Historians: The Median Empire is an elusive and tricky concept Statisticians: The median empire lasts 87.63 years, spans 108 million km², had a population of 373,988,101 and was ruled by a 12 yr old
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Herodotus absolutely does NOT deserve the "father of lies" title, because he wasn't lying and he wasn't even always reporting things he believed to be true, he was instead reporting hearsay and best guesses, and he was completely transparent about this fact. He would often remark that a claim he was sharing sounded unlikely to him.
Indeed! As 'history' had yet to be invented, it had no rules of historiography, and Herodotus was really more of an 'historical story-teller' than an historian. He was closer to being a poet, like Homer or Virgil, than a historian such as Thucydides or Tacitus. He even admits that his concern, when presented with several different versions of some event (particularly, for example, the death of Cyrus), that his priority in choosing which version to tell was to choose the 'most noble' story. Thus his real concern was not historical accuracy, but which version of a story would be more likely to inspire nobility in the minds of his readers. So yes, to call him the 'father of lies' is really a bit harsh! If it were true of him, it was even more true of Homer, and more still of Virgil! Are poets 'liars'? Or are they merely poets, taking 'poetic licence' in order to satisfy their respective muses and to inculcate nobility of mind in their audiences?
I mean this is like holding ‘philosophers’ to actual scientific standards, 90% of their ideas and “research” would be laughed at in modern science but that’s all there was back then
So the "father of lies" title is a lie? I'm trying to think a better title for Herodotus, but I can't think of a word for a lie that comes from ignorance or heresay. It's not a white lie, maybe you could call it a grey lie! The "father of fables" is an option but it's misrepresentation. I like the "father of fudge".
@@Wisdomcuccoyou're fooling noone but yourself, these are obviously Lies, your pleadings invitations to engage in story - telling o f the worst kind! "A lie is still a lie, for all that"!😊
many of the things people accused him of lying were then proven true...again and again.but yes he sometimes admitted he uses hearsay .how could he wrote the history without it ?there were no previous historians to quote from : )he was the first.he deserves much more credit than most admit.
Ancient societies had no anthropologists. Today we interpret comments by ancient writers as if they were anthropological. The Greeks never used the terms Mede and Persian in a consistent way. From my reading of the sources it seems that one man's Mede is another man's Persian.
@@anonymousbloke1 in Persian kurdek(kurds) means nomads ... in kurdish parsek(a persian) means a beggar .... if they are one people than they all are racist to each other lets be honest thats the onle excepted form of racism.
@@samankucher5117 kurd originally meant nomad but now it's sole meaning is the kurdish people and i dont know why you think it would be offensive. and i dont know if parsek has anything to do with pars or not
@@mahatmaniggandhi2898 parsek and parsak mean Persian and bagger in kurdish. kurds and Persians Generally dont like each other they use these words as insults if they weren't offensive they wouldn't have used them unfortunately.
The median empire swallows 8 spiders annually. This is a statistical error, the average empire eats 0 spiders annually but the Spiders Georg empire is in a cave and eats 10,000 spiders a year and should be discarded as a statistical outlier
or, hear me out, maybe it was the enemies we made along the way. What is an empire without enemies against which to define its borders and its ethos? But no one ever thinks about the enemies, no, they only think about themselves.
I have bad news, it did actually exist, and virtually around the same size as the classical sources state. I did this as part of my master's thesis. A lot of this theory is scholarly hype mainly fueled by limited archaeological evidence. However, read the Sippar Cylinder of king Nabonidus; he describes how he wanted to retake the city of Harran but couldn't because "the Mede surrounds it and his might is excessive." Harran was a good distance west, which really means the Medes must have controlled large parts of Anatolia in order to have a presence there, just as originally thought. Theres more of course I can add but this is a youtube comment that's already very long :)
Ya exactly. And not only that, the babylonians also built "The median wall" which was located between Tigris and Euphrates, many many miles away from Ecbatana and the traditional heartland of the Medes, showing quite decisively that they ruled lands that were foreign to them, hence making them an Empire in the traditional sense. We also have signs of destruction in Urartu which happens to be AFTER the fall of Assyria but BEFORE the rise of the achamenids, suggesting that the classical sources were right about the medes. Not to mention the fact that the battle of the eclipse, between the Medes and the Lydians can be confirmed by basic astronomy, which strengthens the narrative of the classical sources, that the Medes conquered and fought all the way to the borders of Lydia near the Halys river. Personally I believe this is only bad scholarship, with academics trying to make a name for themselves through sheer and unashamed historical revisionism. I can't describe it as anything other than lack of academic and intellectual integrity.
As an Iranian this argument is kinda funny to me, the Persians not only spoke of the Medes but actually depicted them on rock carvings,often holding hands.by the way the board game called chess was actually called shah mad in ancient times which translates to “king of Medes” ,the word “checkmate” comes from the word shah mad
@@zimrielthe original name was Mad but turned into Mat ,for example the Russians call it Shakh mat but what you said is interesting because the word “died” in Persian is “mord” in Russian its “miort”
Median presence doesn’t mean a median empire. I think we all understand that the Medes existed and that they were territorially widespread, but the question, if you’ve been paying any attention, is whether or not they attained to the degree of socio-political maturation necessary in order to administer an actual empire with actual provincial divisions, with an emperor, etc.
I always thought of the Medes as a kind of Proto-Achaemenids, where the Persians just picked up where the Medes left off. Clearly that is a distorted perspective. Thanks for the video 👍
Nope, the Medes hardly retained power for much time, however they were highly respected by the Persians and their kings were considered honorary, and for a short time they had partitioned Babylon together with another group.
@@GenericUA-camGuy I do wonder whether the idea of Median ancestry was a tradition invented by The Achaemenids. Though why they'd do that isn't clear. Maybe they had a grudge against The Elamites and wrote them out of history.
@@alanpennie8013The Elamite identity had survived every attempt of conquest for over 2000 years at that point. I can see how that might be viewed as a potential threat to Persian hegemony.
@@alanpennie8013 well that’s interesting because in the Bible, Haman, well I’ll just say his name is supposedly related to a Elamite word. I don’t see any logic as to why they, the Persians, would make up Median ancestry. I also wonder if you mean the Persians did this publicly or if they erased it later. But really all I know about this, is that, Elamites, Medes, and Persians, all lived together in their own kingdoms. I have a high suspicion that the system the Persian empire had regarding respecting the Medes is similar to that of the United Kingdom. It’s of course most likely that the Medes went by a different name. But I think the Medes existed. There’s no reason at all to make it up.
There is also a considerable doubt if Cyrus was even an Achaemenid. That claim is only made by Darius after he killed the person on the throne, who he claimed was an imposter.
that's why I believe that cyrus's history could been fake history and darios or later iranian dynasties just founded it. History is full of lies, sadly the history of my own country as well (iran)
Maybe the Medes were like Mongols, they had an 'empire' but didn't leave behind much material culture for archaeologists to find, other than signs of destruction.
the mongols left political entities across Eurasia which survived for centuries in varying capacity. They also left towers of humans skulls that reached 100ft high when they originally went through
Herodotus lied about Marathon because the Persians did not intend to capture Athens, the Persian army defeated the Greeks in the plain of Marathon, and some of the Greek armies also escaped and hid around, and the Persian army returned to the ship and moved towards owns territory, and Herodotus has falsely referred to it as a victory in favor of Athens
Herodotus wrote that he wrote down what people told him. I think it gives great insights to people back then and also issues of communication. Love the stuff like how people far north sleep for half a year. Problem is more with modern historians than Herodotus; modern historians want to figure out what truly happened, what was the truth. Then they try to transpose their standards on Herodotus, basically making claims in his name that he didn't make.
For the same reason white people are called 'Caucasian' even though they aren't from the Caucasus- even though the old idea is outdated, the name sticks
@@randomuser-xc2wr The word "Persia" is literally a Greek/western term, which only gained significance when the Achaemenids became a prominent force in the region. And they called it that because they thought the entire region spoken only a single language (which is false, given how diverse Iran still is). In the battle of Thermopylae, sources refer to the Immortals including "the finest men from Medes"--which acknowledged a distinguishment.
@@zack2804 Ancient Greek accounts were not "Euro-centric" since the Greeks were not European as we think of it today. Maybe their writings were ' Greco-centric ' just like the Persian ones must have been ' Persian-centric '. It can be biased to demand that only one side is objective and expect more of them than of the other sides.
This is really mind blowing to me. Once for a paper in college I researched the origins of the Achaemenid empire and was surprised by how such a large empire like the medians could have so little information about it!
Could be explained by the fact the Macedonian Greeks burned a lot of the historical records made by the Acheamenids and promoted the ''barbaric East'' notion and the ''victory'' over them after they conquered the Persian Empire. Don't forget, Alexander (with his huge ego) wanted vengence for the burning of Athens by the Persian Empire. What else could he have done to tarnish the name of Persia? Destroy all of their scholarly works and records and promote Greco-centric scholars? This is 500 BC we're talking about. Julius Caesar boasted about killing a million Gauls, even though he probably never killed that many.
It's unfair to call Herodotus a liar since he simply used the sources available. You will note he excised the more legendary elements about what pre-Dorian Greece was like. You are simply using the word "lie" incorrectly.
He didn't call him a liar, he merely stated he is sometimes called "the father of lies" 2:06. He stated what others have said about him. But nowhere in the video does he call Herodotus a liar.
@@samsonsoturian6013 Maybe you can make a video to voice your opinion on the matter so more people can hear your thoughts and possibly a greater dialogue can be extended, regarding Herodotus. I would watch said video and right now seems like it would be a good time since he has more critics right now more than ever so it seems.
I"'m sure Herodotus knew he was a liar. But the lies he put out were his best-calculated attempts at truth for the Greek audience. It is like making a comment on UA-cam where you know you don't have full confidence in what you are typing. It is almost guaranteed to be a lie.
