A really good read on the topic and history in general is : Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil. The book requires a lot more patience than the ones recommended, but covers the topics you mentioned, specially the origin and evolution of agriculture in much greater detail than any I have read. An interesting fact (from the same book) which is somewhat related from your conversation here: Not only the type of staple food, but also the way they are cooked is closely linked to the geography and the energy people got from burning. An example is: most asian countries rely on steaming or stir frying their grains and veggies and meat... This was driven by heavily agricultural societies but not much dry wood at their disposal, but crop residues to burn... hence the choice of a low energy cooking methods. In contrast, people in Europe and America had plentiful dry woods at their disposal, and these were also the places where baking was prevalent. Baking is essentially cooking by radiation heat (highly inefficient, hence requires a lot of energy)... Fast forward to 21st century, and our cuisines re still reflective of those age-old constraints. :)
On the point of non existence of Potatoes and Tomatoes and Chillies in India, we had Sweet potato and the black pepper in India. Many ancient temples in India don't use potatoes and Tomatoes and Chillies in their temple food till today.
Black pepper is still today the most traded spice in the world. Here in India we switched over to chillies for spiciness, but in the west they still rely most on (Indian) black pepper.
@@helloworld8058 Yeah they use it for different reasons. You can use a black pepper for teekhapan. It has a different flavour profile though. Before we had chillies, black pepper was all we had for adding spiciness. The main purpose though was for preserving meat. Btw, a correction. Sweet potato was also not available in India before the discovery of Americas. It originated in Central/South America. We had the suran (elephant foot yam) and various other yams like karanda instead.
@@Banzybanz idk, actually I went to Puri Jagannath where they told that 'Ranga aloo' or sweet potato was originally from India, so it is used in the temple food
And it's okay. You are a mere viewer and it's his Channel. I hope you understand they do comedy to please themselves and they like it, not because people can watch it. People like it that is why they watch it. We are dependant on them, not vice versa. I hope you understand they have work, unlike you, Karen.
About the potato thingy, In order to create hype for the new crop, the cultivators guarded the fields so heavily that people couldn't even see it. This made them think like its some sort of special or out of the world 'luxury' food item, and hence the demand rose. BTW loved the podcast.
I would highly suggest watching Joe Rogan's podcast #725 with Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock on Ancient Civilisation 👍. Totally blew my mind , took over a week to process it.
I think when biswa was talking about tomatoes, he was talking about the case in france where the king used to eat tomatoes on pewter plates, and got diseases. Everyone blamed tomato but pewter was the actual problem
4:00 The word “civilization” relates to the Latin word “civitas” or “city.” This is why the most basic definition of the word “civilization” is “a society made up of cities.
When Biswa mentioned corns' changes.. and season's trivia... I was mind blown.. ALSO as a biology student i have read about the crops developments..its basically biotechnology...there have been experiments that now i realise , were just hilarious to think of..Its so true that there are so many Einsteins, so many geniuses, that we never realised... Amazed! Thank you for this podcast!!
Mann... Please come back you guys and continue the series, these podcasts came in a time in life when i was depressed midst corona and needed to distract myself.. Listening to this I developed curiousity for history, mankind and reading and its the best thing i did at that time.. Please guys. Come back.. I miss this podcasts too much...!
Agriculture was called a revolution due to many things. 1) It started surplus production which differentiated the works. As you mentioned also. 2) it also started trade on a comparativly bigger scale. And this trade needed records. These recording keeping necessity led to the beginning of writing. Mesopotamia and Harappan civilisations were the cradle of writing. 3) agriculture also led to division in society. The surplus production was needed to be maintained and distributed which required some comprehensive form of leadership/king/administration. 4) Agriculture also led gender based division. That the males will go out to work and females will be confined to homes. As we see progression of agricultural societies we also saw the progression of a society more divided along gender and class lines. The control over surplus produced a minority that could dominate a majority. 5) cities also developed. Cities are areas that live off the surplus produce developed by agriculture. That's why Harappan civilisation was an Urban civilisation. So was Mesopotamia. Gordon Childe's work are very important as he was the one who started called agriculture a revolution due to the profound way it changed humanity. It is also hypothesised that agriculture was started by women. I liked your discussion but was expecting these topics to be discussed too. Especially when the topic was agricultural societies
Really good points you've made, I figure you're a student of history? Anyway, about your 4th point- women in general have a lot more stamina and are less prone to dying early than men, and yet they were not put in equal position with men, do you think it could be the menstrual health care that could have been responsible for it, given that, back then we did not have the modern technological advances?
Interestingly, fondness for eating chillies is also a psychological consequence - it subconsciously reminds you of something that should kill you but doesn't. Surviving it makes you feel good. Same reason people like rollercoasters.
Interesting discussion. Root crops/veggies have been in India probably for 5000-6000 years. Indus valley's pictorial script indicate different symbols for above and below ground crops. Also, bonfire existed several thousand years ago - early australians did it by rubbing dry stick on dry leaves to start it, and gathered around it to keep themselves warm at night.
