"ey, halvdan, where are you going for summer-vacay this year?" "hi there, snorre, i thought that ireland trip last year was kinda quaint, wanna row along?" "sure, i'll get the boys, you get the torches?" "hell yea, boat trip!!" "BOYS-RAID-OUT!!!"
This theory reminds me of the meme about if one guy starts digging a hole other men will see and just randomly join and then suddenly you got a bunch of dudes just digging a hole
That fact that as a child I was stacking rocks before I learned about Stonehenge, says a lot about Stonehenge. It's DEEP in our dna to be creative & see how big it can be.
I actually think it's more interesting in some ways. No, there wasn't any "great" event that spurred it on, humans just like building things and they decided to build it, because humans are fun like that. That's how art works, really. The first Gothic cathedrals were like that ("let's build it really tall and light with big glass windows, because I think we can do it and wouldn't that be so beautiful?") And when it fell down they said, "well, that was a lot of work, but I think we can fix this with butresses"). Sure, powered flight was to fix a problem (how to get there from here without using land or water), but it was also because, wouldn't it be really cool to fly through the air like a bird? I doubt that the painters of Lascaux had no practical motivations for their paintings, but I bet a lot of the motivations were the pure joy of painting by torchlight in these deep caverns of the earth; because wouldn't it be cool if you could go see some beautiful shapes and colors on a wall, but /even better/ because you have to go on a journey through the earth to see it? If you look at human history from the point of view wars and leaders, you get the impression that everything has an economic/political motivation. But when you look at it from the point of view of art, and invention, so much more seems to be about human curiosity and creativity joined to practical considerations.
I've never associated this idea to history but I have often thought about it. When I play minecraft I reach a point in which I don't have to worry about anything in the game, so I create another world to get rid of boredom. I can surely imagine myself bored to the point that I start to buld something just for fun.
I do this as a carpenter. I build houses and remodel old ones. When I get bored or burnt out with that, I'll go to my garage and make a cabinet, table, etc. to "recharge my batteries". I also used to play Minecraft, and would always end up starting a new world after about 6 months because of boredom.
I came across your channel today, and, beyond the fact that your videos generally present fairly compelling and interesting historical ideas, or really interesting dives into the lives of first nations people, I really have to comment on how genuinely pleasant your voice is to listen to. You have a softly melodious way of speaking, and a wonderful ebb and flow to your explanation and storytelling, both of which I could listen to all day.
Thing is, boredoms is only possible if they had time on their hands and probably occurred much more in hunter gatherer societies. Instead Stone Henge like many other ancient monuments of the Neolithic Age in Britain, were erected at a time of great activity. For the first time the landscape was being cleared of great swathes of woodland for farming activities. This not only led to greater food production it produced a relationship of man to the landscape by those early farmers, who now had the size of population and time to create these structures. The importance of clear vistas of sky and land from them is so important that you cannot look at them individually without reference to where they are situated and the views around. Within this new open Neolithic landscape were burial chambers and great procession avenues for which henges were an integral part, all created through the clearance of these ancient forests. It should also be pointed out, that evidence suggests that stone circles evolved from timber henges which were a lot more numerous, of which little now remains.
Alan Watts spoke on this. "Boredom is the big problem." he said if I remember correctly. To him boredom is not just an important driving force of history but also on a metaphysical level.
While I think that something like stone henge is way to big of a project to be justifiable by boredom, I had a similiar question once about some relativly simple carvings, that my prof. associated with unknown deities. I can absolutly imagine someone carfing a face into a stick out of boredom and throwing it mindlessly in the swamp. But like with the stonehenge if there are more and more of those things, then it is more likely that they have some kind of meaning unless they are as simple as doodles maybe. My reasoning is that we don't try to preserve (or even finish) the things that we do just out of boredom, since we aren't really invested. So it probably couldn't be more than a starting point.
Part of the problem is stonehenge and any large stone building is massive under takeing, and we have skipped the first stages. The wood henge and the small stones. If Stonehenge was the equal to a sports stadium then all the other other stone circles are just smaller marked communal areas. Many of them are small enough that only a few people would be needed to build them, a hand full a week end for a few months, and a few family's could fill them up.
True for a lot of useful inventions that allow for tasks that used to take a huge amount of time to be done more quickly or more efficiently, or require less labor. But with stuff like monuments, I'm not sure. I think boredom would play a bigger role there.
Man I hope you get noticed like you deserve. This is a great, and funny but thought provoking one. I hope you continue to experiment with your channel. And I’m glad to see you making videos again.
A few months ago I had my truck at the automotive shop for repairs. The repairs would take 4 hours and the shop was in the middle of nowhere. In my boredom, I wandered out into the woods near the property. Out of boredom I found some dead branches. And stones. I made a small wooden spear with them, some corded grass, and a lot of patience. The spear was sharpened with a piece of discarded cinderblock. There is now a 2 foot stone tipped spear sitting in the woods by an auto repair shop, not out of necessity, but out of boredom. I collected my truck and drove home.
Boredom is an extra motivating factor that can be added to practically any other factor. Napoleon probably invaded Russia for power and wealth, but boredom probably helped push his hand. Stonehenge was probably a religious monument, but people are way more willing to go out and do that if they were all sitting around bored. "Ugh, I have nothing better to do, I guess I might as well go help the shaman with whatever they're building this year"
My favourite thing is that cave paintings literal started most likely from boredom as humans in general if left alone with drawing implements generally start doodling. That same behaviour can be seen in marking or breaking objects while hiking or traveling. Or stacking stones or other objects
The people in Mora in sweden carved toy horses during the winter. As you can't do anything useful outside in a swedish winter. At some point every child has a ton of toy horses. No need for more. So they sold them to other regions. And now the red Mora horses are a symbol of sweden.
I’ve been making artifacts for over 30 years. I can safely say that most of artifacts are overkill technology speaking. There’s no need for such artistic and complicated recipes. Culture is strange. Wonderful but weird.
