Gbekli Tepe: The Dawn of Civilization

[Warpy]

12. Some of that series is an example of why kids get turned off to history

because it tends to get bogged down in this king did this thing and his son, that king, did that other thing, and then another king did something else and then his son lost half the empire and then his son....you get the idea. It focuses far too much on the names of kings and not enough on things like how they supplied water, how they grew their food, how they kept cities from being awash in sewage and making everybody sick, and what their people were producing as trade goods. I don't give a damn about what the kings were named, I want to know what else was going on.

The Sumerians were a special example of this. We're only now catching up to some of their astronomy and some of their number theory, and I'm talking about "now" as the last 200 years.

However, if this series is up your alley, don't miss the one on the Songhai Empire.