CCF Archive Site

The history of Europe is breathtakingly complex.
Jurisdiction over most of Europe's landmass has changed hands innumerable times —
except for the long time when the Roman Empire was dominant.

WW2 was important to our history, but Hitler's Third Reich was barely a blip compared to the Roman Empire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY9P0QSxlnI

Here is the same history, except with names of rulers instead of names of empires.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpKqCu6RcdI

Now here's a history of Asia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8TNvvjoqvw

Interesting indeed

P.S. Interesting choice of music.

It's the same kind of music you'd hear in old newsreels like:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHxkmSiKu4I

The video that Arnold posted is great.  The early Scots (Picts) must have been real badasses since the Romans never conquered them.  Other things struck me too, like how much a flash in the pan the Third Reich was compared to other empires and how scary the Golden Horde was coming out of nowhere  and so quick.

Where are we today?   I'll posit a few things:

1) If you have nukes you can opt out of this historical dog-eat-dog madness.  A delivery system would be nice too, but not necessary.  You can always smuggle a nuke into the U.S. in a bale of marijuana  .   For that reason, it's rational for NK to want them.

2) Trade strength now replaces military strength.   We are like the Romans outsourcing their military when we outsource our manufacturing.  The only way to get strong again (i.e. get our trade in balance)  is to be a lot smarter in everything, especially automation in all things.  If a country does not have smart workers, managers and industrial and political leaders it's going to be economically conquered.

3) Information security is probably a core technology.  That has to do with computer security and meme security.  By the latter I mean making sure that ideas which get propagated through the news and online are true.  Services like Snopes and the Amazon review checking services are in this category.  I suspect fact-checking is going to be a growth industry.

Interesting to see the relative stability of the population until the 1700's. It looked to me like it took 1200 years for the population to recover to the level of the Roman Empire.