I'm going to Gobekli Tepe tomorrow - a trip 30 years in the planning! I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in rainy Istanbul, watching videos about the site and bouncing with excitement. Can't wait to see it! Edit: Well, all I can say is it's worth the hype, and the 4 days travelling there and back. I've never seen anything like it, or felt the weight of time quite as strongly. It's magical. If anyone's interested in seeing it, I've uploaded a slideshow thingy to what is laughably called my "channel". I've never done it before, so please don't be too rude about it......

"Two cannibals walked into a restaurant in Prague...they asked for separate Czechs...."

I do posts on Mesoamerica and consulting for History/Archeology channels: The Maya section has a lot of issues, and this has been a consistent issue with Simon's network of channels with Mesoamerican vids. Here, Teotihuacan is at 0:38 and 1:33 despite it very much not being a Maya city (though it did have some Maya artists and diplomats living in a specific part of the city, potentially), and to say the Maya "began" growing ~250AD is wrong: Kaminaljuyu and El Mirador were GIANT Maya cities from 400-100BC, while Aguada Fenix, Nakbe, etc were notable centers dating back to 1000-800BC. The biggest issues though with how the video talks about the Classic Maya Collapse. "The Entire civilization" did NOT suffer a "near complete political collapse" nor "the abandonment of nearly every major city" in the 9th century AD in the "Maya Collapse". The Classic collapse was just that, a collapse which marks the end of the Classic period. Simon does later walk those statements back by (correctly) noting that the Maya were still around at the arrival of the Spanish and millions of Maya people are around today, but this is still far overplaying the severity of the Classic Maya Collapse, which some researchers reject the label of entirely: it's really mostly only large cities in the Central and Southern Maya regions which decline: Medium and smaller sites were often fine, and the big cities in the Northern Maya regions actually GREW during/right after the period rather then decline: Chichen Itza is perhaps the most famous Maya city, yet it's heyday wasn't till centuries after the Classic Collapse. (The collapse was also a more gradual process then over 50 years like the video says, but that's a minor thing relatively speaking). The League of Mayapan, perhaps the largest Maya political network to ever form, was around primarily from ~1100 to the mid 1400s! Listing a Toltec invasion as a potential cause of the Collapse is also really incorrect. The Toltec, if they even existed, really only became a thing (~900 to 1100AD, give or take a century.) AFTER the end of Classic Maya Collapse. And as I alluded to, they may not have even really existed at all. Aztec accounts describe the Toltec as this great utopian civilization in their accounts, but these are clearly at least partly mythical, and while researchers used to believe that they were merely mythologized versions of a real grand historical empire, and pointed to similarities between Tula (a city in Central Mexico during the Early Postclassic period some accounts identified with the Toltec Tollan) and Chichen itza, alongside parts of the account like the Toltec lord Ce Acatl Topiltzin (associated with Quetzalcoatl) leaving to the east and Feathered Serpent cults being popular with the Itza Maya around the time as evidence for a Toltec conquest of the Yucatan, that is now mostly discredited. Tula, and almost certainly no other single Central Mexican city, did NOT have a massive empire spanning over all of Central Mexico and up into the Yucatan as shown at 4:19: Tula had a medium sized kingdom in Central Mexico, and while some researchers still believe there was some sort of direct connection between Tula and Chichen itza with trade or diplomacy, even that is suspect now and it's clear that a lot of the perceived connections and reading into the myths about the Toltecs don't hold up to scrutiny. "The Tula-Chichen-Tollan Connection" by Tlatollotl is a great writeup on this. And again, not only is the idea of a large conquering Toltec Empire itself not correct, again, the outdated idea of that still would have been AFTER the Classic Maya Collapse, not as a cause of it. I get that Simon's channels put out a ton of content on a regular basis and the team making them probably can't do a ton of research on every given thing, but almost every video touching on Mesoamerica has had both very basic (not as in small/minor, but as in "this should have been easy to catch, but it wasn't") and very large errors. I'm not sure what the production workflow is like, but I'd be down to help out potentially, or at least point you guys towards good resources and sources and maybe get you in touch with some researchers.