Excellent one again, and so many thought provoking topics. Especially Items that were considered luxuries which we take for granted. Learning about the history of potato was mind blowing. Could you also cover how Salt and Sugar have had a huge impact over societies over the years. Sugar was a luxury in Europe until the early 19th century. However, salt was often difficult to obtain, so it was a highly valued trade item, and was considered a form of currency by certain peoples. Continue including food history references in future podcast. Godspeed.
It is not genetic modification that modified the crops earlier. It was selective breeding. It was basically the nature itself did many mutations and people just selected the best out of them and carried it forward. It is a very slow process. Genetic modification on the other hand means we can actually modify the genes by ourselves.
Yeah but now that we have tools to modify gene but in larger aspect if u r talking about the selective breeding it does modify the genes and it is the basis of genetic modifications
@@mish8571 I agree with both of you, problem with modern GMO is they make it insect & pesticide resistant, while former just fucks with the food chain, latter has even dire consequences and causes erosion of soil by killing almost all the microbes responsible foe carbon and nitrogen fixation. Our agricultural habits need desperate changes! Recommended watch: Netflix- Kiss the Ground
Book suggestion covering post Greek and Roman period (if you people ever reach that part of the history) with the silk route as main focus point- The Silk Roads: A New History of the World By Peter Frankopan
By far, this has been the most interesting and informative podcast I've come across. Also I work with PVTGs- Particularly Primitive Tribal Groups, who are communities of Tribal people who still are in the 'pre-agriculture' state of technology. And I have seen everything Biswa and Kumar Varun have talked about!
I have been following 2 past 2 curious and of lately Learning Gita by Sid as well. Chapter 3 of Gita has a lot about sacrifice (which in my understanding is about, giving to the society/doing greater good for the society) after listening to this episode, I could correlate it with that chapter (as Gita is basically a very old book written for educating people on ethical ways of living. In my opinion.) Here, Biswa spoke on how humans have been polluting the world for a very long time and maybe once civilization started a few men became activites who gave back to the society and many of our epics are codes for the same however religion made its own interpretation and hence things got lost in translation. Ps: This is purely my understanding and opinion. I might be completely wrong.
Hey guys! Doing a great job here! Non-history student here too. About the agricultural land; in meso-american and other native american societies, agricultural land was considered communal land between the populace; it was shared and farmed collectively by the citizens of the nation-state/empire and, interestingly, women got to make most of the decisions and had multiple spouses who would also collectively take care of the kids. This was documented by the Spanish conquistadors once they landed here. The development of agricultural societies in the rest of the world also marked a transition from mostly matriarchal to patriarchal societies. There is a documented correlation between wherever the plow was used and where women was starting to get treated like property! It is this period of history and how society worked that marks the contrast between marxist and non-marxist thinkers! (Marx died documenting and researching social relations of this very specific part of human history)
Civilization as described by Biswa might be a valid definition but a more apt definition of civilisation which was described beautifully by Tony Joseph in his book 'Early Indians' makes more sense. He said and I quote from his book - 'The word ‘civilization’ is etymologically connected to ‘city’, so one could say civilization presupposes an urban transition.' So basically civilization means when a society moves from a rural economy to an urban economy. The term rural and urban not necessarily mean todays rural and urban areas but most probably mean that the society has advanced enough to have a urban structure with people in society performing roles other than just agriculture . This of course happened because of the benefits of agriculture. The book 'Early Indians' is a good read for people interested in history. Though it's not as fun a read as Sapiens it is also not as dense and technical as 'Guns, Germs and Steel' 🙂
Loved it bro. People still use to farm rice and fish in same field. Except now we use too much pesticides and modern equipment, that we is not possible to raise fish in same field. Still in some areas in western Odisha and some other area where organic farming is done, they grow rice and fish farming on same land.. Also like bishwa said, burning of region for farming was still in practice till say 20 years from now. In Odisha it was called podu chasa. Literally means farming by burning. Also in some episode of jre podcast Joe Rogan also said that in Amazon region this practice was there. As per this podcast, the rain forest donot have much potential. So the earlier civilization in amazon area used to burn the forest in a way that the burnt trees were the manure/fertilizer for farming
Greetings from a plant biologist. Well done. Yes. We human have been selecting and domesticating plants with best and best features. And resultantly what we uave today look entirely different from what it originally was. I enjoyed the podcast:) looking for more awesome content like this.
India me Hanuman gada naam Ka fruit hota tha, which has gone extinct, because people started focusing on bottle guard (lauki in Hindi), and in place of rice and wheat, people have had "sanva, Kodo", during early 90's in India in my grandmother's village "wheat" was luxury grain(because it used to take lots of efforts to grow wheat, due to not very good irrigation system) .
