (380 AD)
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You have a very good, clear voice for narration. Not too fast nor too slow in speaking. I don't listen to this channel often enough but that is about to change.
I wonder if you own the books your narratives come from? Perhaps antiquarian books?
😊A N.
Video should be called Top 5 best flat earth proofs. Missed an opportunity here.
Let's N0T & Say We DID! ! ! !
Have any idea what the headless men with one eye in their chests could possibly be?
Fun fact about the giant ant thing: there are parts of northern India where local tribes have, for centuries, collected gold dust from the sand left in piles by a species of burrowing marmot that digs in places where the ground happens to be gold-rich.
Supposedly, the word in ancient Persian for "ant" sounds very similar to the word for "marmot", so the whole giant ant thing might be a true story mixed up by a simple mistranslation.
Ahh fascinating, thanks for this
@@planecosy6384 It's the classic kind of "Herodotus Makes an Oopsie" that Herodotus totally admitted he did all the time, which was record stuff exactly as he heard it for lack of ways to verify it.
the winged snakes he speaks of in arabia might be cobras
@@cal2127he actually mentions seeing their bones in Egypt. Probably some fossil bed with pterosaurs/birds
@@BarondePencierThis is why Herodotus is my favourite historian, much better imo than Thucydides, because he repeatedly clarifies that this only what he has heard. Thucydides just states a lot of points while never expressing any doubt about its veracity.
Hanno the navigator: "this island was full of savages"
Also Hanno:"so I flayed their skin off"
As one does
He was not messing around 💀
"So anyway I started blasting"
Hanno the Navigator: “wow those people were some mighty savages huh”
The interpreters: “those are Gorillas, mate”
Hanno: “ah so that is the name of that savage people, interesting!”
The interpreters: “……….”
Def didnt eat them either
Imagine you walk east one day and you’ve got a fox sized ant bringing you a hunk of gold for free.
I wonder if he saw a camel spider
At which point you should be very polite to random kindly old ladies because you are now in a fable of some kind and will get karmically smited if you don't heed their warnings.
@@Healermain15"You should have tipped the ant!"
That's when you know you've been inhaling earth's gases in a cave for too long 😂
Ants = marmots. A mistranslation.
imagine not knowing what a gorilla is and seeing one for the first time. Must've been wild
Same with thinking they are like people, and trying to kidnap them, just to kill them because it was too much hassle =|
There was a report of men with faces in their chest. And are vicious lol. Sounds like gorillas or other apes
They should establish diplomatic and trade ties with them. Starting off with the banana trade
The mighty tribe of the Gorilli.
@@saudielbamber4227 ignorance is bliss
Love how three of them were "Ancients misinterpreting stuff again." and China was just "HERE IS A DETAILED LIST OF THEIR GOVERMENTAL STRUCTURE, FLORA, FAUNA, ECONOMY, CULTURE AND SOCIETY. WE GIVE THEM A SCORE OF *STILL BELOW CHINA* "
and Rome is just "Meh, nice silk and nature, that's about it."
I found it interesting that apparently the Romans harvested silk at the time they were visited by the Chinese traveler, but apparently no longer did so by the time the Roman traveler went to China, because he thought it came directly from the trees and seemed unfamiliar with the whole idea.
Never mind, I'm reading in the other comments that the Romans did not in fact have any knowledge of silk production, they just got it from places other than China, and the Chinese traveler mistook it as their own product.
The Chinese were listing out the resources they could potentially take that's all.
What's funnier is that the Chinese also believed the Romans to be a lost Chinese kingdom to the far west. Why? Well they're so advanced, only the Chinese could become so advanced, everyone who isn't Chinese are club-dragging morons living in caves. But they're specifically called "Little China", because obviously China is larger, older, and thus superior in every way to these lost Chinese.
@@saltrocklamp199the Roman's had a silk production industry but it was the byzantines. The silk worms got brought over by Christian monks. Continued at least until the ottoman conquest
"here is all this weird fantastic stuff from India, Arabia, and Africa. definitely exists, trust me bro."
"I can't confirm that Britain exists. I mean seriously, an island were people mine tin....I'm gonna need some more evidence for that one."