One thing we do know often determined historical action (at least in Europe) but rarely gets acknowledged is astrology. Many humanists at the start of their career made a living by making horoscopes for nobles and royals while enjoying their hospitality.
I think a counter-argument to this is that boredom is primarily a side-effect of modern modes of production, the same way hobbies are. Most people nowadays make their living doing repetitive alienated tasks and fill the rest of their time with counter-activities as a counterbalance. If people's boredom was a primary motivator for large events or monuments like this then the earth would be covered in them, since for 100,000+ years of our hunter-gathering history people had to work significantly less to subsist. But you only have to go to a rural village in some countries to find most people just sitting around and chatting for hours a day every day. It can often seem unusual to us when we read about societies that barely changed over thousands of years according to the archaeological record, but I think laziness and inertia are a lot stronger than boredom.
the earth is kinda covered in them. We find megastructures like this pretty much everywhere we find significant human presence in the last ~10,000 years. You gotta remember that there didn't used to be quite so many people as there are now.
I remember reading many years ago that Gore Vidal, or at least I think it was him, attributed much of what Caligula did down to boredom rather than insanity.
I agree with this theory. Too many historical explanations rely on sets of intentions related to religion, politics or power, but what if things are far more random and less linear? I'm pretty sure that is the case.
I think the greatest potential for this is in the arts, especially the culinary arts. Frying foods in fat is such a culturally widespread practice, but takes enough steps and resources that someone had to be experimenting with it. And given how fried foods taste, I bet they were bored.
I think boredom could explain why Stonehenge is so large. Vanity and desire to awe visitors may also have player a role. After learning long and hard our road to learning astronomy was, though, and how essential it is to timekeeping, and how useful timekeeping is for agriculture and navigation, I think it is a good guess to say that people built a stone-henge because they wanted a durable calendar. A massive calendar of stone is a public work as well as a display of power and an answer to boredom for engineers. That is what most public works have been and are today.
Referring to the Egyptian pyramids, we can see that massive monuments could have the enthusiastic support of those involved in their construction. The workmen who built those pyramids were paid conscripts (often selected by lottery), not slaves, and they took pride in their work, as we have seen from inscriptions found on some of the stones naming their groups, such as "Friends of Pharoah." Being involved in such a massive project probably did break up the monotony of daily life, but it appears that being part of something important also drove those who performed the labor. =^[.]^=
I like to think about the first person to discover humans can drink milk from animals. First thing's first. It probably wasn't a cow they first drank milk from. And they had no idea how to "milk" an animal. They only had one fram of reference for getting milk out of something. This leads me to believe we discovered dairy after a bunch of hunter gatherers had the first ever game of "Truth or Dare"
From what I've gathered, Stonehenge as an example was originally a group of four or five big pine logs sunk into the ground for no obvious reason about a mile from the nearest known contemporary settlement. This was done by early settlers in Britain, before it became an island. Black skinned, blue eyed Mesolithic people. Presumably it was a group of totem poles, although it's hard to know for sure. Ritual purpose and all that. Then after sea levels rose the Neolithic people came out of the Levant bringing farming across the world, eventually reaching Britain. They excavated a big circular bank and ditch and then buried people inside it, marking their graves with large stones. So presumably it was a graveyard for the Neolithic people. There are 56 evenly spaced graves containing 63 cremated people. This was naturally trashed by archeologists. Additional graves were added over time and some wooden posts were set up perhaps for decoration. Then later they relocated a bunch of stones from offsite to the location and set up a timber circle a few miles away. Archeologists have again presumed some ritual purpose. Probably solstice related. People appear to have gathered there for some reason. Wooden circle seems to be aligned for viewing the winter solstice and the stone circle for the summer solstice. I would imagine there was some sort of party held in the area twice a year. In the Bronze Age they appear to have come back and updated the site, moved some stones around every few hundred years to accommodate new aesthetic preferences. Then eventually in the Iron Age the Celts seem to have culturally appropriated the site as well. They built a fortified village in the area and spruced up the place. Later medieval people figured it was built by giants and wizards, or perhaps the devil. Modern people seem to think the druids built it, but it was already ancient by the time their religion spread to the area. Anyhow boredom could explain a lot of it. Obviously, it was some sort of cemetery for much of its history, the particulars of the decorations are probably pretty arbitrary. The distance the quarried stones were brought from certainly speaks to an impractical motivation, a prestige project of some sort.
Egotistical kings and chiefs and emperors have built bigger and more absurd things than Stonehenge simply to satisfy their whims and feed their overgrown egos. Priests have insisted on even bigger absurdities to satisfy their superstitions. So I think that is the most likely explanation for Stonehenge.
This is pretty much why we do anything. Every bit of time spent on things that are not solely for survival is out of curiosity or boredom. Just because we can.
"Doesn't really tell you much about them." I wouldn't assume this. Simple things can tell a lot. Plus, there are history fields that focus on everyday boring stuff.
honestly i think napoleons invasion and stonehenge both have a small bit of boredom involved in their creation, old britons taking a break from their dull life to construct something huge and fascinating and unnatural, napoleon being tempted to do the one thing that makes him feel alive again, even if its risky and stupid and cruel
I personally believe that every single big thing, big monument or work of art, came about because someone was bored at some point, had an idea, convinced others to work on it and then made something. You theory kinda just trivializes it too much, like everything just happened, personally i believe it's a mix of boredom and determination. "I want to do something, let's do this really complicated thing that will look good and make us feel good"
Didn't Miyamoto come up with the concept of the first Mario game when he was bored on the train and started imagining a little man jumping from rooftop to rooftop? And look what a profound impact that boring train ride has had on our art and entertainment. It would eventually lay the ground work for one of the prolific gaming genres of the 90's, it resulted in one of the most universally recognizable mascots in history and it played a key role in restoring the entirety of the video games industry after the crash of '83. Without that boring train ride the last 40 years of art, media and video games would look vastly different. The video games industry might never even have recovered at all, it most certainly wouldn't have come as far as it has.