"You know -all that pyramid building and stuff -why are we doing that?" "Don't you know that? It's because... because... I have actually no idea at all." That was the beginning of the end of the Mayan Civilization.

To answer your last point: Karahan Tepe, discovered right near by Göbekli seems to be from sround same period, or maybe even predate. It's a settlement carved directly into bedrock. Have a look at it. ;)

0:40 - Chapter 1 - What happened to the maya ? 5:05 - Chapter 2 - What happened to alexander's tomb ? 8:05 - Chapter 3 - What caused the bronze age collapse 12:35 - Chapter 4 - Who build gobekli tepe ?

As of April 2024 there are also other settlements found in the area around Gobekli Tepe dated to the same time or older. These are more residential areas than Gobekli Tepe,

And NOW, Karahan Tepe... Pre agriculture Pre pottery Pre Pyramids Pre Stonehenge

6:23 ... And THAT my friends is why Elvis is still alive to this day!! Thank you .. Thank you very much!

Please do more videos like this! Historical mysteries are the best.

There is actually a site older than gobekli teppe. The older site is called Boncuklu Tarla, and it is in the same part of turkey as gobekli teppe

There's a high chance we are missing alot of other structures of the same age or older as GT because they are under the sea, sea levels at that time were far lower than today and given the tendency even now to build along the coast theres a high chance they are hidding off shore

12,000 years ago our global sea level was about 400 ft lower. Any coastal cities that existed are under a lot of water. There were islands in the oceans and seas that are no longer visible.

In most cases if extreme change, its a combination of incidents and circumstances that create a bigger issue. There is a very real likelihood that a combination of war, drought, pests, disease, and social or religious beliefs could have combined to tear a civilization apart. They don't have to happen simotainiously. They can be consecutively. Drought or pestulance leading to war over resources, war leads to power struggles, famile opens the door to disease... see how one compounds or triggers the others?

Much like the bronze age collapse there probably isnt a single reason why the Maya collapsed. It was probably a bit of eveything that led to a general systems collapse ans society reverted back to smaller, less organized/advanced state.

Great content as always!

Thank you, Simon! As an ancient history buff, I love learning new things about happenings thousands of years ago. Gobekli Tepe still amazes me, it's SO old. No doubt the Egyptians would love to find Alexander's tomb. It would be a huge tourist attraction! So would Cleopatra's, if she had one. Octavian/Augustus didn't like her much.

Very good episode and your last statement concerning what is buried or hidden l believe could add unimaginable volumes to our history

The main immediate effect on Egypt of the Bronze Age Collapse was the loss of its "Asian" territories. The New Kingdom suffered about another century and a half of decline before it petered out with the end of the 20th Dynasty. While we can't say for sure what caused the broader collapse, environmental factors were certainly at play in Egypt, with reduced sunlight, droughts, and a reduced Nile flood leading to famine so severe that even some of the elites suffered. The only place where writing was actually lost was Greece, where the Mycenaean Linear B system entirely vanished. Greece would not re-learn how to write until the 8th century when they imported and adapted the alphabet from Phoenicia.

The biggest unsolved mystery is how Simon can be so darn charming!

Never disappoints, another great video. A true inspiration to small history youtubers like myself

Great video, I have both the MTT and AAT from that Era and never thought to compare the size. I am glad you did as it makes sense, however unfortunate that they are so small. Even more than the new wave of downsizing

The making of bronze heavily requires vast trading routes, as the materials are imported fron different and far locations. For this, the bronze making was usually controlled by the local king. Iron can be found locally. It doesn't need many components like bronze did. Anybody could make iron, if he knew how to do it. This was in effect a massive disruption of the main income of the kings of that time. It was a much stronger metall for the masses against the weaker metall provided by the kings. An early version of the French Revolution? It took about a thousand years untill iron replaced bronze everywhere.