I'm so delighted that you guys are back with a new episode!!!! I too have been reading Mr. Harari's books and thanks to your recommendation, have now started Mr. Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. Please do make more videos in this series regularly. This series truly serves as a ray of hope for me because most people that I know, don't appreciate the beauty of these gradual changes in humans and human society with fervor. I'm so glad that you guys do and this series opens up a forum to meet like-minded folks.
I'm currently reading it, it was published in 1997 though, and little archaeological evidences here and there have been updated quite a lot since then, would love to read a recent book of such cadre! Please suggest any if you come across.
Putting this when farmers of punjab and haryana are fighting for their existence.2 states that started the nation(harappa civilization) protected the nation , fed the nation, entertain the nation and represent the nation in sports are now been forced to kneel down.
There is a theory that grain agriculture was successful because it was easily taxable and paved the way for the growth of 'states'. www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-case-against-civilization This article and the book discussed in it will give more information.
Just the fact that we figured out that we can and have to fight for life within our species and the efforts we made to make weapons to fight ,kill n control our own species ...is also mind blowing..
Amazing episodes, guys. I learn so much here.The most interesting thing for me was knowing that there are so many other people driven by their curiosity who watch this series. To all of you, you are the reason humanity makes any progress at all. So, stay curious!
Fun fact: The word Jambudvīpa(another name of India as in Ramayana) literally refers to "the land of Jambu trees" where jambu (also known as Jamun) is the Indian Blackberry (Syzygium cumini) and dvīpa has two meanings "island" or "continent" and "planets" situated in the ocean of outer space.
Hey! Really enjoyed this episode! You seem to be going by the major inventions by humans, but on the point of empires and civilizations I was thinking you could talk about when we settled down in agricultural societies how different hierarchies were formed and cemented, and how that led to bigger cities and empires. You sort of touched upon it when you said that when we settled down more conflict began to occur because we had property and crops to protect. That would be an interesting cultural aspect to learn about various kinship systems and stuff :)
Indeed, and they should also mention the nature of contract and how it was kind kf embedded in hunter gathering societies, but was propelled by agricultural towns and led to the modern human societies!
Hunter gatherers did a kind of farming called permaculture which is nomadic in nature and sustainable. This form of agriculture is still prevalent in tribal areas.
Just to point out now human society is adapting to fast food so we don't have to waste time cooking our own food. you guys are so curious this is damn cool☺
I love these podcasts so much that today I listened to all of them in one go. all 4 episodes. And then gave 1-hour show off of my knowledge to family while eating. Told them where each shit came from what you are eating.
Even if I had finished reading the references I would still have loved this conversation between buddies. Awesome tone during the entire podcast and glad to see the mutual appreciation. Keep up the good work buddies.
The intro is so so beautiful and amazing. 💚I love this podcast. You guys release the episodes so randomly that whenever one releases its like a surprise gift 💚
Several things started through out the world at multiple places almost simultaneously. I think pace at which the human mind or intellectual or wisdom evolved was pretty much the same another thing would be the ability to estimate/ guess the outcomes of certain (or many) things.
I have a suggestion for you guys. You could have one more person with you who either knows a lot about the topic or very less about the topic. Why you ask? Pata nai. Mujhe laga maza ayega.
I don't know whether you will see this comment or not, but, new research is coming up now which suggests Humanity's first settlement were probably around places they thought were supernatural or had religious connotations. Hence came the need to store water and do farming. It was after this agriculture was started to be practiced. One of the major contributors to civilisation must have been the invention of Jugs(matka). That enabled human to stay even far-away from water bodies. These should be intresting points to ponder upon.
Read "Survival of the Sickest" interesting book. It tells how a disease helped during evolution. Also tells you how water was purified by boiling and alcohol.