Honestly still can't prove it exists and I just got out of the tin mine
Wait Britain is real !?
@@rainvast8982 6 out of 10 experts agree
@@rainvast8982 hey man, you put those words in my mouth, I said tin mine
Britain museum:, good if they doubt we exist they cant ask for their things back
Funny how distant lands always seem to have more gold than the lands of the writers.
Grass always greener across the street kind of thing, don't you think?
@@kokoeteantigha389 evolution, makes u explore
Simply laying the groundworks for the justification of future wars.
@@albertfcb6654 🙄🙄
@@albertfcb6654evolution is poo and you know it
Explanations on Chinese names for those civilizations:
(Rome) 大秦 Daqin: literally "Great Qin", the most common hypothesis being that Chinese believed Rome rivaled them in civilization, so they called the Romans Great Qin, or Great China. Another less common hypothesis being that it's a phonetic reading of Latium (La > Da, Ti > Qin), but corrupted through the telephone game along the Silk Road.
(Babylon) 條枝 Tiaozhi: phonetic reading of Tigris, corrupted through the game of telephone along the Silk Road.
(Parthia) 安息 Anxi: phonetic reading of Arsacid, the name of the Parthian dynasty.
(Egypt) 埃及 Aiji: also the modern Chinese name for Egypt today, phonetic reading of Egypt.
Good details and explanations. Thanks.
Stop degrading yourself to flatter white people
Da Qin given to Rome meant that despite Rome’s greatness they still saw it as beneath them. After all, saying “oh hey you’re just like me” to a competitor is more of an insult.
The Chinese on the Romans / Roman on Chinese (from similar eras: 240 vs 380) was enlightening. The Romans had a "slight" understanding on silk production (but knew not of the silk worms), where the Chinese had rather "better" geographic data, the "writer" had assumed we had our own silk worms and silk production ability, if of lower quality (when we had no silk worms or even understanding thats how silk was made)
So the Romans were sold inferior silk, and the Chinese kept the best for themselves.
@@merseyviking
Yes Rome had no silk. They bought it from Persia and India, which bot got it from China...
What might have surprised a Chinese visitor could be the colours and dyes of the Roman textiles and silk products, that could have been very unusual for him, leading him to think they had an indigenous silk industry.
The introduction of the first silk worms in Italy dates from the XIVth century, when a Florentine spy managed to get some from Constantinople, alongside the big, big secret : what the worms fed on -> mulberry leaves.
When the chinese author assumes is "roman silk" is most probably coan floss, which was luxury textile produced by another moth. Byzantizes smuggled in silk worms to found a silk instrustry of their own. Coan floss had a small market still an couple hundred years more, coan floss would be mostly similiar ultra-thin textile like musselin.
Didn’t help that time Huan’s account was written the most prosperous dynasty, The Han, had fallen and the country was deep into a fierce civil war known as the Three Kingdoms Era. Definitely wanted to keep all the silk they could for themselves at the time.
@@SeanHiruki Most would give away an entire storage of sacks of coins and bolts of silks for themselves. Liu Bei, the supposedly surviving Han prince and the First Lord Sovereign of Shu-Han, gave such plunder away to his newly acquired resident subjects.
That description of China as "forever unacquainted with arms and warfare" and "troublesome to none of their neighbors" really got me.
Empires typically think other empires do nothing wrong unless they come into conflict with them over who they oppress
@@Morgan_of_the_Maxilla Good point. I wish we could clarify the author's definition of "neighbor" and "troublesome".
Just don’t ask.the Uighurs.
What really got me is some imperialist lad who's empire has invaded the entire world making up lies about China invading people.
@@darko714 the uighur narrative is now thrown into the trash bin by the CIA. get new material
Fascinating how Herodotus mentions the British Isles, the "Tin Islands," only in passing; known to him more by _what_ is extracted there than by _who_ lives there.
Tin is needed to make bronze, so the Greeks had likely been in distant contact with the Isles for a long time in a tangential way. Trade with the Etruscans, who themselves ventured deeply into central and northern Europe might have brought them some knowledge of it too, as well as the Phoenicians who had somewhat of a monopoly on Celtic trade in ores. Though we can never really be sure.