I love your channels. I always learn something new. Keep up the good work!

Fascinating! Thank you for this one. Hugs

great stuff

There have been more sites near Gobekli Tepe that have been dated older than Gobekli Tepe already, one almost by 2200 years earlier.

There's good evidence that the Maya's practice of making lime in vast quantities (burning shells in hot fires - everything in their cities were coated in a layer of it, including the streets) led to deforestation - as to process so much required continuous burning of endless quantities of wood - which, by itself wasn't necessarily fatal, but it made them more vulnerable to drought as there was almost no forests or vegetation within kilometers of any city. This would lead to famine and societal collapse, and since their neighbours didn't turn the areas around their own settlements into deserts, they weren't as vulnerable to a regional drought.

I've heard on a podcast or two that Gobekli Tepe sat undisturbed for so long because it was erroneously identified as a Moslem graveyard. This kept the usual tomb raiders from tearing up the joint in search of trinkets to sell.

Odds are Alex's body was robbed & the bones scatter around like that of Pharaohs before him.

Hold up!! Did I miss Simon telling us about Roman concrete?

I always get excited when I see a new video from one of Simon's channels!

The end of the Maya civilization is known. The cenotes they used for water filled with salt water because they drew too much water from them. Those other theories are good, but they aren’t supported by evidence. Their cities were too big for their water sources, so they stopped building monumental cities.

As we in American near closer to the cliffs edge in November, I need this channel to keep my mind off it

Thera could have been a catalysts for the Bronze Age Collapse. Crete appears to have been a major trader for the supply of tin and copper. When the Minoans collapsed, so too did the trade. The climatic changes would also have affected the whole region.

pretty sure that last shot was from an unreal engine 5 nanite demo. interesting potential for a video series there, btw.

The builder's of Gobekli Tepe were sent from Baalbek to tame the Eastern Frontier. It was like Dodge City complete with general stores, livestock yards and even a Whore Houses. Sorry to mention the houses of ill repute but carving stone to depict your goods is difficult.

Yay, you used maya/Mayan properly!!!! :D

there's toltec buildings at chichen itza, the ball court at chichen itza is of toltec design and has toltec rules on what happens to the losing team, as in being ended.

There's a theory that the tomb of Alexander the Great has been misidentified as the tomb of his father, Philip II.

So exciting! This was a *great* video! Thank you so much!

When talking about the collapse of ancient civilizations I'm always inclined to believe that it was a combination of several natural factors made worse by competition/invasions/wars from other neighbouring civilizations. I find it hard to believe that one single issue can collapse a civilization completely.

I tend to assume most large-scale collapses are due to a confluence of causes. Any society that lasts a long time is likely to be able to weather one or two bad things happening, but when three or four hit together or in quick succession, there are very few societies that can wirhstand that.

I like the hypothesis that drought probably led to the sea people raiding for whatever resources they could since they seemed to have no interest in conquest at all. So instead of a cause of the collapse they were a symptom of it.

Gonna say it again: this is a better format than your other videos. Your voice level is uniform. I love your content but hate having to raise the volume to be able to hear half of what you say. Whatever equipment you use in this format fixes that problem.

You forgot to include that the runs also spreads some disease very quickly

As long as there are cool videos proclaiming the "weird & wonderful', well we stand a chance of always being curious! It's the guys who are professional in their field we should listen to & learn from, but only till it becomes unreasonable... The 'weirdness' of some in their own field is becoming apparent with the dawn of the internet. Then, curiosity & perhaps a little less pride might help us conquer mysteries. Life is pretty cool, & very intriguing & beautiful.

