Shadowing Practice: Mesopotamia: Crash Course World History #3 - Learn English Speaking with Video
Choose a practice mode
Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.
166 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
Hi there, I'm John Green.
2
You're watching Crash Course World History, and today we're going to talk about...
3
Iraq.
4
No, you purportedly smart globe.
5
We're going to talk about Mesopotamia.
6
I love Mesopotamia because it helped create two of my favorite things, writing and taxes.
7
Why do I like taxes?
8
Because before taxes, the only certainty was death.
9
Mr. Green, Mr. Green, did you know that you're referencing Mark Twain?
10
I'm not referencing Mark Twain, me, from the past.
11
I'm referencing Benjamin Franklin, who was probably himself referencing the unfortunately named playwright Christopher Bullock.
12
Listen, you may be smart, kid, but I've been smart longer.
13
By the way, today's illustration points out that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world monocular.
14
So about 5,000 years ago, in the land Meso, or between, the Tigris and Euphrates Potomoi, or rivers, cities started popping up,
15
much like they had in our old friend the Indus River Valley.
16
These early Mesopotamian cities engaged in a form of socialism where farmers contributed their crops to public storehouses,
17
out of which workers, like metal workers or builders or male models or whatever, would be paid uniform wages in grain. So basically...
18
Mr. Green, Mr. Green, were there really male models?
19
Can you do blue steel?
20
Oh younger version of myself, how I hate you.
21
Oh, the humiliation I suffer for you people.
22
That was my best blue steel.
23
That was as close as I can get.
24
So anyway, if you lived in a city, you could be something other than a shepherd, and thanks to this proto-socialism, you could be reasonably sure that you'd eat.
25
Stan, is there any way we can get another globe in here?
26
I feel like this shot is inadequately globed.
27
Yes, much better.
28
You know, you can tell the quality of a historian by the number of his or her globes.
29
But even though you could give up your flock, a lot of people didn't want to, and one of the legacies of Mesopotamia is the enduring conflict between country and city.
30
You see this explored a lot in some of our greatest art, like the Beverly Hillbillies and Deliverance and the showdown between Enkidu and Gilgamesh in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
31
Gilgamesh is one of the oldest known works of literature and I'm not going to spoil it for you, there's a link to the poem in the video info,
32
but suffice it to say that in the showdown between country and city, the city wins.
33
So what were these city-states like?
34
Well let's take a look at one such city-state, Gilgamesh's hometown of Uruk, in the Thought Bubble.
35
walled city with an extensive canal system and several monumental temples called ziggurats.
36
The priests of these temples initially had all the power
37
because they were able to communicate directly with the gods and
38
that was a useful talent because Mesopotamian gods were moody and frankly pretty mean.
39
Like according to Gilgamesh, they once got mad at us
40
because we were making too much noise while they were trying to sleep
41
so they decided to destroy all of humanity with a flood.
42
The Tigris and Euphrates are decent as rivers go but Mesopotamia is no Indus Valley with its on-schedule flooding and easy irrigation.
43
A lot of slave labor was needed to make the Tigris and Euphrates useful for irrigation.
44
They're also difficult to navigate and flood unpredictably and violently.
45
Violent, unpredictable, and difficult to navigate.
46
Oh Tigris and Euphrates, how you remind me of my college girlfriend.
47
So I mean, given that the region tends to yo-yo between devastating flood and horrible drought, it follows that one would believe that the gods are kind of random and capricious,
48
and that any priests who might be able to lead rituals that placate those gods would be very useful individuals.
49
But about 1,000 years after the first temples, we find in cities like Uruk, a rival structure begins to show up.
50
The palace.
51
The responsibility for the well-being and success of the social order was shifting from gods to people.
52
A power shift that we'll see-saw throughout human history until probably forever, actually.
53
But in another development we'll see again, these kings, who probably started out as military leaders or really rich landowners, took on a quasi-religious role.
54
How?
55
by engaging in sacred marriage, specifically scoodily pooping with the high priestess of the city's temple.
56
So the priests were overtaken by kings, who soon declared themselves priests.
57
Thanks Thought Bubble.
58
So how do we know that these kings were scoodily pooping with lady priests?
59
Because they made a scoodily pooping tape and put it on the internet.
60
No!
61
Because there's a written record!
62
Mesopotamia gave us writing, specifically a form of writing called cuneiform, which was initially created not to like woo lovers or whatever,
63
but to record transactions, like How many bushels of wheat were exchanged for how many goats?