Persia probably was born like this then: the Persians conquered Elam and adopted their governmental structures and some other things and then conquered Medes.
This is extremely interesting. I lived and taught in Iran in the 1970s, and made a point of visiting Hamadan, Persepolis and Isfahan. My Iranian sources told me that into the early 20th Century Iranians were semi-nomadic, moving from the hot lowlands to the cooler uplands, pastoral people with flocks and city people with villas. Iran is still about 50% tribal, so an earlier Persia being an association of tribes is not unimaginable. As suggested here, maybe our perception is wrong. Rather than being like Rome or later European Empires, maybe the Persian Empire, at first anyway, was more like the Angevin or Holy Roman Empires. I've always suspected that Media vs Persia was more like an internal regime change than a war between states. Thanks for very interesting and absolutely thought provoking video!
That stat is for Pre-modern era/late nineteenth century, and it was 40%, not 50%. Modern day Iran is almost 80% urban, with around 1% remaining nomadic population.
@@thenoobprincev2529 That tracks, but do the figures count people with seasonal villas or non-villa vacation spots as nomadic? I could have been classified as nomadic for most of my ESL career as I moved from country to country teaching. Also, there is the "snowbird" phenomenon in the US. People, usually older or retired and sometimes with families, move south to escape from the cold winters in the Northeast. That is definitely nomadic, but is not usually labeled as such. No doubt some people will think a literal description is an insult.
@@JMM33RanMApeople in Iran don’t live like that anymore, almost everybody stays put in their cities,people only travel for vacation, i mean if you go to Hawaii for a vacation is that considered living a nomadic life style?the only nomadic people in Iran i know of are the Qashqai people who live in Shiraz.the Persians did take over the Median empire by a military coup, the king if the Medes Ishtovigo or Astyages in greek was Cyrus’s grandfather ,so basically Cyrus rebelled against his own grandfather and took the throne.the Medes were mentioned by the Assyrians numerous times ,in one Sargon the second mentions the king of Medes named Diako (the first king of Medes) uniting with the Urartians against the Mannaea kingdom but was captured by Sargon and exiled to Syria
No one would doubt that there was a Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan, even though there's little archeology, if at all, to support this. There was likely a Medean Empire (Confederation?) even if only through conquest and not through building cities.
"In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.” - 2 Kings 17:6 "And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes:” - 2 Kings 18:11 "And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written:” - Ezra 6:2 "If it please the king, let there go a royal commandment from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, that it be not altered, That Vashti come no more before king Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate unto another that is better than she.” - Esther 1:19 "Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.” - Isaiah 13:17 "And all the kings of Zimri, and all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of the Medes,” - Jeremiah 25:25 "Make bright the arrows; gather the shields: the Lord hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his device is against Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the Lord, the vengeance of his temple.” - Jeremiah 51:11 "Prepare against her the nations with the kings of the Medes, the captains thereof, and all the rulers thereof, and all the land of his dominion.” - Jeremiah 51:28 "Peres; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” - Daniel 5:28 "Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.” - Daniel 6:8 "Then they came near, and spake before the king concerning the king's decree; Hast thou not signed a decree, that every man that shall ask a petition of any God or man within thirty days, save of thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? The king answered and said, The thing is true, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.” - Daniel 6:12 "Then these men assembled unto the king, and said unto the king, Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no decree nor statute which the king establisheth may be changed.” - Daniel 6:15 "In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans;” - Daniel 9:1 "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia,” - Acts 2:9 The Bible mentions the Medes many times and even late dating of Biblical layers would put it before Herodotus. (Except Acts.) "The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.” - Genesis 10:2 (Madai here likely being Media.) "The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.” - 1 Chronicles 1:5 Here is the polity of Media being mentioned in the Bible. "A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease.” - Isaiah 21:2 "In the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces, being before him:” - Esther 1:14 "Likewise shall the ladies of Persia and Media say this day unto all the king's princes, which have heard of the deed of the queen. Thus shall there arise too much contempt and wrath.” - Esther 1:18 "And all the acts of his power and of his might, and the declaration of the greatness of Mordecai, whereunto the king advanced him, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia?” - Esther 10:2 "And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.” - Daniel 5:31 "The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia.” - Daniel 8:20
Even in Genesis the genealogy of the Medes is given. So a rather old layer of the Bible. The Bible extensively uses Media as a closely related group to Persians, Chaldeans, Elamites, Assyrians and Babylonians.
The Hebrew scriptures were written for religio-political reasons, and reconstructions of the peoples of southwest Asia have shown where the Bible writers made errors (possibly on purpose, possibly not.) If you listen to this video you will discover that the existence of people who can be identified as "Medes" is not the question, but whether there was a great Mede Empire is what is being examined.
I'm glad this list of references was given, though @@TheDanEdwards... It suggests that the Medians were always part of a larger group rather than a unique separate empire.
See, when bringing this up, one could theorize that the Medes did have an empire but were simply a ruling tribe/caste that mostly stayed seminomadic while the various peoples they ruled over did the actually industry and construction. I could easily believe that Median majority settlements didn't exist or if they did then they would have used the previous cultures art and architecture, especially those of the Assyrians considering it as prestigious. call me dogmatic, but for as much grains of salt I give to Herodotus, he and a few other sources speak of cities in media, and records of Cyrus' conquests would have had to involve way more territories and individual wars before his conquest of Lydia and Babylon, implying that the lands he conquered from the Medes were already extensive. We know for a fact that non-Mede peoples were living in the areas assumed to be the median empire and were constructing urbanized settlements that would have been independent nations if their wasn't already one. These were from before and during the supposed Mede era, so it wouldn't be like conquering a nomadic empire in a relatively empty and large tract of land. It just makes sense for there to be a Median empire. Plenty of other seminomadic/nomadic nations we know existed at later times that didn't leave much obvious archeological footprints or distinctive material culture would be a point to consider.
I think it's possible that the "Medes" often refers to people living in the mountain areas east to Mesopotamia, it's a very board term, that why the Hebrews and the Greeks often refer Persians as Medes.
What if the Medes whad a history similar to that of Afghanistan, unifying under a king willingly when faced with foreign threats. They may have done this twice, once to resist Assyria and other to resist Persia.
I’ve heard from some researchers that the Medes weren’t a people unto themselves but a group within a people that identified as Medes in tribute to a person or idea .
Were not the Medes the Magi or priestly caste that survived within Persian Culture? Were the Medes not necessarily a "civilization," but a culture with marriage alliances all the way from Lydia to parts of India? I've read Herodotus 30+ times since 1995 and a lot of his reportings, even a few quirky ones have been proven correct. I trust Herodotus. Please do a feature on Lydia.
Correction: now that I have watched the full video, I understand that the Median "Empire" probably did not exist. I am now curious to learn more about the Elamites, since it seems they played a much more prominent role than traditional historiography allocates to them
@@danukil7703Much of Elamites were destroyed by Ashurbanipal once, before some partially recovered. So, not a lot can be found about that too, or may look sparse.
The Father of lies? I don’t think so. Herodotus stated quite clearly that he only reported what was told to him and that he was under no obligation to believe it. However if he claims to be an eyewitness to an event and you or I don’t believe him then that’s another question altogether.
Maybe the Medo-Persian Empire was like Yugoslavia. For most of its history it was dominated by Serbia, but for a brief time when it was a German satellite state it was dominated by Croatia.
when was Yugoslavia dominated by Croatia? the German satellite you're thinking about was the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist regime that built itself up on being the antithesis of Yugoslavia lol
@@enderman_666 The Nazi puppet state of Yugoslavia was Croat dominated because the Croats happened to be the Serbs' internal rival. Although the details get complicated with collaborators, autonomous states, and guerrillas.
@@samsonsoturian6013buddy. Those were two different nations. Yugoslavia changed it's borders a number of times. During Nazis Croatia was it's own nation. And at no time did Croats controlled Yugoslavia.
Aren't scholars also saying now that the United Kingdom of Israel or the Unified Monarchy never existed too. I heard but don't know where, that the idea of the unified monarchy was created to basically allow for Israel to have a claim to the northern parts of Canaan If the Syro-Hittites, Assyrians or Arameans ever started to falter and lose territory
There definitely were a few Jewish states within Canaan, but all archeological evidence implies that they didn't encompass the entirety of the land, it's very likely the claim that they did came from ignorance and propaganda that couldn't be refuted at the time. I'm glad archeology let's us learn from non-bias sources.
@@thenutella8846 I think it is a confusion of idealized borders of the territories given to the tribes with the actual borders of the Kingdom. For example, the united Kingdom of Saul is usually just shown as all the 12 tribes but we know Saul definitely didn't control Philistia and was campaigning in some other territories attributed to the tribes so he didn't control all of the other territories either. I think there was a united Kingdom in the highlands as the limits of the cities mentioned by the bible that Saul campaigned in match cities that the Egyptians mention campaigning against when they first returned to Canaan (minus Jerusalem, but given how closely the other cities align and the fact that the time of the Egyptian campaign should be under one of David's successors we could posit the Egyptians arrived either during or causing the division of the Kingdom).
Yes they were nomad pagans up until 3rd century bc and there was no first temple but "the second" which was the only one they've built, their myths were invented during macchabes dynasty to fabricate their legitimacy and had no statehood before... Hebrew is scriptural language which was never used by commoners and Torah was written in greek, much later translated into their "language "
That was really enlightening, thanks. I'd like to hear more about this Persians coming from Elamites. I know Anshan was one of the great Elamite cities, and Cyrus did claim to be the king of Anshan, but I also heard that the Indo-European tribes from the steppes took it over in the early Iron age. So it would be good to get some clarity on this
"There is no evidence that there ever was an English Empire. The examples that had been proposed to be English language and culture turned out to be British instead. The American Empire turns out to have evolved from the British civilization, not the English one. We must conclude that the English Empire was a fiction created by European historians (who did not know about Britain) to fill the gap between the Roman Empire and the the American one."
