October 8, 2024 • 60 mins
What can ancient myths teach us about history and culture? Join us as we unravel the spellbinding legend of Shahmaran, the Queen of Serpents, and her fateful encounter with Tahmasp. This myth sets the stage for our exploration of ancient Anatolia, a region rich in history and cultural exchanges with the Greeks. We venture into the depths of Göbekli Tepe, possibly the world's first temple, and discuss its significance in early human spirituality and trade. You'll gain insights into how climatic shifts after the last glacial period reshaped human activities and paved the way for the agricultural revolution.
Ever wondered how ancient trade networks and metallurgy influenced societies? Travel back to the early Bronze Age settlement of Büyükkaya, which later became the famed city of Hattusa. We delve into the Hattians' adoption of cuneiform writing, their woodworking excellence, and the expansive trade networks they established. Discover the sophisticated business practices of Assyrian merchants in Karum-Kanesh , including checks, investment companies, and price arbitrage. Learn about the challenges faced by the Hattians, from Akkadian conquests to the economic dominance of Assyrian traders.
Step into the world of kings and empires as we chart the rise and fall of the Hittites and Phrygians. Explore the strategic maneuvers of King Suppiluliuma I, his alliances, and his confrontations with Egypt. Hear the dramatic tale of Zannanza's ill-fated journey and the resulting plague that struck the Hittite Empire. We also highlight the Phrygian Kingdom, their contributions such as an extensive road system, and their legendary King Midas. Finally, we touch on the Kingdom of Urartu and the cultural and historical impacts these civilizations had on ancient Anatolia. This episode promises a rich narrative that brings the ancient world to life.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations all theway to the present.
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
entertaining.
(00:23):
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
entertaining.
Now, I'm not a historian but,like Dan Conlon likes to say, I
am a fan of history.
Shemarin, part woman, part snake, known as the Queen of Serpents
, had acquired an incrediblewealth of knowledge of the
history of mankind.
One day, a man named Thomasstumbled upon her secret hiding
(00:48):
place.
She kept him as a guest andtold him many stories about
mankind.
They eventually fell in love,but Thomas got homesick and
decided to leave.
But he made a promise that hewould never tell anyone about
Shamran's hiding spot and, justas important, he would forever
(01:09):
need to bathe alone, for if hedidn't, his skin would turn to
scales and therefore anyone whosaw him will know that they had
been together.
And therefore he knows whereher hiding spot is.
Now you gotta understand shemight have been the most
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valuable person on earth if sheknew all there is to know about
the history of mankind.
However, soon after, the localking got sick and his grand
advisor began to hunt forShemarin's whereabouts because
he knew the cure could be foundthrough her.
But the twist was the advisorwas evil and wanted Shemarin for
(01:54):
his own personal gain andfigured he could flush her out
by passing a law that forbadeanyone from bathing alone.
Thus Thomas was captured andforced to reveal where
Shemarin's hiding spot was.
When Thomas and Shemarin werealone together, thomas
apologized profusely, but whilehe was apologizing, the king's
(02:15):
advisor was eavesdropping andheard the entire thing.
Shemarin forgave Thomas, butshe knew that the king's advisor
was listening.
So she told Thomas that theycould cure the king by killing
her and cutting up and eatingher body.
She informed Thomas thatwhoever ate her tail would
(02:37):
receive wisdom and knowledge,and whoever ate her body would
die instantly.
The advisor jumps out of theshadows and killed Shamaran.
Instantly.
He took the dead body ofShamaran to the king, where he
cut her up and cooked her body.
He gave the body to the kingand he ate the tail, knowing he
(02:57):
would be the next great king.
Thomas at the time was soovercome with guilt that he ate
her head, hoping he would dieinstantly.
He thought this because hedidn't know that the advisor was
eavesdropping at first and, asyou can imagine, he was tricked
and he died instantly, while theking was cured when he ate the
(03:19):
body.
On the other hand, when Thomasate the head, all the knowledge
that Shalmaran had hadtransferred to him and he went
on to become the world's firstever doctor and also became the
advisor to the king.
Now there are many versions ofthis story, but I thought this
(03:40):
would be a great story to tellas a great primer to the ancient
Anatolian myth system, and, asyou can see, this is the kind of
myth that would also sound veryGreek at the same time.
So what I'm getting at early onin this episode is how the
Anatolians and the Greeks had alot of knowledge transfer, and
(04:00):
you're going to kind of hear alot of it through this various
episode.
So I hope you find this to beenjoyable and together we can
learn more about ancientAnatolia.
When you think of ancientTurkey, you may hear it
described as the Greek word ofAnatolia, which means the east,
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and that would be from the Greekpoint of view.
It is not just Turkey, but itcould also include eastern
Thrace.
Anatolia was the Asian part ofthe region, while eastern Thrace
was the European part.
This region is also home toprobably the world's first
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temple, located at Gobekli Tepe,which translates to, basically,
potbelly Hill.
Carbon dating indicates thatthis site was built around 9000
BCE.
As you can imagine, the ancientbuilders left behind hundreds
of stone tools, such as chiselsand knives that were used to
(05:03):
construct the ancient marvel,such as chisels and knives that
were used to construct theancient marvel.
This was most likely the siteof some sort of religious or
spiritual location or had somekind of spiritual significance,
and some suggest that the areacould have been used as the
world's first astronomicalobservatory.
As the world's firstastronomical observatory.
(05:24):
Now, it's quite possible that,since trade had happened long
before written language and thefact that the temple would
attract people from far away,that trade would have been a
central theme to the meetings.
The many caves in the area alsomeant that the early
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hunter-gatherers may have usedthem as shelters as well and, to
be clear, this wasn't apermanent settlement, but before
all that could have happened,it's important to note what was
happening geologically in theworld at the time, in the world
at the time.
So, if you look back far enough, the last glacial period would
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have reversed course around11,700 years ago, with glaciers
receding, temperatures wouldhave rose globally, sea levels
also would have rose andcoastlines around the world
would have changed and, as aresult, ecosystems also around
the world would have beennaturally altered.
Well, ecosystems also aroundthe world would have been
naturally altered.
Now, this climate change wouldhave drastically altered human
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activity, specifically the wayhumans eat and survive.
It was shortly after that theplanet had warmed that many
humans began to turn toagriculture as its main food
source.
Agriculture itself has nosingle simple origin, but it
appears that it may have had itsroots in, or near, anatolia.
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As a result, anatolia might bethe location of the first ever
human permanent settlements, ashumans occupied it between 9600
and 7000 BCE.
The fact is, anatolia wasfortunate enough to have an
abundance of natural grasslands,which would have allowed them
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to harvest grains such as wheatand barley.
In addition, this area wouldhave attracted large herds of
gazelle, wild sheep and evengoats, so the local population
would have had an opportunity tosupplement its diet with
various meats, and they wouldhave also been able to
domesticate certain animals thatwere native to the region.
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So, as a result, the people hadaccess to a wide variety of
foods.
Once the original site ofGobekli Tepe had lost its
spiritual significance, the sitewould have been used for
farming.
In fact, it appears that thesite was farmed so much that it
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had lost its fertility, and Ishould really emphasize the fact
that widespread domesticfarming had really been in full
swing by around 8000 BCE.
Domestic farming had reallybeen in full swing by around
8,000 BCE.
This meant that nomadic peoplewould settle down and create
certain communities that wouldbecome certain cultures, as
norms would have beenestablished in those communities
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.
So essentially, what happenedwas, originally the sites were
more or less used for nomadicsacred sites, which simply would
have been filled over and thenfarmed over.
This is precisely what happenedin the first layer of Golblakli
Tepe, and from there the secondlayer would have dated back to
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a period of around 88 to 8,000BCE.
The third layer is the oldestand it was famous for its
circular structures.
Now, it should be noted that noone is certain if the
structures had a ceiling or not.
The people who inhabited thesite were mostly
hunter-gatherers, who wereessentially nomadic tribes, and
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the circular structures havebeen carbon dated to around
9,000 BCE and it was added to aworld heritage list in 2018.
Sadly, in recent years, theareas had faced a refugee crisis
due to the Syrian conflict and,according to Klaus Schmidt, his
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hypothesis is that originally,hunter-gatherer tribes met to
collectively build the site, andit was able to be built because
of the invention of farmingthat would have kept people
there long enough to have theability to feed them and to
sustain a large workforce thatwas needed to build it.
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Now, he didn't mention it, butI suspect that the complex would
have been a critical tradingpost as well.
So if you're going to have asustained population in and
around a site and it has somesort of spiritual aspect, then
trade would have most likelyfollowed suit or maybe possibly
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proceeded it and became acritical component.
So, since people would havebeen passing through, it would
kind of only make sense thatthey would have bring excess
supplies to the site that wereeither grown or crafted far away
for trade purposes.
Now, as you can imagine,anatolia, like basically all the
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other prehistory settlementswell, they are quite a mystery
for us today.
Some of these early settlementswere established some 10,000
years ago and since writingwasn't established until the
people of Sumer had createdtheir cuneiform system roughly
around 3300 BCE.
We would have to extrapolatefrom the remains how the people
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would have lived their lives, soitems such as pottery would
have been a key insight as tohow they lived.
So far, the period we've beenreferring to is the Stone Age,
which lasted until around 5500BCE, when the Copper Age began.
So, in other words, humans hadfigured out how to smelt and
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manipulate copper to make toolsand, of course, weapons.
While this was a huge stepforward in the development of
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civilizations, to understand thenature of smelting ores to
activate metals, our commonancestors had first used stone
tools millions of years ago.
In fact, archaeologistsunearthed stone tools from the
shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya,and this would have dated back
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to about 3.3 million years ago,long before humans were around.
The fact is, homo sapiensreally didn't appear until about
200 to 300,000 years ago about200 to 300,000 years ago.
So it took millions of years todevelop metallurgy.
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And if you look into the localregion, a stone tool was found
in the Gadiz River that appearsto be 1.2 million years old.
Now, some of the oldestpermanent homes in modern-day
Turkey were built out of stonesthat were packed tightly
together.
These homes were generallysimilar in size, so this
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generally indicates that thepeople in these towns probably
lived relatively equal lives,since you wouldn't see that one
part of the settlement had muchbigger homes as compared to the
other side of the settlements.
When this happens, it becomessomewhat obvious that there was
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some sort of inequality.
If one side had theseproto-mansions and the other had
these proto-shacks, then yousay okay, yeah, well then one
side of town definitely appearedto have more wealth than the
other side, so we didn't reallysee that at this time.
The unique feature of thesestone homes was they had gaps
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under the floors where channelswere built.
No one is 100% sure why thesehomes had these channels, but
it's quite possible that theywere drainage systems or that
the channels were used to coolthe houses down somehow.
But it also goes further thanthat, as these homes were often
painted and decorated, with someof them having deceased members
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of their families buriedunderneath the homes.
