SYSK Selects: What was the most peaceful time in history?

Enjoy it's a good one. Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We're being very professional and this is stuff should are. This is decided, you know all we're saying, Josh, let's get a piece of chance, who says me? And John Lennon and you know the follow up I think that that line was if it doesn't work out, kill someone. But then he Yoko said you should take that part out.

Thank God for Yoko. Yeah, that's what I always say. Um, well, I think that was a nice little intro. Chuck just made it up close off the cuff clearly on the fly. Um have you ever heard of the group vision of Humanity? I have. I wonder where groups like this get their cash because this is kind of um. I mean, they make a social statement, but how are they? Are they selling ads on their annual report? What's going on here? I don't know? They may be an NGO, I guess.

I mean, I'm sure they are. I think it's valuable research. I agree because it brings into focus, like, you know, what we're going towards. What I should say. What they do is they they use in twenty three different indicators and uh crunch some numbers from all over the world to determine what is the most peaceful countries on Earth? And it's fairly predictable. The top and the bottom. What

were you surprised by? Did you like at two thousand twelves? Yeah, okay, we'll go ahead and go over the top and bottom ten and then we'll talk about surprises, because that sound it sounds delicious. The number one most peaceful country was Iceland. Yeah, and then you got Denmark, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Austria, Oireland, Slovenia, Finland and Switzerland are the top ten most peaceful countries. I could have guessed all those. Maybe not Austria. Oh yeah, yeah, dude,

there's like super chill, very peaceful people. Got anything in Western Europe basically is very peaceful these days. Yeah, I mean Western Europe typically is very peaceful. By it's the most peaceful region according to this list in the world. I'm I'm just a little out of okay, I feel like that Iranic surprised by one. Okay, so I picked Austria, all right. I was surprised by Oh, I'll go with Slovenia. Yeah, I don't know much about Slovenia. That's why I'm surprised.

So the worst is Somalia, and then Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Republic of Congo. Here's where I was surprised. Russia, I was too. Russia is just slightly better than Congo as far as peaceful countries go. Yeah, and slightly worse than North Korea, and then the Central African Republic and then Israel and in Pakistan is the tenth worst. And I was also surprised by Israel. And then once I thought about I was like, man, that really stinks. Yeah, I

was surprised by Russia. Yeah I was too, And um, this one tends to fluctuate a little bit more depending on these little civil wars that crop up in some of these countries. Because like a place like Syria had the biggest fall, they fell thirty places in a year, and then Sri Lanka rose thirty places because their civil war ended. So oh yeah, man, if you want to like change big time in this rating, start or finish a civil war, that's thirty points right there one way

or the other. Um. So yeah, I think the United States tends to rank pretty much somewhere in the middle, usually about the eighties. Yeah. Um, and the UK was twenty nine. Just you know, that's another notable that is very notable country or region. Uh. And you could probably guess one of the things that one of the reasons why the UK is higher than the United States is because I think one of the indicators has to do with access to guns a k. A. Ease of access

to weapons of minor destruction. Yeah, the UK's access against is far more restricted. Um number of jailed inmates for one thousand people. Uh. Military capability, Hey, US has got that in aces. Yeah, well so does England though Uh potential for terrorists acts. Yeah, I take that to mean like maybe being a target for it. Uh, that's what

I took it as yea. And then some of the other indicators they use our number of homicides per one thousand people, um, how you get along with your neighbors country wise, um, number of deaths from organized conflict, respect for human rights, and number of heavy weapons so not just guns and things, but scud missiles and like bunker busters.

