The Knowledge of the First Civilizations | Dr. Irving Finkel
Dr. Irving Finkel of the British Museum joins John Michael Godier to discuss the origins of ancient Sumerian writing, the development of cuneiform tablets, and the early flood myths that shaped the world’s oldest known stories.
Finkel explains how the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh and the Babylonian Flood Tablet predate the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark, revealing how ideas about divine floods, survival, and human memory first emerged in ancient Mesopotamia.
Dr. Irving Finkel
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collect...
https://thegreatdiaryproject.co.uk/
00:00 – Introduction: Dr. Irving Finkel and the British Museum
02:00 – How the First Writing Systems Began
05:30 – Pictographs, Trade, and the Birth of Communication
09:45 – The Invention of Cuneiform
13:00 – Sumerian: The First Known Language
17:10 – How Babylonian and Akkadian Evolved from Sumerian
21:00 – Language Connections from Mesopotamia to Hebrew and Arabic
24:15 – Commerce and the Spread of Early Writing
28:40 – The Role of Writing in Civilization
33:00 – The Origins of the Flood Myths
36:15 – A Babylonian Story Older Than the Bible
40:00 – Historical Memory of Real Floods in Mesopotamia
44:20 – The Fear of Floods and the Psychology of Ancient Myths
48:30 – From Babylon to the Bible: How the Flood Story Traveled
52:45 – The Shape of the Ark: Circle or Square?
56:10 – Why the Biblical Ark May Have Been a Mistranslation
59:40 – Flood Stories Around the World
1:03:10 – Missionaries and the Global Spread of Flood Legends
1:06:30 – The Babylonian World Map and Ancient Cosmology
1:10:00 – How Ancient Mesopotamians Understood the Earth
1:14:00 – Geometry, Circles, and the Ark’s Design
1:18:00 – Lessons from the First Civilizations
1:21:20 – The Legacy of Ancient Knowledge and Why It Endures
1:25:00 – Closing Reflections: Preserving Humanity’s First Stories
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