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10 Famous Ancient Events That Never Happened

World of Antiquity

557,591 views

If you enjoy evidence-based ancient history, myth-busting, and clear explanations of new discoveries, you’re in the right place.

Wonder why I say BCE and CE?
See here: Am I Too "Woke" for Saying CE and BCE?

CONTENTS
00:00 Introduction
00:21 The 300 Spartans Fought Alone at Thermopylae
02:47 Cai Lun Invented Paper
05:31 Thutmose III Immediately Erased Hatshepsut for Revenge
08:54 The Edict of Milan Made Christianity Rome's Official Religion
11:57 Zhuge Liang Used the Empty City Stratagem Against Sima Yi
15:22 The Ancient Greeks Had a Marathon at the Olympics
17:57 Qin Shi Huang Ordered All Books in China Destroyed
20:46 Ramesses II Won a Crushing Victory at Qadesh
23:30 Pythagoras First Discovered the Pythagorean Theorem
27:11 Aryan Invaders Massacred Mohenjo-daro

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► REFERENCES
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1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journa...
2. https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/18/20/...
3. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1f28...
4. https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/s...
5. https://zh.wikisource.org/zh/%E4%B8%8...
6. https://library.olympics.com/doc/SYRA...
7. https://mkern.scholar.princeton.edu/d...
8. https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.890651
9. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/py...
10. https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedit...

20 Comments

@WorldofAntiquity Creator 1 month ago (edited) Pinned

If you liked this video, you might also like:
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@Mr.MashenIt 1 month ago

The saying most know is history is written by the victor, but many people don't think how it was also rewritten again and again and sometimes a narrative that wasn't in the past is inserted for ulterior motives, be it political, monetary, or social. Truly, one of the greatest challenges historians have sometimes is attribution because humanity has been rewriting and erasing history since it started recording it. I love your energy with these because a real lover of history does get mad at the idea of the real details being twisted or erased for whatever reason.

@arthurfarrow 1 month ago

In old age, I can imagine Ramesses II boring his dinner guests by replaying the battle of Qadesh with the cruet set

@Soundwrecker 1 month ago

It is amazing how old and detailed Egyptian history is. Stunning.

@The_Anti-Mormon 1 month ago

A thing to remember about EVERY army is that there are MULTIPLE non-combatants back in camp for every fighting man on the field.
It takes A LOT of infrastructure to support an army on the move.

@AncientWisdomWeirdStats 1 month ago

The 700 Thespians at Thermopylae are the detail that always gets me. They actually outnumbered the 300 Spartans in the final stand, stayed voluntarily according to Herodotus, and somehow almost disappeared from the popular version of the story. History sometimes simplifies itself into a better headline.

@VFella 1 month ago

More Marathon trivia:

The extra 2.195 km were added in 1908 during the London Olympics in order to allow the race to start from the gardens of Windsor Castle. It stuck for some reason.

There is another race, based on the myth of Pheidippides, the runner who supposedly ran from Marathon to Sparta (or from Marathon to Athens and then to Sparta to drop death there). It's a gruelling 243 km ultra-race, considered among the most important ultra-races on the planet.

@JaelaOrdo 1 month ago

As a history teacher preparing for school to start on Tuesday I know I’ll be showing my students this first day, a lot of them won’t be showing up until next week and so the ones who do get a few days of educational videos with no expectation of them doing any homework or anything. I will make sure they’re paying attention though.