Guys I think you should approach culture evolution like anthropologists study it. We just dont recognise the importance of culture as a survival tool.A mindblowing fact- if we were born today without a society to enculture us we wouldn't be able to discover on our own something as trivial(as per us) as a wheel even at this stage of human evolution. We have had number of thinkers who have concluded that cultural evolution proceeds the same way organic evolution does and there is a lot of evidence for it. Herbert spencer(a sociologist) said that a society is a "being" in itself(but we can't comprehend the nature of it howsoever hard we may try, like an RBC cell inside would never know of existence of a human provided it became sentient) which becomes more specialised with time. Again think how Biswa said that we humans have taken up more demanding, strenous and monotonous things which ensure survival of society as a whole. Now think how an organism has evolved . Each organ has just gotten more complex and specialsed taking up more demanding tasks (thunk of it as division of labour) to ensure survival of the organism. Work per person has increased but survival prospects of the society has increased. As per Durkheim(another sociologist widely hailed by anthropologists alike) even something like suicide is a social fact (we can derive scientific laws to ascertain suicides as empirically objective facts) Personally I always was interested in Organic evolution but ever since i came across cultural evolution as a separate subject the world view has changed drastically. For starters i would recommend if you could go through some concepts like - 1) Levi strauss concept of how fundamentally human brain only think along "binary opposition" ( explore this and you would be mind blown how it is universally applicable, and all our culture evolution , language etc stems from this). Just think how fundamentally all our myths across all culture have similar themes, how incest taboo is inexplicably universal etc 2) the debate that basically we are imitators VS there exists a psychic unity of mankind( that we coincidentally invented the same things at different places around the same time) P.S - both are true This is only the beginning. Now the point regarding how we keep assuming so much. Actually we dont even recognise how we don't even attempt to question everything around us . The more we question the more familiar becomes strange and we just merely scratch the surface of the true nature of this world which we are sadly actually not programmed to comprehend(again like that RBC cell iside our body). Another mindbloeing fact this time regarding organic evolution- we are not programmed to die , there is no 'death gene' . Natural selection never cared for us past the period we reproduced(20's/30's) and hence our ancestors life span averaged around this age. They died of diseases or beasts but very rarely due to age(i differ with biswa on this that hunter gatherer lived long, it is very rare and that la chapelle arthritis suffering neanderthal is a rare exception and not significant case for natural selection to operate ) . This is the reason that now as we are immune to disease thanks to medical science, there is no single age of "growing old " . It differs from person to person and occurs drastically as one reduces activity(eg retirement). Thus our ages are increasing globally and will soon even average well beyind hundred. Another reason that explains why there is no "death gene" is because if there were we would someday be able to modify that(gene silencing is theoretically possible) and thus be practically immortal. But that is not possible . It is genetics equivalent of law of speed of light (there cant be anything faster than light speed). Thanks for reading.
this is just extension of the point of view of what Europeans gave us; as a starting point. We need to look for old ancient indian authors; which we have not done at all, as a society.
Also, based on the book Sapiens, humans have progressed further as a result of sacrifice of comfort & wellness of great people. That to attain happiness, we need to forgo pleasure. That explains why motherhood is associated with sacrifice.
As someone else on the comments already pointed out, please watch the Graham Hancock episodes on the Joe Rogan podcast. Human civilization is much older than we think it is.
By the time they will do podcast on Moon Landing, Humans will have started colony in neighboring solar system
They must be finding better and detailed facts to tell us so they are late
@@shiv_-_-_-_-_- arre joke tha bro
😂😂😂😂
😄😄
Itna imperfect dank kabhi nahi dekha.
This podcast should be called the audio version of SAPIENS.
Can we appreciate the amount of research they would have done before this!
They just read sapiens and guns,germs and steel
No😴
@@abcxyz7513 true
Started watching this series when agriculture was started
A really good read on the topic and history in general is : Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil.
The book requires a lot more patience than the ones recommended, but covers the topics you mentioned, specially the origin and evolution of agriculture in much greater detail than any I have read.
An interesting fact (from the same book) which is somewhat related from your conversation here:
Not only the type of staple food, but also the way they are cooked is closely linked to the geography and the energy people got from burning.
An example is: most asian countries rely on steaming or stir frying their grains and veggies and meat... This was driven by heavily agricultural societies but not much dry wood at their disposal, but crop residues to burn... hence the choice of a low energy cooking methods.
In contrast, people in Europe and America had plentiful dry woods at their disposal, and these were also the places where baking was prevalent. Baking is essentially cooking by radiation heat (highly inefficient, hence requires a lot of energy)...
Fast forward to 21st century, and our cuisines re still reflective of those age-old constraints. :)
On the point of non existence of Potatoes and Tomatoes and Chillies in India, we had Sweet potato and the black pepper in India.
Many ancient temples in India don't use potatoes and Tomatoes and Chillies in their temple food till today.
Darn, never noticed that thanks!
Black pepper is still today the most traded spice in the world.
Here in India we switched over to chillies for spiciness, but in the west they still rely most on (Indian) black pepper.
@@Banzybanz no, it's just seasoning. The real 'spice' or 'teekhapan' comes from the chillies
@@helloworld8058 Yeah they use it for different reasons. You can use a black pepper for teekhapan. It has a different flavour profile though. Before we had chillies, black pepper was all we had for adding spiciness.
The main purpose though was for preserving meat.
Btw, a correction. Sweet potato was also not available in India before the discovery of Americas. It originated in Central/South America. We had the suran (elephant foot yam) and various other yams like karanda instead.
@@Banzybanz idk, actually I went to Puri Jagannath where they told that 'Ranga aloo' or sweet potato was originally from India, so it is used in the temple food
The way these eps are coming out im sure when the series would be completed pandemic would be far gone 😂
Two more pandemics would be over by the time this series come to conclusion.
1000 years later when 2 comedians will be talking about 2020s pandemic in their first episode, this podcast will still be going on 😂
abe saale
Lol.. True
They would be not be talking on zoom anymore.
