Take a look at these past modern-day affairs. On the eleventh of September 2011, two planes flew into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, another plane hit the Pentagon outside Washington D.C., and a fourth plane crashed on a field in Pennsylvania. Thousands of people died from the attacks that day. The question of what might have caused this phenomenon raises further questions. Could it have been the much-awaited result of Nostradamus’ pop-culture prediction several centuries ago—or could it have been the scheming of another ill-gotten sociopath? What about a religious group and an even bigger civilization?
And by the way, any panorama view of the Tiananmen Square today would behold a picturesque scenery, a beautiful sight that evokes nothing but feelings of calmness and fortitude. Nine years before its restoration in 1990, however, one of the most important historical events in Chinese history took place in this site. Thousands of civilians died during the people revolution there—and the dilemma of where to pinpoint such a drastic happening is explainable by nothing but history and the dynastic cycles that came before the revolution.
And by the way, any panorama view of the Tiananmen Square today would behold a picturesque scenery, a beautiful sight that evokes nothing but feelings of calmness and fortitude. Nine years before its restoration in 1990, however, one of the most important historical events in Chinese history took place in this site. Thousands of civilians died during the people revolution there—and the dilemma of where to pinpoint such a drastic happening is explainable by nothing but history and the dynastic cycles that came before the revolution.
Today, we are familiar with ancient texts like the Ramayana and Mahabharata from the Harappan Civilization—but did you know that these two works were formed even before the first system of writing was developed? Simultaneously in a different part of the world, two other significant bodies of text, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were recorded from oral tradition. The popularization of these epic poems by Homer has greatly influenced the development of world literature since their time, such that the works of art of one too many may not escape into the hands of viewers or readers without first being splattered over with textual references from the Greeks. In similar fashion, one must never forget that while these few notable works had the benefit of preservation across time, many have been lost, and many do not find themselves in today’s canons and archives because civilizations have either burnt them away or failed to retrieve them. In 213 B.C. during the Qin Dynasty, for example, the burning of books and burying of scholars caused the loss of several philosophical writings.
Ancient literature, systems of writing, political systems, ancient artifacts, religion, culture, and other notable inventions and developments would not be in existence today without the dynamism of the ancient world. The influences of these ancient civilizations continue to expand and shape the cultures and networks of our present-day world—we continue to build today’s world because our predecessors, those brave men and women who fought and have gone before us, have laid the foundations of life for us in our stead. In the modern world we live, we are in constant improvement of the many things they have started; we continue to develop what they have first developed because the modern man cannot go without remembering history as a way of improving strong suits and correcting errors.
In his TED speech, Nathan Myhrvold, one of the world’s most well-known professional jack-of-all-trades—he is the co-founder of the private-owned company Intellectual Ventures, one of the authors of the cookbook Modernist Cuisine, a wildlife photographer, a volcano explorer, and with several other exciting titles one can name another—told the audience, “One of the things that I love to do is travel around the world and look at archaeological sites. Because archaeology gives us an opportunity to study past civilizations, and see where they succeeded and where they failed.” We know about early Egyptian architecture and their belief in the afterlife because we have seen Egyptian pyramids, whether in pictures or in real life. After the discovery of Terracotta Army in 1974 by peasant farmers, we can now have a glimpse into the kind of life people lived during the Qin Dynasty, as well as the belief systems of their late emperor. We have learned, from this dynasty’s mistakes, that a greed for power and immortality only leads to one’s own defeat. The study of these civilizations teach us about the ways of the past. More importantly, learning about these civilizations will give us insight into how people once triumphed after periods of recesses, or after failure, so that in our own similar encounters we may look back and subsequently make better decisions to improve life for the next.
Let us then learn more about these ancient civilizations and be mesmerized by the wonders and travails of the world our ancestors traveled by—the world that made our world.