64
I'm not kidding, by the way.
65
A lot of cuneiform is about wheat and goats.
66
I don't think you can overestimate the importance of writing, but let's just make three points here.
67
First, writing and reading are things that not everyone can do, so they create a class distinction, one that in fact survives to this day.
68
Foraging social orders were relatively egalitarian, but the Mesopotamians had slaves, and they played this metaphorically resonant sport that was like polo,
69
except instead of riding on horses, you rode on other people.
70
And written language played an important role in widening the gap between classes.
71
Two, once writing enters the picture, you have actual history, instead of just a lot of guesswork and archaeology.
72
And three, without writing, I would not have a job.
73
So I'd like to personally thank Mesopotamia for making it possible for me to work while reclining in my lazy boy.
74
So why did this writing happen in Mesopotamia?
75
Well, the fertile crescent, while it is fertile, is lacking pretty much everything else.
76
In order to get metal for tools, or stone for sculpture, or wood for burning, Mesopotamia had to trade.
77
This trading eventually led Mesopotamia to develop the world's first territorial kingdom,
78
which will become very important and will eventually culminate in some extraordinarily inbred Habsburgs.
79
The city-state period in Mesopotamia ended around 2000 BCE, probably because drought and a shift in the course of rivers led to pastoral nomads coming in
80
and conquering the environmentally weakened cities, and then the nomads settled into cities of their own, as nomads almost always will.
81
Unless, wait for it, you are the Mongols.
82
These new Mesopotamian city-states were similar to their predecessors in that they had temples and writing and their own self-glorifying stories, but they were different in some important ways.
83
First, that early proto-socialism was replaced by something that looked a lot like private enterprise, where people could produce as much as they would like as long as they gave a cut,
84
also known as taxes, to the government.
85
We talk a lot of smack about taxes, but it turns out they're pretty important to creating stable social orders.
86
Things were also different politically, because the dudes who'd been the tribal chiefs became like full-blown
87
kings who tried to extend their power outside of cities and also tried to pass on their power to their sons.
88
The most famous of these early monarchs is Hammurabi, or as I remember him from my high school history class, the Hammer of Abbey.
89
Hammurabi ruled the new kingdom of Babylon from 1792 BCE to 1750 BCE.
90
Hammurabi's main claim to fame is his famous law code, which established everything from, like,
91
the wages of ox drivers to the fact that the punishment for taking an eye should be having an eye taken.
92
Hammurabi's law code can be pretty insanely harsh.
93
Like, if a builder builds a shoddy building and then the owner's son dies in a collapse,
94
The punishment for that is the execution of the builder's son.
95
The kid's like, that's not fair, I'm just a kid, what did I do?
96
You should kill my dad!
97
All of which is to say that Hammurabi's law code gives a new meaning to the phrase tough on crime, but it did introduce the presumption of innocence.
98
And in the law code Hammurabi tried to portray himself in two roles that should sound familiar, shepherd and father.
99
I am the shepherd who brings peace.
100
My benevolent shade was spread over the city.
101
I held the peoples of Sumer and Akkad safely on my lap.
102
So again we see the authority for protection of the social order shifting to men, not gods, which is important, but don't worry, it'll shift back.
103
Even though territorial kingdoms like Babylon were more powerful than any cities that had come before, and even though Babylon was probably the world's most populous city during Hammurabi's rule,
104
it wasn't actually that powerful, and keeping with the pattern, it was soon taken over by the formerly nomadic Kassites.
105
The thing about territorial kingdoms is they relied on the poorest people to pay taxes
106
and provide labor and serve in the army, all of which made you not like your king very much.
107
So if you saw any nomadic invaders coming by, you might just be like, Hey, nomadic invaders, come on in!
108
You seem better than the last guy!
109
Well, that was the case until the Assyrians came along anyway.
110
The Assyrians have a deserved reputation for being the brutal bullies of Mesopotamia.
111
But the Assyrians did give us an early example of probably the most important
112
and durable form of political organization in world history.
113
And also Star Wars history.
114
The Empire.
115
The biggest problem with empires is that, by definition, they're diverse and multi-ethnic, which makes them hard to unify.
116
So beginning around 911 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew from its hometowns of Asher and Nineveh to include the whole of Mesopotamia, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean,
117
and even, by 680 BCE, Egypt.
118
They did this thanks to the most brutal, terrifying, and efficient army the world had ever seen.
119
More adjectives describing my college girlfriend.
120
For one thing, the army was a meritocracy.
121
Generals weren't chosen based on who their dads were.
122
They were chosen based on if they were good at generaling.
123
Stan, is generaling a word?
124
It is!
125
Also, they were super mean, like they would deport hundreds of thousands of people to separate them from their history and their families, and also moved skilled workers around where they were most needed.
126
Also, the Neo-Assyrians loved to find would-be rebels and lop off their appendages, particularly their noses for some reason.
127
And there was your standard raping and pillaging and torture, all of which was done in the name of Asher, the great god of the Neo-Assyrians, whose divine regent was the king.
128
Asher, through the king, kept the world going, and as long as conquest continued, the world would not end.
129
But if conquest ever stopped, the world would end, and there would be rivers of blood, and weeping, and gnashing of teeth.
130
You know how apocalypses go.
131
The Assyrians spread this worldview with propaganda, like monumental architecture and readings about how awesome the king was at public festivals,
132
all of which was designed to inspire awe in the empire's subjects.
133
Oh, that reminds me, it's time for the open letter.
134
An open letter to the word awesome.
135
But first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.
136
Oh, Stan, is this yellow cake uranium?
137
You never find that in Mesopotamia.
138
Dear Awesome, I love you.
139
Like most contemporary English speakers, in fact, I probably love you a little too much.
140
The thing about you, Awesome, is that Awesome is just so awesomely awesome at being awesome.
141
So we lose track of what you really mean, Awesome.
142
You're not just cool, you're terrifying and wonderful.
143
Your knees buckling, chest tightening, fearful encounters with something radically other,
144
something that we know could both crush and bless us.
145
That is all.
146
And I apologize for having watered you down, but seriously, you're awesome.
147
Best wishes, John Green.
148
So what happened to the Assyrians?
149
Well first, they extended their empire beyond their roads, making administration impossible.
150
But more importantly, when your whole world view is based on the idea
151
that the apocalypse will come if you ever lose a battle, and then you lose one battle, the whole world view just blows up.
152
That eventually happened, and in 612 BCE, the city of Nineveh was finally conquered and the Neo-Assyrian Empire had come to its end.
153
But the idea of empire was just getting started.
154
Next week we'll talk about mummies.
155
Oh, I have to talk about other things too?
156
Crap, I only want to talk about mummies.
157
Anyway, we'll be talking about...
158
Sudan.
159
No!
160
Dang it!
161
We'll actually be talking about...
162
Egypt.
163
Thank you, Smart Globe.
164
See you next week.
165
and our team of semi-professional quasi-historians will endeavor to answer them.
166
Thanks for watching, and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.
Download App
Everything you need to speak fluently
AI PronunciationScore every sentence
IPA PracticeMaster every sound
VocabularyBuild your word bank
Vocab GameLearn while playing
📺 Same Channel
C11
Vectors and 2D Motion: Crash Course Physics #4
Daily ConversationHigh School StudentsUniversity Students
C11
How Water Shapes the Land: Crash Course Geology #9
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
The Bicameral Congress: Crash Course Government and Politics #2
Daily ConversationHigh School StudentsUniversity Students
B21
Crash Course US History Preview
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
C1What's all the Yellen About? Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve: Crash Course Economics #10
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
C12
The Secret to Business Writing: Crash Course Business - Soft Skills #3
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
Unit Conversion & Significant Figures: Crash Course Chemistry #2
Daily ConversationHigh School StudentsUniversity Students
B24
How Often do Asteroids Hit the Earth?: Crash Course Geology #20
Daily ConversationHigh School StudentsUniversity Students
C11
What Is Myth? Crash Course World Mythology #1
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
B210
Crash Course Sex Ed Preview
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
Derivatives: Crash Course Physics #2
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
C13
Indus Valley Civilization: Crash Course World History #2
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
B22
Ancient Egypt: Crash Course World History #4
Daily ConversationHigh School StudentsUniversity Students
C12
What is Engineering?: Crash Course Engineering #1
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
The Persians & Greeks: Crash Course World History #5
Cambridge Exam PrepHigh School StudentsUniversity Students
C12
Supervised Learning: Crash Course AI #2
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C1Why Are US Politics Today So Divisive?: Crash Course US Government #1
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
C13
The Periodic Table: Crash Course Chemistry #4
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepCambridge Exam Prep
B22
Where Do Diamonds Come From?: Crash Course Geology #8
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepCambridge Exam Prep
C13
Where Did Democracy Come From, and Does It Still Work?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
✨ Recommend Video
C11
142 sentences
The Civil War, Part I: Crash Course US History #20
Daily ConversationHigh School StudentsUniversity Students
B16
183 sentences
The Simpsons - HE LOST HIS MIND (S32E02)
TeensDaily ConversationHigh School Students
C18
48 sentences
Gift economy, commodity fetishism, and what we owe each other #capitalism #environment #philosophy
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
165 sentences
How Gross Was the Past, Really?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
194 sentences
Why the British Empire Fell Apart - Won Two Wars, Then Lost Its Empire
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B25
201 sentences
World War 2 in Simple English (Daily Life + Vocab) 🌍📚 | B1–B2 English Listening
Cambridge Exam PrepDaily ConversationHigh School Students
B25
68 sentences
A world where fish are no longer forced to climb trees.
