Dan Davis History narrates: “The people of the Sintashta culture were Bronze Age chariot warriors of the Northern steppes. A people who changed the world. Highly patriarchal and warlike, they were also bronze workers who built huge fortified settlements like Arkaim east of the Ural mountains. They invented the chariot and bred the best horses the world had ever seen. But where did they come from? And what happened to them? This is the story of the Sintashta culture.”
Kingdom of Armenia – Between Rome & Parthia
“Kings and Generals historical animated documentary series on the history of Ancient civilizations and Middle East continues with a video on the Kingdom of Armenia, as we look as how this state survived between the two giants of the era – Rome and Parthia and then Byzantine and Sassanian Empires, creating a unique civilization.”
Who Made Scottish People? …The Scots
The Scotland History Tours channel on Youtube features an interesting narrative documentary on the making of the Scottish people: “The Scottish nation are an mix of many peoples. Scottish history tour guide, Bruce Fummey looks at some of the peoples who made Scotland: The Picts, the Britons, the Angles, the Vikings and in this episode… the Scots.”
How was England formed?
Knowledgia has an interesting video on the formation of medieval England in the wake of the dissolution of the former Roman Empire.
Blonde Mummies, Tocharians and Indo-Europeans of China
Survive the Jive has an interesting video on “Blond Mummies, Tocharians and Indo-Europeans of China” about the Indo-European presence in present-day Xinjiang of western China: “Archaeological discovery of mummies in the Taklamakan desert of Western China dating back 4,000 years has captivated the imaginations of researchers, who were surprised to discover that they were caucasians from Europe. The answers to the mystery of who these white mummies were might be found in the later history of Xinjiang province; in the Chinese written records of blue eyed and red bearded merchants such as the Yuezhi and the Sogdians from the West and in the manuscripts written in a mysterious Indo-European language known as Tocharian. Clearly there were both Iranic and Tocharian peoples living in Western China in later times, and the Tarim mummies must have been the ancestors of some if not all of them. The inhospitable Tarim basin became a vital route for merchants, at the crossroads between East and West, the basin is skirted by oasis towns which were stations for anyone traveling on the Silk Road.The caucasian, Europoid mummies and the ancient Indo-European languages of the region challenge popular misconceptions about the limits of European civilisation in the Bronze Age. The material excavated suggests the area was active for thousands of years, with diverse languages, lifestyles, religions, and cultures present.”
This documentary runs commensurate with an earlier Nova documentary on the same topic from the 1990s.
The duties of a Christian Patriot
Francis Scott Key, the author of “The Star Spangled Banner,” on the duties of the Christian patriot:
“The patriot who feels himself in the service of God, who acknowledges Him in all his ways, has the promise of Almighty direction, and will find His word in his greatest darkness ‘a lantern to his feet and a lampt unto his paths.’ …He will therefore seek to establish for his country in the eyes of the world, and in the estimation of her own citizens, such a character as shall make her not unworthy of the name of a Christian nation. He will strive to save her from the reproach of bearing the name and disowning the obligations it imposes. He will endeavor to advance the public happiness by promoting public virtue. Whatever, therefore, can be done for the establishment of sound principles and correct habits, for the suppression of vice and the encouragement of piety, will receive his unwearied support and constitute the chief aim of his labors.”
—Francis Scott Key, “Oration Before the Washington Society of Alexandria,” 1814.
Evolution of the Indo-European Languages
This is interesting.
“The Kings and Generals animated historical documentary series on the ancient civilizations continues with a video on the evolution of the Indo-European Languages, as we give a summary of how this language family formed and how the languages belonging to each are still connected to each other.”
How to Build the Perfect Castle
“This is Epic History TV’s guide to building the perfect castle, based on the development of European medieval castles over 400 years of history. We trace the origins of the castle in the feudal system that emerged in France c.900 CE, and look at the early motte-and-bailey castle, used by the Normans to subjugate England and Wales in the 11th century. We then look at how castle’s became stronger and more sophisticated, with the addition of stone curtain walls, massive keeps, towers (square, round and D-shaped), as well as powerful gatehouses, barbicans, machicolations and moats.”
The twin perils of overreach and neglect.
In the Western world, and the United States of America, one can garner the sentiment that what David Polansky tenders above is profoundly true. One of the sad realities of the western world is much of it as devolved into a Panopticon Police State. This police state is acclimated to an “information overload” where it’s perpetually hypervigilant over seemingly benign infractions. Here they chase shadows in order to have an illusion of control, and yet they usually neither effectively maintain control nor possess the comfortable illusion of it.
In Great Britain, for instance, cameras canvas every street, building, bridge, and subway, and some have described it as the realization of George Orwell’s 1984 novel come to life. As well, in the United Kingdom, police are tasked with investigating peoples’ thoughts and words, and ascertaining whether they conform to a conjured Newspeak or have committed thought crimes. At Davos, the talk of the WEF crowd is of “recalibrating free speech,” which is Newspeak for doing away with “free speech” as conventionally understood, and subjecting everything to the control and filter of elite censors.
To the Tweet’s point, in Uvalde, Texas, local authorities sat on their hands while a mass-shooter sadly killed children earlier in May 2022. Burke said evil only prevails when good men do nothing, yet they did nothing. Their inaction and ineptness roundly elicited condemnation from across America and even other Sheriffs expressed condemnation. They waited 40+ minutes and did nothing but restrain upset parents gathered outside who were demanding that they take action. It was ultimately an off-duty U.S. Border Patrol officer acting independent of them that subdued the killer. Erstwhile rewind several months earlier and this same Uvalde Sheriff’s Department was raiding a bar-restaurant with a SWAT team to uphold a pandemic lockdown closure restriction. Does one see the discrepancy? Is this not a two-tiered concurrent manifestation of “institutional failure” and “wildly disproportionate accountability”? The most basic protective functions of the law as it relates to protecting life, liberty, and property are neglected while civil government routinely overreaches and oversteps the reasonable bounds of prudence. This in in a nutshell is the crux of the problem and David Polansky’s Tweet of 27 May 2022 captures it.
“Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
―Alexis de Tocqueville