That's the Global Peace Index. And again it's Vision of Humanity and NGOs UM annual data that they crunched together, which is pretty sweet, and that was there's just like a little cheat sheet that we were working off of, but there's a whole publication that really goes into depth if you're interested. And they pretty much have a lock on what the most peaceful country in the world is, But the question still remains, what is the most peaceful time in history? A lot of people ask that, Yeah,

and there's been several candidates. Um. Probably the most readily identified as the packs Romana, which means the Roman Peace. This gets a lot of press, at least um thanks to a seven I'm sorry. An eighteenth century historian named Edward Gibbon, who wrote the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire pretty light reading um and given was the first to really say, hey, there's this thing called the Pax romana, or is the first one to popularly right about it and actually try to date

this period. It was about a hundred and fifty years and it started. Um was it a hundred and eighty years? I'm sorry, yeah, well they rounded up to two hundred Yeah, two hundred years things. Man, he puts it at twenty seven BC, is beginning when Octavian, who was gayest Julius Caesar Augustus, the great nephew of the stabbed one Julius Caesar, and he was like, you know what, I'm in office now, and I'll know what all we've always done is just conquered, conquered, conquered,

conquer and spread the empire. We got enough junk. Now can we work on our what we have and just like quit conquering and work on our infrastructure and just being more peaceful and getting along within our own uh land bounds right, making our people happy. We've got a bunch of people, let's start focusing on them. And it actually had a really big impact. The popular rebellions dropped

off pretty quickly in the Roman Empire. No, they point out, but they I get the impression that they were a lot more frequent and widespread than they were during the pax Row model. Um. There there's these things called the Gates of Janice, and they were built by the second Emperor of Rome. I can't remember his name. Yeah, I

looked it up to I can't remember he. Uh. He built these things and left them open, and while they were open, somebody noticed like Rome was at peace, and then another emperor later on closed them and Rome was at war, and these gates would stay open or closed for hundreds of years at a stretch, mostly open for hundreds of years at a stretch, because they were always at war. Yeah, and they became the symbolic, um, I guess, kind of indicator of how Rome was doing right then

as far as war and peace went. And so during the pet Romana, the Gates of Janis were ceremonially closed and stayed closed for a couple hundred years, which is a big deal. It was opposite of how I thought it would be. I thought you would close them during times of war, But um I I couldn't get to the bottom of it. Was definitely symbolic. But is it symbolic of Rome had troops out there that they needed to leave the gates open for or if the gates

for closed. Rome was focusing inward rather than outward. See, you thought more much more about it. I just thought, if you're a war man, you better close the gates. You guys could come in. Um. There was also something called the Aura Passus, the Altar of peace, that was built during this time as well. And then the whole thing came to an end thanks to a guy named Commodus. Yeah. He was more into conquering. Yeah. He was Marcus Aurelius's son,

and Marcus Aurelius was a really great general, we should say. Um, during this time, during the Pax Romana, like you said, there were still some popular rebellions. Um. There was one in Hispania which is now modern day Spain. In Portugal. Um, there was there's a border between the Roman Empire and Germania which is modern day Germania. Um. And then also during the Pax Romana, Rome invaded England and subjugated it. So depending on who you were, the Pax Romana could

have been very violent. You may have come to a violent and but if you're if you look at the Roman Empire as a whole, this was a very peaceful time. And Rome was pretty much running the world at the time. So this you could say was the most peaceful time in world history, I think, compared to how Rome usually was. It was pretty peaceful. Yeah, but it wasn't all like you said, daisies and uh honey bees. Did you know, I had no idea where I was going? Um? Did

you know you know a vomitorium? Yeah, that's it's it's a popular misconception, really not true. No, Um, Romans actually didn't really use feathers to vomit up their meals. Vomitorium was like a place of ingress and egress into um, like a form or colosseum or something like that. It's basically the place where everybody walked in. They called it the vomitorium. So all those stories about eating to excess, bening and purging are not true as far as I know.