Business EnglishDaily ConversationHigh School Students
C13
115 sentences
Contemporary Topics 2 Unit 10 URBAN PLANNING 21st century
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
C11
6 sentences
Why is Stephen Fry so passionate about the ancient Greeks?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C1180
24 sentences
The uncomfortable truth | Yuval Noah Harari
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C1291 sentences
Why did white men conquer the world?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 166 sentences and 2197 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:52. The speaker talks fast, about 185 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- temple /ˈtɛm.pl̩/ (noun) — A house of worship dedicated to a polytheistic faith.
- priest /ˈpɹiːst/ (noun) — A religious clergyman (clergywoman, clergyperson) who is trained to perform services or sacrifices at a church or temple.
- globe /ɡloʊb/ (noun) — The eyeball.
- flood /flʌd/ (noun) — An overflow of a large amount of water (usually disastrous) from a lake or other body of water due to excessive rainfall or other input of water.
- hometown /ˈhoʊmˌtaʊn/ (noun) — An individual’s place of birth, childhood home, or place of main residence.
- territorial /ˌtɛɹ.əˈtɔɹ.i.əl/ (adjective) — Of, relating to, or restricted to a specific geographic area, or territory.
- shepherd /ˈʃɛpəɹd/ (noun) — A person who tends sheep, especially a grazing flock.
- socialism /ˈsoʊʃəlɪzəm/ (noun) — Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution…
- poop /ˈpuːp/ (noun) — Fecal matter; feces.
- wage /weɪd͡ʒ/ (noun) — An amount of money paid to a worker for a specified quantity of work, usually calculated on an hourly basis and expressed in an amount of money per hour.
- remind /ɹəˈmaɪnd/ (verb) — To cause one to experience a memory (of someone or something); to bring to the notice or consideration (of a person).
- punishment /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/ (noun) — The act (action) or process of punishing, imposing and/or applying a sanction, typically by an authority or a person in authority (for example: a parent or…
- slave /sleɪv/ (noun) — A person who is held in servitude as the property of another person, and whose labor (and often also whose body and life) is subject to the owner's volition…
- brutal /ˈbɹuːtəl/ (adjective) — Savagely violent, vicious, ruthless, or cruel, often in an unintelligent manner.
- goat /ɡoʊt/ (noun) — Any ruminant of the genus Capra.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- talk about (verb) — Used to draw attention to the speaker's characterization of someone or something.
- blow up (verb) — To explode or be destroyed by explosion.
- come along (verb) — To accompany.
- come by (verb) — To obtain; to get, especially by chance or involuntarily.
- come in /ˌkʌm ˈɪn/ (verb) — To enter.
- come on in (verb) — Synonym of come in (“to enter”).
- do in (verb) — To kill or end; to defeat.
- give up (verb) — To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone).
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 32 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, we'll, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shepherd /ˈʃɛpəɹd/, socialism /ˈsoʊʃəlɪzəm/, punishment /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/, irrigation /ˌɪɹəˈɡeɪʃən/, reputation /ˌɹɛpjʊˈteɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: territorial /ˌtɛɹ.əˈtɔɹ.i.əl/, socialism /ˈsoʊʃəlɪzəm/, historian /hɪˈstɔɹi.ən/, apocalypse /əˈpɑkəlɪps/, irrigation /ˌɪɹəˈɡeɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like temple, priest, globe.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | would be paid · was needed · were overtaken |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | cuneiform, which was · gods, which is · ethnic, which makes |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.