To give you an idea about howold some of these homes are, the
ancient city of Çatalhöyükmight have been settled around
7500 BCE and, like I've said onseveral occasions, trade was a
vital part of these ancientsettlements, as it appears that
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they were engaging in tradingwith societies from the
Mediterranean and even as faraway as the Red Seas during the
Copper Age.
The first evidence of coppersmelting dated back from around
the 6th millennium BCE in Serbia, but the earliest documented
use of lead smelting beganaround the 6th millennium BC as
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well, but slightly prior, inYeram Tepe in Iraq.
So this suggests that leadsmelting may have actually
predated copper smelting, thatthe people of Anatolia began its
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metallurgy in Halasir, whichwas initially settled by wheat
and barley farmers around 7,000BCE.
So it appears that the smeltingtechnology had descended from
Southern Europe as well as fromits neighbors to the south in
Yarmtepe, from its neighbors tothe south in Yarmtepe.
When archaeologist Gil Steinbegan excavating the region, he
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kind of quickly figured out thatone of the sites looks like it
dated back to about 4100 BCE.
But the interesting thing aboutthis site that he excavated was
it included permanent housingand even mortuaries.
But a lot of similarities werediscovered that also could be
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found in Uruk, which was far,far to the south.
In addition, he noticed thatthere was certain bones of goats
that had similar markings ofhow the butchers would have
butchered their goats in otherMesopotamian cities.
Therefore, gilstein hadconcluded that the people of
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Anatolia around 4000 BCE hadalready established extensive
trade networks with cities farto the south or near the
Euphrates River.
Now, as we roll on further intothe early Bronze Age, which
historically starts around 3300BCE, the settlement of Boyakaya
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springs up.
Now.
This will be an importantsettlement, as this will
eventually grow significantlyand eventually become part of
the ancient city of Hattusa,which will be settled by the
Hattians and then by theHittites.
As we move into the Age ofMetallurgy, the various peoples
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in the region of ancient Turkeywill discover, and then
ultimately mine, a wide range ofmetal deposits, which allowed
them to make tools and weapons,but also the surplus would be
vital for trade, especially withthe people of Sumer and Akkad.
It wasn't just the metals thatwere traded.
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The people of Anatolia as earlyas 4000 BCE were also known for
their red and black potterythat would eventually be found
in Syria and Chechnya, astraders had taken the pottery
with them as they traveled alongthe extensive trade routes.
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Probably the first culture thatreally thrived in Anatolia after
the advent of the Bronze Agewere the Hattians, who settled
central Anatolia from around2300 to 630 BCE.
It appears that they may haveborrowed some of the
advancements made by theirneighbors to the south and, in
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particular, the people of Sumerand Akkad, of which one of the
biggest advancements that theyhad borrowed was that of
cuneiform writing, which enabledthe people of Anatolia the
ability to essentially createbusiness ledgers when conducting
trade.
And one of the biggest reasonswhy writing developed was it
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wasn't for a king to basicallylet everybody know how great
they were, but instead it was sothat individuals can track
business transactions.
In this particular region ofcentral Anatolia, the Hattians
had access to pretty denseforests, so this meant that the
people of central Anatolia, andthe Hattians in particular,
would have become masters atwoodworking and even created
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homes out of timber.
But the thing was is they wouldhave had excess timber, which
meant that they could trade thisexcess to people that didn't
have it, and the people thatdidn't have it were the people
to the south, and the peoplethat didn't have it were the
people to the south.
So what happened was thiscuneiform writing was a great
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tool to track various shipmentsthat were going to the people of
the south and the places likeSumer and Akkad that demanded
the excess timber.
That was in central Anatolia,and this trade not so much the
timber trade, but trade ingeneral would have occurred with
other people as well.
So it wasn't like they werejust trading with people to the
south, the Sumerians and theAkkadians.
No, they were also trading withthe Mitanni and people,
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babylonia and Egypt and, ofcourse, assyria.
But despite all this, theHattians were primarily farmers,
not unlike virtually everyother settled society at the
time.
So for the most part they justlived off the land.
But what was interesting isthey weren't known to be hunters
, because apparently theybelieved that everything had a
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spirit and because of this theydidn't want to upset their
patron goddess.
So therefore they basicallyavoided the hunting part of that
society.
The main city of which tradewould have been extended through
was their famous city ofHattusa, which was originally
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built around 2500 BCE on amassive hill which allowed it to
have natural defenses.
In fact, the Akkadians tried toconquer the Hattians on several
occasions, but failed in largepart because of the location of
Hattusa.
Failed in large part because ofthe location of Hattusa.
Also speaking of the Akkadians,the written language was
inspired by Akkadian script, butit was their own written
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language.
As such, archaeologists couldread some of the words inscribed
on the records but really don'tfully understand what was
written.
While Anatolia was dominated bysmall to medium kingdoms, by
1960 BCE, assyria had gained itsindependence from the Akkadians
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.
It was also around this timethat wealthy Assyrian merchants
had established the Karims,which were small colonial
settlements just outside ofAnatolian cities, which were
secure areas where merchantsfrom Ashur could bring their
goods.
The word Karim literally meansport in Akkadian.
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One of the Karims, known asK'nash, stood out from the rest
as it became the most importanttrading post for Ashur, rest as
it became the most importanttrading post for Ashur.
The trade colony of Kanish wasruled by the Hattians, as this
was among the most lucrativetrade centers for all the Near
East region.
Karim Kanish was reached bydonkey caravans from Ashur,
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which was roughly 625 miles or1000 thousand kilometers away,
which usually took about sixweeks to get from Ashur to the
Karim Kinesh.
Just like the other Karims, theAssyrians traveled to Kinesh,
set up a business and thencontrolled the business from
Ashur by placing trustedassociates, which were typically
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family members, in charge ofthe trading post.
So it was the Assyrians, notthe local Hattians, that were
more or less making the money inthe trade.
Some trading houses of KarimKanish flourished and some
became extremely wealthy, theequivalent of ancient
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millionaires of the time.
Even the banking operationscame from the Assyrians and they
were not local Hattians.
The traders of the old Assyriancolony of Kanish were looking
for ways in which they couldmaximize their profits by using
modern instruments such as thecheck payable to the bearer.
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Also, like we saw in thetraders in Babylon and Ur,
investment companies were set upfor trade colonies in Anatolia,
and these companies in Anatoliapaid dividends in a pro rata
basis based on the originalinvestment amounts by the
individual investors.
Also, these markets were sothoroughly developed by then
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that the traders and the peoplewere well aware of price
differences in different regions.
So it's quite possible thatthere were some kind of
arbitrage opportunities fortraders to buy goods cheaply in
one Anatolia colony and thensell the same goods at a higher
price in another location.
If you'd like more detailedinformation about the Assyrian
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trade colonies, you can listento my episode dedicated to
Assyria.
As these trade coloniesflourished, others took notice.
King Anita of the city-state ofKassura was taking notice and
eventually was able to sack thecity of Hattusa.
He was the son of Petana, whohad previously conquered the
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Assyrian trade colony of Knessduring his reign.
Legend has it that King Anitaplaced a curse on Hattusa to
prevent the people from tryingto rebuild the city.
However, this curse must nothave been very effective,
because King Hattusili I laterdecided to rebuild the city.
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Now he was accredited withfounding the Hittite kingdom and
this was more or less thebeginning of the end for the
Hattians, as the Hittites wouldtake on as the local hegemon and
, as a result, the Hattianculture began its slow decline.
Eventually it would be theHittites, who were originally
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descended from Indo-Europeanpeoples, that took over control
of Hattian lands and, as a longresult of staying in the Hattian
lands, well, they kind ofessentially absorbed the Hattian
culture and fused it to maketheir own Hittite culture.
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So really in the end, despitethe fact that the Hattians had
kind of disappeared, they weresuper influential on the Hittite
culture.
So essentially they disappeared, but they were still there,
because if you look at theHittites you can kind of get a
good idea of what the Hattianswere potentially like.
So it's kind of like a weirdbizarre thing, because the
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people came in from Europe, theykind of lost their European
culture, they dominated anotherculture and then basically
absorbed that culture and reallytook that on as their own.
But this new Hittite culturewould become stronger and
wealthier as it continued itstrade with all the other
regional powers.
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Hattusuli was able to subduemany distinct tribes in Anatolia
and then moved its capital toHattusa as a defensive measure.
He went on the offensive andexpanded the territory and in
reality it sounds like he waskind of like a great PR man for
his time, because he made sureeverybody knew within his
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kingdom and even beyond that hewas this great lion on the hunt,
great lion on the hunt, andessentially he wanted to make
sure everybody knew this.
So therefore he can installsome kind of fear in people
outside his kingdom.
However, he did try to sack theancient city of Aleppo, but he
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could not conquer the city andapparently on his deathbed he
chose his grandson, mersilli,who was only a child at the time
, as his heir.
Now, by the time, mersilli wasa young man.
He wanted to go back to Aleppo,but this time his army was able
to conquer it and then, ofcourse, plunder it.
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By around 1595 BCE he went downto Babylon and sacked the city
as well.
Now, from my perspective, hekind of had this Assyrian
quality about him in that hewould spare any city that gave
up.
But if a city put up any kindof resistance, he would come to
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you and try to utterly destroyit, and then he would use that
as an example to the next peopleas to what could happen if you
don't give up right away.
So it was kind of like hey,I'll be fair if you just give up
your city, but if you cross me,I will destroy everything.
Now, once he conquered a cityor region, he would generally
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install puppet kings that wouldreport directly back to Hattusa,
because he wouldn't stay in thecity that he conquered, so he
would conquer and then move on,and then ultimately he went back
to Hattusa In the end.
He didn't really want to expandhis kingdom beyond his control,
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so it appears that he wouldhave been content with the size
of his kingdom, as he neverreally tried to expand its
borders too much, but instead hepreferred to attack his
neighbors and plunder itsvaluables and then take them
back to Atusa.
During his reign, hesuccessfully plundered the
ancient cities of Lebo andBabylon, so those were some
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pretty big gets.
However, his reign wouldn'treally last long because he was
assassinated by hisbrother-in-law, hantili, which
started a gruesome trend amongHittite kings of assassination.
Among Hittite kings ofassassination, a lot of this was
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because they really didn't havea firm succession plan or even
succession laws, whichultimately led to assassinations
and coups which severelyweakened the kingdom for nearly
70 years and almost collapsed itentirely because of it, and as
a result, the kingdom shrunk.
Now everything changed withKing Telpino, who reigned from
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around 1525 to 1500 BCE, becausehe implemented a law code that
finally addressed success inplans but also addressed trade,
known as King TelppinosProclamation.
It was different than otherEastern law codes in that other
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codes were focused more onpunishments, but his
proclamation was more based onfines, not so much the corporal
punishments that you've seen inthe past.
He also signed the first evertreaty that we know of as well,
which would basically start atrend by Hittite kings.
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The Hittite kingdom was one ofthe most influential ruling
powers in Anatolian history.
During its earliest periods, itwas simply just another
regional power that struggled toprotect itself against its
enemies.