The purging part is a misconception. Interesting. Yeah, they definitely went to excess, especially followers of Bacchus. Yeah, I mean, can you believe that, like could you imagine, I'm just gonna eat so much like lamb and beef and drink mead until I can't move, and then I'll throw it all up and I'll do it all over again, and then will honor the God that I follow, which and why I follow this sex with like eighteen people at once ancient Roman, that place was a party. Rodney McDowell,

huh yeah. And Helen Mirren young was she? And that? Yeah, she was in it and naked crazy quite a bit. I never saw it, Caligula, it's really not very good. It's well, it's just long and dull, and you expect way more than you get. As far as when I was a kid, Colia was like the dirtiest thing ever, you know. Yeah, And then you watch it now you're like, God, what a bore that clash of the Titans without the good fighting without pants? Yeah, um, you jaded, bright uncle Agula. Yeah,

I am all right. So that is the pats Romana. We we put it up for consideration and we're striking it down. The sound of it being stricken down up next, we have a time that you might not think was the most peaceful, and that was the time of Genghis Khan. What Genghis Khan who we have talked about murdering what like a million people? One point eight million people? We put that one to rest. Yes we did, um, but he did. We should probably go over it real quick.

The reason he was he was known for killing one point eight million people in an hour is because in just one particular city, Nishapur, he had his people sack it and then he went in and said, cut everyone's head off and stack it into a giant pyram. And everybody's man, woman, child, baby, dog, You got your head cut off and stacked. That was jengas CON's orders. Jingis, that's how you say it. Okay, I saw the thing that fern bank. They kept saying jengas Con. So that's

how I'm saying it, not Janis, No, okay, Jengis. Well, I'm gonna go with Gingis Khan, Gingi Kahan ging Juice. Alright. So um, sure there was a lot of conquering of people's when you were bringing together the Mongol hordes. You gotta do some killing. But apparently once all the killing was accomplished, or not all of it, but enough of it, he was like, you know what, I think now we

really need to like take care of folks. Yeah, kind of like protect people, kind of like when who started the Pax Romana, Uh, the Great Nephew, Yeah Octavia's Yeah, yeah it was. It was very much like, Okay, you're under our control now, which means you're now protected by our laws, which was good for a lot of people, especially the Mongol hordes that he uh he basically brought under his um his kingdom, I guess King Chip whatever um.

And some of the some of the innovations that Jengis Khan came up with where things like freedom of religion, what yeah, women's rights. Um. He devised a postal system, not the first, but he divides the postal system yeah, sort of like the pony express that we talked about. They had stations and horses and they would go from

station to station delivering mail. And if you listen to the Postal Service episode, you know that that is something that is intended to create culture and spread information, share information easily. Um. Kubla Khan two hundred years after Jengis Khan uh he established a system of printing presses. Two hundred years before Guttenberg sublicon it's uh, it's pronounced um. There. So there is a lot of really great innovations as

far as like promoting individual and human rights um. And they protected these things using really really strict punishment, so much so that there's a very old legend that a woman are saying that a woman could walk from one end of the Mongol Empire to the other about a million square miles, holding a sack of gold, and be

just completely left alone. That's awesome, it is because there was a lot of you were you were going to be punished pretty severely, but a lot of people would point out, uh, if the state doles out capital punishment or physical punishment pretty easy, pretty strictly. And can you

say that's very peaceful? Yeah? And can you say it's peaceful even though like millions of people potentially were killed in order to establish that that huge area of land, you know, I mean, I guess afterwards maybe, but we're gonna say no on Gingis con So, no to the pox Romana, No to Jengis Khan's Mongol Empire founded around a d win. Then Chuck, I'm gonna put up a boat along with our buddy Stephen Pinker that says right now, my friend, are the most peaceful times in world history? Man,

that is crazy, chuck his think about it. During the twentieth century we had two World wars, countless civil wars. Um, We've had genocides, terrorism, We've had a lot of um, lynch ings, lots of lots of death like violence, like how can you call it homicide? Patricide? Matricide, brother and sister side. That's a phil phil side, is it? I think? So? Okay? Um, so yeah, there's a lot of killing going on. But evolutionary psychologist Stephen Finker, who I think we talked about before,

haven't we. It's not really familiar. Yeah, we have, Uh, we talked about him in Um Emotion and Art. He said that music is auditory cheesecake. That's right. Um, he said. You know what, things seem violent now for several reasons. One reason is because of media coverage and you hear about everything and you're inundated with it. So it's gonna you know, if you watch the evening news, it's violence

