Crash Course: The Agricultural Revolution

A new YouTube series is taking a humorous (and partly-animated) look at world history. I do recommend it.

There are a few more episodes available on the channel page. So far it’s doing a fair job of presenting an undergraduate level of investigation in a manner which a high school student could follow. Every episode has taken a good topic (agriculture, the definition of civilization, writing) and then demonstrated its importance and the degree to which culture changed as a result. Far better than a parade of characters and dates or falsely-mystifying open questions (“Who were the celts? We may never know”). The approach means history is presented as a contemporary and ongoing activity.

As of yet, I do not recommend the sister series on chemistry and biology. The first episode’s slut-shaming metaphor for carbon was so thick I had to turn it off a few minutes in.