I don't know if this is a joke or a serious argument, as this is the internet, so I'm going to assume the latter, since someone in the comment section take this seriously. England, at the end of War of the Roses, was a centralized state with an unquestioned hereditary monarch at the top with solid evidence of it existing. Media, as talked in this video, was a amalgamation of disunited tribes/states only perceived by foreigners as united through fragmentary evidences. Also, this is falsely assumed to be the progenitor of the Achaemenid Persia. If this is a joke, I salute to you. Otherwise, you're constructing false analogy as a gotcha to discredit the well-made video.
I first learned about the Medes from, of all things, from one of the Asterix andObelix books. Which I guess proves what a death grip the Medes had on pop history back in those days.
By doubling down and claiming we're the orignial people and all other peoples in the region are kurds too, of course (I'm half kurdish and half zazaki, before anyone gets offended). There's always the Mitanni we can try and claim.
I thought only (us) Eastern Euros had these "we wuz secretly great but they (they=Catholic monks, Americans, Soviets, ...) covered it up" kinds of ideologies/theories. tee-hee
Fantastic video as always. The issue today is that a lot of people are too emotionally and ideologically devoted either in blindly believing anything Herodotus claimed or in believing that the Median empire existed.
I don’t understand this Herodotus cult. It shouldn’t be that wild to understand that it’s useful to read Herodotus but equally he was fallible and not unquestionable.
@@ebrim5013 some people think that if an ancient writer wrote something, it must automatically be a fact that can’t be questioned or dismissed. Some people have other ridiculous reasons for why they cite him as a purely factual source.
@@arman_1024 I think its just a general holdover from 19th and 20th century historiography, which was such a "Western" phenomenon really, and the Greeks were considered "Western", even though they were really very far east from England 🤨 This history of how these biases develop, is fascinating in and of itself.
@@michaeljfoley1Greeks were western in the idea of founding democracy and a lot of beliefs and cultural values Europe would eventually have (tho this is pretty vague)
Yeah, personally I am skeptical of the modern academia as well. I get that Herodotus could get stuff wrong but I don't see why he'ld just make shit up wholesale like the theory is assuming (that he made it up due to an assumption of Empires but given the Babylonian Empire also existed, he had no reason to).
Very interesting presentation. Your concluding remarks seem to suggest that the Elamites, rather than the Medians, ought to be seen as a much stronger influence on the Achaemenids. Do you believe that they actually held a much larger territory than is traditionally ascribed? I would love to see a video from you on the Elamites.
It is established that the Elamites provided the civil backbone of the Achaemenid state, especially in those earlier days. Cyrus himself and his dynasty were originally lords of Anshan (an Elamite city).
19:10 If the ruins are Sasanian, that doesn't mean there never was a Median or Achaemenid city there, it just means that we probably can never know for sure because the remains of that city would be beneath the Sasanian remains that we obviously aren't going to dig through to find out.
A better theory is that Medes and Persians are the names of geographical regions and not people, Herodotus himself points out that the Medes considered themselves Aryans and spoke easily with the Persians without an interpreter, as according to Strabo . Persian, Sogdian, Bactrian and Madian languages are completely similar and have very little difference. Even Darius considers himself an Aryan in his inscription ، Aryans had the Oxus civilization and the Elamite civilization had an interesting similarity to it
I keep scratching my head wide near eastern historical topics never mentioned Armenia, it was a large part of the near east for millennia, at least occupying one third of it, and they have archives. They are still around so you can talk to them and see what their historians have to say, may be a great help
I really despise the click bait title and the reference to nationalist Soviet pseudo science. I usually watch most stuff this channel puts out, but this really annoys me, and it obviously doesn't have anything to do with the map in the thumb nail or the contents of the video.
"Historians cannot find any record of the first two Medean kings in Assyrian chronicles, so they did not exist." Can't you see the logical fallacy there?
It should also be noted that ‘history is written by the winners’. Achaemenid sources may also have minimized the importance of the Medes as a means of suppressing any possible revolutionary sentiments after the conquest. As historians, we should always be careful about rejecting one assumption in favor of another, since we can’t categorically state that either one was wrong. For all we know, someone will dig something up tomorrow that validates Herodotus. Nevertheless, great video - I definitely learned a lot from it. Kudos!
That would make sense except their existence as a major power is downplayed by Assyrian sources as well compared to say the babylonians or egyptians. Under the theory that the Medes were a semi-nomadic tribal confederation, or the leading language/ethnic group of a loosely defined tribal confederation that includes the persians I can see the greeks confusing them and the persians in the same way the mongols were called and confused for the Tartars. From their perspective they did not succeed the Medes, the medes were an entirely different ethnic group they subjugated. The Elamites used to be the great power in the region, in the same way the mongols sought to emulate the Turkic Khaganates not the Tartars. Likewise the greeks and assyrians only understanding city relations may not have understood the difference between tribal tributary relations and vassals. The persians and the cities in the region like Ecbatana could've been basically independent except for paying the Medes off.
I agree the idea that the Persian Empire was a continuation of Elam makes sense. Wasn't one of the titles of Cyrus the Great King of Anshan, an Elamite title. And if I remember correctly wasn't the city of Anshan located not that far from Persepolis?
The change from complete reliance on Greek and Roman sources only began in the 1980s? That seems late. And did the Iranian Revolution of 1979 creating Iranian exiles fleeing to the West have anything to do with this?
I don't think so, I think it had more to do with international archeology finally taking an interest in the middle east beyond biblical archeology. There was some archeological digs and efforts in Iran before then, but very few in comparison to the Mediterranean region.
The solar eclipse calculations confirms that the battle of Halys between Media and Lydia was indeed real as the reported eclipse event and the date by Herodotus was accurate which is May 28, 584 BC (not 585 as written on Wikipedia).
Each year I am confronted with just how far the American education had fallen. A lot of Herotodus's "lies" are truths that the self-deluded to not want to be true. As for centuries so call historians denied Troy and the Hittites.
Curious as to why the comment section has been turned off for videos under the Halloween & Mythology playlist? Also 5:25.. it established what kind of history in its own right?
I was hoping you also address the contact between Media and Lydia, and their supposed battle that Herodotus claims, do we have anything to suggest something like this happened (besides Herodotus)?
Alternative theory: Persian Empire succeeded because it was a successful synthesis of Indo-European pastoralists with an extensive horse-driven culture (i.e. the Medes as the most prominent example) and the state-building heritage of the Elamites, with their thousands of years of complexity. The book cited, by Pierre Bryant, presents a picture of the post-Cambyses II (i.e. from Darius the great) as being a time when uniquely Persian elements begin to be emphasized, and there seems to be a reasonable possibility that some sort of hybrid pastoral / Elamite state at this time passed under dominant control of the Persian nobility. In which case, they may have played up their political connections with the Medes, as fellow pastoralists and Indo-European speakers, to increase their within-Empire political legitimacy at the expense of the Elamites.
I mean you get the (somewhat) contemporaneous situations where Aryan migrants/conquerers move into India and Persia with their horse-driven nomadic cultures into areas with a thousand years of urbanization like Elam/Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley. Suddenly the Vedic traditions and Persian confederacies/empires take shape and leave lasting impacts on their respective regions. The adoption of sedentary entrenchment and its blending with the rolling martial culture of the invaders produced some of the first polities and contiguous cultures that we'd think of as empire-sized today. Obvious Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, maybe the Mitanni and Hittites, were able to have hegemony over large areas but those pale in comparison to the Achaemenid and Maurya Empires that emerged a few hundred years after the integration of Aryan nomads and Semitic/Non-IE cityfolk (and debatably the Medians too, thus the video)
Median empire was probably a placebolder name for a non-existent empire between time separated empires in that region. Based on my knowledge wholly limited to what was presented in this video, I'd bet they were maxing personal freedom in a pseudo-anarcharistic state and the surrounding empires probably did not like the concept of their bottom-up power structure. Their history was erased through conquest, and there's little to speak of them as a result. Thank you for sharing information on this blank spot of history.
great video! i really appreciate the effort you put into breaking down the misconceptions. however, i feel like there's a fine line between questioning historical narratives and completely dismissing them. isn't it possible that some elements of what we've been taught could still hold some truth, even if they’re not what we expect? just a thought!
the medes were also mentioned in the bible. people want to deny historical facts the bible mentions. the hittites sffurred the same fact of being fictionalized until the late 1800s
Very uncertain if this is truth… if it goes against the Bible it isn’t. In Daniel Medeo-Persia was the bear like kingdom (or beast) with three ribs in its mouth and higher on the one side.
It seems to me that Medieval and Renaissance biases to Latin sources and thus the Greco sources are the heart of this matter. Those sources were what was used and believed, and later, generations just continued these biases. Thus, it became tradition and continued by means of cultural traditionally rout training. As to Heridutus, he used the sources he had that filled the need of his time. Warning his people of the teribble Persians. So, in that Heridutus, maybe embellished or bent history to what he thought was needed by the Greeks who was his main readers when he envisioned this work. I think that was his main point in writing this not to posterity that we associate with history know and the past 100 + or so years. Heridutus was not the first " historian" to do this and as we can see today he was not the last that want to use history as a tool to achieve some aim in the present by bending, twisting or even breaking history.
Eh, there is some also late collaboration of the idea of a preceding Empire in the Persian Shahnameh. So even if we had other sources, chances are it would have just changed to some legendary dynasty in the Shahnameh being said to be the Medians.
Those were the only sources the Medieval and Renaissance historians had available, so to state that's just a form of "bias" is quite historically ignorant. They couldn't just sit in their basements and google it, they had to work with what they had. And the idea that Herodotus' histories were all driven by some nefarious motive to achieve political goals in his time, is prime 21st Century Goldfish Brain. I get that people nowadays are taught to believe everything is political and everything any historical author ever wrote in history had a political motive, but this really is an extremely simplistic view of reality and makes you a lot more biased than the classical authors you so smugly denounce.