It's rare to see biswa in his own channel..he is everywhere except his own channel..🙄🙄🙄
Stop saying this i have read it too many times🤦♂️😣
And it's okay. You are a mere viewer and it's his Channel. I hope you understand they do comedy to please themselves and they like it, not because people can watch it. People like it that is why they watch it. We are dependant on them, not vice versa. I hope you understand they have work, unlike you, Karen.
About the potato thingy, In order to create hype for the new crop, the cultivators guarded the fields so heavily that people couldn't even see it. This made them think like its some sort of special or out of the world 'luxury' food item, and hence the demand rose. BTW loved the podcast.
When you least expect it..BOOM! New episode! 😎
I would highly suggest watching Joe Rogan's podcast #725 with Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock on Ancient Civilisation 👍. Totally blew my mind , took over a week to process it.
true, if you are into podcast i would highly recommend joe rogan's podcast with elon mask and naval ravikant.
Watch world of antiquity youtube channel to really look into their theories from an academic mainstream point of view. Its good.
@@anurag24th thanks, very nice channel, very detailed content..
Here's the link-
ruclips.net/video/aDejwCGdUV8/видео.html
I think when biswa was talking about tomatoes, he was talking about the case in france where the king used to eat tomatoes on pewter plates, and got diseases. Everyone blamed tomato but pewter was the actual problem
When you're an agriculture graduate and this is just your syllabus. 🙆
Im agriculture student as well but there are many minute points to learn as well. The trends as discussed arent taught anywhere
Finally something intellectual and fun on YT after soooo long
there's tons of good scientific content on youtube...
@@supreetsahu1964 i think he was referring to indian youtube
4:00 The word “civilization” relates to the Latin word “civitas” or “city.” This is why the most basic definition of the word “civilization” is “a society made up of cities.
I forgot that this series existed. Vaah doston kaafi regular!
They don't need to be. It's their decision to make.
When Biswa mentioned corns' changes.. and season's trivia... I was mind blown.. ALSO as a biology student i have read about the crops developments..its basically biotechnology...there have been experiments that now i realise , were just hilarious to think of..Its so true that there are so many Einsteins, so many geniuses, that we never realised... Amazed!
Thank you for this podcast!!
Mann... Please come back you guys and continue the series, these podcasts came in a time in life when i was depressed midst corona and needed to distract myself.. Listening to this I developed curiousity for history, mankind and reading and its the best thing i did at that time.. Please guys. Come back.. I miss this podcasts too much...!
Agriculture was called a revolution due to many things.
1) It started surplus production which differentiated the works. As you mentioned also.
2) it also started trade on a comparativly bigger scale. And this trade needed records. These recording keeping necessity led to the beginning of writing. Mesopotamia and Harappan civilisations were the cradle of writing.
3) agriculture also led to division in society. The surplus production was needed to be maintained and distributed which required some comprehensive form of leadership/king/administration.
4) Agriculture also led gender based division. That the males will go out to work and females will be confined to homes. As we see progression of agricultural societies we also saw the progression of a society more divided along gender and class lines. The control over surplus produced a minority that could dominate a majority.
5) cities also developed. Cities are areas that live off the surplus produce developed by agriculture. That's why Harappan civilisation was an Urban civilisation. So was Mesopotamia.
Gordon Childe's work are very important as he was the one who started called agriculture a revolution due to the profound way it changed humanity. It is also hypothesised that agriculture was started by women.
I liked your discussion but was expecting these topics to be discussed too. Especially when the topic was agricultural societies
Really good points you've made, I figure you're a student of history?
Anyway, about your 4th point- women in general have a lot more stamina and are less prone to dying early than men, and yet they were not put in equal position with men, do you think it could be the menstrual health care that could have been responsible for it, given that, back then we did not have the modern technological advances?
Interestingly, fondness for eating chillies is also a psychological consequence - it subconsciously reminds you of something that should kill you but doesn't. Surviving it makes you feel good. Same reason people like rollercoasters.
Finally a new video... Before the apocalypse and world ended.... ✌️
BTW You guys are the best combo.. 😎
Waiting to see religion and culture as a podcast.
If you want to know the history of religion, go to Sid warrier channel and search for religion video.
Interesting discussion.
Root crops/veggies have been in India probably for 5000-6000 years. Indus valley's pictorial script indicate different symbols for above and below ground crops.
Also, bonfire existed several thousand years ago - early australians did it by rubbing dry stick on dry leaves to start it, and gathered around it to keep themselves warm at night.
After months, they're finally here. Biswa and KV ❤️
Excellent one again, and so many thought provoking topics. Especially Items that were considered luxuries which we take for granted. Learning about the history of potato was mind blowing. Could you also cover how Salt and Sugar have had a huge impact over societies over the years.
Sugar was a luxury in Europe until the early 19th century.
However, salt was often difficult to obtain, so it was a highly valued trade item, and was considered a form of currency by certain peoples.
Continue including food history references in future podcast.
Godspeed.