I love this! So freaking hilarious! It could be as true as anything, and actually makes me feel happy as heck! If you look there is a couple of those clouds that look like some of those rocks lying on their sides, like they are waiting to be placed, lol. Thank you for this spectacular video!
I think art often has a practical function people didnt intend, like some people learn american english from watching Friends or other tv shows. They were made entirely for a different reason but people just found it was a useful way to learn a language.
I'd be inclined to believe any theory you put forth based on how dryly you managed to deliver this one, though I can't see your face to tell if you were grinning throughout it
Generally, when we think that we have come up with a theory that nobody will support, guess what, its already an accepted theory. This has happened to me many times in my life. I'm 58 but only recently (3 years ago) discovered I have ADHD. I looked into it and found that about 10% of children and 5% of adults in Australia have been diagnosed (a lag in adult diagnoses since it was not recognised previously). Its is apparently 70% genetic. I thought, 10% is a lot there must have been an evolutionary advantage in the past because there sure as hell isnt one now. I hypothesised that it may have been an advantage to hunter gatherers since being extremely bored encourages activities like hunting and also encourages multi skilling (currently specialisation is rewarded). Anyway, I checked and the theory already exists, Its called the Hunter Farmer theory. I thought it would be relevant to mention here since (ADHD, for me at least) its largely about boredom. Also because a theory of boredom motivating large historical changes also already exists :) mostly in philosophy and psychology.
I see lots of ancient figurines in museums, and they are often labeled as ceremonial or religious objects from these lost civilizations. Well i wonder, what if they're actually just toys for the kids? Action figures!
I like these musings. Interesting point about whether the theory leads anywhere; I think you might be under-selling it. After all, it tells us that people were doing well enough to have time on their hands, rather than the incessant hard graft that we might imagine from sone of the history books. It also goes towards showing that people aren't purely driven by economic motives, unlike the model some people (cough, management consultants, cough) make our lives miserable with. Could possibly think of more but will leave that as an exercise for the bored...
Malcolm, now that you have put forward this theory, I'm sure that you are correct. Boredom was at least a contributing factor and the main factor in multiple historical events.
I don't think the Boring Theory is boring, I think it is particularly interesting because of the humor of insight we get on ourselves as people by applying it. And surely as you said something major had to be caused at least in part by boredom. It wouldn't surprise me if a good number of things of "importance" got made out of a joke or boredom, but they were so impressive that people long past the makers death attributed their own meaning and then altered the structures to represent their new interpretation. Sorta like how Ancient Greek and Roman statues were stripped of their paint, to create this clean and stoic appearance versus the vibrant reality.
I've always had this thought from a biological point of view. The human brain is 20% of our energy expenditure. As hunters or gatherers, that's incredibly useful for each day of tracking and foraging. But when you're doing repetitive tasks such as agriculture or a trade, your mind will naturally want to apply itself to more. I think the majority of human culture stems from needing something to "whistle while we work."
i remember hearing about stone henge in my history class, i was built over many centuries by thousands of people, probably the decedents of the first people who started it, some of the middle most stones line up with ether the sun or other significant starts, and the larger stones came from miles away! this is all to say that I'm pretty sure this was a religious structure. i dont know any other sort of building that people would put so much effort into other then maybe a palace.
Yeah, I doubt stone henge was out of boredom considering those rocks were dragged over 100 miles. But I agree, I am sure there is something in history, major event or monument, that is a result of boredom.
I think you're selling your hypothesis a little short. I would not be at all surprised to find that some significant events or structures throughout history started with our modern equivalent to "hold my beer".
I think you're on to something. However there are also issues. I know you were using Stonehenge as partial hyperbole but It actually serves as a good example for both sides of the argument. I think boredom is a great motivating factor to build something. However building Stonehenge would take lots of people lots of time to build. It is very difficult to motivate lots of people for lots of time to build something that's very difficult to build. I think that many smaller things or bigger things that we're not as complex to build May have been driven by boredom but the bigger and more complex they are the more effort and more people that they require drives down the probability that that object was driven by boredom
*I MADE THIS ARGUMENT A FEW YEARS BACK* almost all the "mysteries" of the past can be solved if you just add time and boredom WE look at a massive amazing cared rock and think OMG how did they do that - the answer is very slowly but what else are you going to do??? Maybe a night down at the rock carving with your mates and some beers was the highlight of your day...
Reverse the idea, and you actually get a phenomena that is fairly well documented. People inventing activities to make other people occupied, so that they don't get bored. E.g. one of the main reasons the New Deal was approved by a lot of (most?) politicians, was the argumet that it would prevent civil unrest among the people in USA, by keeping them preoccupied and fed. E.g. the reason Swedish King Charles XII, conquered a lot of Europe, was that the Swedish parliament didn't want him to get bored within the Swedish borders, because everytime he did, he got very destructive. Charles XII was one of the few Swedish kings that was a tyrant (that is: he had almost total power in his rule of Sweden, and he couldn't be punished if he broke the law), but the Swedish parliament still had some powers, one of them being allocating money and resources to the Swedish Army (there was also a Royal Army, but it was just a small number of fairly incompetent rich, bored, people, and a few payed merchanaries that they could play army with). Charles XII father, Charles XI, was also a tyrant, but a tyrant that respected the letter of the law, and usually obliged to any decisions made by the semi-democratic Swedish parliament. His son was different, a total psycho. As a small child, he liked to torture and kill animals, as a tween he started to do the same with humans, and likely not just to servants and low bornes. So everytime the boy got bored-drunk, everything and everybody around him was in hasard. There is one story about when he got drunk together with his bff, and tried out one of his new sword, by decapitating numerous animals (including an ox), in order of size. Likely he had already decapitated a few servants (it's not documented, talking bad things about the sucessor of the throne, true or not, was illegal, and punished hard). When he, and his buddy, together with their less drunk guards, drunkenly staggered of the castle ground, into the city, searching for new targets for testing the sword, someone got hold of a tutor, that held enough authority over the tween, and knew him well enough, to talk him down (although the tutor still feared for his life, while he did it, and he newer regained the mental health he had before this trauma). During the first part of his reign, Charles XII did pretty well, and people surounding him could most of the time keep him preoccupied with mostly doing constructive things. He did get caught doing a lot of petty theft, and money forgeries. But he couldn't be punished for it, as a king, only his accomplishes could, and other people getting punished for his crimes, with a few exceptions, was not something that bothered Charles XII. But as Charles XII grew more bored, he grew more destructive, and more and more neglected his duties of a king. And worst of all, since he was a tyrant, if he didn't continously approved decisions made by the parliament, everything in Sweden came to a stand. The solution. Charles XII wanted a reputation as a hero king, a great warrior, just like his father. So the parliament equipped him with an army and resources for wars abroad. While the king was waring, out of the country, the parliament had temporary power to rule Sweden, and a lot of people, resources (and bribe money), needed to keep quiet about new royal scandals, was freed for better use.
So a couple km from stone henge is wood henge. Similar layout and they’ve for the remains of pigs and food from all over Britain. It was aligned with the winter solstice. It was a big party hall occupied in the most boring time of the year. I think this definitely falls under your boring theory of history. Stone henge was built over an even older graveyard. It’s built out of stone, a dead material. It was the party house for the ancestors so they didn’t feel left out.
I love this approach reminds me of the KISS method (keep it simple stupid) I think keeping wives happy has long been the driving force of our species 😅 cheers bud awesome video
Interesting idea. 1) I'm pretty put off by the existence of women in the story only to nag their male family members. 2) once you have the basic technology, getting together the whole community for a big work day was probably a way to solidify group solidarity. There's evidence in some of the massive earthworks in the Americas (I want to say Cahokia??) that instead of having a few specific skilled workers doing the work over time, the communities deliberately did it all in a couple days using as many people as possible. Modern research shows that people who sing or march together have more fellow-feeling and loyalty; and then you can all point at the henge or pyramid or whatever and say, "yeah, I helped make that."
You could also think of "Great Men" as those that are more likely to be bored. The more restless you are (like Napoleon) the more likely you are to want to change your environment.
The Tripadvisor page for Stonehenge actually does have reviews from very unimaginative people complaining that it's 'just a load of old rocks' and so on. No 1 candidate for biggest historical event caused partly due to boredom and curiosity: Columbus' voyage to the New World. Having gone around a bunch of monarchs, begging for money so he could sail westwards to Asia and having repeatedly been told he was a crank who didn't know how big the world was, the slavery-obsessed genocide monkey finally caught Ferdinand and Isabella in a good mood. They'd just conquered Granada and completed the centuries-long project of the 'Reconquista'. They had a lot of new wealth and spare time on their hands. So instead of telling Columbus to get lost, they thought: 'What've we really got to lose by giving him a bit of money? Worst case scenario is that the little Italian creep sails off into the Atlantic and starves to death and we never have to see him again. Best case: he accidentally finds something interesting out there and we make a bunch of money and look really smart for sponsoring him.' Some of the worst events in human history ensued and it can all be directly attributed to a chain of events that began when a pair of bored monarchs gave money to an evil little crackpot just to see what happened.
Boredom and " I bet you" are the unspoken driving force of history :)
I'd bet. And "screw those guys" causing all kinds of weird wars and alliances that don't make much sense looking back.
Also, lets not forget "Hey y'all, watch this!".
"ey, halvdan, where are you going for summer-vacay this year?"
"hi there, snorre, i thought that ireland trip last year was kinda quaint, wanna row along?"
"sure, i'll get the boys, you get the torches?"
"hell yea, boat trip!!"
"BOYS-RAID-OUT!!!"
@@gitstautusgitstutasgitstatus war of the bucket, q.e.d.
This theory reminds me of the meme about if one guy starts digging a hole other men will see and just randomly join and then suddenly you got a bunch of dudes just digging a hole
I would totally join in a good hole diggin'
Digging digging holes, digging a hole
That fact that as a child I was stacking rocks before I learned about Stonehenge, says a lot about Stonehenge.
It's DEEP in our dna to be creative & see how big it can be.
Hell yeah. It is a peaceful thing to have a creative outlet. Not having that leads to boredom
Idle hands are the devil's workshop.
I grew up on a farm and I used to build tree houses every summer and I never really understood why, but this is a perfect explanation
Three houses or tree houses?
I actually think it's more interesting in some ways. No, there wasn't any "great" event that spurred it on, humans just like building things and they decided to build it, because humans are fun like that. That's how art works, really. The first Gothic cathedrals were like that ("let's build it really tall and light with big glass windows, because I think we can do it and wouldn't that be so beautiful?") And when it fell down they said, "well, that was a lot of work, but I think we can fix this with butresses"). Sure, powered flight was to fix a problem (how to get there from here without using land or water), but it was also because, wouldn't it be really cool to fly through the air like a bird? I doubt that the painters of Lascaux had no practical motivations for their paintings, but I bet a lot of the motivations were the pure joy of painting by torchlight in these deep caverns of the earth; because wouldn't it be cool if you could go see some beautiful shapes and colors on a wall, but /even better/ because you have to go on a journey through the earth to see it? If you look at human history from the point of view wars and leaders, you get the impression that everything has an economic/political motivation. But when you look at it from the point of view of art, and invention, so much more seems to be about human curiosity and creativity joined to practical considerations.
The same logic applies to games. People love building sandbox games. The need to create is part of human nature.
I've never associated this idea to history but I have often thought about it.
When I play minecraft I reach a point in which I don't have to worry about anything in the game, so I create another world to get rid of boredom.
I can surely imagine myself bored to the point that I start to buld something just for fun.
I do this as a carpenter. I build houses and remodel old ones. When I get bored or burnt out with that, I'll go to my garage and make a cabinet, table, etc. to "recharge my batteries". I also used to play Minecraft, and would always end up starting a new world after about 6 months because of boredom.
4:50 ugh, I hate it when the top rocks fall off and crush people, just the worst
I came across your channel today, and, beyond the fact that your videos generally present fairly compelling and interesting historical ideas, or really interesting dives into the lives of first nations people, I really have to comment on how genuinely pleasant your voice is to listen to. You have a softly melodious way of speaking, and a wonderful ebb and flow to your explanation and storytelling, both of which I could listen to all day.
Thing is, boredoms is only possible if they had time on their hands and probably occurred much more in hunter gatherer societies. Instead Stone Henge like many other ancient monuments of the Neolithic Age in Britain, were erected at a time of great activity.
For the first time the landscape was being cleared of great swathes of woodland for farming activities. This not only led to greater food production it produced a relationship of man to the landscape by those early farmers, who now had the size of population and time to create these structures. The importance of clear vistas of sky and land from them is so important that you cannot look at them individually without reference to where they are situated and the views around. Within this new open Neolithic landscape were burial chambers and great procession avenues for which henges were an integral part, all created through the clearance of these ancient forests. It should also be pointed out, that evidence suggests that stone circles evolved from timber henges which were a lot more numerous, of which little now remains.
Alan Watts spoke on this. "Boredom is the big problem." he said if I remember correctly. To him boredom is not just an important driving force of history but also on a metaphysical level.
Many people ask "why stonehenge," but few ask "why *not* stonehenge?"
Even fewer ask "how's stonehenge?" :sad_hamster:
While I think that something like stone henge is way to big of a project to be justifiable by boredom, I had a similiar question once about some relativly simple carvings, that my prof. associated with unknown deities. I can absolutly imagine someone carfing a face into a stick out of boredom and throwing it mindlessly in the swamp.
But like with the stonehenge if there are more and more of those things, then it is more likely that they have some kind of meaning unless they are as simple as doodles maybe.
My reasoning is that we don't try to preserve (or even finish) the things that we do just out of boredom, since we aren't really invested. So it probably couldn't be more than a starting point.
Part of the problem is stonehenge and any large stone building is massive under takeing, and we have skipped the first stages.
The wood henge and the small stones.
If Stonehenge was the equal to a sports stadium then all the other other stone circles are just smaller marked communal areas.
Many of them are small enough that only a few people would be needed to build them, a hand full a week end for a few months, and a few family's could fill them up.
According to Robert Heinlein, laziness, rather than boredom, is the mother of invention. And he does a pretty good job of presenting his theory.
Nice yes convenience is a major thing.
True for a lot of useful inventions that allow for tasks that used to take a huge amount of time to be done more quickly or more efficiently, or require less labor. But with stuff like monuments, I'm not sure. I think boredom would play a bigger role there.
Man I hope you get noticed like you deserve. This is a great, and funny but thought provoking one. I hope you continue to experiment with your channel. And I’m glad to see you making videos again.
A few months ago I had my truck at the automotive shop for repairs. The repairs would take 4 hours and the shop was in the middle of nowhere.
In my boredom, I wandered out into the woods near the property.
Out of boredom I found some dead branches. And stones. I made a small wooden spear with them, some corded grass, and a lot of patience. The spear was sharpened with a piece of discarded cinderblock.
There is now a 2 foot stone tipped spear sitting in the woods by an auto repair shop, not out of necessity, but out of boredom.
I collected my truck and drove home.
Boredom is an extra motivating factor that can be added to practically any other factor. Napoleon probably invaded Russia for power and wealth, but boredom probably helped push his hand. Stonehenge was probably a religious monument, but people are way more willing to go out and do that if they were all sitting around bored. "Ugh, I have nothing better to do, I guess I might as well go help the shaman with whatever they're building this year"
My favourite thing is that cave paintings literal started most likely from boredom as humans in general if left alone with drawing implements generally start doodling.
That same behaviour can be seen in marking or breaking objects while hiking or traveling. Or stacking stones or other objects
The people in Mora in sweden carved toy horses during the winter. As you can't do anything useful outside in a swedish winter. At some point every child has a ton of toy horses. No need for more. So they sold them to other regions. And now the red Mora horses are a symbol of sweden.
"It ain't work, but it's honest."
Your grounds are well laid, your construction is phenomenal, your delivery is on point and you sir are clearly going places
It's been almost a year since I have published a video where the views exceeded my subscriber count.
I found this hilarious, this is one of the most interesting theories for history i've heard and the funniest critique i've seen in a while.
Just discovered your channel! The underspoken aspect reminds me of Casually Explained. Can't wait to see where your videos go! Great work!
Occam's razor, so eloquent in its simplicity
I’ve been making artifacts for over 30 years. I can safely say that most of artifacts are overkill technology speaking. There’s no need for such artistic and complicated recipes. Culture is strange. Wonderful but weird.
i love listening to you talk.... about literally anything tbqh
One thing we do know often determined historical action (at least in Europe) but rarely gets acknowledged is astrology. Many humanists at the start of their career made a living by making horoscopes for nobles and royals while enjoying their hospitality.
I honestly believe that this is the reason for Gobekli Tepe. It's burning man for late Neolithic hunters with a seasonal food surplus.
Sure I'll incorporate that into my belief system
They could have been the foundation for the second floor of a festival hall.