History Time had got a very good and in depth video on the Sea People

"...decorated with images of lions, bulls, gazelles and ducks..." Ducks‽‽‽ "I am a great warrior! I have upon my shield the image of a fearsome ... umm ... duck."

read that it is thought that gobekli tepe was just one of many.,

I live for Simon dropping new content across his many awesome channels.. no time to watch anything else really.... Well played Fact Boy 😂

Yes, Karahan Tepe is older than Gobekli Tepe. But also, this is even older! Similar region. Similar construction.

Gobekli-tepe, my theory. Winter camp site for nomads, structures were for community building fallacies. Some were "farming", some hunting, all were trading. It got buried because of a similar to MAGA or NIMBY movement, is my guess. Leaders said, "Well, community needs to be localized now, best get rid of this global thing with some sort of ceremony, symbolize it for the rubes to get a handle on it."

Realy good title !

As usual very interesting and instructive. But.... you talk too fast. I just have to rewind often, so, no worries, keep doing what you do. It is great work.... Thank you.

The Gobekli Tepe thing, isn’t quite up to date.. there are a handful of other sites that likely pre date it .. regardless.. it’s AMAZING.. the accomplishments of the early humans, before pottery, before metal.. I saw an interesting documentary with subtitles at another pre pottery site about a week ago.. incredible stuff!

This start with a massive series of understatements. "Some things remain a mystery'?? so far, MAYBE 10% of human history is solved to a point of 'beyond a reasonable doubt' and there are massive unknowns around nearly anything our best history wizards know. Here's an example of something everyone is sure we have totally figured out, recorded: "Mongols" but there is barely any consensus on what 'Mongols' really were or were not and what actually was a 'Mongol' invasion or 'Tartars' or if we're really just seeing some descriptions of 'Tartar Raiders' and most would be stunned at the disagreement gap on just how many Mongols and foes were in these major battles that youtube videos choose to have the highest numbers. Legit historian disagree by '600 total combatant' to 60,000' because nobody really knows. What did Ghengis Khan look like? Not so fast. the only thing that's probably a legit description tells us green eyes and red hair. Everyone says 'the mongols' but Jerchens and the Manchus (The Qing who conquered China until their recent last emperor) weren't "Mongols' were they? They were? Are you sure the Mongols took over all that land mass highlighted in red 'the largest empire by land mass' etc? Yes and no and not really. What you'd more accurately describe would be many red lines and spots. there were hundreds of towns who would have never seen a Mongol, not once and carried on before, during and after never engaging or caring about Mongols because no such administrative 'state' and controls happened but rather alliances of tribes going through and to (and back) like raiding parties. or maybe not? actually there is far far less of any certainty and anything solid on this than anyone really knows. Here in China there is shockingly little behind a lot of history that you'd receive as if it were the most recorded well known thing and obviously corroborated and yet there are 1000 year spans where there is just a few blurps of a much much later historian who's name nobody knows and then there are parts and places where its as if historical records 'vanished' and absolutely nothing is known and it's weird. like for 200 years an absolute 'blank'. History is weird. Yep, then there is something with stunning record and dig up all the stuff you want it will all be a massive record of everything to what they ate for dinner and get boring its so thick with record. 50 kms away there was very obviously a very big deal of a kingdom for which nearly NOTHING is known about them, wtf they did for 300 years and we're not even really sure what ethnic group or name or anything at all.

Of the 5 or 6 (maybe more?) channels Simon has, does anybody know which channel was his first one?

The 'sea people' seem to have been part-time mercs employed by the ancient Egyptians as fleet protection. That would explain why they knew which cities to pilfer first when things started to go downhill.

My favorite Mayan Collapse theory is,,,The average Mayan just got sick and tired of constructing endless pyramids and monuments. I have been all over Central America and the buildings are endless. And that is just the ones unearthed.

This was a well-researched presentation and It was good to see that they did not jump to conclusions or try to push one theory over another.

A crazy hypothesis on the purpose of Gobleki Tepe. What if, instead of being a place to worship some god or gods but a trade school. If we consider that not every man in the tribe was a great hunter or gatherer. Some people don't have it in them and that's fine. So what other facets of society are these people capable of? To quote my son when I asked him if you can't work with your back you work with your brain. But what if your brain is broken too. His reply was "You work with your heart." He was referring to my art. And when we take into consideration the vast amount of art and different styles it makes for a compelling argument that this could have been a school. We tend to think of a place of learning to be a more modern thing usually attributed to the Greeks but Egypt had institutional learning before Greece was a country. And with there still being a great lack of information about Gobleki Tepe we can only speculate and guess until further excavation and research is done.

1:40 the Romans understood the meaning of zero. They used the word nulla instead of a symbol. I’m sure most civilizations understood zero as a concept. It is obviously a very concrete concept. You had X bushels of grain you sold or ate that X now you have zero bushels. These civilizations were able to build giant very precise structures in remote places. They had to have understood the zero even if they didn’t have a symbol for it.

I find with archeology, when one secret is unearthed and solved, ten more take their place.

In the top 1000 nice 👍

Alexander did not build an empire, he invaded an Empire and his generals established Kingdoms on Achaemenid Empire. Establishing an Empire means building a state and complex bureaucracy. For instance Cyrus built institutions to rule over the many kingdoms he conquered. Later Shahs such as Darius added on top of this. They created the first true Empire composed of many conquered kingdoms with many cultures, languages and religions.

Edit: Nevermind. Someone else already posted the information. I found the comment about Karahan Tepe just a few minutes after I posted. Edit 2: Someone else posted about an older site called Boncuklu Tarla. This is probably the one I was trying to think of. I thought that there was another site comparable to Gobekli Tepe that archaeologists determined to be even older. Or were those reports exaggerated?

With the Mayans, archeologists found a lot of either mercury or lead contamination, I can't recall which at the moment but there was at least one study done and the amounts found in the area were too high. Whether they didnt know it was there or were utilizing it on purpose is obviously unknown. Its feasible they experienced degenerative disorders. And just as likely that neighboring cultures wanted nothing to do with them if they ended up seeking help. Oddly enough, degenerative disorders often turn on or increase the activity of other parts of our DNA in attemot to compensate, so its very possible they could have known it was there and thought it was beneficial due to the neuro-divergence of those affected.

I was waiting for the Sea People!

Love the archaeology content!

We built it, and then we forgot. Because we forget things, and have to relearn them, over and over again. We're just built like that.

I am convinced that there is evidence of older civilizations that is now underwater as the last ice age ended and sea level rose. Probably under the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf.

There was a collapse in the UK and Northern Europe too. Why 'wars', 'drought' and 'disease' are always sited for the Bronze Age collapse in the Med is beyond me. Occams razor suggests the Icelandic volcano, or another as yet undiscovered eruption, could very well have been the catalyst, forcing those in the north to move south and pressuring those in the south and west Med to attack the richer eastern Med. Egypt, whilst crippled survived. That for me rules out 'iron', of which there is no mention in the Trojan war which happened at or around the same time, and much nearer Bulgaria.

5:31 Alexander died of malaria? I realize that is one of the theories but as far as I know, its only a theory and not necessarily one of the better ones. From the contemporary sources, he as missing some of the main symptoms. Points against this theory are the absence of dark urine usually seen in P. falciparum, the absence of intermittent fever, the apathetic faces, and clinically, abdominal pain is more common in typhoid fever. Additionally, today, most malaria in Iraq/present-day Babylon is due to P. vivax, in which abdominal pain is absent [12]. Not to mention there wasn't a known outbreak of malaria in his camp. And in most cases there would've been, at least as far as we know today. Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9078372/ This is also a great read too.

Good stuff, but during the bit about Alexander, you mention the temple was looted by Cleopatra to fund the war with Octavian and then it was visited by Augustus. But Octavian IS Augustus. The current phrasing does not make it clear to a listener who is not familiar with that fact.

The majority of Mesoamerica is in the North American region, not Central American. Afaik Mayans were partly in CA but the Olmecs were entirely in current day Mexico(North America).

I just wish who built Turkeys' underground cities had been included in this list.

Any debates about Gobekli Tepe being connected to the dawn of agriculture are pure pedantry. The earliest evidence for domestication of wheat, barley, and sheep, all come from settlements of the same (or at least similar enough not to matter) culture, in the same period, in the same region that just happened to be where those species grew wild.

Alexander left his empire "to the strongest" so i guess he wanted it to fall apart into a series of constantly fighting successor states who were no where nearly competent.

Q: What happened to the Maya? A: There was this guy named Jax Teller...

First time I've heard six referred to as "a couple..." Pro-tip: a "couple" is two, a "few" is three, "several" is four or five & anything above that gets called out by name. 😁

11.20 "The Sea Peoples" depictions are from the reign of the 20th Egyptian Dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses the Third not the 19th Dynasty's Ramesses the Second! Ramesses11 (Ramses the Great) preferred the depiction of his "defeat" of the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh for his decoration. 😉

5:22 How was Alexander able to stoke such devotion? Is it true that he assimilated into local people he invaded?

Gobekli Tepe was not inhabited. Noone lived there. It rather seems to be the first big scale lunch and food park. Also including several artists work places, for weapons and sculptures etc. Many big pots for cooking food and brewing beer have been found there. Bread and beer go much further back in our history! It was certainly not invented in Bavaria.

If there was a devastating [agricultural collapse] it seems strange that their neighbors didn't experience it as well... My ancestors were from Ireland. If they were still around they could explain it to you

Gadfly here 🏧🏦. The Bronze Age Collapse: one of the earliest bank failures and depression of historical significance 💍👑🐷

You should look into Catastrophism. Everything you mention is merely a symptom of the cause of the fall of the Bronze Age.

There is plenty of evidence for a progression of center developments in south eastern Turkey. BTW - they weren't settlements. They're some sort of cultural/religious/cult centers. There is plenty of evidence of hunter gatherer "settlements/camps" around that area indicating those centers were the result of cooperative activity between groups. Similar, in many ways, to the various megalithic centers in England and northwestern France.

my theory is that first contact was not Columbus it was much earlier and by the time europeans arrived in the Americas it was pretty much too late. the bulk of the human population had already perished from some disease brought from over seas.

haven't you seen the predator movie that shows the predator atop a pyramid destroy the whole area rather than being overrun by the attacking aliens?

Hey Simon. How did the Maya know it was the year 909 AD? If they inscribed 909 on that building they must’ve been in touch with at least with Europe and the Middle East to be using the same dating system.

I was just confused by the year "250 AD". Usually in Dutch we call that 250. Wether we're using the Gregorian calendar or the astronomical, it is simply the year 250, no extra letters or - needed. Incidently the no year 0 in the Gregorian might be why some people think we're in the 3rd year of the 2020's. We're in the 4th: 2020 was the first year.

Opening intro gives idea for new channel name... Mystery Histroy 😊 or History Mystery (what ever ya fancy!)

Can we get a history channel with you? A new channel in the family?

Teotihuacan is not a Maya city. Nobody knows who built it. Some civilisation that could raise massive pyramids and then disappear without trace. It was already ancient to the Aztecs who made pilgrimages there (its name is aztec but we have no idea what it was originally called)

How about the pyramids and the sphinx, there's proof they were older then the egyptian dynasty's, like they found water erosion near the sphinx, that area was lush and green 1000's of yrs before the egyptian dynasty's.

The Sea Peoples being from Morocco and Libya… that’s a new one.

The Maya in Guatemala say they had an economic collapse. At least that they the Mayan tour guide told us when I visited in 2010.

Good informative stuff

You-ka-tan, there is nothing nothing yucky about the Yucatán peninsula. Some of the best food I have had anywhere in the world.