KISSAN Aandolan ke time ye video ,timing salute
25:32
What a great insight to the regional differences in the cuisines across the globe.
It is not genetic modification that modified the crops earlier. It was selective breeding. It was basically the nature itself did many mutations and people just selected the best out of them and carried it forward. It is a very slow process. Genetic modification on the other hand means we can actually modify the genes by ourselves.
Yeah but now that we have tools to modify gene but in larger aspect if u r talking about the selective breeding it does modify the genes and it is the basis of genetic modifications
@@mish8571 I agree with both of you, problem with modern GMO is they make it insect & pesticide resistant, while former just fucks with the food chain, latter has even dire consequences and causes erosion of soil by killing almost all the microbes responsible foe carbon and nitrogen fixation.
Our agricultural habits need desperate changes!
Recommended watch: Netflix- Kiss the Ground
Book suggestion covering post Greek and Roman period (if you people ever reach that part of the history) with the silk route as main focus point-
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
By Peter Frankopan
By far, this has been the most interesting and informative podcast I've come across. Also I work with PVTGs- Particularly Primitive Tribal Groups, who are communities of Tribal people who still are in the 'pre-agriculture' state of technology. And I have seen everything Biswa and Kumar Varun have talked about!
It's hard to see Biswa mentioning Banana and Pomegranates with a serious face 😄
I remember watching last episode in my childhood 😂
Was eagerly waiting for the new episode.. 😃
I have been following 2 past 2 curious and of lately Learning Gita by Sid as well. Chapter 3 of Gita has a lot about sacrifice (which in my understanding is about, giving to the society/doing greater good for the society) after listening to this episode, I could correlate it with that chapter (as Gita is basically a very old book written for educating people on ethical ways of living. In my opinion.) Here, Biswa spoke on how humans have been polluting the world for a very long time and maybe once civilization started a few men became activites who gave back to the society and many of our epics are codes for the same however religion made its own interpretation and hence things got lost in translation.
Ps:
This is purely my understanding and opinion. I might be completely wrong.
Hey guys! Doing a great job here! Non-history student here too. About the agricultural land; in meso-american and other native american societies, agricultural land was considered communal land between the populace; it was shared and farmed collectively by the citizens of the nation-state/empire and, interestingly, women got to make most of the decisions and had multiple spouses who would also collectively take care of the kids. This was documented by the Spanish conquistadors once they landed here. The development of agricultural societies in the rest of the world also marked a transition from mostly matriarchal to patriarchal societies. There is a documented correlation between wherever the plow was used and where women was starting to get treated like property! It is this period of history and how society worked that marks the contrast between marxist and non-marxist thinkers! (Marx died documenting and researching social relations of this very specific part of human history)
Civilization as described by Biswa might be a valid definition but a more apt definition of civilisation which was described beautifully by Tony Joseph in his book 'Early Indians' makes more sense. He said and I quote from his book - 'The word ‘civilization’ is etymologically connected to ‘city’, so one could say civilization presupposes an urban transition.' So basically civilization means when a society moves from a rural economy to an urban economy. The term rural and urban not necessarily mean todays rural and urban areas but most probably mean that the society has advanced enough to have a urban structure with people in society performing roles other than just agriculture . This of course happened because of the benefits of agriculture. The book 'Early Indians' is a good read for people interested in history. Though it's not as fun a read as Sapiens it is also not as dense and technical as 'Guns, Germs and Steel' 🙂
I think he was not talking about the definition of 'civilisation', but its etymology.
Loved it bro.
People still use to farm rice and fish in same field. Except now we use too much pesticides and modern equipment, that we is not possible to raise fish in same field. Still in some areas in western Odisha and some other area where organic farming is done, they grow rice and fish farming on same land..
Also like bishwa said, burning of region for farming was still in practice till say 20 years from now. In Odisha it was called podu chasa. Literally means farming by burning. Also in some episode of jre podcast Joe Rogan also said that in Amazon region this practice was there. As per this podcast, the rain forest donot have much potential. So the earlier civilization in amazon area used to burn the forest in a way that the burnt trees were the manure/fertilizer for farming
Greetings from a plant biologist. Well done.
Yes. We human have been selecting and domesticating plants with best and best features. And resultantly what we uave today look entirely different from what it originally was.
I enjoyed the podcast:) looking for more awesome content like this.
Never read a book in my life, never thought I will.
Thanks to you guys I've started reading Sapiens and I'm LOVING it!!
This is by far the best episode of this podcast, keep it up you two! 👍
India me Hanuman gada naam Ka fruit hota tha, which has gone extinct, because people started focusing on bottle guard (lauki in Hindi), and in place of rice and wheat, people have had "sanva, Kodo", during early 90's in India in my grandmother's village "wheat" was luxury grain(because it used to take lots of efforts to grow wheat, due to not very good irrigation system) .
Never stop these.. Finally something worth watching on youtube ♥
I'm so delighted that you guys are back with a new episode!!!!
