"Light has a greater velocity than sound"
Ok now we're going somewhere
"Seals are immune to lightning"
Ah and we're back

I love how one moment, Pliny can go “Ah yes, mirrors can reflect light at a concentrated level to create fire” to “HUMANS CAN SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST”.

pliny turns to stonetoss' art style when talking about ethiopians lmao

I love how Pliny’s various accounts just go from “huh, that’s really cool that you were able to know that so long ago” to “how do you function?!” delivered with the same cadence as DBZA Freiza.

My reaction are like "oh yeah he's totally right... wait wait the hell you mean wet and dry stars?"

Actually incredible how much he got correct-adjacent

Something that always fascinates me is that, ancient humans have always been just like us in so, so many ways. They liked dick jokes, they carved funny messages into stones, they put up signs warning potential thieves of guard dogs, they studied and learned and dreamed. The only difference is the amount of concrete knowledge we have; they didn’t have nearly as much to work with, but they were still brilliant and learned people. They knew copper protected from diseases, they knew how big the earth was and how the water cycle worked, they could predict eclipses and chart the stars.

Humans have always been humans, even if we sometimes forget, and it’s nice to be reminded on occasion

It's really nice to see that some people, even back then, tried to use a combination of plain logic and knowledge from scholars to understand the world. Honestly, knowing that this kind of thinking has been natural throughout the ages gives me hope for humanity's survival.

This is what we will sound like to people in 4025.

I saw in a documentary that the "two suns" thing may have been from a Supernova explosion that was just close enough to become a really bright star in the sky, so I'm partial to that account of an aerial phenomena

37:24 technically, Earthquakes can last years, As Earthquake Aftershocks count as a single earthquake, and they can continue to happen years after the original

10:30 Sam is using chess notations. In this context 'Book' means according to the book i.e. a standard move neighter bad nor great, rather than the book he's reading.

I love this video because it ranges in how this man shifts from sharing true facts, making brilliant observations for his time, and absolute insanity in a matter of moments.

wow he’s actually so based. Surprisingly and refreshingly enlightened for his time > no, scratch that, batshit ideas, product of his time > repeat

The Oracle at Delphi actually did use cave gasses to hallucinate and do their oraclular thing. The details are now lost on me, but it's definitely worth looking into. Most interesting psychedelic religious thing in history imo.

I love how half of this is either at least almost true if not completely and the other is just educated guesses that are batshit crazy like mars and Saturn causing Jupiter to send lightning to earth lmao

39:55 They actually recently found the fault lines underneath the temple that would have facilitated the release of the gasses. It was harder for the earlier archaeologists to find any fissures so they dismissed it as myth, but it is/was there. There’s a documentary out about it, iirc they finally found the evidence when one archaeologist had the bright idea to bring in his geologist friend to take a look around. 😂

The earthquake lasting so long makes a little sense if you count the aftershocks as part of the earthquake. That is the only way i can see that duration making any sense.

I do have to wonder if Pliny's "multiple suns" are him trying to describe the Sundog Effect which can look like three suns in the sky if you didn't know what it was.

37:00 he is probably talking about aftershocks but still years is wild