upon violence upon violence. He says. If you go to the hunter gatherer days where you think they're all this out hunting and gathering of the men died at the hands of violence compared to two of men today dying at the hands of violence during the twentieth century. Yeah, which is a lot more people, a lot more dudes, of course, so take that into account. But compared to like the Middle Ages and in times like that, much

much more peaceful and less violent today. He makes the point that Hobbs Thomas Hobbs, not Calvin Hobbs, which is what I always want to say. Um. He that he was correct and his whole idea that life was brooty, brutish, nasty and short before government. Um. And that he points to a times of like anarchy or a failed state like in Guinea Bissau or Somalia where you have huge escalations of violence. And he said the rise of the state and the state monopoly on violence, which means like

the states is the only one that can execute somebody. Um. Has created this way for people to to get redressed for wrongs against them, go to court and the government does it for you. You don't have to go kill that man and then he doesn't come kill your family, and blah blah blah and back and forth. UM. So that was one thing, one reason, um, why we've gotten

more peaceful. Uh yeah, he he thinks technology, UM, which makes a lot of sense, has a lot to do with it because we are connected now like we never have been in world history, and connected to other countries. And and I think people and this is me talking, I think people fear what they don't understand. And there is a better understanding now than there ever has been, so there's not as much fear, and people oftentimes react

from fear with violence. Yeah. And what a guy named Peter Singer came up with is called the expanding circle. It was It initially started with UM, you know, our your family, and then clans, tribes, whatever. And as we got bigger and bigger, and societies got bigger and bigger. Uh, this circle of who was okay in our book UM expanded more and more until it was like one culture

warring with one culture. But then as we came to understand other cultures a little better, that circle got bigger and bigger, until now not only does it include UM basically all humans, but other species of animals as well. Like they're okay, maybe we shouldn't kill maybe we shouldn't eat octopi, you know, because they're intelligent and we know they're intelligent because we understand them a little more. We've we've gotten closer to them, we've been hugged by them.

That's a good point. And he goes on Pink or Dust to talk about healthcare. It's sort of along the same lines. Not only can are we better at saving people, but it also has given us more value about saving people, And just the notion of saving human lives through medicine has increased or decreased violence. That one kind of like didn't quite click with me. It seems like super for me. If you're gonna die at thirty or thirty five, that would make life even with no chance of reviving you.

If like you, like fell in a puddle, yeah, um, that would make life more valuable in that sense. Whereas like, if people are walking around like well, a doctor could probably fix them. If I hit him over the have with this lead pipe, it might make people a little more prone to use the lead pipe on somebody. I

don't know that lead pipe eaters think about that stuff. Well, but think about this, like, let's say we got to the point where you had a chance being fully revived and restored within a couple of days after being shot. That medicine advances to that point, I'd be shooting people all over the place exactly. So that's my point, you know what I'm saying, Like it seems like that seems counterintuitive to me, and I've been trying to wrap my

mind around it. And I'm also really worried that I've just given my myself aways like a complete sociopath somehow by not understanding that you know now that one didn't

hit his home as much with me either. I also want to say too, with the government monopoly on violence, um, yes, the government used to have a monopoly on violence in other ages as well, but that wasn't um, that didn't have the companion of protecting individual and human rights like we have today to where it's not just like yeah, kill him for you know, next to nothing. Like Pinker points out that during the Middle Ages when m violence peaked and by his estimation, um, like you stuff that

we would a government would find someone for. Today you would be killed for. Yeah, that's good, right. Uh. He also makes some good points about things like the United Nations, like the cooperation between countries these days is unparalleled, the EU um sharing responsibility for international conflicts, like teaming up with other countries to go you know, peace keep I guess, or conquered, depending on which way you want to look

at it. Um common currency, I guess it was a lot more violent back in the day when you had everyone trading different things. Common currency would sort of bind people together. Yeah, at the very least. Different currencies maybe promote a sense of otherness too, you know, yeah, in group out group stuff. I take an anthropology class once.