Medes were the borderland Indian tribe known in India as Madas, their country (north west India) was Madra. Their king's sister is known as Amytis by Greeks. She was married to Nebuchadnezzar. In reality, her name was "humaiti", which is a corrupted form of Sanskrit "Sumati" meaning "good thoughts". Herodotus says Medians called themselves "arrian" by which he means they called themselves "Arya". This word was used by ancient Persians and Indians.
I'm guessing its a combination of Herotodus' desire to underacknowlege the Persians and other rivals, and the simple fact that Greeks knew of the area through trade contact, rather than political contact. This colors their attribution of who's empire this is.
Interesting. On fake history. What do you think about the opinions of older historians Richard Bentley, John Wilson Ross, and Polydor Hochart on Tacitus being a forgery? Bentley raised some valid concerns about textual integrity and inconsistencies, while Ross pushed the idea that Lorenzo Bracciolini probably made it all up in the 15th century. Hochart built on that, pointing out stylistic issues that make it seem more Renaissance than Roman. Any merit to their claims?
The Medes seem to have been a tough adversary of the Assyrians for several centuries; tougher than the Cannanites and the peoples in Southern Mesopotamia and Elam. Once one discounts the bias of the authors, those records read as reports of half-victories at best, that never managed to establish Assyrian control over even part of the land. So maybe the "historical fiction" is actually the modern theory that the Medes were just a bunch of pastoral tribes without any national organization? Again, just because the archaeology of the land has *so far* failed to bring up evidence of a wider political/military organization, it does not mean that it did not exist...
Hmph. I'm pretty sure I saw something about the Elamites in the Old Testament... And my impression of the Medes and Persians is that they were allies, like cousins who teamed up to overthrow the Mesapotamians. Maybe it's a good thing I never got into Herodotus 😂..
Fantastic stuff, thankyou. It seems to me the ‘Medians’ were the ‘barbarian’ (loaded word yeah) tribes at the Assyrian borderlands? Hence why their material culture looks Assyrian; they were trading with their neighbours, and adopting their practices/materials on an ad-hoc basis. And the turbulant period of the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. with the Babylonians and Elamites and others washing over the Assyrians is then, for whatever reason, given over to the Medians by good old “i heard a rumour” Herodotus? Like the way we use the shorthand of the “Goths” replacing the Romans.
I love how as a Persian living in Iran I don't know what any of that means... what we learned in school was Persian migratied from north lands and there were already different tribes living in Iran and Persians also divided into 3 main tribes and lived peacefuly next to other tribes... and it was like that for a while until one of our western neighbors kept attacking and pillaging us so people came together to fight them back under Cyrus then they succeeded and Cyrus was nice to them and he was like why should we stop here ? So it lead to a big empire ... 😅
About 40 years ago in Iran (when the hands of the Islamic regime had not tainted the history books taught in schools), we were taught that the Persians were Aryans who arrived in the area thousands of years ago. They split in to many tribes and went their separate ways. Although there are evidences of some of these tribes forming and living in small cities (Such as the "Burnt City" which goes back over 8000 years or more ago), most of the Aryans lived as nomadic tribes that were seasonaly migrating from place to place within what later became Persian kingdom. The nomadic Aryans have barely left Any evidence of their existence. These nomadic Aryans were the Medes. Different nomadic Aryan tribes that had grown in numbers and expanded their range of seasonal migration. It is highly likely that the Medes (we call them the Medes. They knew themselves Aryans with a similar language and belief system) were simply the unified nomadic Aryans. Where did the Medes go? And were they conquered by the Achamenids? My opinion is that the Medes were not conquered. Although there may have been a slight civil war between them to establish a new form of order (Achamenids). They changed their way of life and instead of existing as many tribes, they once again became One. And from migrating nomads, they became city dwellers. In settling in cities, they became a nation. Their nation needed a leader. Cyrus from one of the prominent original tribes became their king and called the new kingdom "Hakhamaneshi" or Achamenid as it is known in English.
@@samsonsoturian6013 * The Scythians had a ritual of heating hemp seeds in a small tent and becoming excited by the vapors *Herodotus described a type of Egyptian river boats which historians thought fake until they found an example of one *Herodotus correctly described the embalming process *Herodotus correctly describes the existence of pygmy populations in Africa *Herodotus describes how people in the Himalayas collect gold from soil dug up by marmots when they dig their burrows, though he describes them as ants. *Herodotus described how the Scythians used human skin for leather. Conclusion? Herodotus was correct about everything.
Lack of surviving documentation does not disprove the existence of Media. Whether Media was an empire or merely a Kingdom or civilization is an argument of semantics and definitions.
I love history, but this is what I absolutely hate about history. The thing is history (mostly ancient and even some up to medieval or early modern) can sometimes be blurred and the dates of when rulers ruled or lived is often really messed up cause the records are often very scarce, leading to some figures becoming legendary or mythical cause we aren’t sure if they ever existed. Like how the first 29-50 emperors of Japan are legendary and even the one who aren’t still have lack of records about their life and is filled with legend. Like the first Ottoman Sultan Osman I who despite being born not in ancient times but pretty much close to early modern, still has such scarcity about him, and I wonder if he was actually real. Ancient records are so messed up. Making what actually happened almost obscured of information. Like the Roman kings in Rome. This always just annoys and frustrates me cause it prevents me from knowing what actually happened, I consider it a thorn in the back of learning history. Sometimes I wonder if even more modern history still has messed up records, I even ask myself if Napoleon was a real person or a legendary figure or with messed up records. The thing about history is we are never truly sure whether it truly ever happened and we can only rely on records or patterns to figure it out.
Seems you're saying we should all be 99.9% skeptical about absolutely everything; and for the other 0.1% we're standing on thin ice. Not a very balanced perspective, unless all you're interested in is sleeping all night and all day.
Herotodus did not believe in Britain. He thought it a silly rumour. As I grow older, I have come to share his conviction. .
😂
Lol
Herodotus never wrote of Thule
I take a more agnostic approach. Show me Britain and I'll believe it but till then.....
like Birds i wish britain was real.
Historians: The Median Empire is an elusive and tricky concept
Statisticians: The median empire lasts 87.63 years, spans 108 million km², had a population of 373,988,101 and was ruled by a 12 yr old
Thats x5 the total glove population at the time 😂
@@maxstirner6143 its a joke, did you see the area???
@@braunschweig-mapping-01thats not apparent notsee supporter
Damn… ruled by a 12 year old for 87 years, that’s pretty cool.
They were much nicer than the different, but related Mean Empire.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Herodotus absolutely does NOT deserve the "father of lies" title, because he wasn't lying and he wasn't even always reporting things he believed to be true, he was instead reporting hearsay and best guesses, and he was completely transparent about this fact. He would often remark that a claim he was sharing sounded unlikely to him.
Indeed! As 'history' had yet to be invented, it had no rules of historiography, and Herodotus was really more of an 'historical story-teller' than an historian. He was closer to being a poet, like Homer or Virgil, than a historian such as Thucydides or Tacitus. He even admits that his concern, when presented with several different versions of some event (particularly, for example, the death of Cyrus), that his priority in choosing which version to tell was to choose the 'most noble' story. Thus his real concern was not historical accuracy, but which version of a story would be more likely to inspire nobility in the minds of his readers.
So yes, to call him the 'father of lies' is really a bit harsh! If it were true of him, it was even more true of Homer, and more still of Virgil! Are poets 'liars'? Or are they merely poets, taking 'poetic licence' in order to satisfy their respective muses and to inculcate nobility of mind in their audiences?
I mean this is like holding ‘philosophers’ to actual scientific standards, 90% of their ideas and “research” would be laughed at in modern science but that’s all there was back then
So the "father of lies" title is a lie?
I'm trying to think a better title for Herodotus, but I can't think of a word for a lie that comes from ignorance or heresay. It's not a white lie, maybe you could call it a grey lie!
The "father of fables" is an option but it's misrepresentation. I like the "father of fudge".
@@Wisdomcuccoyou're fooling noone but yourself, these are obviously Lies, your pleadings invitations to engage in story - telling o f the worst kind!
"A lie is still a lie, for all that"!😊
many of the things people accused him of lying were then proven true...again and again.but yes he sometimes admitted he uses hearsay .how could he wrote the history without it ?there were no previous historians to quote from : )he was the first.he deserves much more credit than most admit.
Ancient societies had no anthropologists. Today we interpret comments by ancient writers as if they were anthropological. The Greeks never used the terms Mede and Persian in a consistent way. From my reading of the sources it seems that one man's Mede is another man's Persian.
And one man’s mead is another man’s lager.
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One man's Mede is another man's Persian.
I came here just to find this comment.
What flavor of persian are you today? Iranian? Tajik? Kurd? Sarmatian? Perhaps.. Ossetian?
@@anonymousbloke1
in Persian kurdek(kurds) means nomads ...
in kurdish parsek(a persian) means a beggar ....
if they are one people than they all are racist to each other lets be honest thats the onle excepted form of racism.
@@samankucher5117 kurd originally meant nomad but now it's sole meaning is the kurdish people and i dont know why you think it would be offensive.
and i dont know if parsek has anything to do with pars or not
@@mahatmaniggandhi2898
parsek and parsak mean Persian and bagger in kurdish.
kurds and Persians Generally dont like each other they use these words as insults if they weren't offensive they wouldn't have used them unfortunately.
The Median Empire was the friends we made along the way.
The median empire swallows 8 spiders annually. This is a statistical error, the average empire eats 0 spiders annually but the Spiders Georg empire is in a cave and eats 10,000 spiders a year and should be discarded as a statistical outlier
You win the Internet for today, FukuokaZoomer. Congratulations. ❤
>The Median Empire was the friends we made along the way.
Fucking cringe.
or, hear me out, maybe it was the enemies we made along the way. What is an empire without enemies against which to define its borders and its ethos? But no one ever thinks about the enemies, no, they only think about themselves.
@@almishti internet is embracing the cringe
on yo
I have bad news, it did actually exist, and virtually around the same size as the classical sources state. I did this as part of my master's thesis. A lot of this theory is scholarly hype mainly fueled by limited archaeological evidence. However, read the Sippar Cylinder of king Nabonidus; he describes how he wanted to retake the city of Harran but couldn't because "the Mede surrounds it and his might is excessive." Harran was a good distance west, which really means the Medes must have controlled large parts of Anatolia in order to have a presence there, just as originally thought. Theres more of course I can add but this is a youtube comment that's already very long :)
Ya exactly.
And not only that, the babylonians also built "The median wall" which was located between Tigris and Euphrates, many many miles away from Ecbatana and the traditional heartland of the Medes, showing quite decisively that they ruled lands that were foreign to them, hence making them an Empire in the traditional sense.
We also have signs of destruction in Urartu which happens to be AFTER the fall of Assyria but BEFORE the rise of the achamenids, suggesting that the classical sources were right about the medes.
Not to mention the fact that the battle of the eclipse, between the Medes and the Lydians can be confirmed by basic astronomy, which strengthens the narrative of the classical sources, that the Medes conquered and fought all the way to the borders of Lydia near the Halys river.
Personally I believe this is only bad scholarship, with academics trying to make a name for themselves through sheer and unashamed historical revisionism. I can't describe it as anything other than lack of academic and intellectual integrity.
As an Iranian this argument is kinda funny to me, the Persians not only spoke of the Medes but actually depicted them on rock carvings,often holding hands.by the way the board game called chess was actually called shah mad in ancient times which translates to “king of Medes” ,the word “checkmate” comes from the word shah mad
@@Jupiter-td4kw i thought it was "shah mat" meaning "king ded u looz"
@@zimrielthe original name was Mad but turned into Mat ,for example the Russians call it Shakh mat but what you said is interesting because the word “died” in Persian is “mord” in Russian its “miort”
Median presence doesn’t mean a median empire. I think we all understand that the Medes existed and that they were territorially widespread, but the question, if you’ve been paying any attention, is whether or not they attained to the degree of socio-political maturation necessary in order to administer an actual empire with actual provincial divisions, with an emperor, etc.
Great to be back. Herodotus mention within 60 seconds, we're in for a good time
I always thought of the Medes as a kind of Proto-Achaemenids, where the Persians just picked up where the Medes left off. Clearly that is a distorted perspective. Thanks for the video 👍
Same. Now that perspective makes sense as some sort of temporary middle ground.
Nope, the Medes hardly retained power for much time, however they were highly respected by the Persians and their kings were considered honorary, and for a short time they had partitioned Babylon together with another group.
@@GenericUA-camGuy
I do wonder whether the idea of Median ancestry was a tradition invented by The Achaemenids.
Though why they'd do that isn't clear.
Maybe they had a grudge against The Elamites and wrote them out of history.
@@alanpennie8013The Elamite identity had survived every attempt of conquest for over 2000 years at that point. I can see how that might be viewed as a potential threat to Persian hegemony.
@@alanpennie8013 well that’s interesting because in the Bible, Haman, well I’ll just say his name is supposedly related to a Elamite word. I don’t see any logic as to why they, the Persians, would make up Median ancestry. I also wonder if you mean the Persians did this publicly or if they erased it later. But really all I know about this, is that, Elamites, Medes, and Persians, all lived together in their own kingdoms. I have a high suspicion that the system the Persian empire had regarding respecting the Medes is similar to that of the United Kingdom. It’s of course most likely that the Medes went by a different name. But I think the Medes existed. There’s no reason at all to make it up.
I'd like to hear more about the Elamite origins of the Achaemenid polity now! Is that coming?
persians = aryans + elamites
History by CY has some stuff about it.
Cyrus is more impressive if he wasn't taking over a preexisting empire
theres no historic person as impressive as Cyrus the great
@@a.s2205 Genghis Khan?
@@ExistgothGenghis Khan is lame, just some guy who took over a bunch of other empires.
hey, he made it bigger
@@Existgoth he was a savage who destroyed and contributed 0 to the world
There is also a considerable doubt if Cyrus was even an Achaemenid. That claim is only made by Darius after he killed the person on the throne, who he claimed was an imposter.
that's why I believe that cyrus's history could been fake history and darios or later iranian dynasties just founded it. History is full of lies, sadly the history of my own country as well (iran)
@@randomuser-xc2wr I don't completely disagree, but whether or not he was an actual usurper, he was certainly a competent king of kings
@@nevets2371Yeah his competence as an administrator is much more important than some divine rights of kings bullshit.
And Darius was almost certainly from near the river Oxus, nowhere near where Cyrus was from!
Nope 😂
Thank you for doing Near Eastern and Asian history, not nearly enough of it on this platform!
It's truly astounding how long the Proto-Basque have been confounding historians and archeologists
lmao
Maybe the Medes were like Mongols, they had an 'empire' but didn't leave behind much material culture for archaeologists to find, other than signs of destruction.
the mongols left political entities across Eurasia which survived for centuries in varying capacity. They also left towers of humans skulls that reached 100ft high when they originally went through
@@LiterallyWho1917 wait wasnt the skull towers guy was Timur not Chingghis
@@kuman0110 No, the mongols did that too. Who did you think Timur was imitating after all?
We have a lot from hamadan
@@LiterallyWho1917 okay, and the Medes left behind the Achaemenids and I have yet to hear of archeological discovery of those bones.
Herodotus lied about Marathon because the Persians did not intend to capture Athens, the Persian army defeated the Greeks in the plain of Marathon, and some of the Greek armies also escaped and hid around, and the Persian army returned to the ship and moved towards owns territory, and Herodotus has falsely referred to it as a victory in favor of Athens
The Greek were always jealous or Persia because they were far more advanced and had a rich culture.
Herodotus wrote that he wrote down what people told him. I think it gives great insights to people back then and also issues of communication. Love the stuff like how people far north sleep for half a year. Problem is more with modern historians than Herodotus; modern historians want to figure out what truly happened, what was the truth. Then they try to transpose their standards on Herodotus, basically making claims in his name that he didn't make.
True, same with the bible
People who trash talk Herodotus have no idea what they're talking about.
The Prophet Daniel prophesized the Median empire, and it is mentioned in other Biblical places, the sources for Media are not just in Herodotus
Ifn Media was never important why did the Greek say "medize" for Greeks who supported Persia?
For the same reason white people are called 'Caucasian' even though they aren't from the Caucasus- even though the old idea is outdated, the name sticks
@@randomuser-xc2wr The word "Persia" is literally a Greek/western term, which only gained significance when the Achaemenids became a prominent force in the region. And they called it that because they thought the entire region spoken only a single language (which is false, given how diverse Iran still is). In the battle of Thermopylae, sources refer to the Immortals including "the finest men from Medes"--which acknowledged a distinguishment.
@@randomuser-xc2wr Biased and Euro-centric recounts of Ancient Greco-Persian conflicts don't really interest me, even when works of fiction.
@@randomuser-xc2wr that don't mean the Persian empire term was wrong, it simply they were ignorant or generalize
@@zack2804 Ancient Greek accounts were not "Euro-centric" since the Greeks were not European as we think of it today. Maybe their writings were ' Greco-centric ' just like the Persian ones must have been ' Persian-centric '. It can be biased to demand that only one side is objective and expect more of them than of the other sides.
This is really mind blowing to me. Once for a paper in college I researched the origins of the Achaemenid empire and was surprised by how such a large empire like the medians could have so little information about it!
Could be explained by the fact the Macedonian Greeks burned a lot of the historical records made by the Acheamenids and promoted the ''barbaric East'' notion and the ''victory'' over them after they conquered the Persian Empire. Don't forget, Alexander (with his huge ego) wanted vengence for the burning of Athens by the Persian Empire. What else could he have done to tarnish the name of Persia? Destroy all of their scholarly works and records and promote Greco-centric scholars? This is 500 BC we're talking about. Julius Caesar boasted about killing a million Gauls, even though he probably never killed that many.
It's unfair to call Herodotus a liar since he simply used the sources available. You will note he excised the more legendary elements about what pre-Dorian Greece was like. You are simply using the word "lie" incorrectly.
Zero genetic evidence of Dorian peoples/migration/conquest.
He didn't call him a liar, he merely stated he is sometimes called "the father of lies" 2:06. He stated what others have said about him. But nowhere in the video does he call Herodotus a liar.
@@BkennyP Which is also bullshit, it just sounds grand
@@samsonsoturian6013 Maybe you can make a video to voice your opinion on the matter so more people can hear your thoughts and possibly a greater dialogue can be extended, regarding Herodotus. I would watch said video and right now seems like it would be a good time since he has more critics right now more than ever so it seems.
I"'m sure Herodotus knew he was a liar. But the lies he put out were his best-calculated attempts at truth for the Greek audience. It is like making a comment on UA-cam where you know you don't have full confidence in what you are typing. It is almost guaranteed to be a lie.
I think Herodotus was right about all of it, especially the flying snakes, they kick ass.
Persia probably was born like this then: the Persians conquered Elam and adopted their governmental structures and some other things and then conquered Medes.
This is extremely interesting. I lived and taught in Iran in the 1970s, and made a point of visiting Hamadan, Persepolis and Isfahan. My Iranian sources told me that into the early 20th Century Iranians were semi-nomadic, moving from the hot lowlands to the cooler uplands, pastoral people with flocks and city people with villas. Iran is still about 50% tribal, so an earlier Persia being an association of tribes is not unimaginable. As suggested here, maybe our perception is wrong. Rather than being like Rome or later European Empires, maybe the Persian Empire, at first anyway, was more like the Angevin or Holy Roman Empires. I've always suspected that Media vs Persia was more like an internal regime change than a war between states.