I think a counter-argument to this is that boredom is primarily a side-effect of modern modes of production, the same way hobbies are. Most people nowadays make their living doing repetitive alienated tasks and fill the rest of their time with counter-activities as a counterbalance. If people's boredom was a primary motivator for large events or monuments like this then the earth would be covered in them, since for 100,000+ years of our hunter-gathering history people had to work significantly less to subsist. But you only have to go to a rural village in some countries to find most people just sitting around and chatting for hours a day every day.
It can often seem unusual to us when we read about societies that barely changed over thousands of years according to the archaeological record, but I think laziness and inertia are a lot stronger than boredom.
alienation of labour is pretty old tho right? or atleast property is. hmmm.
the earth is kinda covered in them. We find megastructures like this pretty much everywhere we find significant human presence in the last ~10,000 years. You gotta remember that there didn't used to be quite so many people as there are now.
I remember reading many years ago that Gore Vidal, or at least I think it was him, attributed much of what Caligula did down to boredom rather than insanity.
I love this video. "How do you move a rock that's too big to move?"
I love this theory and i am convinced this might be part of the why.
I agree with this theory. Too many historical explanations rely on sets of intentions related to religion, politics or power, but what if things are far more random and less linear? I'm pretty sure that is the case.
I think the greatest potential for this is in the arts, especially the culinary arts. Frying foods in fat is such a culturally widespread practice, but takes enough steps and resources that someone had to be experimenting with it. And given how fried foods taste, I bet they were bored.
I think boredom could explain why Stonehenge is so large. Vanity and desire to awe visitors may also have player a role.
After learning long and hard our road to learning astronomy was, though, and how essential it is to timekeeping, and how useful timekeeping is for agriculture and navigation, I think it is a good guess to say that people built a stone-henge because they wanted a durable calendar.
A massive calendar of stone is a public work as well as a display of power and an answer to boredom for engineers.
That is what most public works have been and are today.
Referring to the Egyptian pyramids, we can see that massive monuments could have the enthusiastic support of those involved in their construction. The workmen who built those pyramids were paid conscripts (often selected by lottery), not slaves, and they took pride in their work, as we have seen from inscriptions found on some of the stones naming their groups, such as "Friends of Pharoah." Being involved in such a massive project probably did break up the monotony of daily life, but it appears that being part of something important also drove those who performed the labor. =^[.]^=
I like to think about the first person to discover humans can drink milk from animals. First thing's first. It probably wasn't a cow they first drank milk from. And they had no idea how to "milk" an animal. They only had one fram of reference for getting milk out of something.
This leads me to believe we discovered dairy after a bunch of hunter gatherers had the first ever game of "Truth or Dare"
Step 1: Domesticate a large enough mammal as a beast of burden.
Step 2: Notice baby animals drinking milk.
Step 3: Hey...this stuff isn't half-bad...
Maybe they just did it because it looked cool.
From what I've gathered, Stonehenge as an example was originally a group of four or five big pine logs sunk into the ground for no obvious reason about a mile from the nearest known contemporary settlement. This was done by early settlers in Britain, before it became an island. Black skinned, blue eyed Mesolithic people. Presumably it was a group of totem poles, although it's hard to know for sure. Ritual purpose and all that.
Then after sea levels rose the Neolithic people came out of the Levant bringing farming across the world, eventually reaching Britain. They excavated a big circular bank and ditch and then buried people inside it, marking their graves with large stones. So presumably it was a graveyard for the Neolithic people. There are 56 evenly spaced graves containing 63 cremated people. This was naturally trashed by archeologists. Additional graves were added over time and some wooden posts were set up perhaps for decoration.
Then later they relocated a bunch of stones from offsite to the location and set up a timber circle a few miles away. Archeologists have again presumed some ritual purpose. Probably solstice related. People appear to have gathered there for some reason. Wooden circle seems to be aligned for viewing the winter solstice and the stone circle for the summer solstice. I would imagine there was some sort of party held in the area twice a year.
In the Bronze Age they appear to have come back and updated the site, moved some stones around every few hundred years to accommodate new aesthetic preferences. Then eventually in the Iron Age the Celts seem to have culturally appropriated the site as well. They built a fortified village in the area and spruced up the place. Later medieval people figured it was built by giants and wizards, or perhaps the devil. Modern people seem to think the druids built it, but it was already ancient by the time their religion spread to the area.
Anyhow boredom could explain a lot of it. Obviously, it was some sort of cemetery for much of its history, the particulars of the decorations are probably pretty arbitrary. The distance the quarried stones were brought from certainly speaks to an impractical motivation, a prestige project of some sort.
Egotistical kings and chiefs and emperors have built bigger and more absurd things than Stonehenge simply to satisfy their whims and feed their overgrown egos.
Priests have insisted on even bigger absurdities to satisfy their superstitions.
So I think that is the most likely explanation for Stonehenge.
I feel like boredom and curiosity sum up how humans discovered everything that was edible and everything that wasn't.
This is pretty much why we do anything. Every bit of time spent on things that are not solely for survival is out of curiosity or boredom. Just because we can.
"Doesn't really tell you much about them."
I wouldn't assume this. Simple things can tell a lot. Plus, there are history fields that focus on everyday boring stuff.
honestly i think napoleons invasion and stonehenge both have a small bit of boredom involved in their creation, old britons taking a break from their dull life to construct something huge and fascinating and unnatural, napoleon being tempted to do the one thing that makes him feel alive again, even if its risky and stupid and cruel
This probably explains cairns and cave paintings
I personally believe that every single big thing, big monument or work of art, came about because someone was bored at some point, had an idea, convinced others to work on it and then made something. You theory kinda just trivializes it too much, like everything just happened, personally i believe it's a mix of boredom and determination. "I want to do something, let's do this really complicated thing that will look good and make us feel good"
when i read the title, i thought you were gonna say it's how they stored their rocks for later use
Don’t you know that’s what the pyramids were originally used for?
@@MalcolmPL seriously?
No.