I don't know if I've talked about it before. The first one I ever took great class, and the the um instructor challenged the class to go a full day without using any in group or outgroup language like us them we they Wow, I bet that stuff. It's impossible. You can't do it, But just paying attention to it, trying just for a day really kind of brings out how much you see other people in other groups. Is

different in other and and that's not necessarily a good thing. No, I would I would like to strive to be more open minded and inclusive like that. I would say, try that, then, yeah, I think everyone should, though I agree, you got anything else. No, there's a pretty cool thing UM called Stephen Pinker on the Decline of Violence UM by Ethan Zuckerman. I can't remember the name of the site it was on, but if you search that, it will bring it up from

two thou seven. And it sounds like Stephen Pinker was like preparing his notes for Angels of Our Better Nature, that book he came out with where he argues we just talked about, Um, that's pretty cool little primer, a little brief rundown of it. I love Pinker And if you want to read this article, um, you should. You can type in peaceful History in the search bart how stuff works dot Com and it will bring it up. And I said search bar, which means it's time for

word from our sponsor. It is time for a listener mail. All right, We're gonna call this more on Condoms in New York because you just can't get enough of that apparently. Uh. In one of our podcasts we talked about the fact that you find condoms just playing around the street New York and I was kind of like, where are those coming from? And we had one dude right in that worked for the ferry. I think that all that stuff gets washed out down there. And what do they call him?

The uh oh white snakes or something icone island like whitefish. Yeah, I think whitefish, white snake. Yeah. So uh this uh, this guy Aaron listened to that, and he has a theory here um about New Yorkers. Generally, we tend to engage in otherwise private behavior in public. For many of us, privacy is hard to come by. Remember this was the birthplace of the tenement. The whole family is living in one room. Unfortunately for some, this remains a reality. For

most people. However, even living with one's family in separate rooms or roommates in a cramped department means little privacy. Going outside doesn't help. Uh. It might in the suburbs, but here in New York there are always people walking around everywhere all the time. Once in a while, I will see if I can find a place where there's no one around and no one can see me. It's pretty tough. So people adapt to this reality by blocking out reality, so to speak, pretending as if no one

is around. That's why New York has a reputation for having a lot of crazy people, because a lot of us talk and sing and laugh and gesture to ourselves. I believe this goes on all across the country. It's just that everyone else does it behind closed doors. I like what he's saying here. By the way, I totally agree. So while some people merely talk to themselves in public, a few people engage in more vulgar behavior, from picking

one's nose all the way to having sex. Not only have I witnessed three separate acts of public sex in my youth, I engaged in public sex three times. All of these acts witnessed and engaged and occurred in public parks, and I'll except one occurred during the daytime. Personally, I remember trying to minimize the chances of being seen somewhat but not too hard. If someone saw, they would be unlikely to a no, mere my girlfriend or be do anything but ignore it and keep on walking. Which is

the great thing about New York. You can really do anything. Then you will be completely ignored because no one wants any part of that. You know. Uh So that is exactly what I did, guys um as a witness. I hope this helps explain why your chances of stepping on a used condom while out on the stroll is higher in New York City than anywhere else in the country.

It is certainly the wrong way to dispose of condoms, to be sure, and that's because we're a bunch of self centered, selfish people for whom littering is a way of life. Please don't judge us for public sex, Aaron, I like Darren. Thanks Aaron, what a level headed approach to explain anything. Yeah, I like that sort of armchair psychology about stuff like that. Yeah, those armchair dr ruth in. Yeah,

you know that's all I got about that. One's good for you, Aaron, if you want to explain something that we've talked about and couldn't quite get to the bottom two, we're always happy to cross all of our teas and daught our eyes if you will. Um. You can tweet to us s ESKA podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send us an email The Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. But wait, you should first also join us

on our website. Our website chuck Yeah, lots of cool stuff there. It's called Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot com