In this podcast, historian Will Durant emphasizes that ethnic diversity among ancient peoples in the Middle East was common due to constant interactions and intermarriage, leading to changes in language and culture and undermining the idea that ethnicity was the defining characteristic of groups at the time.
The Persian empire's propaganda of people willingly being part of their regime is false, as evidenced by their treatment of the Egyptians who rebelled against them in ancient times. The use of collective punishments, such as the mass execution of young boys and enslavement of girls, was a common practice in empires of the past.
This is a historical sprint of the ancient world between 615-612 BCE, which was like the last burst of rocket fuel before the ancient era gave way to Greek classics and other stuff. During this period, the Assyrian army was the largest standing military force, equivalent to five modern heavy American divisions or almost eight Soviet field divisions.
The Medes, who were once on the periphery of civilization, were transformed in the 700s BCE into a regional superpower that had a significant impact on history, including potentially preventing the Persian Empire from becoming the dominant power in the ancient world.
The Medes were previously thought of as a centralized state, similar to the Babylonians and the Assyrians, but current theories suggest that they were much more tribal in nature. Herodotus tells the story of how the Medes eventually threw off the nomadic oppression that was controlling them.
The idea that the invention of agriculture meant the departure from an egalitarian society is a misconception. Evidence shows a variety of social experimentation before farming, and it's wrong to assume that large-scale societies must have top-down structures of management.