@@MalcolmPL ok :3
I find that theory incredibly compelling
Didn't Miyamoto come up with the concept of the first Mario game when he was bored on the train and started imagining a little man jumping from rooftop to rooftop? And look what a profound impact that boring train ride has had on our art and entertainment. It would eventually lay the ground work for one of the prolific gaming genres of the 90's, it resulted in one of the most universally recognizable mascots in history and it played a key role in restoring the entirety of the video games industry after the crash of '83. Without that boring train ride the last 40 years of art, media and video games would look vastly different. The video games industry might never even have recovered at all, it most certainly wouldn't have come as far as it has.
I love this! So freaking hilarious! It could be as true as anything, and actually makes me feel happy as heck! If you look there is a couple of those clouds that look like some of those rocks lying on their sides, like they are waiting to be placed, lol. Thank you for this spectacular video!
Love how the video just cuts
I am glad i have found this channel 👍
i didn't even know napoleon invaded russia. guy was really getting stuff done
I think art often has a practical function people didnt intend, like some people learn american english from watching Friends or other tv shows. They were made entirely for a different reason but people just found it was a useful way to learn a language.
I'd be inclined to believe any theory you put forth based on how dryly you managed to deliver this one, though I can't see your face to tell if you were grinning throughout it
Basically what the guy who made Opus 40 decided to do. Spend 20+ years just making a giant stone sculpture for fun.
Generally, when we think that we have come up with a theory that nobody will support, guess what, its already an accepted theory. This has happened to me many times in my life. I'm 58 but only recently (3 years ago) discovered I have ADHD. I looked into it and found that about 10% of children and 5% of adults in Australia have been diagnosed (a lag in adult diagnoses since it was not recognised previously). Its is apparently 70% genetic. I thought, 10% is a lot there must have been an evolutionary advantage in the past because there sure as hell isnt one now. I hypothesised that it may have been an advantage to hunter gatherers since being extremely bored encourages activities like hunting and also encourages multi skilling (currently specialisation is rewarded). Anyway, I checked and the theory already exists, Its called the Hunter Farmer theory. I thought it would be relevant to mention here since (ADHD, for me at least) its largely about boredom. Also because a theory of boredom motivating large historical changes also already exists :) mostly in philosophy and psychology.
Probably not Stonehenge, but you're probably right about something. That is the kind of thing people do sometimes.
The reason for the current unrest :
"Basically I've been bored since 9/11"
I see lots of ancient figurines in museums, and they are often labeled as ceremonial or religious objects from these lost civilizations. Well i wonder, what if they're actually just toys for the kids? Action figures!
it must be ceremonial
I like these musings.
Interesting point about whether the theory leads anywhere; I think you might be under-selling it. After all, it tells us that people were doing well enough to have time on their hands, rather than the incessant hard graft that we might imagine from sone of the history books.
It also goes towards showing that people aren't purely driven by economic motives, unlike the model some people (cough, management consultants, cough) make our lives miserable with.
Could possibly think of more but will leave that as an exercise for the bored...
Malcolm, now that you have put forward this theory, I'm sure that you are correct. Boredom was at least a contributing factor and the main factor in multiple historical events.
I don't think the Boring Theory is boring, I think it is particularly interesting because of the humor of insight we get on ourselves as people by applying it. And surely as you said something major had to be caused at least in part by boredom. It wouldn't surprise me if a good number of things of "importance" got made out of a joke or boredom, but they were so impressive that people long past the makers death attributed their own meaning and then altered the structures to represent their new interpretation. Sorta like how Ancient Greek and Roman statues were stripped of their paint, to create this clean and stoic appearance versus the vibrant reality.
I love this idea. Totally makes sense
Stonehenge summer project.
I've always had this thought from a biological point of view.
The human brain is 20% of our energy expenditure. As hunters or gatherers, that's incredibly useful for each day of tracking and foraging. But when you're doing repetitive tasks such as agriculture or a trade, your mind will naturally want to apply itself to more. I think the majority of human culture stems from needing something to "whistle while we work."
i remember hearing about stone henge in my history class, i was built over many centuries by thousands of people, probably the decedents of the first people who started it, some of the middle most stones line up with ether the sun or other significant starts, and the larger stones came from miles away!
this is all to say that I'm pretty sure this was a religious structure. i dont know any other sort of building that people would put so much effort into other then maybe a palace.
I heard that the moai were carved just for the LOLs.
Yeah, I doubt stone henge was out of boredom considering those rocks were dragged over 100 miles.
But I agree, I am sure there is something in history, major event or monument, that is a result of boredom.
thats what happends when you get agriculture. suddenly you got a lot of freetime.
I think you're selling your hypothesis a little short. I would not be at all surprised to find that some significant events or structures throughout history started with our modern equivalent to "hold my beer".
I agree boredom is underestimated
I would say this theory is plausible but... I mean if you throw in a few beers it's probably a sure bet.
You can't move that rock...
"hold my beer"
holy shnikies. That's actually kinda brilliant.
Also the answer to "How move big rock?" is always "aliens".
A bunch of two foot tall grays pushing with their little arms, going “heck it’s heavy here!”
Just makeing dinner would be a huge chore never mind the rest of it
So what you're saying is that half of history was done for the lulz?
I honestly don't doubt that.
drachma for your thoughts ... I gotta use that one haha
I think you're on to something. However there are also issues. I know you were using Stonehenge as partial hyperbole but It actually serves as a good example for both sides of the argument. I think boredom is a great motivating factor to build something. However building Stonehenge would take lots of people lots of time to build. It is very difficult to motivate lots of people for lots of time to build something that's very difficult to build.
I think that many smaller things or bigger things that we're not as complex to build May have been driven by boredom but the bigger and more complex they are the more effort and more people that they require drives down the probability that that object was driven by boredom
*I MADE THIS ARGUMENT A FEW YEARS BACK* almost all the "mysteries" of the past can be solved if you just add time and boredom
WE look at a massive amazing cared rock and think OMG how did they do that - the answer is very slowly but what else are you going to do??? Maybe a night down at the rock carving with your mates and some beers was the highlight of your day...
