Finally someone who doesn't glorify the state! Your channel is definition of perfection. Really appreciate what you do!

Wow! what a beautiful and concise lecture on the "why" civilisations have formed! As a modern electronic-age non-magic city builder, this episode drew me in. Thank you and see you in the discord.

the stuff about nomadic groups is so interesting!!! I'm building a dnd campaign set post bronze age collapse and this super antiquity history is such a well

I'd also recommend looking into David Graeber's anthropological work, particularly Debt: The First 5000 Years and The Dawn of Everything. He's also a colleague of James C. Scott. A colleague pf him is also Michael Hudson, who did economic archeological work that he adapted into a trilogy of works: ... and Forgive Them Their Debts, The Collapse of Antiquity, and Temples of Enterprise, all worth looking into. If you can find anything by him, Lewis Mumford's The Myth of the Machine gives a lot to grapple with.

It's now a requirement that glaciers feature in some way, shape, or form in every video.

Your commitment to worldbuilding continues to astonish me. I couldn't imagine trying to write fantasy now without being intimidated by some of these considerations. 😅 Which makes me happy I'm writing contemporary right now.

This channel was a huge discovery for a history major building a post-cataclysmic fantasy world (roughly steampunk -> medieval). Thank you for all the great content, this is a true trove of treasure! Now where did I put my coffee and notebook...

Another banger

This is excellent. This probably popped up on my feed due to my interest in actual states and history, but fills in a lot of information i was not aware of. Great job!

Rewatched the previous parts to prepare for this one, I'M SO EXCITED!! When it first came out, I shared it with artist/writer friends like "!!!!!" like we do Artifexian videos too.

Notes for myself states around more biome diverse areas setttled areas where all requirements arent met twin areas where trade routes occur or where state-demanded resources exist, or where "barbarians" exist alongside states migratory areas with low biome diversity or just areas without a lot of habitability

Love your channel !

Although I think you’re right that emergencies and danger helped encourage people to accept authoritarian states (a tactic that still works today, unfortunately), I think another part of it may have been the astronomical expertise of the priest classes in states like Egypt or the Mesopotamian or Indus city-states. We unfortunately tend to think of ancient priests as mere spinners of superstition, and of course they did believe tons of stuff that we now know isn’t true, but that nonsense was mixed in with a lot of genuine observational knowledge of astronomy and its correlations with seasonal rains, frosts, and droughts. If your priests can tell the whole community that the position of the Sun is a sign from the goddess Inanna that she’s ready to bless the sowing of the millet crop (which happens also to be the exact date of the spring equinox and the start of the rainy season), it may make sense to the millet farmers to raise a little surplus to feed those priests, so they can get the planting time right again next year.

Another great guide!!! Your videos are so in-depth, yet I'm able to follow along without getting overwhelmed haha! Thank you so much for making this guide. Looking forward to the next video 💕

Great video! I didn't know about the difference between states and feudal polities.

Watching Artifexian lead me to you. This was a great video.

30:37 by 450 CE, much more of the Gangetic Plain, A cluster around the southern coast of India, and larger parts of South China should be states

26:49 just a note that "q" in Chinese romanization is pronounced as a sound close to English "ch" so it should be something close to "ching dynasty". If you know the IPA the sound is /tɕʰ/. Great video though I can't believe I haven't seen your videos before, will definitely be watching more of them 🙏🏽

Not sure what happened but I copied the description back in, so the chapters are back!

This is interesting but as a new viewer chapters would be super helpful. Not sure I have the willpower to sit through a 1 hour video on a new channel.

How could land degradation caused by agricultural be determined? Specifically, the gradual desertification over centuries, unnoticed by the farmers, until their society suffers agricultural collapse (thinking of the Mayans). Could this potentially be the outcome of most antiquity states? Explore adventurers from the lucky faraway state would then discover vast ruins of lost civilizations all over the world :)

What was the full name of this Ross guy? I can't figure out the rest of it.