But all that would change whenSupilulima I ascended the throne
and I apologize if I butcheredthat name, but that name is a
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tough one for me to pronounce so, as the Hittites and the
Hattians had consolidated well.
This meant that there were nowtwo superpowers in Anatolia the
Hittites and the Mitanni.
Now they weren't really verypeaceful as they would have
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fought against each other and,more importantly, they would
have also been trade partnerswith the Assyrians and the
Egyptians as the Hittites grewin strength.
Every time the Hittitesconquered far off territories,
far away from Hattusa, theybasically didn't have the
ability to hold and govern theirnew conquered territories,
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which would have led to powervacuums of which the Mitanni
were more than happy to fill,and, as a result, the Mitanni
would strengthen into a verystrong kingdom in the region and
more or less be a thorn in theHittite side.
The Hittites' aggressivenesswould lead it to some
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historically bad press, as theywere mentioned in the Old
Testament, for constantlyattacking surrounding nations,
especially the Israelites.
But it's also possible thatthis was also blown way out of
proportion.
To give you an idea of thestrength of the Hittite economy,
you can almost view it frommodern finds.
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So, for example, there was ashipwreck that was discovered
off the coast of Turkey.
This shipwreck may be dated toaround the 13th century BCE and
it may be the world's oldestshipwreck that we have actually
discovered In the ship?
They discovered around six tonsof copper and one ton of tin.
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Now, as you may remember fromprevious episodes, tin was
extremely rare and therefore thekey ingredient to make bronze.
So tin was kind of like the oilof the Bronze Age, whereas
securing it would have beenvital for the production of
bronze but more importantly, itwould have been important from
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national defense, so it wouldhave been a national security
thing too.
So around the time of theshipwreck, king Supiluluma I,
who had became the king around1344 BCE, he had previously
moved the Hittite capital backto Hattusa and began conquering
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surrounding territories.
As such, he conquered theMitanni and even took land from
Syria.
The result was the Mitannikingdom became a Hittite vassal
state.
Supi Lululema also found otherways to exert influence, as he
created alliances by takingforeign wives, just like so many
(33:30):
other kings had done before andafter him.
In fact, one of his marriagesincluded a Babylonian princess,
which kind of really indicatesthat he was making a major power
play in the region.
Eventually, the Hittite kingdomwould become a threat to the
Egyptians, but luckily for theHittites, egypt was weak at the
time.
The reason why Egypt was soweak was because of numerous
(33:55):
factors, but in large part itwas because Pharaoh Akhenaten
had weakened Egypt when hedecided to move Egypt away from
its traditional gods to worshipone of more of a monotheistic
religion in Atenism.
This had essentially upendedand disrupted the entire kingdom
, so Egypt wasn't really in aposition to confront the
(34:18):
Hittites up in Syria.
His successors couldn't do muchbetter.
Tutankhamen fought against theHittites, but the Egyptians kept
on losing ground to theHittites.
As a possible refresher,tutankhamen was born with
multiple health issues and as aresult, he died at a very young
(34:39):
age of maybe 19 or so.
After his death, his widowrequested to marry one of
Supiluluma's sons.
Now, this was a very unusualarrangement In fact you could
probably say that it wasunprecedented at that point.
But Supiluluma agreed becausehe had a history of forging
(35:03):
alliances through marriages.
So he sent his son, sananza, tomarry the queen of Egypt.
However, sananza never made itto his destination and was
likely murdered by Tutankhamen'sgeneral, was likely murdered by
Tutankhamen's general.
Supiluluma was obviouslyenraged and began to use this as
(35:27):
motivation to attack variousEgyptian territories and conquer
much of the Levant.
This ultimately proved to be afatal move, because many
Egyptian POWs had brought theplague with them, which
eventually killed Subi-Lulumaand his successor around 1322
BCE.
So in the end, it was hisgrandson, mursili II, who would
(35:52):
become the new king of theHittite kingdom.
Mersili II was still young andrelatively unproven.
However, he managed to provehimself quite quickly and became
a very skilled and successfulking.
One of the more interestingaspects of the Hittites was that
they would pick gods fromconquered or absorbed
(36:14):
territories and incorporate theminto their own pantheon, or
absorb territories andincorporate them into their own
pantheon.
Now, I'm not 100% sure why theydid this.
Maybe it was because they werehonoring the people that they
conquered, or maybe it wassomewhat superstitious in that
they didn't want to anger allthe various gods.
So it's better to have theiropponent's god on their side
(36:34):
instead of being an adversary.
So in the end, they end up withprobably the most amount of
gods of any ancient society.
Some of the gods would live onfor millennia as they would
evolve into Greek and even Romangods.
And it's funny because I havethis interesting little story
(36:56):
One of my best friends growingup who ended up being the best
man at my wedding.
Well, he was in building sevenof the World Trade Center on
9-11.
He told me afterward that hewas certain he was going to die
and if you remember buildingseven, that was the last
building to fall.
It was after the two twintowers had went down.
(37:16):
Afterward he kind of had a goodsense of humor about it
regarding the stressful ordeal,because what he told me later
was that when he was being heldup in the lobby of the building
they could see people from theother buildings jump into their
death.
At the time he kind of reallymade peace with the fact that he
might die that day and he saidhe wasn't scared, but instead he
(37:39):
was really calm.
But then he started to think tohimself should I pray to a God
right now?
I mean he was like man, there'sso many to choose from.
Which one would be the best?
Which one should I pick?
Maybe I should pick all of themand pray to all the different
gods, because I don't know ifthere is one, and if there is I
want to make sure I get itcorrect.
So he kind of laughed about itat the end.
But it kind of I bring up thatstory because it kind of reminds
(38:02):
me a lot of what the Hittiteswere kind of maybe thinking.
You know, it's like, hey,there's so many gods out there
we don't know which one iscorrect, but maybe if we pray to
them all we'll be protected.
So that's kind of my littlestory of my friend who kind of
had a real good sense of humorabout 9-11.
And considering that 9-11really didn't have much humor
(38:25):
involved, it was prettyinteresting that he can kind of
relate a story afterward to whatwas kind of going through his
head.
But in a weird way I kind ofreally see the way he was
thinking, even though maybe itwasn't so much serious, whereas
the Hittites would have takenthis very serious.
But yeah, that's my littlepersonal story on that.
(38:46):
So as the Pantheon was growing,so too was the Hittites' growth
and strength.
As such, their encroachmentinto the Levant continued to be
a threat to the Egyptians.
Encroachment into the Levantcontinued to be a threat to the
Egyptians.
Ramesses II of Egypt had kindof really guided Egypt back on
(39:06):
track and really wanted toexpand the territory northward,
especially around Kadesh,because it was booming due to
its lucrative trade routes, andas such, the pharaoh gathered at
least 20,000 infantry and asmany as 2,000 chariots in
preparation for the upcoming warwith the Hittites.
In 1274 BCE, before the warbegan, the Egyptians were able
(39:27):
to capture Hittite spies.
The Egyptians were known forusing torture techniques, and
they used it to give up thelocation of the Hittite king and
his troops.
The Egyptians attacked Kadesh,but the battle was a stalemate
and there was really no truewinner that was achieved.
Soon after the battle, theHittites had another problem, as
(39:48):
the Assyrians were also gettingstronger to the southeast.
Therefore, the Hittite king hadto halt any planned attacks
against the Egyptians because hehad to deal with the growing
Assyrian problem.
About 15 years after the GreatBattle, a peace treaty was
signed by Ramesses II andHattusulid III and, if anything,
(40:11):
it would have relieved pressureon the Hittites.
The Egyptian-Hittite peacetreaty, also known as the Treaty
of Kadesh, might be theearliest surviving peace treaty
that we can actually view tothis day.
I spoke about this in theEgyptian episode, but
(40:35):
essentially both sides of thebattle claimed victory, but in
reality the battle ended up as atie, even though the Hittites
waged war with its neighbors.
This treaty kind of points to alarger idea that the Hittites
may have been ultimately knownfor was that they appeared to
prefer negotiations and treatiesover a long-term war with its
neighbors.
Historians generally believethat they are one of the first
(40:57):
kingdoms that practicedinternational diplomacy.
You might be kind of thinkingto yourself is it possible that
they preferred to negotiatepeace treaties because maybe
they didn't have the means towage long-term war successfully?
And, to answer your question,you might be correct, as they
may have had to turn todiplomacy for survival.
(41:19):
But in the end, even thoughthey had went to war with each
other, there was a lot ofinformation sharing between the
Hittites and the Egyptians.
So, for example, the Hittiteshad transferred a lot of their
metalworking knowledge with theEgyptians, while the Egyptians
had shared their farmingknowledge with the Hittites.
In 1210 BCE, king Supaluluma IItook the throne, but he would
(41:47):
be the last Hittite king.
The reasons for the Hittitedownfall aren't very clear, so
there's a lot of speculation.
It's quite possible that it wasdriven by climate change or
even a serious earthquake whichtotally destabilized the region.
So it's possible that Hattusawas abandoned.
(42:08):
Or some believe that the citywas sacked by Casca, who were
people from the north of theHittites, the north of the
Hittites.
What was left of Hattusa waspossibly destroyed by fire and
really won't be occupied againfor about 500 years.
But let us not forget that theHittites were probably doomed
(42:30):
one way or another, because itwas around this time that we
experienced the late Bronze Agecollapse, which we saw the
mysterious sea peoples that wererolling in from the
Mediterranean and attackingcoastal settlements in the Near
East and even in Egypt, and theywould have caused massive
destruction.
I mean to tell you how powerfulthey were.
(42:50):
They basically pushed theAssyrians back into basically a
little bubble where theAssyrians were basically able to
fall back and survive and a lotof other societies near the
coastline could not fall backand survive, so they're
basically just wiped outaltogether.
Now I wanted to take a step backin the story and talk about the
(43:11):
Mitanni.
We know about the Mitannibecause archaeologists have
recovered numerous letters fromaround 1500 to 1240 BCE, some of
the letters exchanged by theMitanni, the Assyrians and even
the Egyptian kings, which pointsto the fact that the Mitanni
were one of the most powerfulnations at the time.
(43:33):
The Mitanni were mostly basedout of the region around
northern sections of theEuphrates and the Tigris rivers,
different nations.
Due to its location, it wasable to establish several trade
(43:57):
routes that ran down the riversinto southern Mesopotamia.
And the thing is is the peoplein southern Mesopotamia
typically did not have naturalresources they needed, so it had
to look to other cultures, suchas the Mitanni, and being on
the rivers meant trade betweenthe different cultures would
have been much easier, sincethey wouldn't have had to overly
(44:19):
rely on overland travel.
But it's interesting that eventhough they were on or near the
rivers, they were also greathorsemen.
Or near the rivers, they werealso great horsemen.
In fact, the world's oldesthorse training manual was found
by historians that was writtenby the Mitanni.
So basically, you combine thefact that they were great
(44:41):
horsemen and the fact that theywere able to develop metal
weapons well, this would giveyou an idea that they would have
been formidable opponents onthe battlefield.