I too have been reading Mr. Harari's books and thanks to your recommendation, have now started Mr. Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.
Please do make more videos in this series regularly. This series truly serves as a ray of hope for me because most people that I know, don't appreciate the beauty of these gradual changes in humans and human society with fervor. I'm so glad that you guys do and this series opens up a forum to meet like-minded folks.
Guns, germs and Steel by Jared diamond. Highly recommended on this topic. Mind blowing. Sapiens was inspired by this book.
I'm currently reading it, it was published in 1997 though, and little archaeological evidences here and there have been updated quite a lot since then, would love to read a recent book of such cadre!
Please suggest any if you come across.
Omg every time I watch this series, I get goosebumps
mere sabse bada problem hai i read about stuff and fir bhul jaata hai
Putting this when farmers of punjab and haryana are fighting for their existence.2 states that started the nation(harappa civilization) protected the nation , fed the nation, entertain the nation and represent the nation in sports are now been forced to kneel down.
The pod cast we deserve.
and we are also getting
There is a theory that grain agriculture was successful because it was easily taxable and paved the way for the growth of 'states'.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-case-against-civilization
This article and the book discussed in it will give more information.
Wow. So our heavy dietary reliance on grains today is because of historical reasons that aren't even applicable today.
Actually berries are also fruits. So banana is a fruit as well.
Just the fact that we figured out that we can and have to fight for life within our species and the efforts we made to make weapons to fight ,kill n control our own species ...is also mind blowing..
Waited for it soo long.. so glad to see this notification appear💕
Amazing episodes, guys. I learn so much here.The most interesting thing for me was knowing that there are so many other people driven by their curiosity who watch this series. To all of you, you are the reason humanity makes any progress at all. So, stay curious!
i like the way biswa say " BUDDY"
Fun fact: The word Jambudvīpa(another name of India as in Ramayana) literally refers to "the land of Jambu trees" where jambu (also known as Jamun) is the Indian Blackberry (Syzygium cumini) and dvīpa has two meanings "island" or "continent" and "planets" situated in the ocean of outer space.
Regarding lactose intolerance, mankind has used the good bacteria to make yoghurt/curd to gain the nutrition from the cow milk since a long time.
Hey! Really enjoyed this episode! You seem to be going by the major inventions by humans, but on the point of empires and civilizations I was thinking you could talk about when we settled down in agricultural societies how different hierarchies were formed and cemented, and how that led to bigger cities and empires. You sort of touched upon it when you said that when we settled down more conflict began to occur because we had property and crops to protect. That would be an interesting cultural aspect to learn about various kinship systems and stuff :)
Indeed, and they should also mention the nature of contract and how it was kind kf embedded in hunter gathering societies, but was propelled by agricultural towns and led to the modern human societies!
Hunter gatherers did a kind of farming called permaculture which is nomadic in nature and sustainable. This form of agriculture is still prevalent in tribal areas.
Just to point out now human society is adapting to fast food so we don't have to waste time cooking our own food.
you guys are so curious this is damn cool☺
I love these podcasts so much that today I listened to all of them in one go. all 4 episodes. And then gave 1-hour show off of my knowledge to family while eating. Told them where each shit came from what you are eating.
i though Mirzapur ka 3rd part pahele aega before you come with new episode .
I thought it's a new series but realised that the series is already there since 10000bc.
Amazing podcast...learning a lot💝💝
Suggestion-Create a server on discord to have an active discussion from the community and topic recommendations
Even if I had finished reading the references I would still have loved this conversation between buddies. Awesome tone during the entire podcast and glad to see the mutual appreciation. Keep up the good work buddies.
The intro is so so beautiful and amazing. 💚I love this podcast. You guys release the episodes so randomly that whenever one releases its like a surprise gift 💚
Section A Sir having curious conversations with Section D Sir 😘😘😘
You guys do excellent job by doing this kind of podcasts but please do this more frequently 🙏🙏🙏
Several things started through out the world at multiple places almost simultaneously. I think pace at which the human mind or intellectual or wisdom evolved was pretty much the same another thing would be the ability to estimate/ guess the outcomes of certain (or many) things.
I have a suggestion for you guys. You could have one more person with you who either knows a lot about the topic or very less about the topic. Why you ask? Pata nai. Mujhe laga maza ayega.
Watching this while eating my birthday cake, time well spent 🖖
This is one podcast I patiently wait for, Thank you Buddy and Biswa for making RUclips awesome!!
I am waiting for an episode on "ART".
Hope there's one
He finally appeared on his own channel.
Biswa bro... The content is gr8, so is the discussion n conversation.
Just can you increase the audio volume level.
Its too low it seems.
There is a vibe of string theory in the intro animation
man i am loving the frequent uploads.
