I just learned about Shibam and I am fascinated. It’s one of those things that makes you completely reconsider what you thought you knew about humanity, especially in the middle east. These people built a city of 70k people in 9 square blocks (3x the density of manhattan today) with 5 story buildings around 0-100AD with MUD BRICK. And it’s still there today. Just amazing. I hope things stabilize there soon; Yemenis should have a safe and stable life, and they should be able to proudly and openly share themselves and their culture with the world. 🇾🇪
We are all finally realizing we been lied to and played with for at least 150yrs. We are all waking up to these games they play. No more. We will all rise together and be as 1 as it should be. No more wars very soon. You watch. I have a feeling we will all come together and build
Both Oman and Yemen are well known For khat addiction. We now about you. It is not flattering. Also, nutmeg is toasted to concentrate myristicin, a hallucinogen and abortifacient.
As an Architecture Department student it is really marvellous to know such an amazing ancient high story building that existed since ancient times ! reallly i got goosebumps to see this marvellous structures pls make some research about the building construction methods and techniques post in our textbooks
They make mud and put under the sun for some time and then a bird will come to walk over the mud bricks,if he walked perfectly then it's ready ,if he started puting his head down the mud then it's nedd more time
I really want to visit Yemen one day, many amazing sites like this. I like that you collaborated with a local to make this and the interviews made the video more interesting. I hope Yemen can find peace.
Hong konger here lol I was thinking if someone would make that comparison, and I'm not disappointed haha. To be fair, the walled city was a result of geopolitics, not engineering, so its messy-ness is a natural result of that. What I want to point out is that many cities in asia have much higher population density than Manhattan. I live in the suburb in hong kong and my government housing building, being the shortest in the neighborhood, houses around 10 families each floor and it has 35 floors. The city area has much higher density than that. Some sources say mong kok, the literal center of hong kong, has a population density of 130000 per square km. Macau, Manila and dhaka are all known for their density among others. In fact the deciding factors of whether a neighborhood can sustain that many people are not the buildings themselves, but on waste processing, drinking water and power grid, followed by general health care/hygiene and employment opportunity.
I have to admit that at the start I thought I was seeing a CGI model of what the city used to look like - and perhaps it had been buried in the desert. As a 'know it all' I can't believe I was unaware of such an incredible city. RUclips has taken over from Wikipedia as my source of new knowledge :) To those of us in the wetter parts of Europe, the Arabian peninsula seems to be just one big desert at first sight - I understand Riyadh has to bring desalinated water all the way from the coast - so it's always a surprise to find there are pockets of water throughout Arabia, but not all year around. I'm still a little unsure of how each building works though. Today we'd assume that each level of a multi-storey building would have several flats. But it seems one family lives from floor to roof over several storeys, divided up for separate purposes.
Because Riyadh was literally built on a desert that was not settled by any city dwellers before in the Peninsular. Riyadh was one of a camping side for the Saud family clan. They were Bedouins unlike the Arabs in Makkah, Medina and Jeddah who are city dwellers and the Yemenite is also a city dwellers. This is the things about Arabs culture that not many people outside the peninsular knows. There are 2 type of Arabs, the city dwellers and the Bedouin. THEY ARE VERY DISTINCT ALTHOUGH THEY CAME FROM SAME ROOTS. Prophet Muhammad who were born in Makkah was a city dwellers and he was not a Bedouin and even he differentiate between his people and the Bedouin. He predicte dthat in the late hour of the wolrd the Arabian peninsular will be ruled by Bedouins KINGS. HE WAS RIGHT. THE SAUD ROYAL FAMILY and all the UAE and KHALEEJI royal family like in Bahrain and Qatar were all Bedouins Arab not Hadari or city dwellers Arab from the western coastline. The only Hijazi or City dwellers Arab king that exist today is the Jordanian King.