And it’s fucking wild that the British did the same damn thing with the Spice Islands and other colonies, like father like son ig
@@yakobi8434That's how ALL people were back then. Especially the Islamic Caliphate.
@@KingNoTail Lmao, I know, don’t really need to use that defence, was just pointing out those little synchronicities in history
I mean what would you have preferred he called it, "the island of pale people"??
A recurring theme to these accounts: "There's totally GOLD there, bro, trust me."
great way to get funding / support for the next expodition i guess
😂..yep..😎
The ancient world was much more connected then we think, but at the same time, so much was unknown or unsure and it mustve felt so mysterious comig across these nations, their people and their wildlife for the first time.
I wonder how many details of fantastical creatures were made to make these lands seem more mystical and exciting, since it was assumed nobody could prove it wrong lol.
On the other hand, I'm certain there were plenty of accounts written, where the writer wanted to accurately document what they were seeing and experiencing.
Not saying liars didn't exist, I think it's more abundant these days, and more of a modern sickness, than ever before.
Lying is spiraling out of control.
@@elgoog7830Lying? I don’t completely disagree, but I would’ve used the word Hysteria is more out of control these days.
Than*
Sailors and merchants probably lying alot for shits and giggles loll. Or to make it seen like their products were very hard to get
@@elgoog7830 agreed. We must at least consider that some of these ancient accounts may be actually what these people were seeing After all. their are plenty of species that we know went extinct... whose to say their are not species that went extinct that we just havent found or heard of
I liked the sheep with the little carts.
Being British, it feels so strange for Herodotus to talk about northern Europe, Greece now considered a part of Europe, with such uncertainty. It feels even stranger, being British, when he doubts our very existence (as Britain is certainly what "Tin Islands" refers to). Very strange indeed.
i was looking at the comments to see if someone already said that the "tin islands" is Britain
Are you one eyed by chance? 😅
Northern Europe was beyond the Alps mountains. The average early Greek would have familiarity with Turkey, Egypt, Italy or Armenia, with stronger trade and cultural ties. To them, northern europe was an exotic foreign land far away and yet unexplored.
Just how British, French, Spanish etc. spoke of other parts of the world in later colonial era, and people often doubted the existence of places in Africa, Oceania, India or Americas or considered the people exotic. And many merchants created hoaxes or spoke lies about countries teeming with gold and diamonds and no one knew things for certain.
@@greatexpectations6577 not to my knowledge. 😉
But then Herodotus didn't believe it either.
The bit that I find it strange is how that's contrasted with his awareness of other far away places. History unfurls is surprising ways
Imagine if we were these ancient people and heard this story of an exotic distant lands with exotic beasts and peoples. It's like a future equivalent of founding the alien civilization in the other star system, with its own culture, values, religion, and way of life. I love this kind of story.
born too late to explore the earth, born too early to explore the galaxy
@@rattled1557born just in time to explore Skyrim 3000+ times
I'd heard that the Chinese person who wrote about Rome only went as far as the Middle East and then wrote about the rest of Rome from books.
Likely a lot from hearsay too 🤔
he must've gone to the edges of the eastern roman empire and i read somewhere that he was stopped by the iranians
To be fair to him he was told it would take months by sea to get to Italy and China was in the middle of a decades long civil war so he had to get back soon
Some say Marco Polo did the same when he wrote about China. That he only made it to the middle east or India and just wrote down stories he heard.
@@mbern4530the Chinese writer didn’t say he went there tho, Marco Polo writes of a meeting with the Khan
The continuity of the culture of the ancient Prussians is so fascinating. From a Suebi scout telling Caesar that the Aestii live on the far side of the hercynian forest trading amber for metals, to polish dukes 1300 years later having their invasions thwarted by complex ambushed from swamps and glades by men with strange plate armor. I wish we could know more about the Prusai. There is a gap in knowledge of them that extends so far.
Had no idea about this, going to look further into it! Interesting how they were attested to in Roman times, just with a different name.