But unfortunately, with theexception of the manual and the
letters between the variouskings, there really isn't a
whole lot known about theMitanni, as the records have
(45:02):
basically not survived.
So therefore there's many holesin the Mitanni story.
However, there are letters thatwere discovered that were
written by Akkadians regardingtheir dealings with the Mitanni.
So the thing is, a lot ofhistorians had to get a lot of
details from other societies andit's obviously not first-hand
(45:24):
information, but it's alsoinformation in which the victor
is discussing a defeated enemy.
So there's also that we do knowthat the Egyptians, under
Thutmose III, fought a battleagainst the Mitanni around 1400
BCE.
In modern day Syria, it alsosounds like the Mitanni did what
(45:46):
a lot of other kingdoms didduring these days, in that they
would try to marry off theirdaughters to form political
alliances with other kingdoms ofthe region, and, of course,
they would also send off manygifts, including gold and
jewelry, and even camels, toforeign kings.
Now, these practices typicallydidn't have long-lasting effects
(46:09):
, so it usually worked in ashort period of time.
In fact, in one case it appearsthat a Mitanni king was upset
with another foreign kingbecause he did not receive his
proper quantities of gold andother precious gems in exchange.
Between his daughter and aforeign king, between his
(46:34):
daughter and a foreign king.
Now, as wealthy as the Mitanniwere, they still weren't quite a
match for their rivals inAnatolia, the Hittites, as they
eventually turned the Mitanniinto their vassals, of which
they would never really trulyregain independence under a
unified kingdom, and as a result, they would be dominated for
years until the Sea Peoples camealong and then the Assyrians.
(46:55):
Now the issue with theAssyrians is if any nation
rebels against their authority,they would have often resulted
to extreme cruelty to maintaintheir power.
A perfect example of this isthe Assyrian king Shalmaneser.
I destroyed the Mitanni duringone of its rebellions, and in
(47:16):
doing so, many other survivorswere left blinded in various
Mitanni cities that were sacked,along with the Assyrians
destroying any of the allies ofthe Mitanni.
The ones that weren't killed orblinded were then sold out into
slavery.
Therefore, the Assyrians, inlarge part, were able to put an
(47:36):
end to the Mitanni culture.
The fact is, the Mitanni andthe Hittites sprung up in an
unfortunate location and in atime in history that they would
have had the misfortune of beingwithin striking distance of the
Sea Peoples and the Assyrians,and therefore they were
essentially wiped out completely.
In fact, both cultures were sothoroughly decimated that people
(47:59):
, for thousands of yearsafterward, had no clue that they
even existed in the first place.
Once the Hittite Empirecollapsed, there was a bit of a
vacuum in Anatolia, and thisvacuum was ultimately filled by
the Phrygians.
As such, the Phrygians came topower and created a kingdom that
(48:19):
would last for centuries.
However, they never reallybecame a military powerhouse and
thus sort of were more or lessa minor kingdom.
In the grand scheme of things,not much is known about these
people, as they really didn'tleave behind a whole lot of
inscriptions, which means muchof the information received
about them comes from otherkingdoms.
(48:40):
Some think that they came fromthe Sea Peoples, some think that
they had come from the Balkansand possibly Macedonia.
I'd say the thing that theycontributed to the most to the
region was the fact that theyhad built this massive road
system which would last longafter their society collapsed,
(49:04):
which meant future societiescould use their roads for trade.
One of the roads that was builtwas through their capital of
Gordium, which will ultimatelybe part of the Great Persian
Royal Road.
Since they were strategicallyplaced between the Greeks and
the Persians, their societyevolved to have a heavy Greek
(49:25):
and Persian influence.
You might also be familiar withsome of the Phrygian mythology,
as it included the famous storyof King Midas.
Also, according to Greekmythology, the Phrygians were an
ally defending the city of Troyin the Trojan War.
Now, you might not be toofamiliar with the Trojan War, so
(49:48):
I'll give you a quick recap.
Familiar with the Trojan War,so I'll give you a quick recap.
The Trojan War began when thePrince of Troy, paris, seduced
Helen, the wife of the King ofSparta.
Obviously, the Greeks weren'tgoing to stand for this dishonor
and, as a result, the TrojanKing's brother led an army
against Troy.
This bloody war would last forabout 10 years, with both sides
(50:11):
experiencing heavy losses.
Probably the most famous part ofthe story is when the Greeks
built a massive wooden horse,known as the Trojan horse, which
hid some of the finest soldiersinside.
The Greeks in the meantimefaked a retreat and left the
wooden horse at the city gates.
When the Trojans discovered thehorse, they assumed the Greeks
(50:33):
had surrendered and they hadbrought the horse in the city.
That night the hidden Greeksoldiers snuck out of the horse,
opened the gates to a waitingGreek army and then they
destroyed the city.
Of course, my favorite Trojanhorse scenes in movies were the
2006 Beer Fest movie, when theguys hid inside a Trojan keg and
(50:54):
they used it to get into theinternational beer drinking
contest.
And of course Monty Python alsoused this in the quest for holy
grail, but instead they hadused a rabbit but forgot to hide
inside the wooden rabbit.
And since Monty Python is goodas it gets, the wooden rabbit is
thrown at them from the castle.
So obviously this story isworld famous and people have
(51:17):
been telling it for thousands ofyears and even creating their
own little spin to create theirown little Trojan horse, whether
it's in comedy movies or if youare trying to attack people
through their computer systemsmovies, or if you are trying to
attack people through theircomputer systems Now.
Just a few minutes ago, I'd alsobrought up King Midas as well.
Now, with regards to King Midas, some historians point to some
(51:44):
inscriptions of a real-liferuler named Midas, who may have
ruled from around 738 to 696 BCE, who may have been the
inspiration for the legendarystory.
And if you aren't too familiar,the story goes that King Midas
returned the satyr Salinas tohis master, dionysus, the god of
wine.
The god, being pleased,proposed to Midas a gift for him
(52:09):
to choose.
So Midas chose the ability toturn anything he touched to gold
.
As such, this was obviouslyshort-sighted decision-making,
because he wouldn't be able toeat or drink anything, since all
his food and liquids would beturned to gold.
So the starving king begged thegod to reverse the gift of gold
(52:30):
, and Dionysus told the king towash off in the Pactolus river.
Now the interesting thing is,is the Pactolus river in Lydia
was known for its copiousamounts of gold deposits which
later enriched the kingdom ofLydia and Caritius in particular
.
In real life, it was Midas whomay have been the basis of the
(52:53):
legendary myth of King Midas,who died in around 695 BCE after
losing a major battle to theSumerians, who were a nomadic
people who migrated to Anatolia.
Around 700 BCE, they became asomewhat minor power on Anatolia
(53:14):
until they were conquered byLydia.
The Sumerians burned downGordium to the ground, and they
likely destroyed many importantrelics that would have shed a
lot more light on the Phrygiansociety.
Phrygia ultimately became aLydian state.
The Greeks, however, seemed tobe fond of the Phrygians because
(53:36):
they were highly prized in theslave market, so they probably
had either a certain look orskill that separated them from
other slaves.
In their case, they were highlyskilled metal workers and wood
carvers.
It is also believed that theywere quite educated as well as
(53:58):
they were quite literate, sothey probably filled a void for
slaves that didn't have theability to comprehend certain
ideas or even be literate.
In this particular region therewas also the kingdom of Aratu,
which was also known as thekingdom of Van, which was
(54:19):
located around Lake Van in theArmenian highland.
They were a monarchy, and theirfirst recorded king was Aramee,
who ruled from around 860 to840 BCE.
This wasn't necessarily along-lasting kingdom, as they
only lasted a few hundred years.
They did appear to end up beinga thorn in the side of the
(54:39):
Assyrians, especially becausethey were pretty wealthy and
they had large metal reservesincluding silver, gold, copper,
iron and even lead and as aresult, they ultimately became
skilled at crafting goods madeof metal, which meant that they
could produce quality tools andweapons.
In addition, they becameskilled traders and merchants
(54:59):
due to their large naturaldeposits of metals.
They were also able to tradeexcess raw materials and
finished goods thanks to thetrade routes that ran directly
through Anatolia, mesopotamia,thanks to the trade routes that
ran directly through Anatolia,mesopotamia and even out in
through Iran and up into China.
Also, it appears that theirtrade routes made it all the way
(55:20):
to the Italian peninsula, or atleast had contracts with the
Etruscans, because cauldronsthat were made in Oratu were
very similar to the Etruscanpieces found in Italy.
The Etruscan civilizationinhabited central Italy between
the 8th and 3rd centuries BCE,before the rise of the Romans,
(55:42):
so it's possible that theEtruscans were influenced by the
people of Oratu.
So the people of Oratu and thePhrygians had something in
common in that they both had animpact on Etruscan art.
It would seem that thePhrygians also had extensive
trade with the people of Aratu,since archaeologists found a
(56:07):
Phrygian cauldron bearing anAratian bull figure.
They also had their ownlanguage, which was described as
a Neo-Hyrian language, but it'sbeen a long dead language.
But they also adapted to usingAssyrian script.
My guess and I emphasize guessis that they used a Syrian
(56:31):
script because they just adopteda more efficient means of
writing from their would-beconqueror, since they would have
had such a direct effect whenthey contacted each other.
Now, it's quite possible thattheir civilization probably
didn't last that long, becausethey were at perpetual war.
(56:52):
All men were required to servein the military and therefore
their military budget would haveeaten into much of their
available resources, such asarming and feeding the army when
they were in the field.
Now, at first, the military wasdedicated to defense,
especially when the Assyrianswere at their peak.
(57:12):
At first, the people of Ratuwere forced to engage in
defensive tactics, since theAssyrians were constantly
invading their territory.
However, once the Assyrianswere no longer a threat, the
people of Ratu appeared to havepicked up on the Assyrian habits
(57:33):
and started attacking hisneighbors.
And in case you're wonderingwhy Assyria couldn't conquer
this region, well, it's probablytwo-pronged.
For one, they were farthernorth, so this added distance
probably would have helped themout.
And also, this region wasmountainous and rocky, which
(58:08):
meant that when things turnednegative on the battlefield, the
soldiers would basically headfor the rocky hills and slip
away, since they knew theterrain and the Assyrians didn't
.
And in a way, this has kind ofa North Vietnam feel to it, in
that the North Vietnamese couldslip away into tunnels or in the
jungles whenever a battlestarted to tilt the other way
from them.
When Sargon II evaded Eratu in714 BCE, he decided to outflank
(58:28):
them and took the long routearound to catch them off guard.
However, it appears that thisbackfired at first, because by
the time the two armies met, theAssyrians were essentially
cooked and demoralized fromtheir long trek through the
mountains.
Plus, they were used tofighting on flat surfaces.
But Sargon led from the frontand when he charged, his troops
(58:53):
rallied around him and thepeople of Aratu were overwhelmed
and retreated to the mountains.
Sargon II chose not to pursuehis enemies but plundered
several cities, so in the end hewas able to enrich himself
despite not defeating the enemyin battle.