Yemeni here, I really like the video and appreciate the coverage of the beautiful sides of Yemen❤ I just want to tell give you a few points you can improve on, as i really appreciate this video. Whoever you hired to translate did a very inaccurate job. I understand the need to add information or context, but that you can do with your own voice, if there's distortion of the voice of the locals, just don't interview them. Also the orientalism with all the music and whatnot might appeal to non-MENA ppl, but it is very off-putting and kind of perverted. There's so much famous music from Yemen, especially Hadhramawt (Abu-Bakr Salam)
Hey, great you like the video and thanks for the feedback. I'm sorry to hear that the translations were not up to par. I asked two Iraqi friends and they said they were contextually correct. When it comes to music, I hear you. It's always a balancing act with music, I'm sorry to hear it was not suitable to you. People associate certain sounds with desert landscapes but when is it too much? I would have loved to used some music from Yemen but that is copyrighted and I unfortunately don't have Hans Zimmer under speed dial :)
A followup showing more of the construction and/or interiors would be awesome to see. Thank your local team for getting the shots and interviews! They did a great job.
If you are interested in interesting architecture there are also windcatcher in Iran. there is a really good documentary in German following the "last" builder of these in Yazd. But it didn't actually die now he believed and now is a renaissance of them.
As a Yemeni, I really liked your content, especially this video. Although I lived for 19 years in a city that is only about 30 kilometers away from Shibam, all this time I thought I knew a lot about Shibam, but when I watched this video I discovered that I really didn’t know much about it. Thank you for showing Yemen in a more beautiful image despite all the fake propaganda it faces.
Thanks for the video Past Present. Love your content and thought that this story was amazing. These ancient skyscrapers are so amazing and it is so sad that they are under so much threat from both the climate and war. But It also shows how people can adapt to this changing world. I also thought that your 3d graphics and animation are great. As a beginner video editor who is learning 3d in blender, I really respect the work you put into your videos and research.
The architecture in Yemen is so beautiful and a city builder’s DREAM. Well, city builders like me. It is uniform yet not imposing. It has individuality yet is blended. It is incorporated WITH the environment to sustain simple infrastructure.
This is one of the best short docus i have seen in a long time, especially because it is a topic that i have not expored before. Gonna watch more of your stuff. Thankyou!
This is the best vide i have seen in a long time great script great editing great bgm great everything I love this video I have saced this video in great videos playlist i have Love u brother
It seems that this video is kinda incorrect. The city itself is known for 2500 years but the buildings are not that old. The oldest building is about 450 years old and the majority of buildings are from 1800s up to 1915.
@@heyheychillwrong it's built bc in hadramout kingdom era but in 15th a large parts destroyed due a flooding and they rebuilt it again and countine to colore it each year
The builder guy at the beginning says somthing like: " And war..for what reason?!! War. What is this war? For what reason ? Why is there a war, now?" Took a couple of rewindings to get the whole thing hah. But yeah says a lot about Yemenis ( Not Houthis).
Wow, ich fasciniert mich an diese Stadt. Und vorher hab ich nicht an Shibam gehört. Danke, dass Sie Ihr Wissen und Ihre Erfahrung mit uns teilen Joachim. Jetzt will ich besuchen!
brilliant video highlighting the ingenuity of these people. There still lives a huge misconception that people of the past were "backwards" and "unsophisticated", and the only way to break that misconception is by showing the awesome things that humans have always been able to do.
It's not in Europe and wasn't built by white guys. It's why places like this aren't common knowledge, it's not beneficial to the eurocentric world they want.
I once went on a week trip in middle school where we built a little "house" for a daycare, just a small place to rest when you play outside. We mixed some clay, smothered blocks of straw, and stacked them, eventually getting clay walls with straw core. That was pretty fun, the material is pretty good, easy to build and can protect you from the elements. I imagine mud straw bricks are awesome, especially with riverbed mud.