I don't know whether you will see this comment or not, but, new research is coming up now which suggests Humanity's first settlement were probably around places they thought were supernatural or had religious connotations. Hence came the need to store water and do farming. It was after this agriculture was started to be practiced. One of the major contributors to civilisation must have been the invention of Jugs(matka). That enabled human to stay even far-away from water bodies. These should be intresting points to ponder upon.
Thank you for everything
Biswa and Kv are the best❤️
Take time but give such content, Amazing 🙌
Read "Survival of the Sickest" interesting book. It tells how a disease helped during evolution. Also tells you how water was purified by boiling and alcohol.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_Sickest_(book)
I really love the length of this podcast, gonna check other episodes.
Content is gold.
this has to be a Stream format... let people contribute and ask via superchats... great work you guys.. cheers!!!
What took you guys so long. Well, thank you for bringing this back
I can watch both of them talk literally for hours.
Amazing stuff....keep doing such podcasts👍
I absolutely love this series please keep regularly posting new episodes
Guys I think you should approach culture evolution like anthropologists study it. We just dont recognise the importance of culture as a survival tool.A mindblowing fact- if we were born today without a society to enculture us we wouldn't be able to discover on our own something as trivial(as per us) as a wheel even at this stage of human evolution. We have had number of thinkers who have concluded that cultural evolution proceeds the same way organic evolution does and there is a lot of evidence for it. Herbert spencer(a sociologist) said that a society is a "being" in itself(but we can't comprehend the nature of it howsoever hard we may try, like an RBC cell inside would never know of existence of a human provided it became sentient) which becomes more specialised with time. Again think how Biswa said that we humans have taken up more demanding, strenous and monotonous things which ensure survival of society as a whole. Now think how an organism has evolved . Each organ has just gotten more complex and specialsed taking up more demanding tasks (thunk of it as division of labour) to ensure survival of the organism. Work per person has increased but survival prospects of the society has increased.
As per Durkheim(another sociologist widely hailed by anthropologists alike) even something like suicide is a social fact (we can derive scientific laws to ascertain suicides as empirically objective facts)
Personally I always was interested in Organic evolution but ever since i came across cultural evolution as a separate subject the world view has changed drastically. For starters i would recommend if you could go through some concepts like -
1) Levi strauss concept of how fundamentally human brain only think along "binary opposition" ( explore this and you would be mind blown how it is universally applicable, and all our culture evolution , language etc stems from this). Just think how fundamentally all our myths across all culture have similar themes, how incest taboo is inexplicably universal etc
2) the debate that basically we are imitators VS there exists a psychic unity of mankind( that we coincidentally invented the same things at different places around the same time)
P.S - both are true
This is only the beginning.
Now the point regarding how we keep assuming so much. Actually we dont even recognise how we don't even attempt to question everything around us . The more we question the more familiar becomes strange and we just merely scratch the surface of the true nature of this world which we are sadly actually not programmed to comprehend(again like that RBC cell iside our body).
Another mindbloeing fact this time regarding organic evolution- we are not programmed to die , there is no 'death gene' . Natural selection never cared for us past the period we reproduced(20's/30's) and hence our ancestors life span averaged around this age. They died of diseases or beasts but very rarely due to age(i differ with biswa on this that hunter gatherer lived long, it is very rare and that la chapelle arthritis suffering neanderthal is a rare exception and not significant case for natural selection to operate ) . This is the reason that now as we are immune to disease thanks to medical science, there is no single age of "growing old " . It differs from person to person and occurs drastically as one reduces activity(eg retirement). Thus our ages are increasing globally and will soon even average well beyind hundred.
Another reason that explains why there is no "death gene" is because if there were we would someday be able to modify that(gene silencing is theoretically possible) and thus be practically immortal. But that is not possible . It is genetics equivalent of law of speed of light (there cant be anything faster than light speed).
Thanks for reading.
Do you have a blog, if yes please put a link 🙏
Biswa have always some mind-blowing fact😯
I ❤️ 2 past 2 curious !
Waiting for more
Tum bahut mast kaam karta hai biswa aur KV bhai
this is just extension of the point of view of what Europeans gave us; as a starting point.
We need to look for old ancient indian authors; which we have not done at all, as a society.
Also, based on the book Sapiens, humans have progressed further as a result of sacrifice of comfort & wellness of great people. That to attain happiness, we need to forgo pleasure. That explains why motherhood is associated with sacrifice.
Came here just coz biswa said to come on RUclips and it was worth it 😊
KV is such a gem I discovered in this lockdown. Biswa We all know from his PMR episodes
Wah itna regular
4th episode aane tak maine Sapiens padh he liya pura.
As someone else on the comments already pointed out, please watch the Graham Hancock episodes on the Joe Rogan podcast. Human civilization is much older than we think it is.
Here's another link on that-
Thanks!! Maza agaya but Thoda jaldi nikalo next Wala please.bohot wait karna padd raha h
Suggestion: how about a podcast on development of speech and language
the way they are going it would be 6th or 7th episode