Theodorus the Great wrote back to the Aesti once (around 500AD).
_ It is gratifying to us to know that you have heard of our fame, and have sent ambassadors who have passed through so many strange nations to seek our friendship.
We have received the amber which you have sent us. You say that you gather this lightest of all substances from the shores of ocean, but how it comes thither you know not. But as an author named Cornelius (Tacitus) informs us, it is gathered in the innermost islands of the ocean, being formed originally of the juice of a tree (whence its name succinum), and gradually hardened by the heat of the sun. Thus it becomes an exuded metal, a transparent softness, sometimes blushing with the color of saffron, sometimes glowing with flame-like clearness. Then, gliding down to the margin of sea, and further purified by the rolling of the tides, it is at length transported to your shores to be cast upon them. We have thought it better to point this out to you, lest you should imagine that your supposed secrets have escaped our knowledge. We sent you some presents by our ambassadors, and shall be glad to receive further visits from you by the road which you have thus opened up, and to show you future favors. _
@@tylerdurden3722haha I love how he spends most of the message giving a science lesson. Slightly wholesome and slightly patronizing. But also always cool hearing how the ancients viewed stuff like that
The "Island of tin" Herodotus refers to was England. Tin was mined in Cornwall and supplied Europe with it during the bronze age.
Interesting
Doubt that very much only thing that was made out of tin was/is Biscuit tins. And bourbons are now made in plastic wrapping so you look a bit daft there.
@@frusciantesplectrum7980ah yes. because now stuff is made out of plastic, that place just cant have produced tin five thousand years ago.
@@frusciantesplectrum7980 know, there’s this really interesting thing called ‘Bronze’. It’s an alloy of Copper, and that oh so special ‘Tin’. But there’s noooo way they would import Tin to other parts of the world to make Bronze, right? Especially during the ‘Bronze Age’. 💀
Spain also had tin mines. But the travel to England was necessary because the tin miners in the Taurus mountains were had a monopoly.
I can’t even imagine, such a world. How incredible these recounts of their world are. Intriguing and could listen to these all day long❤
Full of mysteries and hardships .yet mu h more exciting.
I like to imagine that each of these accounts are all real, and things have just changed that much throughout history.
YES, THANK YOU
Who knows maybe someone rewrote and is lying aboit the actual history spoke all around the world
The "abundance of gold" and "tin islands" in Northern Europe are very clearly the British isles, archeology suggests north Africa traded pottery for tin and gold.
Its why the Romans conquered the British isles to gain access to gold and tin
Except they could only gain much as far as the Lothian lowlands, but had settled behind the sparsely colonized area behind the Antonine and colonized what is kept behind the Hadrian Walls. They would turn out to be poorly economical provinces for the Roman Empire, with a lot of treacherous and opportune emperors born and made to the ranks from serving in the British Roman Legions
Funny how the Chinese thought the Romans also made silk from sillworms, while the Romans didn't even know about the worms and thought the Chinese silk came directly from trees
How did they make silk if not worm
Interesting how now Africa was heavily wooded and many wild animals lived in Europe that are now elsewhere or extinct.
What incredible times to be alive. So much mystery in the world. Landing in other countries mustve been like going to mars.
Go look at people who go into caves & explore.
It's literally going back in time in more ways than 1.
The caves were there before humanity existed & those same caves were ones that early mankind entered.
Imagine walking into the same "home" that cavemen lived in all those centuries ago.
The caves themselves look like other planets. You can see how the myths about caves going to hell etc came about. No 2 caves are alike & they can really look crazy AF!
Channel "Adventure Twins" is a good start. Then there's underwater caves which is a whole other thing.
Except you can actually breath there and then potentially go home safely unlike Mars.
More interesting than mars tbh there's nothing much there
Gorillas: OOOO OOOO
Hanno: "Look at these very hairy men."
Thinks they're people
Kills and flays the women, brings their skin home
WTF?!
@@WorthlessWinnerit’s not so strange for his time
"So, how did your trip go?"
"Pretty good"
"Make any interesting new friends?"
"Eh, not really. We did find some really strange people though, they weren't like us at all."