Outstanding overview of this special place. Aside from the amazing architecture, I can't believe how spotless it is in spite of all that desert dust. Beg to differ however on the origin of that livable "crack" with cradles Shibam. These fissures bear all the hallmarks of massive electrical scarification (and limited erosion afterwards). They demonstrate aspects of Mandelbrot sets in which lightning often manifests (not so much in the sky, but its tracks where it meets the planet). The water then takes advantage of these channels and people follow. New sub, really enjoying your work!
Wonderful wonderful. Where have you been? Or has the algorithm been messing around? How happy I was when I heard your voice and then saw your face. I have never heard of this place nor seen any footage of it so let me watch to the end without any interruptions and hope that helps the algorithm issue. Cheers from Dubrovnik. Zoltan
Something about Shibam's design just gives off the feeling its meant to be there~ Like it's part of the landscape~ It feels open and airy~ Unlike what you'd find in modern day cities, Which feel confining and imprisoning. I think that's what makes it so appealing~
I remember seeing pictures of this place in a book when I was a child. I thought it to have been abandoned and fallen into ruins long time ago, as so many other ancient cities. I am happy to see that it's even better maintained nowadays. May it's future be prosperous.
you just gave an idea with this title to a tiktoker to give the credit to ancient aliens. on a real note, i remember being in yemen as a kid (cause relatives) and there was a a steep road, which was hard to walk on but the view I saw walking up and down was amazing, it still stuck in my head.
it's a beautiful village, it just really sucks that the war is affecting them, my thoughts and high hopes go to all those civilians affected by war across the world.
As yemeni, it's inspiring to be reminded that we're capable of anything, we started the skyscrapers, and we can turn this poor country into a ritch and prosperit country loke it once was. BTW I'm watching this video in my apartment in Manhattan, so this video is extra special, Thank you.
I was casually looking for some of the oldest tallest structures and am shocked I didn't find these. My region is so different, that I didn't even know mud based bricks go over 3 stories. Unreinforced unfired bricks in multistory buildings lasting thousands of years.
Due to the current situations, it's hard to see for people who are ignorant of the place, but Yemen has a far richer, more intricate and beautiful history and civillization than most of other places in the Gulf region. The stability in modern times has driven the spotlight away from Yemen to the other states, but one can really appreciate Yemen when they learn it's history.
Ancient romans also build high multistory buildings. Some of them had even 7 floors in them. I would guess that the reason they build it into so tight of a space was for protection. Its easier to defend a place which is somewhat centered than one that is sprawling out into multiple directions. Building a defensive wall around a town isnt cheap and extending it would be a major effort for a smaller town like this one.
Now do a 90+ minute history of the Arabian peninsula. This video is so emblematic of the surface level scraping that most YT videos do of events that are critical to the local inhabitants. It's partly YT's fault of course, but it's not required to conform to YT's low bar.
'Desert stone' is not particularly tough at all. But it can be hard to mould and access with relatively poor quality tools. And having very limited access to wood makes it harder to have access to decent quality tools.
It makes far better use of its 3D structure than modern cities with vertically partitioned rooms and horizontally connected buildings. Maybe in the future our cities will evolve like this
@@tbird-z1rthe prophet صلى الله عليه و سلم said: "Whoever has intercourse with an animal, kill him and kill the animal with him." (Narrated by Ahmad, 2420; Abu Dawood, 4464; al-Tirmidhi, 1454; al-Haakim, 4/355).
I'm from Tunisia, thanks for showing the good side of Yemen that is, I believe, purposefully ignored by western media. I would've liked it if you had used authentic Hadhramawti music instead of the typical, orientalist desert music, which can be annoying and borderline offensive. Also this city has an extensive mythology and epic-ness tied to it, It would've been cool to have recounted some of those stories, instead of presenting this world wonder as a mere adaptation to hash dry climate.
The reason it was compared, visually, to Chicago is not the type of buildings but the nature of the buildings within the landscape. Chicago is very, very flat... and suddenly, all at once, a bunch of tall buildings huddle together. Similar with this ancient city: the buildings are all clustered together, and then it stops into the surroundings which do not have this. This is a unique feature of the skyline of Chicago, and as the video points out, Shibam.