The reason for the declinereally isn't really certain.
(59:16):
It's possible that they facedattacks from foreign invaders
such as the Scythians.
However, in 585 BCE, oratu fellto Cyrus the Great of Persia.
I think I want to leave it offthere for right now.
Next, I want to really get intothe Ionian Greeks and their
(59:39):
influence on Anatolia, and thenreally what we're going to do is
we're going to get into thepart that really kind of I
wanted to speak about the most,and especially the Lydian part.
The Lydians would ultimatelyhave probably the longest
lasting effect on the region andreally their minting of coins
(01:00:01):
will have long lasting effect onsocieties going forward.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to the show, you
can visit us at patreoncom slashhistory of money banking trade
or you can visit our website atmoneybankingtradecom.
Also, you can help out the showa ton by leaving a five-star
(01:00:23):
review and telling a friend.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon.
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations all theway to the present.
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
entertaining.
(00:23):
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
entertaining.
Now, I'm not a historian but,like Dan Conlon likes to say, I
am a fan of history.
Shemarin, part woman, part snake, known as the Queen of Serpents
, had acquired an incrediblewealth of knowledge of the
history of mankind.
One day, a man named Thomasstumbled upon her secret hiding
(00:48):
place.
She kept him as a guest andtold him many stories about
mankind.
They eventually fell in love,but Thomas got homesick and
decided to leave.
But he made a promise that hewould never tell anyone about
Shamran's hiding spot and, justas important, he would forever
(01:09):
need to bathe alone, for if hedidn't, his skin would turn to
scales and therefore anyone whosaw him will know that they had
been together.
And therefore he knows whereher hiding spot is.
Now you gotta understand shemight have been the most
(01:29):
valuable person on earth if sheknew all there is to know about
the history of mankind.
However, soon after, the localking got sick and his grand
advisor began to hunt forShemarin's whereabouts because
he knew the cure could be foundthrough her.
But the twist was the advisorwas evil and wanted Shemarin for
(01:54):
his own personal gain andfigured he could flush her out
by passing a law that forbadeanyone from bathing alone.
Thus Thomas was captured andforced to reveal where
Shemarin's hiding spot was.
When Thomas and Shemarin werealone together, thomas
apologized profusely, but whilehe was apologizing, the king's
(02:15):
advisor was eavesdropping andheard the entire thing.
Shemarin forgave Thomas, butshe knew that the king's advisor
was listening.
So she told Thomas that theycould cure the king by killing
her and cutting up and eatingher body.
She informed Thomas thatwhoever ate her tail would
(02:37):
receive wisdom and knowledge,and whoever ate her body would
die instantly.
The advisor jumps out of theshadows and killed Shamaran.
Instantly.
He took the dead body ofShamaran to the king, where he
cut her up and cooked her body.
He gave the body to the kingand he ate the tail, knowing he
(02:57):
would be the next great king.
Thomas at the time was soovercome with guilt that he ate
her head, hoping he would dieinstantly.
He thought this because hedidn't know that the advisor was
eavesdropping at first and, asyou can imagine, he was tricked
and he died instantly, while theking was cured when he ate the
(03:19):
body.
On the other hand, when Thomasate the head, all the knowledge
that Shalmaran had hadtransferred to him and he went
on to become the world's firstever doctor and also became the
advisor to the king.
Now there are many versions ofthis story, but I thought this
(03:40):
would be a great story to tellas a great primer to the ancient
Anatolian myth system, and, asyou can see, this is the kind of
myth that would also sound veryGreek at the same time.
So what I'm getting at early onin this episode is how the
Anatolians and the Greeks had alot of knowledge transfer, and
(04:00):
you're going to kind of hear alot of it through this various
episode.
So I hope you find this to beenjoyable and together we can
learn more about ancientAnatolia.
When you think of ancientTurkey, you may hear it
described as the Greek word ofAnatolia, which means the east,
(04:22):
and that would be from the Greekpoint of view.
It is not just Turkey, but itcould also include eastern
Thrace.
Anatolia was the Asian part ofthe region, while eastern Thrace
was the European part.
This region is also home toprobably the world's first
(04:42):
temple, located at Gobekli Tepe,which translates to, basically,
potbelly Hill.
Carbon dating indicates thatthis site was built around 9000
BCE.
As you can imagine, the ancientbuilders left behind hundreds
of stone tools, such as chiselsand knives that were used to
(05:03):
construct the ancient marvel,such as chisels and knives that
were used to construct theancient marvel.
This was most likely the siteof some sort of religious or
spiritual location or had somekind of spiritual significance,
and some suggest that the areacould have been used as the
world's first astronomicalobservatory.
As the world's firstastronomical observatory.
(05:24):
Now, it's quite possible that,since trade had happened long
before written language and thefact that the temple would
attract people from far away,that trade would have been a
central theme to the meetings.
The many caves in the area alsomeant that the early
(05:46):
hunter-gatherers may have usedthem as shelters as well and, to
be clear, this wasn't apermanent settlement, but before
all that could have happened,it's important to note what was
happening geologically in theworld at the time, in the world
at the time.
So, if you look back far enough, the last glacial period would
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have reversed course around11,700 years ago, with glaciers
receding, temperatures wouldhave rose globally, sea levels
also would have rose andcoastlines around the world
would have changed and, as aresult, ecosystems also around
the world would have beennaturally altered.
Well, ecosystems also aroundthe world would have been
naturally altered.
Now, this climate change wouldhave drastically altered human
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activity, specifically the wayhumans eat and survive.
It was shortly after that theplanet had warmed that many
humans began to turn toagriculture as its main food
source.
Agriculture itself has nosingle simple origin, but it
appears that it may have had itsroots in, or near, anatolia.
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As a result, anatolia might bethe location of the first ever
human permanent settlements, ashumans occupied it between 9600
and 7000 BCE.
The fact is, anatolia wasfortunate enough to have an
abundance of natural grasslands,which would have allowed them
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to harvest grains such as wheatand barley.
In addition, this area wouldhave attracted large herds of
gazelle, wild sheep and evengoats, so the local population
would have had an opportunity tosupplement its diet with
various meats, and they wouldhave also been able to
domesticate certain animals thatwere native to the region.
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So, as a result, the people hadaccess to a wide variety of
foods.
Once the original site ofGobekli Tepe had lost its
spiritual significance, the sitewould have been used for
farming.
In fact, it appears that thesite was farmed so much that it
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had lost its fertility, and Ishould really emphasize the fact
that widespread domesticfarming had really been in full
swing by around 8000 BCE.
Domestic farming had reallybeen in full swing by around
8,000 BCE.
This meant that nomadic peoplewould settle down and create
certain communities that wouldbecome certain cultures, as
norms would have beenestablished in those communities
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.
So essentially, what happenedwas, originally the sites were
more or less used for nomadicsacred sites, which simply would
have been filled over and thenfarmed over.
This is precisely what happenedin the first layer of Golblakli
Tepe, and from there the secondlayer would have dated back to
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a period of around 88 to 8,000BCE.
The third layer is the oldestand it was famous for its
circular structures.
Now, it should be noted that noone is certain if the
structures had a ceiling or not.
The people who inhabited thesite were mostly
hunter-gatherers, who wereessentially nomadic tribes, and
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the circular structures havebeen carbon dated to around
9,000 BCE and it was added to aworld heritage list in 2018.
Sadly, in recent years, theareas had faced a refugee crisis
due to the Syrian conflict and,according to Klaus Schmidt, his
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hypothesis is that originally,hunter-gatherer tribes met to
collectively build the site, andit was able to be built because
of the invention of farmingthat would have kept people
there long enough to have theability to feed them and to
sustain a large workforce thatwas needed to build it.
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Now, he didn't mention it, butI suspect that the complex would
have been a critical tradingpost as well.
So if you're going to have asustained population in and
around a site and it has somesort of spiritual aspect, then
trade would have most likelyfollowed suit or maybe possibly
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proceeded it and became acritical component.
So, since people would havebeen passing through, it would
kind of only make sense thatthey would have bring excess
supplies to the site that wereeither grown or crafted far away
for trade purposes.
Now, as you can imagine,anatolia, like basically all the
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other prehistory settlementswell, they are quite a mystery
for us today.
Some of these early settlementswere established some 10,000
years ago and since writingwasn't established until the
people of Sumer had createdtheir cuneiform system roughly
around 3300 BCE.
We would have to extrapolatefrom the remains how the people
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would have lived their lives, soitems such as pottery would
have been a key insight as tohow they lived.
So far, the period we've beenreferring to is the Stone Age,
which lasted until around 5500BCE, when the Copper Age began.
So, in other words, humans hadfigured out how to smelt and
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manipulate copper to make toolsand, of course, weapons.
While this was a huge stepforward in the development of
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civilizations, to understand thenature of smelting ores to
activate metals, our commonancestors had first used stone
tools millions of years ago.
In fact, archaeologistsunearthed stone tools from the
shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya,and this would have dated back
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to about 3.3 million years ago,long before humans were around.
The fact is, homo sapiensreally didn't appear until about
200 to 300,000 years ago about200 to 300,000 years ago.
So it took millions of years todevelop metallurgy.
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And if you look into the localregion, a stone tool was found
in the Gadiz River that appearsto be 1.2 million years old.
Now, some of the oldestpermanent homes in modern-day
Turkey were built out of stonesthat were packed tightly
together.
These homes were generallysimilar in size, so this
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generally indicates that thepeople in these towns probably
lived relatively equal lives,since you wouldn't see that one
part of the settlement had muchbigger homes as compared to the
other side of the settlements.
When this happens, it becomessomewhat obvious that there was
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some sort of inequality.
If one side had theseproto-mansions and the other had
these proto-shacks, then yousay okay, yeah, well then one
side of town definitely appearedto have more wealth than the
other side, so we didn't reallysee that at this time.
The unique feature of thesestone homes was they had gaps
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under the floors where channelswere built.
No one is 100% sure why thesehomes had these channels, but
it's quite possible that theywere drainage systems or that
the channels were used to coolthe houses down somehow.
But it also goes further thanthat, as these homes were often
painted and decorated, with someof them having deceased members
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of their families buriedunderneath the homes.
To give you an idea about howold some of these homes are, the
ancient city of Çatalhöyükmight have been settled around
7500 BCE and, like I've said onseveral occasions, trade was a
vital part of these ancientsettlements, as it appears that
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they were engaging in tradingwith societies from the
Mediterranean and even as faraway as the Red Seas during the
Copper Age.
The first evidence of coppersmelting dated back from around
the 6th millennium BCE in Serbia, but the earliest documented
use of lead smelting beganaround the 6th millennium BC as
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well, but slightly prior, inYeram Tepe in Iraq.
So this suggests that leadsmelting may have actually
predated copper smelting, thatthe people of Anatolia began its
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metallurgy in Halasir, whichwas initially settled by wheat
and barley farmers around 7,000BCE.
So it appears that the smeltingtechnology had descended from
Southern Europe as well as fromits neighbors to the south in
Yarmtepe, from its neighbors tothe south in Yarmtepe.
When archaeologist Gil Steinbegan excavating the region, he
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kind of quickly figured out thatone of the sites looks like it
dated back to about 4100 BCE.
But the interesting thing aboutthis site that he excavated was
it included permanent housingand even mortuaries.
But a lot of similarities werediscovered that also could be
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found in Uruk, which was far,far to the south.
In addition, he noticed thatthere was certain bones of goats
that had similar markings ofhow the butchers would have
butchered their goats in otherMesopotamian cities.
Therefore, gilstein hadconcluded that the people of
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Anatolia around 4000 BCE hadalready established extensive
trade networks with cities farto the south or near the
Euphrates River.
Now, as we roll on further intothe early Bronze Age, which
historically starts around 3300BCE, the settlement of Boyakaya
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springs up.
Now.
This will be an importantsettlement, as this will
eventually grow significantlyand eventually become part of
the ancient city of Hattusa,which will be settled by the
Hattians and then by theHittites.
As we move into the Age ofMetallurgy, the various peoples
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in the region of ancient Turkeywill discover, and then
ultimately mine, a wide range ofmetal deposits, which allowed
them to make tools and weapons,but also the surplus would be
vital for trade, especially withthe people of Sumer and Akkad.
It wasn't just the metals thatwere traded.
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The people of Anatolia as earlyas 4000 BCE were also known for
their red and black potterythat would eventually be found
in Syria and Chechnya, astraders had taken the pottery
with them as they traveled alongthe extensive trade routes.
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Probably the first culture thatreally thrived in Anatolia after
the advent of the Bronze Agewere the Hattians, who settled
central Anatolia from around2300 to 630 BCE.
It appears that they may haveborrowed some of the
advancements made by theirneighbors to the south and, in
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particular, the people of Sumerand Akkad, of which one of the
biggest advancements that theyhad borrowed was that of
cuneiform writing, which enabledthe people of Anatolia the
ability to essentially createbusiness ledgers when conducting
trade.
And one of the biggest reasonswhy writing developed was it
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wasn't for a king to basicallylet everybody know how great
they were, but instead it was sothat individuals can track
business transactions.
In this particular region ofcentral Anatolia, the Hattians
had access to pretty denseforests, so this meant that the
people of central Anatolia, andthe Hattians in particular,
would have become masters atwoodworking and even created
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homes out of timber.
But the thing was is they wouldhave had excess timber, which
meant that they could trade thisexcess to people that didn't
have it, and the people thatdidn't have it were the people
to the south, and the peoplethat didn't have it were the
people to the south.
So what happened was thiscuneiform writing was a great
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tool to track various shipmentsthat were going to the people of
the south and the places likeSumer and Akkad that demanded
the excess timber.
That was in central Anatolia,and this trade not so much the
timber trade, but trade ingeneral would have occurred with
other people as well.
So it wasn't like they werejust trading with people to the
south, the Sumerians and theAkkadians.
No, they were also trading withthe Mitanni and people,
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babylonia and Egypt and, ofcourse, assyria.
But despite all this, theHattians were primarily farmers,
not unlike virtually everyother settled society at the
time.
So for the most part they justlived off the land.
But what was interesting isthey weren't known to be hunters
, because apparently theybelieved that everything had a
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spirit and because of this theydidn't want to upset their
patron goddess.
So therefore they basicallyavoided the hunting part of that
society.
The main city of which tradewould have been extended through
was their famous city ofHattusa, which was originally
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built around 2500 BCE on amassive hill which allowed it to
have natural defenses.
In fact, the Akkadians tried toconquer the Hattians on several
occasions, but failed in largepart because of the location of
Hattusa.
Failed in large part because ofthe location of Hattusa.
Also speaking of the Akkadians,the written language was
inspired by Akkadian script, butit was their own written
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language.
As such, archaeologists couldread some of the words inscribed
on the records but really don'tfully understand what was
written.
While Anatolia was dominated bysmall to medium kingdoms, by
1960 BCE, assyria had gained itsindependence from the Akkadians
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.
It was also around this timethat wealthy Assyrian merchants
had established the Karims,which were small colonial
settlements just outside ofAnatolian cities, which were
secure areas where merchantsfrom Ashur could bring their
goods.
The word Karim literally meansport in Akkadian.
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One of the Karims, known asK'nash, stood out from the rest
as it became the most importanttrading post for Ashur, rest as
it became the most importanttrading post for Ashur.
The trade colony of Kanish wasruled by the Hattians, as this
was among the most lucrativetrade centers for all the Near
East region.
Karim Kanish was reached bydonkey caravans from Ashur,
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which was roughly 625 miles or1000 thousand kilometers away,
which usually took about sixweeks to get from Ashur to the
Karim Kinesh.
Just like the other Karims, theAssyrians traveled to Kinesh,
set up a business and thencontrolled the business from
Ashur by placing trustedassociates, which were typically
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family members, in charge ofthe trading post.
So it was the Assyrians, notthe local Hattians, that were
more or less making the money inthe trade.
Some trading houses of KarimKanish flourished and some
became extremely wealthy, theequivalent of ancient
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millionaires of the time.
Even the banking operationscame from the Assyrians and they
were not local Hattians.
The traders of the old Assyriancolony of Kanish were looking
for ways in which they couldmaximize their profits by using
modern instruments such as thecheck payable to the bearer.
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Also, like we saw in thetraders in Babylon and Ur,
investment companies were set upfor trade colonies in Anatolia,
and these companies in Anatoliapaid dividends in a pro rata
basis based on the originalinvestment amounts by the
individual investors.
Also, these markets were sothoroughly developed by then
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that the traders and the peoplewere well aware of price
differences in different regions.
So it's quite possible thatthere were some kind of
arbitrage opportunities fortraders to buy goods cheaply in
one Anatolia colony and thensell the same goods at a higher
price in another location.
If you'd like more detailedinformation about the Assyrian
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trade colonies, you can listento my episode dedicated to
Assyria.
As these trade coloniesflourished, others took notice.
King Anita of the city-state ofKassura was taking notice and
eventually was able to sack thecity of Hattusa.
He was the son of Petana, whohad previously conquered the
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Assyrian trade colony of Knessduring his reign.
Legend has it that King Anitaplaced a curse on Hattusa to
prevent the people from tryingto rebuild the city.
However, this curse must nothave been very effective,
because King Hattusili I laterdecided to rebuild the city.
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Now he was accredited withfounding the Hittite kingdom and
this was more or less thebeginning of the end for the
Hattians, as the Hittites wouldtake on as the local hegemon and
, as a result, the Hattianculture began its slow decline.
Eventually it would be theHittites, who were originally
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descended from Indo-Europeanpeoples, that took over control
of Hattian lands and, as a longresult of staying in the Hattian
lands, well, they kind ofessentially absorbed the Hattian
culture and fused it to maketheir own Hittite culture.
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So really in the end, despitethe fact that the Hattians had
kind of disappeared, they weresuper influential on the Hittite
culture.
So essentially they disappeared, but they were still there,
because if you look at theHittites you can kind of get a
good idea of what the Hattianswere potentially like.
So it's kind of like a weirdbizarre thing, because the
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people came in from Europe, theykind of lost their European
culture, they dominated anotherculture and then basically
absorbed that culture and reallytook that on as their own.
But this new Hittite culturewould become stronger and
wealthier as it continued itstrade with all the other
regional powers.
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Hattusuli was able to subduemany distinct tribes in Anatolia
and then moved its capital toHattusa as a defensive measure.
He went on the offensive andexpanded the territory and in
reality it sounds like he waskind of like a great PR man for
his time, because he made sureeverybody knew within his
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kingdom and even beyond that hewas this great lion on the hunt,
great lion on the hunt, andessentially he wanted to make
sure everybody knew this.
So therefore he can installsome kind of fear in people
outside his kingdom.
However, he did try to sack theancient city of Aleppo, but he
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could not conquer the city andapparently on his deathbed he
chose his grandson, mersilli,who was only a child at the time
, as his heir.
Now, by the time, mersilli wasa young man.
He wanted to go back to Aleppo,but this time his army was able
to conquer it and then, ofcourse, plunder it.
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By around 1595 BCE he went downto Babylon and sacked the city
as well.
Now, from my perspective, hekind of had this Assyrian
quality about him in that hewould spare any city that gave
up.
But if a city put up any kindof resistance, he would come to
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you and try to utterly destroyit, and then he would use that
as an example to the next peopleas to what could happen if you
don't give up right away.
So it was kind of like hey,I'll be fair if you just give up
your city, but if you cross me,I will destroy everything.
Now, once he conquered a cityor region, he would generally
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install puppet kings that wouldreport directly back to Hattusa,
because he wouldn't stay in thecity that he conquered, so he
would conquer and then move on,and then ultimately he went back
to Hattusa In the end.
He didn't really want to expandhis kingdom beyond his control,
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so it appears that he wouldhave been content with the size
of his kingdom, as he neverreally tried to expand its
borders too much, but instead hepreferred to attack his
neighbors and plunder itsvaluables and then take them
back to Atusa.
During his reign, hesuccessfully plundered the
ancient cities of Lebo andBabylon, so those were some
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pretty big gets.
However, his reign wouldn'treally last long because he was
assassinated by hisbrother-in-law, hantili, which
started a gruesome trend amongHittite kings of assassination.
Among Hittite kings ofassassination, a lot of this was
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because they really didn't havea firm succession plan or even
succession laws, whichultimately led to assassinations
and coups which severelyweakened the kingdom for nearly
70 years and almost collapsed itentirely because of it, and as
a result, the kingdom shrunk.
Now everything changed withKing Telpino, who reigned from
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around 1525 to 1500 BCE, becausehe implemented a law code that
finally addressed success inplans but also addressed trade,
known as King TelppinosProclamation.
It was different than otherEastern law codes in that other
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codes were focused more onpunishments, but his
proclamation was more based onfines, not so much the corporal
punishments that you've seen inthe past.
He also signed the first evertreaty that we know of as well,
which would basically start atrend by Hittite kings.
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The Hittite kingdom was one ofthe most influential ruling
powers in Anatolian history.
During its earliest periods, itwas simply just another
regional power that struggled toprotect itself against its
enemies.
But all that would change whenSupilulima I ascended the throne
and I apologize if I butcheredthat name, but that name is a
(30:32):
tough one for me to pronounce so, as the Hittites and the
Hattians had consolidated well.
This meant that there were nowtwo superpowers in Anatolia the
Hittites and the Mitanni.
Now they weren't really verypeaceful as they would have
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fought against each other and,more importantly, they would
have also been trade partnerswith the Assyrians and the
Egyptians as the Hittites grewin strength.
Every time the Hittitesconquered far off territories,
far away from Hattusa, theybasically didn't have the
ability to hold and govern theirnew conquered territories,
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which would have led to powervacuums of which the Mitanni
were more than happy to fill,and, as a result, the Mitanni
would strengthen into a verystrong kingdom in the region and
more or less be a thorn in theHittite side.
The Hittites' aggressivenesswould lead it to some
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historically bad press, as theywere mentioned in the Old
Testament, for constantlyattacking surrounding nations,
especially the Israelites.
But it's also possible thatthis was also blown way out of
proportion.
To give you an idea of thestrength of the Hittite economy,
you can almost view it frommodern finds.
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So, for example, there was ashipwreck that was discovered
off the coast of Turkey.
This shipwreck may be dated toaround the 13th century BCE and
it may be the world's oldestshipwreck that we have actually
discovered In the ship?
They discovered around six tonsof copper and one ton of tin.
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Now, as you may remember fromprevious episodes, tin was
extremely rare and therefore thekey ingredient to make bronze.
So tin was kind of like the oilof the Bronze Age, whereas
securing it would have beenvital for the production of
bronze but more importantly, itwould have been important from
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national defense, so it wouldhave been a national security
thing too.
So around the time of theshipwreck, king Supiluluma I,
who had became the king around1344 BCE, he had previously
moved the Hittite capital backto Hattusa and began conquering
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surrounding territories.
As such, he conquered theMitanni and even took land from
Syria.
The result was the Mitannikingdom became a Hittite vassal
state.
Supi Lululema also found otherways to exert influence, as he
created alliances by takingforeign wives, just like so many
(33:30):
other kings had done before andafter him.
In fact, one of his marriagesincluded a Babylonian princess,
which kind of really indicatesthat he was making a major power
play in the region.
Eventually, the Hittite kingdomwould become a threat to the
Egyptians, but luckily for theHittites, egypt was weak at the
time.
The reason why Egypt was soweak was because of numerous
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factors, but in large part itwas because Pharaoh Akhenaten
had weakened Egypt when hedecided to move Egypt away from
its traditional gods to worshipone of more of a monotheistic
religion in Atenism.
This had essentially upendedand disrupted the entire kingdom
, so Egypt wasn't really in aposition to confront the
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Hittites up in Syria.
His successors couldn't do muchbetter.
Tutankhamen fought against theHittites, but the Egyptians kept
on losing ground to theHittites.
As a possible refresher,tutankhamen was born with
multiple health issues and as aresult, he died at a very young
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age of maybe 19 or so.
After his death, his widowrequested to marry one of
Supiluluma's sons.
Now, this was a very unusualarrangement In fact you could
probably say that it wasunprecedented at that point.
But Supiluluma agreed becausehe had a history of forging
(35:03):
alliances through marriages.
So he sent his son, sananza, tomarry the queen of Egypt.
However, sananza never made itto his destination and was
likely murdered by Tutankhamen'sgeneral, was likely murdered by
Tutankhamen's general.
Supiluluma was obviouslyenraged and began to use this as
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motivation to attack variousEgyptian territories and conquer
much of the Levant.
This ultimately proved to be afatal move, because many
Egyptian POWs had brought theplague with them, which
eventually killed Subi-Lulumaand his successor around 1322
BCE.
So in the end, it was hisgrandson, mursili II, who would
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become the new king of theHittite kingdom.
Mersili II was still young andrelatively unproven.
However, he managed to provehimself quite quickly and became
a very skilled and successfulking.
One of the more interestingaspects of the Hittites was that
they would pick gods fromconquered or absorbed
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territories and incorporate theminto their own pantheon, or
absorb territories andincorporate them into their own
pantheon.
Now, I'm not 100% sure why theydid this.
Maybe it was because they werehonoring the people that they
conquered, or maybe it wassomewhat superstitious in that
they didn't want to anger allthe various gods.
So it's better to have theiropponent's god on their side
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instead of being an adversary.
So in the end, they end up withprobably the most amount of
gods of any ancient society.
Some of the gods would live onfor millennia as they would
evolve into Greek and even Romangods.
And it's funny because I havethis interesting little story
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One of my best friends growingup who ended up being the best
man at my wedding.
Well, he was in building sevenof the World Trade Center on
9-11.
He told me afterward that hewas certain he was going to die
and if you remember buildingseven, that was the last
building to fall.
It was after the two twintowers had went down.
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Afterward he kind of had a goodsense of humor about it
regarding the stressful ordeal,because what he told me later
was that when he was being heldup in the lobby of the building
they could see people from theother buildings jump into their
death.
At the time he kind of reallymade peace with the fact that he
might die that day and he saidhe wasn't scared, but instead he
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was really calm.
But then he started to think tohimself should I pray to a God
right now?
I mean he was like man, there'sso many to choose from.
Which one would be the best?
Which one should I pick?
Maybe I should pick all of themand pray to all the different
gods, because I don't know ifthere is one, and if there is I
want to make sure I get itcorrect.
So he kind of laughed about itat the end.
But it kind of I bring up thatstory because it kind of reminds
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me a lot of what the Hittiteswere kind of maybe thinking.
You know, it's like, hey,there's so many gods out there
we don't know which one iscorrect, but maybe if we pray to
them all we'll be protected.
So that's kind of my littlestory of my friend who kind of
had a real good sense of humorabout 9-11.
And considering that 9-11really didn't have much humor
(38:25):
involved, it was prettyinteresting that he can kind of
relate a story afterward to whatwas kind of going through his
head.
But in a weird way I kind ofreally see the way he was
thinking, even though maybe itwasn't so much serious, whereas
the Hittites would have takenthis very serious.
But yeah, that's my littlepersonal story on that.
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So as the Pantheon was growing,so too was the Hittites' growth
and strength.
As such, their encroachmentinto the Levant continued to be
a threat to the Egyptians.
Encroachment into the Levantcontinued to be a threat to the
Egyptians.
Ramesses II of Egypt had kindof really guided Egypt back on
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track and really wanted toexpand the territory northward,
especially around Kadesh,because it was booming due to
its lucrative trade routes, andas such, the pharaoh gathered at
least 20,000 infantry and asmany as 2,000 chariots in
preparation for the upcoming warwith the Hittites.
In 1274 BCE, before the warbegan, the Egyptians were able
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to capture Hittite spies.
The Egyptians were known forusing torture techniques, and
they used it to give up thelocation of the Hittite king and
his troops.
The Egyptians attacked Kadesh,but the battle was a stalemate
and there was really no truewinner that was achieved.
Soon after the battle, theHittites had another problem, as
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the Assyrians were also gettingstronger to the southeast.
Therefore, the Hittite king hadto halt any planned attacks
against the Egyptians because hehad to deal with the growing
Assyrian problem.
About 15 years after the GreatBattle, a peace treaty was
signed by Ramesses II andHattusulid III and, if anything,
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it would have relieved pressureon the Hittites.
The Egyptian-Hittite peacetreaty, also known as the Treaty
of Kadesh, might be theearliest surviving peace treaty
that we can actually view tothis day.
I spoke about this in theEgyptian episode, but
(40:35):
essentially both sides of thebattle claimed victory, but in
reality the battle ended up as atie, even though the Hittites
waged war with its neighbors.
This treaty kind of points to alarger idea that the Hittites
may have been ultimately knownfor was that they appeared to
prefer negotiations and treatiesover a long-term war with its
neighbors.
Historians generally believethat they are one of the first
(40:57):
kingdoms that practicedinternational diplomacy.
You might be kind of thinkingto yourself is it possible that
they preferred to negotiatepeace treaties because maybe
they didn't have the means towage long-term war successfully?
And, to answer your question,you might be correct, as they
may have had to turn todiplomacy for survival.
(41:19):
But in the end, even thoughthey had went to war with each
other, there was a lot ofinformation sharing between the
Hittites and the Egyptians.
So, for example, the Hittiteshad transferred a lot of their
metalworking knowledge with theEgyptians, while the Egyptians
had shared their farmingknowledge with the Hittites.
In 1210 BCE, king Supaluluma IItook the throne, but he would
(41:47):
be the last Hittite king.
The reasons for the Hittitedownfall aren't very clear, so
there's a lot of speculation.
It's quite possible that it wasdriven by climate change or
even a serious earthquake whichtotally destabilized the region.
So it's possible that Hattusawas abandoned.
(42:08):
Or some believe that the citywas sacked by Casca, who were
people from the north of theHittites, the north of the
Hittites.
What was left of Hattusa waspossibly destroyed by fire and
really won't be occupied againfor about 500 years.
But let us not forget that theHittites were probably doomed
(42:30):
one way or another, because itwas around this time that we
experienced the late Bronze Agecollapse, which we saw the
mysterious sea peoples that wererolling in from the
Mediterranean and attackingcoastal settlements in the Near
East and even in Egypt, and theywould have caused massive
destruction.
I mean to tell you how powerfulthey were.
(42:50):
They basically pushed theAssyrians back into basically a
little bubble where theAssyrians were basically able to
fall back and survive and a lotof other societies near the
coastline could not fall backand survive, so they're
basically just wiped outaltogether.
Now I wanted to take a step backin the story and talk about the
(43:11):
Mitanni.
We know about the Mitannibecause archaeologists have
recovered numerous letters fromaround 1500 to 1240 BCE, some of
the letters exchanged by theMitanni, the Assyrians and even
the Egyptian kings, which pointsto the fact that the Mitanni
were one of the most powerfulnations at the time.
(43:33):
The Mitanni were mostly basedout of the region around
northern sections of theEuphrates and the Tigris rivers,
different nations.
Due to its location, it wasable to establish several trade
(43:57):
routes that ran down the riversinto southern Mesopotamia.
And the thing is is the peoplein southern Mesopotamia
typically did not have naturalresources they needed, so it had
to look to other cultures, suchas the Mitanni, and being on
the rivers meant trade betweenthe different cultures would
have been much easier, sincethey wouldn't have had to overly
(44:19):
rely on overland travel.
But it's interesting that eventhough they were on or near the
rivers, they were also greathorsemen.
Or near the rivers, they werealso great horsemen.
In fact, the world's oldesthorse training manual was found
by historians that was writtenby the Mitanni.
So basically, you combine thefact that they were great
(44:41):
horsemen and the fact that theywere able to develop metal
weapons well, this would giveyou an idea that they would have
been formidable opponents onthe battlefield.
But unfortunately, with theexception of the manual and the
letters between the variouskings, there really isn't a
whole lot known about theMitanni, as the records have
(45:02):
basically not survived.
So therefore there's many holesin the Mitanni story.
However, there are letters thatwere discovered that were
written by Akkadians regardingtheir dealings with the Mitanni.
So the thing is, a lot ofhistorians had to get a lot of
details from other societies andit's obviously not first-hand
(45:24):
information, but it's alsoinformation in which the victor
is discussing a defeated enemy.
So there's also that we do knowthat the Egyptians, under
Thutmose III, fought a battleagainst the Mitanni around 1400
BCE.
In modern day Syria, it alsosounds like the Mitanni did what
(45:46):
a lot of other kingdoms didduring these days, in that they
would try to marry off theirdaughters to form political
alliances with other kingdoms ofthe region, and, of course,
they would also send off manygifts, including gold and
jewelry, and even camels, toforeign kings.
Now, these practices typicallydidn't have long-lasting effects
(46:09):
, so it usually worked in ashort period of time.
In fact, in one case it appearsthat a Mitanni king was upset
with another foreign kingbecause he did not receive his
proper quantities of gold andother precious gems in exchange.
Between his daughter and aforeign king, between his
(46:34):
daughter and a foreign king.
Now, as wealthy as the Mitanniwere, they still weren't quite a
match for their rivals inAnatolia, the Hittites, as they
eventually turned the Mitanniinto their vassals, of which
they would never really trulyregain independence under a
unified kingdom, and as a result, they would be dominated for
years until the Sea Peoples camealong and then the Assyrians.
(46:55):
Now the issue with theAssyrians is if any nation
rebels against their authority,they would have often resulted
to extreme cruelty to maintaintheir power.
A perfect example of this isthe Assyrian king Shalmaneser.
I destroyed the Mitanni duringone of its rebellions, and in
(47:16):
doing so, many other survivorswere left blinded in various
Mitanni cities that were sacked,along with the Assyrians
destroying any of the allies ofthe Mitanni.
The ones that weren't killed orblinded were then sold out into
slavery.
Therefore, the Assyrians, inlarge part, were able to put an
(47:36):
end to the Mitanni culture.
The fact is, the Mitanni andthe Hittites sprung up in an
unfortunate location and in atime in history that they would
have had the misfortune of beingwithin striking distance of the
Sea Peoples and the Assyrians,and therefore they were
essentially wiped out completely.
In fact, both cultures were sothoroughly decimated that people
(47:59):
, for thousands of yearsafterward, had no clue that they
even existed in the first place.
Once the Hittite Empirecollapsed, there was a bit of a
vacuum in Anatolia, and thisvacuum was ultimately filled by
the Phrygians.
As such, the Phrygians came topower and created a kingdom that
(48:19):
would last for centuries.
However, they never reallybecame a military powerhouse and
thus sort of were more or lessa minor kingdom.
In the grand scheme of things,not much is known about these
people, as they really didn'tleave behind a whole lot of
inscriptions, which means muchof the information received
about them comes from otherkingdoms.
(48:40):
Some think that they came fromthe Sea Peoples, some think that
they had come from the Balkansand possibly Macedonia.
I'd say the thing that theycontributed to the most to the
region was the fact that theyhad built this massive road
system which would last longafter their society collapsed,
(49:04):
which meant future societiescould use their roads for trade.
One of the roads that was builtwas through their capital of
Gordium, which will ultimatelybe part of the Great Persian
Royal Road.
Since they were strategicallyplaced between the Greeks and
the Persians, their societyevolved to have a heavy Greek
(49:25):
and Persian influence.
You might also be familiar withsome of the Phrygian mythology,
as it included the famous storyof King Midas.
Also, according to Greekmythology, the Phrygians were an
ally defending the city of Troyin the Trojan War.
Now, you might not be toofamiliar with the Trojan War, so
(49:48):
I'll give you a quick recap.
Familiar with the Trojan War,so I'll give you a quick recap.
The Trojan War began when thePrince of Troy, paris, seduced
Helen, the wife of the King ofSparta.
Obviously, the Greeks weren'tgoing to stand for this dishonor
and, as a result, the TrojanKing's brother led an army
against Troy.
This bloody war would last forabout 10 years, with both sides
(50:11):
experiencing heavy losses.
Probably the most famous part ofthe story is when the Greeks
built a massive wooden horse,known as the Trojan horse, which
hid some of the finest soldiersinside.
The Greeks in the meantimefaked a retreat and left the
wooden horse at the city gates.
When the Trojans discovered thehorse, they assumed the Greeks
(50:33):
had surrendered and they hadbrought the horse in the city.
That night the hidden Greeksoldiers snuck out of the horse,
opened the gates to a waitingGreek army and then they
destroyed the city.
Of course, my favorite Trojanhorse scenes in movies were the
2006 Beer Fest movie, when theguys hid inside a Trojan keg and
(50:54):
they used it to get into theinternational beer drinking
contest.
And of course Monty Python alsoused this in the quest for holy
grail, but instead they hadused a rabbit but forgot to hide
inside the wooden rabbit.
And since Monty Python is goodas it gets, the wooden rabbit is
thrown at them from the castle.
So obviously this story isworld famous and people have
(51:17):
been telling it for thousands ofyears and even creating their
own little spin to create theirown little Trojan horse, whether
it's in comedy movies or if youare trying to attack people
through their computer systemsmovies, or if you are trying to
attack people through theircomputer systems Now.
Just a few minutes ago, I'd alsobrought up King Midas as well.
Now, with regards to King Midas, some historians point to some
(51:44):
inscriptions of a real-liferuler named Midas, who may have
ruled from around 738 to 696 BCE, who may have been the
inspiration for the legendarystory.
And if you aren't too familiar,the story goes that King Midas
returned the satyr Salinas tohis master, dionysus, the god of
wine.
The god, being pleased,proposed to Midas a gift for him
(52:09):
to choose.
So Midas chose the ability toturn anything he touched to gold
.
As such, this was obviouslyshort-sighted decision-making,
because he wouldn't be able toeat or drink anything, since all
his food and liquids would beturned to gold.
So the starving king begged thegod to reverse the gift of gold
(52:30):
, and Dionysus told the king towash off in the Pactolus river.
Now the interesting thing is,is the Pactolus river in Lydia
was known for its copiousamounts of gold deposits which
later enriched the kingdom ofLydia and Caritius in particular
.
In real life, it was Midas whomay have been the basis of the
(52:53):
legendary myth of King Midas,who died in around 695 BCE after
losing a major battle to theSumerians, who were a nomadic
people who migrated to Anatolia.
Around 700 BCE, they became asomewhat minor power on Anatolia
(53:14):
until they were conquered byLydia.
The Sumerians burned downGordium to the ground, and they
likely destroyed many importantrelics that would have shed a
lot more light on the Phrygiansociety.
Phrygia ultimately became aLydian state.
The Greeks, however, seemed tobe fond of the Phrygians because
(53:36):
they were highly prized in theslave market, so they probably
had either a certain look orskill that separated them from
other slaves.
In their case, they were highlyskilled metal workers and wood
carvers.
It is also believed that theywere quite educated as well as
(53:58):
they were quite literate, sothey probably filled a void for
slaves that didn't have theability to comprehend certain
ideas or even be literate.
In this particular region therewas also the kingdom of Aratu,
which was also known as thekingdom of Van, which was
(54:19):
located around Lake Van in theArmenian highland.
They were a monarchy, and theirfirst recorded king was Aramee,
who ruled from around 860 to840 BCE.
This wasn't necessarily along-lasting kingdom, as they
only lasted a few hundred years.
They did appear to end up beinga thorn in the side of the
(54:39):
Assyrians, especially becausethey were pretty wealthy and
they had large metal reservesincluding silver, gold, copper,
iron and even lead and as aresult, they ultimately became
skilled at crafting goods madeof metal, which meant that they
could produce quality tools andweapons.
In addition, they becameskilled traders and merchants
(54:59):
due to their large naturaldeposits of metals.
They were also able to tradeexcess raw materials and
finished goods thanks to thetrade routes that ran directly
through Anatolia, mesopotamia,thanks to the trade routes that
ran directly through Anatolia,mesopotamia and even out in
through Iran and up into China.
Also, it appears that theirtrade routes made it all the way
(55:20):
to the Italian peninsula, or atleast had contracts with the
Etruscans, because cauldronsthat were made in Oratu were
very similar to the Etruscanpieces found in Italy.
The Etruscan civilizationinhabited central Italy between
the 8th and 3rd centuries BCE,before the rise of the Romans,
(55:42):
so it's possible that theEtruscans were influenced by the
people of Oratu.
So the people of Oratu and thePhrygians had something in
common in that they both had animpact on Etruscan art.
It would seem that thePhrygians also had extensive
trade with the people of Aratu,since archaeologists found a
(56:07):
Phrygian cauldron bearing anAratian bull figure.
They also had their ownlanguage, which was described as
a Neo-Hyrian language, but it'sbeen a long dead language.
But they also adapted to usingAssyrian script.
My guess and I emphasize guessis that they used a Syrian
(56:31):
script because they just adopteda more efficient means of
writing from their would-beconqueror, since they would have
had such a direct effect whenthey contacted each other.
Now, it's quite possible thattheir civilization probably
didn't last that long, becausethey were at perpetual war.
(56:52):
All men were required to servein the military and therefore
their military budget would haveeaten into much of their
available resources, such asarming and feeding the army when
they were in the field.
Now, at first, the military wasdedicated to defense,
especially when the Assyrianswere at their peak.
(57:12):
At first, the people of Ratuwere forced to engage in
defensive tactics, since theAssyrians were constantly
invading their territory.
However, once the Assyrianswere no longer a threat, the
people of Ratu appeared to havepicked up on the Assyrian habits
(57:33):
and started attacking hisneighbors.
And in case you're wonderingwhy Assyria couldn't conquer
this region, well, it's probablytwo-pronged.
For one, they were farthernorth, so this added distance
probably would have helped themout.
And also, this region wasmountainous and rocky, which
(58:08):
meant that when things turnednegative on the battlefield, the
soldiers would basically headfor the rocky hills and slip
away, since they knew theterrain and the Assyrians didn't
.
And in a way, this has kind ofa North Vietnam feel to it, in
that the North Vietnamese couldslip away into tunnels or in the
jungles whenever a battlestarted to tilt the other way
from them.
When Sargon II evaded Eratu in714 BCE, he decided to outflank
(58:28):
them and took the long routearound to catch them off guard.
However, it appears that thisbackfired at first, because by
the time the two armies met, theAssyrians were essentially
cooked and demoralized fromtheir long trek through the
mountains.
Plus, they were used tofighting on flat surfaces.
But Sargon led from the frontand when he charged, his troops
(58:53):
rallied around him and thepeople of Aratu were overwhelmed
and retreated to the mountains.
Sargon II chose not to pursuehis enemies but plundered
several cities, so in the end hewas able to enrich himself
despite not defeating the enemyin battle.
The reason for the declinereally isn't really certain.
(59:16):
It's possible that they facedattacks from foreign invaders
such as the Scythians.
However, in 585 BCE, oratu fellto Cyrus the Great of Persia.
I think I want to leave it offthere for right now.
Next, I want to really get intothe Ionian Greeks and their
(59:39):
influence on Anatolia, and thenreally what we're going to do is
we're going to get into thepart that really kind of I
wanted to speak about the most,and especially the Lydian part.
The Lydians would ultimatelyhave probably the longest
lasting effect on the region andreally their minting of coins
(01:00:01):
will have long lasting effect onsocieties going forward.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to the show, you
can visit us at patreoncom slashhistory of money banking trade
or you can visit our website atmoneybankingtradecom.
Also, you can help out the showa ton by leaving a five-star
(01:00:23):
review and telling a friend.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon.
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