"I bet that made establishing relations difficult."
"IMPOSSIBLE. They *really* weren't like us at all."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, they were short and hairy and totally naked."
"But you looked past your differences and still tried to make friends?"
"At first, but they kept running away so we kidnapped 3 of them."
"Oh are they here now? Can I see them? I'd like to meet these strange people you found, can I meet them?"
"Well... they turned out to not be so friendly"
"As people tend to be when you kidnapp them, yes"
"...right, so we *skinned them"*
"..."
Love Tacitus describing nomadic people’s just being totally chill and content to not want any fucking thing to do with civilization or agriculture.
No greed and no religion to f*ck things up. Only working until you have enough to eat and taking the rest of the day off.
The idea that there's a breed of long-tailed sheep who's tails are only preserved by canny carpenter-shepherds who build tail-trailers for said sheep is the greatest "shit the ancients believed" fact I never knew I needed to know
I think it's an exaggerated account of fat tailed sheep
Out of all the things in this video, I wish this one was true.
Yet the "fox sized ants that brought gold" is more believable?!?😆
YO. Do your research; this is referring to fat-tailed sheep, which are exactly as depicted and would have been treated as described.
They're real.
@@omnomnom11122 I fully admit my ignorance that fat-tailed sheep were even a thing (apparently they even make up 25% of the global sheep population). The context of the video (containing fantastical and false things), combined with my ignorance on sheep (I have several weird interests, but sheep isn't one of them), and how ridiculous the idea of a tail-trailer is to my brain, made me assume it to be bullshit. Is there any evidence at all that it's ever been a cultural practice to make tail-trailers for them lol? I read that, in the middle east, the tails may have been able to grown longer than most modern examples of fat-tailed sheep (who seem to almost always have very stumpy tails) apparently because modern tails are interfered with because the sheep are typically used for wool production and the long tail gets covered in sh*t, but even then, it seems like such a ridiculous proposition that someone was making trailers for sheep so they can carry their own tails lol. It might be real, but my god it does not sound real ^^
Edit: I should say that I just closed google images after ending this comment and realised that I look like a total freak now. Just a long page of dumb-truck sheep butts. That'd be a weird one to explain to someone.
Love the political parallels between Roman’s interacting with the Fenni people and their arguments against “civilization” and Europeans interacting with the peoples of the Eastern Woodlands like Kandiaronk are striking! Very similar propoganda with very similar arguments
Uncle Ted warned us.
Vote by mail(?)
Surprise, surprise, people are always the same from everywhere.
I love these sorts of videos. Being an explorer back then must've been a wild experience. Nowadays, I guess our closest parallels are stories of uncontacted native peoples in jungles or possible alien civilizations out in the cosmos. Thank you for another fantastic video!
God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)
Hardly any UNcontacted people remain worldwide. The very few remaining are of Andaman Islands group (of India) & a few Amazon Jungle tribes of Brazil. 😐
Just put on a pair of shoes and start walking around the world, from city to city to city, talk to every beggar, every bum at a bus stop, every kid at a skate park, every cop thats bored and patient enough. Get yourself put in jail or a mental hospital, talk to all the patients, all the inmates, all the guards and doctors ... Ask all these people about their lives, deeply, find out if they were teased as a kid, when they first saw something die, what their power animal is ...
After a while, you will have explored and know more about the world than any geographer, anthropologist, and historians combined ...
There is still lots to explore, much to share, much to learn and we need pioneers more than ever.
@@jimmyohara2601 Their are also tribes on some Indonesian islands of interior region because they hunt men.
The oceans.
@@jimmyohara2601 however, the wonders of the univerese and phsics are just as entertaining, not?
I love this channel so much, the whole team is so talented. Top tier content, every single time.
Herodotus be like "Dog-headed men? Obviously its true! One-eyed men? Out of the question!"
They used to call baboons "dog headed people".
One eye men were the blacksmiths ? They would wear eye patch over one eye to keep one eye adjusted to dark. They stepped outside the forge and would look nasty black and with one eye. Lol
I love this series on ancient accounts, thank you for keeping at it.
