PolledHistory

 Hello! The poll was a tie, but we already did religion in the Friday bonus, so we're doing exploration. K nowledge of the world and one's surroundings has always been a subject of curiosity throughout history. Exploration is defined as "the action of traveling in or through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it", according to the Oxford dictionary. And throughout history, this process has been practiced many times to learn about somebody or a nation's view of the world surrounding it. In the ancient era, you might think cities were completely disconnected and un-knowing of far away areas, but some places had impressive knowledge of far away lands. The Greek philosopher Anaximander, who died by about 546 BC, made a world map that covered the Mediterranean sea, the Black Sea, included the  Nile river, and had knowledge of Anatolia and the Levant. Still, the map was relatively inaccurate at least compared to our current knowledge. The Middle Eastern civiliza...

 Hello! I figured we kept talking about conflict history. We've done the history of philosophy previously and I think religion fits well. The origins of religion is sketchy. The first large, organized religions is usually some form of paganism/polytheism. In India, Hnduism emerged which is a very ancient belief and is one of the forms of polytheism. It had many gods.  Jainism was another ancient Indian religion. The Middle East was also active. Egyptian paganism *or Kemetism) believed in many Gods, the most famous of which was Ra (their sun god). Egyptian religion was more complex, but like many other paganisms of the time, each object or area of life was made a god. In China and East Asia was religions like Taoism/Daoism which is both considered a philosophy and a religion that believed in harmony with the universe. There was also legalism (we must obey strict laws) and confucianism (more of a philosophy. encourages humaneness and benevolence and other virtues). There was Bud...

 Hello! After the poll, we got no results so I just took a random one out of the three.  Today's episode is about a maritime European power not always represented - the Venetian republic centered around the city of Venice. It has a lengthy history land at its height it was a large Adriatic power that was commercially influential. SVenice began as a duchy and was partially under Eastern Roman power until in 726 several Italian provinces under Eastern Roman control broke away because of the iconoclasm - the deletion and smashing of cultural mosaics.  In 812, the new doge (leader) of Venice moved the capital to what would be Venice, near the top of the Adriatic. Venice would have many trade links with the Eastern Roman (Byz.) Empire but things got worse when the Byzantine emperor expelled Venetian merchants which started a war. Venetian-Byzantine enmity escalated and soon in 1204 the Venetians escorted the crusaders not to the intended goal but to Constantinople and the citu...

 Hello! Source: Wikipedia This Friday's weekly history episode is about the Battle of Vienna - a key historical event that had a large effect in history. The powerful Ottoman Turkish empire, though have weakened in the past century, aspired to take the key city of Vienna which would grant them power even deeper into the European continent.  It was a key city and there was very intricate and well designed Ottoman logistical preparations under the Ottoman vizier (vizier is like an advisor) Kara Mustafa. Vienna was under the control of one of the many states in the larger state of the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire is a complex political entity. It was not Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. It was barely an organized empire - more of a semi united collection of lots of small and large smaller kingdoms and barely had legitimacy as being Roman. The ruling Habsburg dynasty also was very messy and inbred. It was a messy thing. The Ottoman Turks (Turks were from Central Asia bu...

 Hello! Last week I actually forgot to add a vote, but I figured we don't cover east asian history enough. A very interesting topic full of strategic brilliance is the Imjin War - a war between a newly unfiied Japan and Joseon Korea.  In Japan, the islands were united by a guy called Totoyomi Hideyoshi. He wanted to have more than Japan. He decided to raise an army, and asked the Joseon (the nation in the Korean peninsula) of they could access through korean territory into China. The Korean king refused to let him through, and in 1592 the war began. Totoyomi sent a few thousand samurai into the southern Korean peninsula, quickly capturing Busan. The Koreans were often defeated on land. The korean peninsula was quickly invaded. However, things changed when a man named Yi-Sun-Sin became the leader of the navy. Yi built a well designed navy with "turtle ships" that were extremely powerful.  Yi Sun Sin defeated tens and hundreds of Japanese ships in multiple battles. The Japa...

T he Diadochi Wars (Greek: Sucessor Wars) were a series of wars that were waged between the sucessors of Alexander the Great after his death. They are quite underappreciated for its importance. It ended in a two century long period known as the Hellenistic era where Greek culture and language spread and mixed in the world. Part 1 - Alexander  Alexander the Great was a Macedonian Greek king of the Argead royal dynasty. He was a skilled person whose father was Philip II. He had a plan: to engulf the Persian empire and create a huge, new, Greek empire.  He set out and in about a decade, fully subjugated the Persians, taking over large swathes of land and forming a world-encompassing empire. Almost the entire known world was under his grasp and he was extremely succesful. He went back to Babylon but then died at a young age in 323 BC. His expansive empire would be fought over for the next decades in a very intense chain of twists and turns. Part 2 - The Early Diadochi Wars There w...

 Hello!  The Fall of  Babylonian civilization was a pivotal event, ending a millenium spanning civilization that invented and discovered many things and had amazing infrastructure and architecture. There were several Babylonian empires to talk about. The first being the Babylonian Empire that spanned between 1900 to 1600 BC and then much later, by 626 BC, a new Neo Babylonian Empire formed. Babylon rose by around 1900 BC. Around this time, the rivers of Mesopotamia moved, making Babylon, conveniently, in a great spot.  Babylon fluorished soon later, expanding throughout Mesopotamia (the area between and around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), and under the reign of Hammurabi they reached their peak. Hammurabi set the first code of laws. There were two Babylonian empire and thus two "falls". The first "fall" happened when the Hittites suddenly came, deposed the Babylonian dynasty, burned Babylon, and left. The Babylonian Empire collapsed, and the Mesopotamian river ...

 Hello!  636 AD, Jerusalem. The Rashidun Arabs, a recently formed empire and the first islamic empire, lanches a siege of the great city which has been under Roman control for about seven centuries at the time. Now, it was under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire, exhausted after wars. The Arabs gained Jerusalem, a symbolic loss to the European nations at the time. Arab control over Jerusalem would remain virtually undisturbed, and the Christian Europeans saw this as a big loss. Jerusalem was seen as a holy city and was very important. It was a holy city to three major religions and in the crossroads of three continents.  In 1095 AD, the medieval European kingdoms have begin to want to recapture Jerusalem. The Catholic Church wanted to recapture Jerusalem and the land of Israel. Pope Urban II (at the time, there was only two main churches, the Roman Catholic and Eastern, Byzantine one) has proposed this idea. And suddenly they all think that God wills that reclamatio...