I lived in Saudi Arabia for 12 years and always wanted to visit Yemen, but the country was too dangerous to go to as a tourist. The nearest I got was Jizan and Najran.
Got me scratching my head. I never seen it heard of this in my life. And I wanna know why wasn't I told about this place. So much hidden. I'm really grateful for the Internet. Before this u had to go to the library.
#ThePresentPast Wadi is called a place that's between mountains. Valley is its English name. Shibam if u look closely is the same. That crater on which its located.
The place where I live has an old arabian area called balad,lots of old buildings but nothing compared to this Balad ,up to some extent had buildings made of a hundred years old Nice video dude :) really interested
I have always wanted to travel to Yemen, and feel such heartache for its political strife. I hope these incredible buildings and cities don't get completely destroyed.
Sources: docs.google.com/document/d/1hv5gRqR69bT_VIELNz3bT_7L0XzJit9SppEo7Q-gpww/edit?usp=sharing
FYI you're cute by the way 😻
@@jamesbarry1673 dawg what💀💀💀
Interestingly enough, Shibam means Old New York.
I just learned about Shibam and I am fascinated. It’s one of those things that makes you completely reconsider what you thought you knew about humanity, especially in the middle east. These people built a city of 70k people in 9 square blocks (3x the density of manhattan today) with 5 story buildings around 0-100AD with MUD BRICK. And it’s still there today. Just amazing. I hope things stabilize there soon; Yemenis should have a safe and stable life, and they should be able to proudly and openly share themselves and their culture with the world. 🇾🇪
We are all finally realizing we been lied to and played with for at least 150yrs. We are all waking up to these games they play. No more. We will all rise together and be as 1 as it should be. No more wars very soon. You watch. I have a feeling we will all come together and build
Oman ends up with more spotlight than Yemen because of stability. Both countries are deserving of having their history known, not just the rich one
Oman isn’t particularly “rich”
@keymot1491 I mean in comparison to Yemen
@@shqip_sumejja when you have Saudi and UAE as neighbors, no one is rich
@@keymot1491 haha true.. but a lot of saudi's aren't rich, but middle class. of course, there's also lots of extremely wealthy ones too.
Both Oman and Yemen are well known For khat addiction. We now about you. It is not flattering. Also, nutmeg is toasted to concentrate myristicin, a hallucinogen and abortifacient.
As an Architecture Department student it is really marvellous to know such an amazing ancient high story building that existed since ancient times ! reallly i got goosebumps to see this marvellous structures pls make some research about the building construction methods and techniques post in our textbooks
i love semitic people they are amazig, petra is my favorite pre-islam arab kingdom. yemen have many similar to shibam city.
They make mud and put under the sun for some time and then a bird will come to walk over the mud bricks,if he walked perfectly then it's ready ,if he started puting his head down the mud then it's nedd more time
Engineering-scientist (engineer/physicist) here and same. This city is completely fascinating.
Even more than the animations, I love the idea of hiring local film makers to shoot in their home countries. Great video
I really want to visit Yemen one day, many amazing sites like this. I like that you collaborated with a local to make this and the interviews made the video more interesting. I hope Yemen can find peace.
It will always be Islamic.
Welcome to Yemen
This really makes me think of Kowloon Walled City before it got torn down. (The title card didn't help matters any either)
Definitely, but far less dystopian.
but kowloon was a mess. this isn't.
Hong konger here lol
I was thinking if someone would make that comparison, and I'm not disappointed haha.
To be fair, the walled city was a result of geopolitics, not engineering, so its messy-ness is a natural result of that. What I want to point out is that many cities in asia have much higher population density than Manhattan. I live in the suburb in hong kong and my government housing building, being the shortest in the neighborhood, houses around 10 families each floor and it has 35 floors. The city area has much higher density than that. Some sources say mong kok, the literal center of hong kong, has a population density of 130000 per square km. Macau, Manila and dhaka are all known for their density among others. In fact the deciding factors of whether a neighborhood can sustain that many people are not the buildings themselves, but on waste processing, drinking water and power grid, followed by general health care/hygiene and employment opportunity.