Reverse the idea, and you actually get a phenomena that is fairly well documented. People inventing activities to make other people occupied, so that they don't get bored.
E.g. one of the main reasons the New Deal was approved by a lot of (most?) politicians, was the argumet that it would prevent civil unrest among the people in USA, by keeping them preoccupied and fed.
E.g. the reason Swedish King Charles XII, conquered a lot of Europe, was that the Swedish parliament didn't want him to get bored within the Swedish borders, because everytime he did, he got very destructive.
Charles XII was one of the few Swedish kings that was a tyrant (that is: he had almost total power in his rule of Sweden, and he couldn't be punished if he broke the law), but the Swedish parliament still had some powers, one of them being allocating money and resources to the Swedish Army (there was also a Royal Army, but it was just a small number of fairly incompetent rich, bored, people, and a few payed merchanaries that they could play army with).
Charles XII father, Charles XI, was also a tyrant, but a tyrant that respected the letter of the law, and usually obliged to any decisions made by the semi-democratic Swedish parliament. His son was different, a total psycho. As a small child, he liked to torture and kill animals, as a tween he started to do the same with humans, and likely not just to servants and low bornes. So everytime the boy got bored-drunk, everything and everybody around him was in hasard. There is one story about when he got drunk together with his bff, and tried out one of his new sword, by decapitating numerous animals (including an ox), in order of size. Likely he had already decapitated a few servants (it's not documented, talking bad things about the sucessor of the throne, true or not, was illegal, and punished hard). When he, and his buddy, together with their less drunk guards, drunkenly staggered of the castle ground, into the city, searching for new targets for testing the sword, someone got hold of a tutor, that held enough authority over the tween, and knew him well enough, to talk him down (although the tutor still feared for his life, while he did it, and he newer regained the mental health he had before this trauma).
During the first part of his reign, Charles XII did pretty well, and people surounding him could most of the time keep him preoccupied with mostly doing constructive things. He did get caught doing a lot of petty theft, and money forgeries. But he couldn't be punished for it, as a king, only his accomplishes could, and other people getting punished for his crimes, with a few exceptions, was not something that bothered Charles XII.
But as Charles XII grew more bored, he grew more destructive, and more and more neglected his duties of a king. And worst of all, since he was a tyrant, if he didn't continously approved decisions made by the parliament, everything in Sweden came to a stand.
The solution. Charles XII wanted a reputation as a hero king, a great warrior, just like his father. So the parliament equipped him with an army and resources for wars abroad. While the king was waring, out of the country, the parliament had temporary power to rule Sweden, and a lot of people, resources (and bribe money), needed to keep quiet about new royal scandals, was freed for better use.
So a couple km from stone henge is wood henge. Similar layout and they’ve for the remains of pigs and food from all over Britain. It was aligned with the winter solstice. It was a big party hall occupied in the most boring time of the year. I think this definitely falls under your boring theory of history. Stone henge was built over an even older graveyard. It’s built out of stone, a dead material. It was the party house for the ancestors so they didn’t feel left out.
Maybe a party theory of history?
Wait, people don't realize that Alexander the Great and his ilk were driven by boredom? Or that most of human art is driven by boredom?
I think youre right
Hi! Can you make a video about dogs in precolumbian america? It would be an interesting topic for me at least.
I love this approach reminds me of the KISS method (keep it simple stupid) I think keeping wives happy has long been the driving force of our species 😅 cheers bud awesome video
I don’t think it’s a boring idea at all and that there’s more than a bit of truth to there too
well it kinda falls becouse as you yourself said , bored ppl just went to war
Makes sense to me
Entertaining, if not enlightening.
Interesting idea. 1) I'm pretty put off by the existence of women in the story only to nag their male family members. 2) once you have the basic technology, getting together the whole community for a big work day was probably a way to solidify group solidarity. There's evidence in some of the massive earthworks in the Americas (I want to say Cahokia??) that instead of having a few specific skilled workers doing the work over time, the communities deliberately did it all in a couple days using as many people as possible. Modern research shows that people who sing or march together have more fellow-feeling and loyalty; and then you can all point at the henge or pyramid or whatever and say, "yeah, I helped make that."
1. I think it's safe to say that I need a lot more practice at basic feminism.
2. That's well said.
I am a white Canadian and enjoy your videos to gain a better perspective on indigenous Canadian culture and history. Thanks for the vids!
I realy enjoyed,keep going
You could also think of "Great Men" as those that are more likely to be bored. The more restless you are (like Napoleon) the more likely you are to want to change your environment.
So good
Napoleon = Putin and the deadly effects of boredom. Possibly.
Earth needs so much help. Hoping boredom can jolt us into action.
The Tripadvisor page for Stonehenge actually does have reviews from very unimaginative people complaining that it's 'just a load of old rocks' and so on. No 1 candidate for biggest historical event caused partly due to boredom and curiosity: Columbus' voyage to the New World. Having gone around a bunch of monarchs, begging for money so he could sail westwards to Asia and having repeatedly been told he was a crank who didn't know how big the world was, the slavery-obsessed genocide monkey finally caught Ferdinand and Isabella in a good mood. They'd just conquered Granada and completed the centuries-long project of the 'Reconquista'. They had a lot of new wealth and spare time on their hands. So instead of telling Columbus to get lost, they thought: 'What've we really got to lose by giving him a bit of money? Worst case scenario is that the little Italian creep sails off into the Atlantic and starves to death and we never have to see him again. Best case: he accidentally finds something interesting out there and we make a bunch of money and look really smart for sponsoring him.' Some of the worst events in human history ensued and it can all be directly attributed to a chain of events that began when a pair of bored monarchs gave money to an evil little crackpot just to see what happened.