Whenever on a plane or high up on a hill, I look out at the landscape and am captivated by what it must have been like during a time before modern locomotion, where traveling more than a few tens of miles was an daunting task, let alone trying to comprehend a land and its people half way across the world.
Sitones are Suiones (Swedes) from Sigtuna, an old name for what today is Stockholm county. Fenni means "finder", it's a germanic exonym for (Finno-Uralic) hunter-gatherers.
It seems Hanno the navigator first encountered a volcanic eruption than a group of great apes (chimpanzee or gorilla) in the west of Africa.
"Gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, tortoises..." made me laugh for like two minutes straight
😂 🐢
Of course women focusing on the delivery rather than the actual topic lol
@@KD400_oh look, an edgy MMA fan whose mommy did not give him enough attention growing up…live and let live, son. :)
@@Meuracas what's mma got to do with this lol
@@KD400_ Nothing, just like the original post had nothing to do with the delivery and just like the frustration behind your comment has nothing to do with the original post ;)
➡️ Chinese historical notations are unparalleled in their detail and accuracy.
Interesting that Tacitus in 98AD already knows that amber is petrified sap.
Possibly the inhabitants around the Baltic Sea knew it too, but a Roman can’t admit to “savages” being (almost) as advanced as them.
I love the element of mystery that comes with these accounts. The world was unimaginably vast for them and mostly unknown. The modern world is so thoroughly mapped and recorded, the only equivalent we'd have would be space.
Their account is based on facts
@@JMB_focus not saying it wasnt?
At 2nd place, the Oceans.
The complete modern world is NOT mapped completely, Admiral Byrd said that there's land past Antarctica, large as America, never touched by humans.
Brilliant - I love the ancient style artwork! A very skilful production 🙂
You were able to hear the sun rising! Fantastic imagery
Tacitus' take on where amber comes from is surprisingly close to the truth. But of course he can't help but dunk on the barbarians.
Fantastic video! It's crazy how much time has passed. These historians wondering what exists around them, now today I can go on Twitch & UA-cam and go to pretty much any major country talked about here live, use a voice to text app, then run it through translation and understand what they are talking about. It almost feels like we are a completely different species with magic at our finger tips.
The concept of providing historical context through the viewpoint of those that actually witnessed the events is exactly the kind of content armchair historians (such as myself) need most right now, in my personal opinion. It gets tiring constantly listening to misinformed, biased opinions that have been reiterated and regurgitated to death over dozens of generations and told by those who generally sparked the conflict to begin with. By receiving the information firsthand (or at least as close as we're likely to get), we're able to form our own opinions and develop our own understanding of our collective world history. What you're doing is important (not that anyone needs me to tell them that) and I thank you for it.
What a great production. I just went down an asbestos cloth rabbit hole thanks to Yu Huan and learned something completely new today so...thanks.
I have ALWAYS been fascinated by Carthage. It always saddens me, their end, and I would love to know even more about the 1st explorers of the waters around Africa! That's the REAL beginning of the European explorer timeframe! I mean, they could have been sailing off the map, for all they knew!
It's also pretty amazing that humans sailed, somehow, through many of the south east Asian islands, to Australia, 60,000 years ago! Or that the Bering land bridge was crossed, or hugged the icy coast, if that's how you believe people came to the Americas.
Carthago delenda est, chad Cato
That 2nd story is interesting, because in Google earth terrain view, Mt Brandberg Marsi Berg reserve in Namibia, looks like it may be a volcano & just to the SE at Bakkrans Historic site is what look like what may have been a circular lake (now dry) with an island in the middle. as described. Also, in Google Earth satellite view, the island of Bela Vista appears to be a collapsed volcanic cone with the outer rim under the sea. So if the report was from a time of lower sea level where the outer rim remained exposed, the island would indeed have been an enclosed lake within the older collapsed rim while the newer small cone would be a mountain at the NE end of the island.
In the Yu Huan story, what is it with Asia's narrative confusion over east & west directions? their description of these directions are most confusing & seemingly contradictory to western ears. I guess they must have a way of expressing this that is consistent to them, but it just doesn't translate well for westerners. I am a retired cartographer & we constantly had this same issue with Asian cartographic staff. I never did figure it out & it drove me crazy that we could never rely on their directional descriptions. It's still a complete mystery to me.
Traditional Chinese maps used south as the "up" direction, so saying you were going left meant going east and vice versa.
Adventure is dead. These men were lucky to have experienced the magic of exploring the unknown.
We need to go to space
What? Speaking from an American perspective their are many peaks and rugged places no human has ever made it too. Even in our most populous state. Many many places in the world no one has bothered to venture into.
Just cause you can't sail into the void and find new continents and islands doesn't mean you can't explore the unknown
Bro there's still a lot to explore
physics, universe ... the world is more interesting thAn ever
You wanna go to Afghanistan? I'll blow your mind dude.
1:32
The average Pigmy is 4’11” so their head would reach to the shoulder of the average west African and their eyes to the average man’s chest
Anyone else think that “headless man” was a miscommunication talking about the still existing pigmy tribes?
Maybe they wore huge helmets to war x)?
That's actually a good possible theory on that particular description, as I was confused, and like the "1 eyed race", or " fox sized ANTS that brought gold up" were just fairytales! 🤔🙃
I think the 6th strangest account of the edge of the world comes from my flat earther grandpa when he was in the korean war. He swears that his plane left from a base in California and used new technology to make the trip across the whole world eastward shorter than anyone would think possible. And before he got off the plane onto land he swears he could see the edge of the world where the waters flowed straight down into the abyss. I just think they medicated him with something a little too strong to combat his wild anxiety about flying.
Flat-earthers don't believe in an "edge". They believe there is a dome (firmamament) that encloses the flat earth
@@SanctusPaulus-ic5gl What? I'm just stating the general flat earth theory. 90% of the time people strawmen their arguments
Jeez I hope he wasn’t the pilot....
☮️🍁🍂
Was he in Special Forces or anything???
Beautifully wrought, thank you!!
This is the absolute best youtube got to offer for history nerds!
These accounts of crazy beasts were true to the people of the time. They believed these things were actually there. Imagine traveling and worrying about some of these creatures
Gigantism goes bigger the further you go back
@@AwakenedAvocadomuch further back than a couple of millennia though. More like tens of thousands of years. Before literacy.
Thoroughly enjoyable. Thank you!
This was fascinating, thanks for sharing! I love accounts like these. The stuff on gorillaz or chimpanzees reminds me of medieval drawings. What people thought elephants looked like. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea for snuffleupagus came from one of those drawings. The ideas that must have come from people just hearing about some of these creatures is truly amazing.
Isn’t snuffleopaugus a mammoth ? Lol
Fantastic as usual!
Amazing video. What a greatly interesting perspective.
The part about Scandinavia is interesting.
I like how the only thing he had to say about the non swedes were that they were ruled by a woman.
@@More_Row And that it made them lower than slaves. The times have changed
@@gsejapanVikings: What women are less than men is nonsense
@@JL3Wind You mean southern Ukraine, Russia, Iran and Central Asia
@@user-cg2tw8pw7jIt says a lot about a man’s insecurities that they see women as lesser. Men who are comfortable in their own skin make no distinction between men and women’s intelligence and abilities, because there is none.
The Carthaginians were surprisingly organized and fair at their account. It makes me sad that this is the only piece of surviving literature from them. I love the romans, but they can be fiercely cruel when they want
I wouldve wished that someone in that time wouldve ventured further, and perhaps circumnavigated Africa. Imagine how the world would react to know that Africa is in fact not an endless landmass
@@hwak6501I would imagine somewhere off the coast of east Africa there to be a lone shipwreck or more from those that did but never returned to tell the tale. Always been the adventurous types that go to far. The story of Icarus was a warning story for a reason I’m sure
The amount of times Hannibal had the chance to put the final nail in Rome's coffin, but each time either underestimated them, or totally screwed it up. Then unfortunately for him he met his nemesis, and equal by the name of Scipio Africanus.
Carthago delenda est
@@PortmanRd He didn't have siege engines and thus, could not crack Roman walls. Italians mostly stayed loyal to the Romans.
I have heard Hanno's account before and I always pause at the mention of them hunting gorillas. It's bad enough they just up and killed three cool animals for no reason, but they also sincerely thought them to be humans, which makes it... a lot worse?
yeh that bothered me too - not a good look
Tbf their body shapes from a distance do resemble us a bit and it's the first recorded encounter with apes so...
I don’t think they were gorillas? Female gorillas would beat the shit out of anyone trying to carry them back to the ship. Also aren’t females like 300-400 pounds? Maybe they were chimpanzees
morality is not consistent through history
@@bun197 exactly
always enjoy your work
Very interesting video, its cool to see what people thought of unknown places and what they had snd their civilization
Always a treat when you post
Herodotus was high on some powerful shit lol
It's called Chinese whispers... or I guess 'Median whispers'
Awesome. I love this channel. I love historical journeys description of the land and people before the 19th century. I would like to listen more about Germania/Germany from any explorer. Roman, Greece, japan, Indian, native Americans or from any other people.
Keep up the amazing work
It's interesting to see that these people, with their narrow scopes of the world and knowledge, still knew when to draw the line between what they saw as fact or myth, saying "I don't know" or "I haven't been able to authenticate" some claims they list. It's a degree of humble-ness that I thought was reserved for the times during and after the industrial revolution
Tremendous video!
Quite interesting, thanks for this vid!
Great compilation again
So interesting how Herodotus’ account is the most open minded yet the earliest. The ancient Greeks really had rationality figured out.
true, because like rationalists he lied constantly and called it logical deduction
Wait until you read how rational their myths are...
Hanno's account seems to me the most open minded. Herodotus' was full of fairy tales
I like how much he admired the civilizations he came across
These charming tall tales are great.
These are so fascinating!
This was so interesting. I love content like this
How incredible these recounts of their world are.😀
My favorite thing is where the writers draw the line in believing something.
I might start going to sleep watching these. Such amazing content, narration, and backround music
This is my favorite channel on UA-cam
Stuff like this is so interesting to me
It's really interesting to see these ancient people's admittedly _do_ have moments when they just admit that they don't know, unsure or don't believe all the things they've heard of far away lands. I feel like a lot of teachings today lead us to believe that ancient people had something of a bit of an ego, or were extremely gullible to what they'd hear about far away places relative to themselves.
So to hear an ancient person admit, "I don't really believe these tales" and "I haven't been able to authenticate....", it's very refreshing
This was very informative and interesting because I luv history. Thanks for your indept research.
Very interesting channel, thank you.
I have a question. In the first part Herodotus mentions the burning of Storax. What is that?
When Herodatus says he doesn't believe your tale... 😂
A white comment
The search of new lands is very interesting and incredible, Erodotus have doing a lot of voyages for the europe.
And this thing for the ancient world was incrdible.
My real name is Emanuele
Love these videos, thanks.
Another great narration. Now I can sleep.
“Their men were savages! So we kidnapped, slaughtered and skinned their women.”
@@jge123 lol yeah, “the good ole days” 🤤
They were talking about gorillas you mong
Haha I was shocked the way he said it like it was completely normal, it must have been weird even for his time.
Very cool video. TY
Fantastic!!
10:44 "They are more patient at cultivating Corn" Correct me if im wrong but Corn shouldn't have been a thing Tacitus was aware of right? I thought Corn was a vegetable indigenous to the Americas which is discovered later in European history.
Corn is a generic word for grain. What we call corn in America is more specifically "maize"
It holds different meaning
what a world it must’ve been
Great video. Which is the music that plays during the History of Herodotus?
@VoicesofthePast
hi, where did ea-nassir video go? I tried looking for in in your channel but I couldn't find it?
The amount of brain power and thinking behind the part on Amber was crazy
OR he heard it from those Baltic people, but he just wanted to keep pretending they were no more than savages, because that’s what “civilized” people do.
18:15 as a redhead i'm somewhat honored that I be listed as a noteworthy substance found in a faraway land
Your cute!!!!!☺️
Such a good narrator...