There's a video about it right under this one 😂
@@Johnny-rj9on That is a good way of putting it.
I have to admit that at the start I thought I was seeing a CGI model of what the city used to look like - and perhaps it had been buried in the desert. As a 'know it all' I can't believe I was unaware of such an incredible city. RUclips has taken over from Wikipedia as my source of new knowledge :)
To those of us in the wetter parts of Europe, the Arabian peninsula seems to be just one big desert at first sight - I understand Riyadh has to bring desalinated water all the way from the coast - so it's always a surprise to find there are pockets of water throughout Arabia, but not all year around.
I'm still a little unsure of how each building works though. Today we'd assume that each level of a multi-storey building would have several flats. But it seems one family lives from floor to roof over several storeys, divided up for separate purposes.
Because Riyadh was literally built on a desert that was not settled by any city dwellers before in the Peninsular. Riyadh was one of a camping side for the Saud family clan. They were Bedouins unlike the Arabs in Makkah, Medina and Jeddah who are city dwellers and the Yemenite is also a city dwellers. This is the things about Arabs culture that not many people outside the peninsular knows. There are 2 type of Arabs, the city dwellers and the Bedouin. THEY ARE VERY DISTINCT ALTHOUGH THEY CAME FROM SAME ROOTS. Prophet Muhammad who were born in Makkah was a city dwellers and he was not a Bedouin and even he differentiate between his people and the Bedouin. He predicte dthat in the late hour of the wolrd the Arabian peninsular will be ruled by Bedouins KINGS. HE WAS RIGHT. THE SAUD ROYAL FAMILY and all the UAE and KHALEEJI royal family like in Bahrain and Qatar were all Bedouins Arab not Hadari or city dwellers Arab from the western coastline. The only Hijazi or City dwellers Arab king that exist today is the Jordanian King.
The Yemenis were always living in cities but I believe there are cities around the Arab peninsula which are under the desert.
Yemeni here, I really like the video and appreciate the coverage of the beautiful sides of Yemen❤
I just want to tell give you a few points you can improve on, as i really appreciate this video.
Whoever you hired to translate did a very inaccurate job. I understand the need to add information or context, but that you can do with your own voice, if there's distortion of the voice of the locals, just don't interview them. Also the orientalism with all the music and whatnot might appeal to non-MENA ppl, but it is very off-putting and kind of perverted. There's so much famous music from Yemen, especially Hadhramawt (Abu-Bakr Salam)
Hey, great you like the video and thanks for the feedback. I'm sorry to hear that the translations were not up to par. I asked two Iraqi friends and they said they were contextually correct. When it comes to music, I hear you. It's always a balancing act with music, I'm sorry to hear it was not suitable to you. People associate certain sounds with desert landscapes but when is it too much? I would have loved to used some music from Yemen but that is copyrighted and I unfortunately don't have Hans Zimmer under speed dial :)
@@ThePresentPast_الكثير من الموسيقى تستطيع اخذها بدون مقابل مالي ، يمكنك فقط ان تستأذن من المؤلف الموسيقي على سبيل المثال : محمد القحوم
Agreed on the music bit, felt like playing Civ lol
@@ThePresentPast_ Could you improve the translation at least? I'd love to know what the interviewees are actually saying
@@ThePresentPast_I doubt Iraqis can understand Yemen dialect
Bologna follow up!
yes!
Whats that mean?
@@matthewtilley7175 in medieval times, bologna had many high buildings. Look it up. It looks as if its straight from a sci fi movie
@@matthewtilley7175he made a previous video discussing old premodern tall buildings.
@@matthewtilley7175 what he meant was the bologna skyscrapers, try google it
A followup showing more of the construction and/or interiors would be awesome to see. Thank your local team for getting the shots and interviews! They did a great job.
I wish peace, safety, and good life to the citizens. Unity of people, not war.
