Empires Special: The Greeks TV - Arthur Keith - Howard Rheingold - Oscar Wilde - George Orwell - Sigmund Freud - Lost Civilisation TV – Ancient Impossible TV - Nafeez Ahmed TV - Matthew Collings TV - Morgan Freeman TV - Mary Beard: Civilisations TV - In Order of Disappearance 2014 - Carroll Quigley - Janina Ramirez TV - Secret History of Humans TV - Exterminate All the Brutes TV - The UnXplained with William Shatner TV - Storyville: Whirlybird TV -
The Greeks: a people glorious and arrogant, valiant and head- strong. These were the men and women who laid the very foundations of western civilisation. Empires Special: The Greeks: Crucible of Civilisation: Revolution, PBS 2000
The discovery of agriculture was the first big step toward a civilized life. Arthur Keith
Of course, with agriculture came the first big civilizations, the first cities built of mud and brick, the first empires. And it was the administers of these empires who began hiring people to keep track of the wheat and sheep and wine that was owed and the taxes that was owed on them by making marks; marks on clay in that time. Howard Rheingold
Comfort is the only thing our civilization can give us. Oscar Wilde
To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay. George Orwell
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. Sigmund Freud
An ancient temple is discovered in the Middle East. It’s thousands of years older than the Egyptian pyramids. Lost Civilisation, National Geographic 2012
In a comparatively short space of time we go from the stone age to walking on the moon. What was it that made us change so dramatically? ibid.
Turkey: here is where the find has been made – at a place called Gobekli Tepe (pot-bellied hill). ibid.
Gobekli Tepe is much more sophisticated than Stonehenge and yet is six thousand years older; it’s seven thousand years older than the Egyptian Pyramids. ibid.
How could we have built something so monumental? ibid.
The temple builders were not farmers; they were still hunter-gatherers. ibid.
The engineering skills involved must have been developed a long time before the temple is built. ibid.
To put ourselves about Nature is a huge change from how we see ourselves in earlier cave paintings. ibid.
And what motivates that cultural revolution is the new religion in which we are superior to the beasts. ibid.
Gobekli Tepe suggests that it was the urge to worship that sparked civilisation. ibid.
How did the Romans manage to defy gravity and make millions of litres of water flow uphill over mountains? How did the ancient Egyptians carve massive granite obelisks thousands of years before the Washington monument was built? And why would the Roman army build their own mountain? Monuments more colossal than our own … The ancient world was far from primitive. Ancient Impossible s1e1: Moving Mountains, H2 2016
The Romans completed the wall around Masada in just a few days. But what they didn’t realise was how well stocked the rebels were. ibid.
How do you get a thousand-ton obelisk on to a barge? … [A. Make it an axle] ibid.
Roman engineers kept the water moving through hills and valleys maintaining a steady gradient of less than one per cent. An astounding feat … uphill: the inverted syphon … ibid.
One of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs created this impossibly vast monument to himself at Abu Simbel … The largest temple ever carved out of solid rock. Ancient Impossible s1e2: Monster Monuments
Stonehenge: it appears to be a structure years ahead of its time. ibid.
‘These stones from this quarry were transported well over a hundred miles.’ ibid.
A 2000-year-old concrete dome found in the centre of Rome – it’s called the Pantheon … ibid.
The Egyptians built more than a hundred pyramids across their kingdom. ibid.
Ancient superweapons as mighty as today’s … Archimedes’ Claw … A group of men could grab and tip enemy ships … Just the first of Archimedes’ many game-changing inventions … A death ray … long debated … by harnessing the power of the sun. Ancient Impossible s1e3: Ultimate Weapons
Could Archimedes’ cannon have had the power needed for such destruction simply using steam? ibid.
Egypt: This floating superweapon appears to have carried more people than a modern aircraft carrier. ibid.
The ancient world clearly had more than one great scientific thinker … Colossal monuments, powerful ancient superweapons, and technology so precise it defies reinvention. Ancient Impossible s1e4: Ancient Einsteins
How could ancient civilisations have built huge structures … produced thousands of chariots with assembly-line precision … Why would the Romans have created a massive underground industrial hell, where thousands of slaves never saw daylight? Ancient Impossible s1e5: Biggest Builds
Using concrete on a large scale underwater … two thousand years ago. ibid.
What incredible power-tool might the ancient Egyptians have used to create this mysterious cylinder … What precision instruments did they have? … Who created the world’s first multi-tool? And an ancient Chinese machine that would start the world’s first industrial revolution. Ancient Impossible s1e6: Power Tools
How did the Chinese manage to build a devastating repeating weapon? … What secrets lie behind the ancient world’s high-tech body armour? … What simply invention was behind the world’s most ruthless weapon – land mines? Ancient Impossible s1e7: Warrior Tech
The game-changing lightweight armour that helped Alexander the Great conquer Asia. ibid.
Roman arenas, engineering triumphs, built to house gladiators fighting to their deaths. Ancient Impossible s1e8: Roman Empire
The Romans also created a mobile and deadly armoured weapon likened to the tank. ibid.
The doctrine of unlimited growth is a failed doctrine; it cannot work, and it is creating absolute disaster. Nafeez Ahmed, The Crisis of Civilization, 2011
We have passed the tipping point on climate change. ibid.
Science is not the problem here: it’s the way in which the political players are exploiting the science in order to legitimize their own vested interests. ibid.
We most likely peaked in world oil production in 2005. ibid.
What the free market ideology does is it organises the economy in such a way that the state really has no role, so the free market ideology is actually taking power through these economic decisions and transactions completely out of the hands of the public and giving free rein to all manner of actors and vested interests that have nothing to do with the popular will. ibid.
If we think we’ve still got civilisation, what do we think it is? Is it old monuments from the past lingering on? Matthew Collings, This is Civilisation I: Ye Gods, BBC 2007
It’s about what art can do that history can’t exactly do. What’s the point of a legacy of art? ibid.
What is civilisation? Civilisation is what we do in order to not be at a basic, murdering, devouring, purely appetite level of existence. ibid.
How amazing it was for the Greeks to depict the gods as human. ibid.
Christianity held a huge part of the world in a mesmorised grip and every other part was affected by it. ibid.
A new prophet teaches a new idea of God … No God but God. The word for ‘one who submits’ is Muslim. ibid.