Empires Special: The Greeks TV - Arthur Keith - Howard Rheingold - Oscar Wilde - George Orwell - Sigmund Freud - Lost Civilisation 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 - Graham Hancock TV - Builders of Ancient Mysteries 2020 - Ancient Aliens TV - The Mysterious Origins of Man TV - Alice Roberts TV - Ancient Impossible TV -
The Greeks: A people glorious and arrogant, valiant and headstrong. 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.
What ultimate weapons of destruction have ancient civilisation managed to create more than 2,000 years ago? Might the energy of the sun have been used against invading ships? Could a cannon powered by steam have crushed an enemy fleet? And might the ancient world have built a warship so huge it could match modern aircraft carriers? Ancient Impossible s1e1: Ultimate Weapons, H2 2014
The ancient world was not primitive. Their marvels were so advanced we still use them. ibid.
‘Archimedes was a brilliant inventor and mathematician. ibid.
Archimedes had a fearsome reputation in the ancient world as a mastermind of warfare. ibid. Bethany Hughes
What could be Archimedes’ most sinister weapon – a death ray. ibid.
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.
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? Ancient Impossible s1e2: Moving Mountains
2,000 years ago it was Mission Impossible for the mighty Roman Army. They had to conquer this impregnable mountain fortress, surrounded by sheer cliffs, standing hundreds of feet above the Judean desert. ibid.
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.
If the Romans couldn’t starve the rebels out, they would take Masada by force. ibid.
Siege ramps have been part of warfare for thousands of years. 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. ibid.
How did the Egyptians carve the world’s largest monument thousands of years before the Americans carved Mount Rushmore? How did the Romans build a dome bigger than the dome of the US Capitol building? And how were the massive stones of Stonehenge moved hundreds of miles across rugged terrain? Ancient Impossible s1e3: Monster Monuments
Over 3,000 years ago one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs created this impossibly vast monument to himself at Abu Simbel at an imposing location on the Nile River. To this day it is still the largest temple ever carved out of solid rock. ibid.
3,000 years ago at Abu Simbel in Egypt there was no dynamite or power drills. ibid.
Yet the Egyptians built this massive temple with little more than copper chisels. ibid.
‘Today, the great Temple of Abu Simbel looks like it’s always been here. It is a great testament to the ancient builders who constructed it, and to the modern engineers who moved it.’ ibid. comment
Stonehenge in the southwest of England. Alongside the Pyramids, it’s one of the most iconic sites in the world. ibid.
Preseli, Wales: This is the place in Wales where the inner-circle blue stones at Stonehenge come from. ibid.
‘These stones from this quarry were transported well over a hundred miles.’ ibid. comment
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.
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.