If you are interested in interesting architecture there are also windcatcher in Iran. there is a really good documentary in German following the "last" builder of these in Yazd. But it didn't actually die now he believed and now is a renaissance of them.
oooh interesting!
Could you put the link here , please ?
As a Yemeni, I really liked your content, especially this video. Although I lived for 19 years in a city that is only about 30 kilometers away from Shibam, all this time I thought I knew a lot about Shibam, but when I watched this video I discovered that I really didn’t know much about it. Thank you for showing Yemen in a more beautiful image despite all the fake propaganda it faces.
Yemenis are inventor of modern style urban design in some way
Thanks for the video Past Present. Love your content and thought that this story was amazing. These ancient skyscrapers are so amazing and it is so sad that they are under so much threat from both the climate and war. But It also shows how people can adapt to this changing world. I also thought that your 3d graphics and animation are great. As a beginner video editor who is learning 3d in blender, I really respect the work you put into your videos and research.
I had never heard of this place. And I appreciate that you sent local people there to film - shout-out to the Yemen crew!
first
6:00 Fern/Jonas it was you making an audio cameo?
The reason it is the Chicago of the Arabian Peninsula is the strategic position and center of trade.
I wonder how these buildings would perform in an earthquake. They seem brittle. I hope they dont have to find out.
The architecture in Yemen is so beautiful and a city builder’s DREAM. Well, city builders like me. It is uniform yet not imposing. It has individuality yet is blended. It is incorporated WITH the environment to sustain simple infrastructure.
You just worded my philosophy when it comes to Minecraft, where I never had words for it before. Thanks mate 👍
This is one of the best short docus i have seen in a long time, especially because it is a topic that i have not expored before. Gonna watch more of your stuff. Thankyou!
This is the best vide i have seen in a long time great script great editing great bgm great everything
I love this video
I have saced this video in great videos playlist i have
Love u brother
I'm amazed that these ancient buildings survive all those ancient Earthquakes for 2000 years!
,,,, hallo from germany
It seems that this video is kinda incorrect. The city itself is known for 2500 years but the buildings are not that old. The oldest building is about 450 years old and the majority of buildings are from 1800s up to 1915.
They said they need constant work and maintenance
@@heyheychillwrong it's built bc in hadramout kingdom era but in 15th a large parts destroyed due a flooding and they rebuilt it again and countine to colore it each year
Handmade by people who would in it.
Bless the hardy and kind people of Yemen, and their resistance
The builder guy at the beginning says somthing like: " And war..for what reason?!! War. What is this war? For what reason ? Why is there a war, now?" Took a couple of rewindings to get the whole thing hah. But yeah says a lot about Yemenis ( Not Houthis).
yup i kept hearing harbs, al harbs....i can't speak Arabic but know some of it becasue im a Muslim...and i know Harbs means war :P
Interesting to know about this. I'm part yemeni, my ancestors are from hadhramout. I love to know more about it and the places surrounding it.
The name alone, makes this city so freaking cool...I mean SHIBAM.....seriously!
Excellent video and the animation is on another level 👏👏👏
Again an amazing video Jochem!
Legend!
A Really nice documentary.
What a beautiful city, loved the interviews too
Shibam looks like an awesome place to live
I absolutely love the architecture and layout
Stunning. An amazing ancient city I've never heard of. Very interesting. Thanks.
Goats inside the building representation, hilarious! :))
Wow, ich fasciniert mich an diese Stadt. Und vorher hab ich nicht an Shibam gehört.
Danke, dass Sie Ihr Wissen und Ihre Erfahrung mit uns teilen Joachim. Jetzt will ich besuchen!
I like this unique mix of traditional documentary and youtube style of telling a story Jochem! A very interesting watch.
brilliant video highlighting the ingenuity of these people. There still lives a huge misconception that people of the past were "backwards" and "unsophisticated", and the only way to break that misconception is by showing the awesome things that humans have always been able to do.
I’m surprised this city never came up in my architecture history classes. (Current architecture student). Loved the video!