Thanks for very interesting and absolutely thought provoking video!
Iran isn't 50 % tribal.
Iran is 77% urban.
That stat is for Pre-modern era/late nineteenth century, and it was 40%, not 50%. Modern day Iran is almost 80% urban, with around 1% remaining nomadic population.
@@thenoobprincev2529 That tracks, but do the figures count people with seasonal villas or non-villa vacation spots as nomadic? I could have been classified as nomadic for most of my ESL career as I moved from country to country teaching. Also, there is the "snowbird" phenomenon in the US. People, usually older or retired and sometimes with families, move south to escape from the cold winters in the Northeast. That is definitely nomadic, but is not usually labeled as such. No doubt some people will think a literal description is an insult.
@@JMM33RanMApeople in Iran don’t live like that anymore, almost everybody stays put in their cities,people only travel for vacation, i mean if you go to Hawaii for a vacation is that considered living a nomadic life style?the only nomadic people in Iran i know of are the Qashqai people who live in Shiraz.the Persians did take over the Median empire by a military coup, the king if the Medes Ishtovigo or Astyages in greek was Cyrus’s grandfather ,so basically Cyrus rebelled against his own grandfather and took the throne.the Medes were mentioned by the Assyrians numerous times ,in one Sargon the second mentions the king of Medes named Diako (the first king of Medes) uniting with the Urartians against the Mannaea kingdom but was captured by Sargon and exiled to Syria
"The 999 Nations* of the Persian Empire descend upon you!"
No one would doubt that there was a Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan, even though there's little archeology, if at all, to support this. There was likely a Medean Empire (Confederation?) even if only through conquest and not through building cities.
"In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.” - 2 Kings 17:6
"And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes:” - 2 Kings 18:11
"And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written:” - Ezra 6:2
"If it please the king, let there go a royal commandment from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, that it be not altered, That Vashti come no more before king Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate unto another that is better than she.” - Esther 1:19
"Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.” - Isaiah 13:17
"And all the kings of Zimri, and all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of the Medes,” - Jeremiah 25:25
"Make bright the arrows; gather the shields: the Lord hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his device is against Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the Lord, the vengeance of his temple.” - Jeremiah 51:11
"Prepare against her the nations with the kings of the Medes, the captains thereof, and all the rulers thereof, and all the land of his dominion.” - Jeremiah 51:28
"Peres; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” - Daniel 5:28
"Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.” - Daniel 6:8
"Then they came near, and spake before the king concerning the king's decree; Hast thou not signed a decree, that every man that shall ask a petition of any God or man within thirty days, save of thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? The king answered and said, The thing is true, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.” - Daniel 6:12
"Then these men assembled unto the king, and said unto the king, Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no decree nor statute which the king establisheth may be changed.” - Daniel 6:15
"In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans;” - Daniel 9:1
"Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia,” - Acts 2:9
The Bible mentions the Medes many times and even late dating of Biblical layers would put it before Herodotus. (Except Acts.)
"The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.” - Genesis 10:2 (Madai here likely being Media.)
"The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.” - 1 Chronicles 1:5
Here is the polity of Media being mentioned in the Bible.
"A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease.” - Isaiah 21:2
"In the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces, being before him:” - Esther 1:14
"Likewise shall the ladies of Persia and Media say this day unto all the king's princes, which have heard of the deed of the queen. Thus shall there arise too much contempt and wrath.” - Esther 1:18
"And all the acts of his power and of his might, and the declaration of the greatness of Mordecai, whereunto the king advanced him, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia?” - Esther 10:2
"And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.” - Daniel 5:31
"The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia.” - Daniel 8:20
Even in Genesis the genealogy of the Medes is given. So a rather old layer of the Bible. The Bible extensively uses Media as a closely related group to Persians, Chaldeans, Elamites, Assyrians and Babylonians.
Does that track back in translation as well as dating?
Transliteration*
The Hebrew scriptures were written for religio-political reasons, and reconstructions of the peoples of southwest Asia have shown where the Bible writers made errors (possibly on purpose, possibly not.)
If you listen to this video you will discover that the existence of people who can be identified as "Medes" is not the question, but whether there was a great Mede Empire is what is being examined.
I'm glad this list of references was given, though @@TheDanEdwards... It suggests that the Medians were always part of a larger group rather than a unique separate empire.
See, when bringing this up, one could theorize that the Medes did have an empire but were simply a ruling tribe/caste that mostly stayed seminomadic while the various peoples they ruled over did the actually industry and construction. I could easily believe that Median majority settlements didn't exist or if they did then they would have used the previous cultures art and architecture, especially those of the Assyrians considering it as prestigious. call me dogmatic, but for as much grains of salt I give to Herodotus, he and a few other sources speak of cities in media, and records of Cyrus' conquests would have had to involve way more territories and individual wars before his conquest of Lydia and Babylon, implying that the lands he conquered from the Medes were already extensive. We know for a fact that non-Mede peoples were living in the areas assumed to be the median empire and were constructing urbanized settlements that would have been independent nations if their wasn't already one. These were from before and during the supposed Mede era, so it wouldn't be like conquering a nomadic empire in a relatively empty and large tract of land. It just makes sense for there to be a Median empire. Plenty of other seminomadic/nomadic nations we know existed at later times that didn't leave much obvious archeological footprints or distinctive material culture would be a point to consider.
I think it's possible that the "Medes" often refers to people living in the mountain areas east to Mesopotamia, it's a very board term, that why the Hebrews and the Greeks often refer Persians as Medes.
What if the Medes whad a history similar to that of Afghanistan, unifying under a king willingly when faced with foreign threats.
They may have done this twice, once to resist Assyria and other to resist Persia.
Crazy that tartaria needs debunking now.
the tartaria/mudflood/antiquitech crowd are the modern flat earthers
@@Emerildtartaria is just the Turkic tribal land in central Asia
I’ve heard from some researchers that the Medes weren’t a people unto themselves but a group within a people that identified as Medes in tribute to a person or idea .
Were not the Medes the Magi or priestly caste that survived within Persian Culture? Were the Medes not necessarily a "civilization," but a culture with marriage alliances all the way from Lydia to parts of India? I've read Herodotus 30+ times since 1995 and a lot of his reportings, even a few quirky ones have been proven correct. I trust Herodotus. Please do a feature on Lydia.
Oh, how fascinating! I am excited for this deep dive into the Median Empire :)
Correction: now that I have watched the full video, I understand that the Median "Empire" probably did not exist. I am now curious to learn more about the Elamites, since it seems they played a much more prominent role than traditional historiography allocates to them
@@danukil7703Much of Elamites were destroyed by Ashurbanipal once, before some partially recovered. So, not a lot can be found about that too, or may look sparse.
Its not fair to say they didnt exist just because they were kinda mid.
The Father of lies? I don’t think so. Herodotus stated quite clearly that he only reported what was told to him and that he was under no obligation to believe it. However if he claims to be an eyewitness to an event and you or I don’t believe him then that’s another question altogether.
Maybe the Medo-Persian Empire was like Yugoslavia. For most of its history it was dominated by Serbia, but for a brief time when it was a German satellite state it was dominated by Croatia.
Maybe more like Gaul. Disunited as a rule, but for a time, a leader emerged that gathered the kingdoms and tribes under one banner (Vercingetorix).
when was Yugoslavia dominated by Croatia? the German satellite you're thinking about was the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist regime that built itself up on being the antithesis of Yugoslavia lol
@@phunkracyAlesia
@@enderman_666 The Nazi puppet state of Yugoslavia was Croat dominated because the Croats happened to be the Serbs' internal rival. Although the details get complicated with collaborators, autonomous states, and guerrillas.
@@samsonsoturian6013buddy. Those were two different nations. Yugoslavia changed it's borders a number of times. During Nazis Croatia was it's own nation. And at no time did Croats controlled Yugoslavia.
Very nicely done! This time period is fascinating.
Love this channel man, you should be more popular
This is very interesting. Thanks for sharing it!
Aren't scholars also saying now that the United Kingdom of Israel or the Unified Monarchy never existed too. I heard but don't know where, that the idea of the unified monarchy was created to basically allow for Israel to have a claim to the northern parts of Canaan If the Syro-Hittites, Assyrians or Arameans ever started to falter and lose territory
UsefulCharts definitely presents this view when he talks about the Torah
There definitely were a few Jewish states within Canaan, but all archeological evidence implies that they didn't encompass the entirety of the land, it's very likely the claim that they did came from ignorance and propaganda that couldn't be refuted at the time. I'm glad archeology let's us learn from non-bias sources.
@@thenutella8846 I think it is a confusion of idealized borders of the territories given to the tribes with the actual borders of the Kingdom. For example, the united Kingdom of Saul is usually just shown as all the 12 tribes but we know Saul definitely didn't control Philistia and was campaigning in some other territories attributed to the tribes so he didn't control all of the other territories either.
I think there was a united Kingdom in the highlands as the limits of the cities mentioned by the bible that Saul campaigned in match cities that the Egyptians mention campaigning against when they first returned to Canaan (minus Jerusalem, but given how closely the other cities align and the fact that the time of the Egyptian campaign should be under one of David's successors we could posit the Egyptians arrived either during or causing the division of the Kingdom).
Yes they were nomad pagans up until 3rd century bc and there was no first temple but "the second" which was the only one they've built, their myths were invented during macchabes dynasty to fabricate their legitimacy and had no statehood before... Hebrew is scriptural language which was never used by commoners and Torah was written in greek, much later translated into their "language "
@@HasheeshianDopethrone wasnt it up till the 6th century during the babylonian exile?
