519. The World's First City

The Rest Is History

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 18.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In as early as 5000 BC the vast and spectacular city of Uruk - replete with towering walls, glistening temples and complex irrigation systems - lay sprawled across the face of Southern Mesopotamia. Not only is Uruk the oldest city in the world, but it is arguably one of the most consequential, having facilitated one of the great turning points of human civilisation. Here, in this mysterious metropolis lay the origins of urbanisation, making Uruk the predecessor and antecedent of every modern city today. It was the cradle of formidable trading networks, sophisticated craftsmanship, agricultural prosperity, the earliest examples of writing, and even home to the very first person in human history to be named. Yet, by 700 AD this once great wonder of the ancient world had been abandoned, leaving nothing behind but haunting ruins and two burning questions: firstly, how did this marvel of urbanisation come to exist, and secondly, what led to its ruin? Was it colonisation, climate change, or conquest…? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss Uruk, the first city in the whole of world history and the mother of modern urbanisation, revealing the remarkable tale of its discovery, its mysterious origins, and equally enigmatic decline. _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:00.0	Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening,
0:05.3	early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to the rest is history.com
0:12.0	and join the club. That is the rest is history.com. This episode is brought to you by Google.
0:21.4	Science isn't necessarily our usual focus, but sometimes there's an advance in technology
0:26.5	that is too important to the course of history to ignore.
0:29.5	Now Tom is referring to AlphaFold, an AI technology developed by Google Deep Mind,
0:35.2	which is revolutionizing how scientists understand proteins.
0:40.0	Proteins are the building blocks of life, driving nearly every biological process.
0:45.2	They're a bit like paper planes in that how they fold dictates how they behave and perform.
0:50.4	Their complex 3D shapes have made them notoriously difficult to study.
0:54.7	Google Deep Mind has transformed our understanding
0:58.0	by predicting these shapes with remarkable accuracy in minutes instead of years.
1:03.1	Researchers are using AlphaFold to accelerate the design of treatments for diseases like cancer
1:08.5	and the development of new antibiotics.
1:10.9	Just one way Google is making AI work for everyone across the UK.
1:18.4	This episode is brought to you by Shopify.
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