It's not in Europe and wasn't built by white guys. It's why places like this aren't common knowledge, it's not beneficial to the eurocentric world they want.
I once went on a week trip in middle school where we built a little "house" for a daycare, just a small place to rest when you play outside. We mixed some clay, smothered blocks of straw, and stacked them, eventually getting clay walls with straw core.
That was pretty fun, the material is pretty good, easy to build and can protect you from the elements.
I imagine mud straw bricks are awesome, especially with riverbed mud.
Outstanding overview of this special place. Aside from the amazing architecture, I can't believe how spotless it is in spite of all that desert dust. Beg to differ however on the origin of that livable "crack" with cradles Shibam. These fissures bear all the hallmarks of massive electrical scarification (and limited erosion afterwards). They demonstrate aspects of Mandelbrot sets in which lightning often manifests (not so much in the sky, but its tracks where it meets the planet). The water then takes advantage of these channels and people follow. New sub, really enjoying your work!
Wonderful wonderful. Where have you been? Or has the algorithm been messing around? How happy I was when I heard your voice and then saw your face. I have never heard of this place nor seen any footage of it so let me watch to the end without any interruptions and hope that helps the algorithm issue. Cheers from Dubrovnik. Zoltan
Something about Shibam's design just gives off the feeling its meant to be there~
Like it's part of the landscape~
It feels open and airy~
Unlike what you'd find in modern day cities, Which feel confining and imprisoning.
I think that's what makes it so appealing~
This is my favorite video of yours by far! Love the collaboration with local filmmakers, too.
It is very important to understand the past traditions. Not just to turn it into a museum but to learn from it
3:05 When you said "Yemen, a place you've probably only heard mentioned like this", I expected Janice saying "15, Yemen Road, Yemen" :D
Incredibly valuable story. I would have never found out about Shibam, or even seen anything positive of Yemeni culture, if it weren't for this video.
Thanks for making this video
It really means a lot to us Yemenis
my god, this is absolutely amazing
cinematography is beautiful
Stunning. Absolutely stunning.
And tragic.
I remember seeing pictures of this place in a book when I was a child. I thought it to have been abandoned and fallen into ruins long time ago, as so many other ancient cities. I am happy to see that it's even better maintained nowadays.
May it's future be prosperous.
يسكنها 70 الف
First video I see of your channel, and it really have the same vibes as on Rare Earth. I liked it a lot.
Oooh, very neo-esque intro, I like it!
"How do you deal with going up 11 flights of stairs?"
"You git gud."
the video basically sayss they mostly live in the lower floors.
out of topic but this video made me tear up a bit bc you sound and talk exactly like my father who passed away 13 years ago
you just gave an idea with this title to a tiktoker to give the credit to ancient aliens. on a real note, i remember being in yemen as a kid (cause relatives) and there was a a steep road, which was hard to walk on but the view I saw walking up and down was amazing, it still stuck in my head.
Awesome video, Thanks!
it's a beautiful village, it just really sucks that the war is affecting them, my thoughts and high hopes go to all those civilians affected by war across the world.
9:11 That is called PERFECTION 👌✨
i appreciated that jab at dubai at the end
Very interesting and really well done documentary !
🎉Greetings from Brazil 🎉
Incredible story, thank you! ❤
An interesting and good quality production. Thanks.
Don't forget the Romans also built apartment blocks
As yemeni, it's inspiring to be reminded that we're capable of anything, we started the skyscrapers, and we can turn this poor country into a ritch and prosperit country loke it once was. BTW I'm watching this video in my apartment in Manhattan, so this video is extra special, Thank you.
Really interesting. Thank you.
so beautiful! really amazing! love it and would love to visit!
Thanks!
Fascinating.... thank you.
Amazing thank you
I was casually looking for some of the oldest tallest structures and am shocked I didn't find these. My region is so different, that I didn't even know mud based bricks go over 3 stories. Unreinforced unfired bricks in multistory buildings lasting thousands of years.