That was really enlightening, thanks. I'd like to hear more about this Persians coming from Elamites. I know Anshan was one of the great Elamite cities, and Cyrus did claim to be the king of Anshan, but I also heard that the Indo-European tribes from the steppes took it over in the early Iron age. So it would be good to get some clarity on this
persians = aryans + elamites
"There is no evidence that there ever was an English Empire. The examples that had been proposed to be English language and culture turned out to be British instead. The American Empire turns out to have evolved from the British civilization, not the English one. We must conclude that the English Empire was a fiction created by European historians (who did not know about Britain) to fill the gap between the Roman Empire and the the American one."
As an American, I had to laugh heartily at this. Actually, it was called the British Empire. (The language was Yankee 😉).
Pure finesse
you nailed it, thank you for detecting his flawed logic.
I don't know if this is a joke or a serious argument, as this is the internet, so I'm going to assume the latter, since someone in the comment section take this seriously.
England, at the end of War of the Roses, was a centralized state with an unquestioned hereditary monarch at the top with solid evidence of it existing.
Media, as talked in this video, was a amalgamation of disunited tribes/states only perceived by foreigners as united through fragmentary evidences. Also, this is falsely assumed to be the progenitor of the Achaemenid Persia.
If this is a joke, I salute to you.
Otherwise, you're constructing false analogy as a gotcha to discredit the well-made video.
Haha exactly.
I first learned about the Medes from, of all things, from one of the Asterix andObelix books. Which I guess proves what a death grip the Medes had on pop history back in those days.
This video explains why I prefer modern history to ancient history - trustworthy sources.
You're ripe for the taking! Did you buy that bridge in Brooklyn?
😂
@@brucknerian9664bet he listens to russian radio🇺🇦
How will Kurdish Median larpers recover from this?
By doubling down and claiming we're the orignial people and all other peoples in the region are kurds too, of course (I'm half kurdish and half zazaki, before anyone gets offended). There's always the Mitanni we can try and claim.
I thought only (us) Eastern Euros had these "we wuz secretly great but they (they=Catholic monks, Americans, Soviets, ...) covered it up" kinds of ideologies/theories. tee-hee
@@thenutella8846
you cant be a half zaza and a falf kurd .... they are the same its like a guy saying i am half persian and half tahrani 💀.
The Medes did exist what we are saying is that they probably did not rule an actual civilized settled empire.
@@thenutella8846 The Mitanni are pretty cool as well
Fantastic video as always. The issue today is that a lot of people are too emotionally and ideologically devoted either in blindly believing anything Herodotus claimed or in believing that the Median empire existed.
I don’t understand this Herodotus cult.
It shouldn’t be that wild to understand that it’s useful to read Herodotus but equally he was fallible and not unquestionable.
@@ebrim5013 some people think that if an ancient writer wrote something, it must automatically be a fact that can’t be questioned or dismissed. Some people have other ridiculous reasons for why they cite him as a purely factual source.
@@arman_1024 I think its just a general holdover from 19th and 20th century historiography, which was such a "Western" phenomenon really, and the Greeks were considered "Western", even though they were really very far east from England 🤨 This history of how these biases develop, is fascinating in and of itself.
@@michaeljfoley1Greeks were western in the idea of founding democracy and a lot of beliefs and cultural values Europe would eventually have (tho this is pretty vague)
Yeah, personally I am skeptical of the modern academia as well. I get that Herodotus could get stuff wrong but I don't see why he'ld just make shit up wholesale like the theory is assuming (that he made it up due to an assumption of Empires but given the Babylonian Empire also existed, he had no reason to).
Not until long ago Armenians kept using the name Medes instead of Kurds to refer to these people even the Ayyubid Empire
Very interesting presentation. Your concluding remarks seem to suggest that the Elamites, rather than the Medians, ought to be seen as a much stronger influence on the Achaemenids. Do you believe that they actually held a much larger territory than is traditionally ascribed?
I would love to see a video from you on the Elamites.
It is established that the Elamites provided the civil backbone of the Achaemenid state, especially in those earlier days. Cyrus himself and his dynasty were originally lords of Anshan (an Elamite city).
I have a feeling that they were just tribes back then.
Nice bookshelf
Thank you!
The pavers are handsome, an improvement on the old concrete-block system. The left edge of the video frame hints at the utility of a plumb bob.
19:10 If the ruins are Sasanian, that doesn't mean there never was a Median or Achaemenid city there, it just means that we probably can never know for sure because the remains of that city would be beneath the Sasanian remains that we obviously aren't going to dig through to find out.
A better theory is that Medes and Persians are the names of geographical regions and not people, Herodotus himself points out that the Medes considered themselves Aryans and spoke easily with the Persians without an interpreter, as according to Strabo . Persian, Sogdian, Bactrian and Madian languages are completely similar and have very little difference. Even Darius considers himself an Aryan in his inscription ،
Aryans had the Oxus civilization and the Elamite civilization had an interesting similarity to it
I keep scratching my head wide near eastern historical topics never mentioned Armenia, it was a large part of the near east for millennia, at least occupying one third of it, and they have archives. They are still around so you can talk to them and see what their historians have to say, may be a great help
I really despise the click bait title and the reference to nationalist Soviet pseudo science. I usually watch most stuff this channel puts out, but this really annoys me, and it obviously doesn't have anything to do with the map in the thumb nail or the contents of the video.
Looking fresh with that haircut and clean shave fam 💯
"Historians cannot find any record of the first two Medean kings in Assyrian chronicles, so they did not exist." Can't you see the logical fallacy there?
To most Iranians it is clear that persian adopted the elemite kingdom and made it into an empire and not controversial at all.
It should also be noted that ‘history is written by the winners’.
Achaemenid sources may also have minimized the importance of the Medes as a means of suppressing any possible revolutionary sentiments after the conquest.
As historians, we should always be careful about rejecting one assumption in favor of another, since we can’t categorically state that either one was wrong.
For all we know, someone will dig something up tomorrow that validates Herodotus.
Nevertheless, great video - I definitely learned a lot from it. Kudos!
That would make sense except their existence as a major power is downplayed by Assyrian sources as well compared to say the babylonians or egyptians. Under the theory that the Medes were a semi-nomadic tribal confederation, or the leading language/ethnic group of a loosely defined tribal confederation that includes the persians I can see the greeks confusing them and the persians in the same way the mongols were called and confused for the Tartars. From their perspective they did not succeed the Medes, the medes were an entirely different ethnic group they subjugated. The Elamites used to be the great power in the region, in the same way the mongols sought to emulate the Turkic Khaganates not the Tartars. Likewise the greeks and assyrians only understanding city relations may not have understood the difference between tribal tributary relations and vassals. The persians and the cities in the region like Ecbatana could've been basically independent except for paying the Medes off.
I agree the idea that the Persian Empire was a continuation of Elam makes sense. Wasn't one of the titles of Cyrus the Great King of Anshan, an Elamite title. And if I remember correctly wasn't the city of Anshan located not that far from Persepolis?
The change from complete reliance on Greek and Roman sources only began in the 1980s? That seems late. And did the Iranian Revolution of 1979 creating Iranian exiles fleeing to the West have anything to do with this?
keep in mind what sources writers are actuallu using including in this video
I don't think so, I think it had more to do with international archeology finally taking an interest in the middle east beyond biblical archeology. There was some archeological digs and efforts in Iran before then, but very few in comparison to the Mediterranean region.
The solar eclipse calculations confirms that the battle of Halys between Media and Lydia was indeed real as the reported eclipse event and the date by Herodotus was accurate which is May 28, 584 BC (not 585 as written on Wikipedia).
Each year I am confronted with just how far the American education had fallen. A lot of Herotodus's "lies" are truths that the self-deluded to not want to be true. As for centuries so call historians denied Troy and the Hittites.
Curious as to why the comment section has been turned off for videos under the Halloween & Mythology playlist?
Also 5:25.. it established what kind of history in its own right?
Who are you in any related field of study?
He’s literally a historian.
@@baneofbanes
What kinds? What are his credentials and where is his published research?
@@drstevej2527understanding "published" research after the convid era should have enlightened a lot of people
@@astroflyinsights
What does that even mean especially in relation to a completely unrelated field?
No one has changed history like historians.
I was hoping you also address the contact between Media and Lydia, and their supposed battle that Herodotus claims, do we have anything to suggest something like this happened (besides Herodotus)?
Great video. I love seeing that I have at least a few dozen of the same books as you haha
Alternative theory: Persian Empire succeeded because it was a successful synthesis of Indo-European pastoralists with an extensive horse-driven culture (i.e. the Medes as the most prominent example) and the state-building heritage of the Elamites, with their thousands of years of complexity. The book cited, by Pierre Bryant, presents a picture of the post-Cambyses II (i.e. from Darius the great) as being a time when uniquely Persian elements begin to be emphasized, and there seems to be a reasonable possibility that some sort of hybrid pastoral / Elamite state at this time passed under dominant control of the Persian nobility. In which case, they may have played up their political connections with the Medes, as fellow pastoralists and Indo-European speakers, to increase their within-Empire political legitimacy at the expense of the Elamites.
An interesting thesis and makes sense
I mean you get the (somewhat) contemporaneous situations where Aryan migrants/conquerers move into India and Persia with their horse-driven nomadic cultures into areas with a thousand years of urbanization like Elam/Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley. Suddenly the Vedic traditions and Persian confederacies/empires take shape and leave lasting impacts on their respective regions. The adoption of sedentary entrenchment and its blending with the rolling martial culture of the invaders produced some of the first polities and contiguous cultures that we'd think of as empire-sized today. Obvious Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, maybe the Mitanni and Hittites, were able to have hegemony over large areas but those pale in comparison to the Achaemenid and Maurya Empires that emerged a few hundred years after the integration of Aryan nomads and Semitic/Non-IE cityfolk (and debatably the Medians too, thus the video)
Median empire was probably a placebolder name for a non-existent empire between time separated empires in that region. Based on my knowledge wholly limited to what was presented in this video, I'd bet they were maxing personal freedom in a pseudo-anarcharistic state and the surrounding empires probably did not like the concept of their bottom-up power structure. Their history was erased through conquest, and there's little to speak of them as a result.
Thank you for sharing information on this blank spot of history.
we’re so back guys. :)
Why did the Greeks call joining the Persians, Medizing? Was Parmenion put in charge of a place called Media? Who called it that?
great choice for a video subject!
great video! i really appreciate the effort you put into breaking down the misconceptions. however, i feel like there's a fine line between questioning historical narratives and completely dismissing them. isn't it possible that some elements of what we've been taught could still hold some truth, even if they’re not what we expect? just a thought!
the medes were also mentioned in the bible. people want to deny historical facts the bible mentions. the hittites sffurred the same fact of being fictionalized until the late 1800s
Very uncertain if this is truth… if it goes against the Bible it isn’t. In Daniel Medeo-Persia was the bear like kingdom (or beast) with three ribs in its mouth and higher on the one side.
It seems to me that Medieval and Renaissance biases to Latin sources and thus the Greco sources are the heart of this matter. Those sources were what was used and believed, and later, generations just continued these biases. Thus, it became tradition and continued by means of cultural traditionally rout training. As to Heridutus, he used the sources he had that filled the need of his time. Warning his people of the teribble Persians. So, in that Heridutus, maybe embellished or bent history to what he thought was needed by the Greeks who was his main readers when he envisioned this work. I think that was his main point in writing this not to posterity that we associate with history know and the past 100 + or so years. Heridutus was not the first " historian" to do this and as we can see today he was not the last that want to use history as a tool to achieve some aim in the present by bending, twisting or even breaking history.
Eh, there is some also late collaboration of the idea of a preceding Empire in the Persian Shahnameh. So even if we had other sources, chances are it would have just changed to some legendary dynasty in the Shahnameh being said to be the Medians.
Those were the only sources the Medieval and Renaissance historians had available, so to state that's just a form of "bias" is quite historically ignorant. They couldn't just sit in their basements and google it, they had to work with what they had.
And the idea that Herodotus' histories were all driven by some nefarious motive to achieve political goals in his time, is prime 21st Century Goldfish Brain. I get that people nowadays are taught to believe everything is political and everything any historical author ever wrote in history had a political motive, but this really is an extremely simplistic view of reality and makes you a lot more biased than the classical authors you so smugly denounce.
Thanks, it is all interesting. Learning the limits of our knowledge is important.
Medes were the borderland Indian tribe known in India as Madas, their country (north west India) was Madra. Their king's sister is known as Amytis by Greeks. She was married to Nebuchadnezzar. In reality, her name was "humaiti", which is a corrupted form of Sanskrit "Sumati" meaning "good thoughts". Herodotus says Medians called themselves "arrian" by which he means they called themselves "Arya". This word was used by ancient Persians and Indians.
I'm guessing its a combination of Herotodus' desire to underacknowlege the Persians and other rivals, and the simple fact that Greeks knew of the area through trade contact, rather than political contact. This colors their attribution of who's empire this is.
Interesting. On fake history. What do you think about the opinions of older historians Richard Bentley, John Wilson Ross, and Polydor Hochart on Tacitus being a forgery? Bentley raised some valid concerns about textual integrity and inconsistencies, while Ross pushed the idea that Lorenzo Bracciolini probably made it all up in the 15th century. Hochart built on that, pointing out stylistic issues that make it seem more Renaissance than Roman. Any merit to their claims?
The Medes seem to have been a tough adversary of the Assyrians for several centuries; tougher than the Cannanites and the peoples in Southern Mesopotamia and Elam. Once one discounts the bias of the authors, those records read as reports of half-victories at best, that never managed to establish Assyrian control over even part of the land.
So maybe the "historical fiction" is actually the modern theory that the Medes were just a bunch of pastoral tribes without any national organization?
Again, just because the archaeology of the land has *so far* failed to bring up evidence of a wider political/military organization, it does not mean that it did not exist...
Yeah, being a powerful political entity in itself alone argues for complex organization.
Hmph. I'm pretty sure I saw something about the Elamites in the Old Testament... And my impression of the Medes and Persians is that they were allies, like cousins who teamed up to overthrow the Mesapotamians.
Maybe it's a good thing I never got into Herodotus 😂..
Thank you for confirming that it's not Tartaria because even as a joke, the whole Tartaria thing has gotten stale.
Gonna attract all sorts of weirdos with that title
Media is lies! Fake News!
can u have some analysis about existence of alexander with same logic
One for the algorithm!
Two for the show!
Third times a charm
So, Cyrus is like Ceasar, and Perisia is to Medians as The Empire is to the Republic? Hmmm?
Fantastic stuff, thankyou. It seems to me the ‘Medians’ were the ‘barbarian’ (loaded word yeah) tribes at the Assyrian borderlands? Hence why their material culture looks Assyrian; they were trading with their neighbours, and adopting their practices/materials on an ad-hoc basis. And the turbulant period of the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. with the Babylonians and Elamites and others washing over the Assyrians is then, for whatever reason, given over to the Medians by good old “i heard a rumour” Herodotus? Like the way we use the shorthand of the “Goths” replacing the Romans.
I love how as a Persian living in Iran I don't know what any of that means... what we learned in school was Persian migratied from north lands and there were already different tribes living in Iran and Persians also divided into 3 main tribes and lived peacefuly next to other tribes... and it was like that for a while until one of our western neighbors kept attacking and pillaging us so people came together to fight them back under Cyrus then they succeeded and Cyrus was nice to them and he was like why should we stop here ? So it lead to a big empire ... 😅
So Herotodus would be writing worldbuilding lore for Ubisoft, if he was alive today
About 40 years ago in Iran (when the hands of the Islamic regime had not tainted the history books taught in schools), we were taught that the Persians were Aryans who arrived in the area thousands of years ago. They split in to many tribes and went their separate ways. Although there are evidences of some of these tribes forming and living in small cities (Such as the "Burnt City" which goes back over 8000 years or more ago), most of the Aryans lived as nomadic tribes that were seasonaly migrating from place to place within what later became Persian kingdom. The nomadic Aryans have barely left Any evidence of their existence. These nomadic Aryans were the Medes. Different nomadic Aryan tribes that had grown in numbers and expanded their range of seasonal migration.
It is highly likely that the Medes (we call them the Medes. They knew themselves Aryans with a similar language and belief system) were simply the unified nomadic Aryans. Where did the Medes go? And were they conquered by the Achamenids?
My opinion is that the Medes were not conquered. Although there may have been a slight civil war between them to establish a new form of order (Achamenids). They changed their way of life and instead of existing as many tribes, they once again became One. And from migrating nomads, they became city dwellers. In settling in cities, they became a nation. Their nation needed a leader. Cyrus from one of the prominent original tribes became their king and called the new kingdom "Hakhamaneshi" or Achamenid as it is known in English.
Considering how many times people have doubted Herodotus only to be proven wrong, I am going to trust Herodotus.
over the actual neighbors of the people he wrote about?
Name five.
@@samsonsoturian6013 * The Scythians had a ritual of heating hemp seeds in a small tent and becoming excited by the vapors
*Herodotus described a type of Egyptian river boats which historians thought fake until they found an example of one
*Herodotus correctly described the embalming process
*Herodotus correctly describes the existence of pygmy populations in Africa
*Herodotus describes how people in the Himalayas collect gold from soil dug up by marmots when they dig their burrows, though he describes them as ants.
*Herodotus described how the Scythians used human skin for leather.
Conclusion? Herodotus was correct about everything.
Father of lies is such an iconic title
@@jacobcantrell82 you actually believe Herodotus was right about everything?
I love your videos man, ive never not learnt something! There are few on this platform that manage such comprehensive breakdowns.
Lack of surviving documentation does not disprove the existence of Media. Whether Media was an empire or merely a Kingdom or civilization is an argument of semantics and definitions.
How real was the map though? Was a single Median regime able to project power from Cappadocia to Bactria regularly between ~650-550 BC?
I love history, but this is what I absolutely hate about history. The thing is history (mostly ancient and even some up to medieval or early modern) can sometimes be blurred and the dates of when rulers ruled or lived is often really messed up cause the records are often very scarce, leading to some figures becoming legendary or mythical cause we aren’t sure if they ever existed. Like how the first 29-50 emperors of Japan are legendary and even the one who aren’t still have lack of records about their life and is filled with legend. Like the first Ottoman Sultan Osman I who despite being born not in ancient times but pretty much close to early modern, still has such scarcity about him, and I wonder if he was actually real. Ancient records are so messed up. Making what actually happened almost obscured of information. Like the Roman kings in Rome. This always just annoys and frustrates me cause it prevents me from knowing what actually happened, I consider it a thorn in the back of learning history. Sometimes I wonder if even more modern history still has messed up records, I even ask myself if Napoleon was a real person or a legendary figure or with messed up records. The thing about history is we are never truly sure whether it truly ever happened and we can only rely on records or patterns to figure it out.
Seems you're saying we should all be 99.9% skeptical about absolutely everything; and for the other 0.1% we're standing on thin ice. Not a very balanced perspective, unless all you're interested in is sleeping all night and all day.
The Kurds descend from the ancient Medes people.
Not only the Kurds, but Gilanis, Mazenderanis, Talishis, and the Azeris too descended from the Medes.
Technically Medes are a far ancestor of Kurds while Parthians are the closer ancestors.
It's almost like classical history at best is educated guess work based on barely sufficient and at times contradictory material sources, isn't it?
Herodotus named it the Median Empire because it was in the middle of the Babylonian and Persian ones. (joke)
Anything about state fairs in north america late 17early 1800s?