Due to the current situations, it's hard to see for people who are ignorant of the place, but Yemen has a far richer, more intricate and beautiful history and civillization than most of other places in the Gulf region.
The stability in modern times has driven the spotlight away from Yemen to the other states, but one can really appreciate Yemen when they learn it's history.
great video!
Ancient romans also build high multistory buildings. Some of them had even 7 floors in them. I would guess that the reason they build it into so tight of a space was for protection. Its easier to defend a place which is somewhat centered than one that is sprawling out into multiple directions. Building a defensive wall around a town isnt cheap and extending it would be a major effort for a smaller town like this one.
Now do a 90+ minute history of the Arabian peninsula. This video is so emblematic of the surface level scraping that most YT videos do of events that are critical to the local inhabitants. It's partly YT's fault of course, but it's not required to conform to YT's low bar.
3:42 Instead of going there...
A very diplomatic way of putting it, if I may say.
A well intentioned result too, so a win all round, bravo ragazzo!
Building up is more energy efficient.
It's much easier to keep the whole building cool in the sunlight.
I hope this beautiful ancient city keeps standing for another 2000 years.
This makes me curious about the sanitary systems like toilet, water supply, etc. that were present or absent in those middle age buildings.
The opening aerial makes Shibam look like a tan version of Kowloon Walled City.
This city is amazing, it needs to be unesco heritage site
Amazing!
An amazing city. Thanks for the video.
'Desert stone' is not particularly tough at all. But it can be hard to mould and access with relatively poor quality tools. And having very limited access to wood makes it harder to have access to decent quality tools.
fascination that no rainfall ever swiped it away
Wow, thank you, that was really good :)
Bro, you don't need the captions. Your accent is fine!
Wow ✨ I never heard about this city!
It makes far better use of its 3D structure than modern cities with vertically partitioned rooms and horizontally connected buildings.
Maybe in the future our cities will evolve like this
7:22 - I like how the 2nd floor is reserved for goats.
The brothel
@@tbird-z1rthe prophet صلى الله عليه و سلم said: "Whoever has intercourse with an animal, kill him and kill the animal with him."
(Narrated by Ahmad, 2420; Abu Dawood, 4464; al-Tirmidhi, 1454; al-Haakim, 4/355).
I'm from Tunisia, thanks for showing the good side of Yemen that is, I believe, purposefully ignored by western media.
I would've liked it if you had used authentic Hadhramawti music instead of the typical, orientalist desert music, which can be annoying and borderline offensive. Also this city has an extensive mythology and epic-ness tied to it, It would've been cool to have recounted some of those stories, instead of presenting this world wonder as a mere adaptation to hash dry climate.
The reason it was compared, visually, to Chicago is not the type of buildings but the nature of the buildings within the landscape. Chicago is very, very flat... and suddenly, all at once, a bunch of tall buildings huddle together. Similar with this ancient city: the buildings are all clustered together, and then it stops into the surroundings which do not have this.
This is a unique feature of the skyline of Chicago, and as the video points out, Shibam.
Awesome story, thank you!
I lived in Saudi Arabia for 12 years and always wanted to visit Yemen, but the country was too dangerous to go to as a tourist. The nearest I got was Jizan and Najran.
Got me scratching my head. I never seen it heard of this in my life. And I wanna know why wasn't I told about this place. So much hidden. I'm really grateful for the Internet. Before this u had to go to the library.
No elevators makes living on the 11th floor a daily workout routine.
#ThePresentPast Wadi is called a place that's between mountains. Valley is its English name. Shibam if u look closely is the same. That crater on which its located.
Cool video. Thank you
Wow it has AC and everything also!
The place where I live has an old arabian area called balad,lots of old buildings but nothing compared to this
Balad ,up to some extent had buildings made of a hundred years old
Nice video dude :) really interested
I have always wanted to travel to Yemen, and feel such heartache for its political strife. I hope these incredible buildings and cities don't get completely destroyed.