Parallel Universes in Ancient History
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00The multiverse theory is a modern science fiction favorite.
00:04The idea that beyond our universe, there exists a plethora of alternate universes, which together
00:09make up the entirety of space and time.
00:11It's just too good for writers and filmmakers not to dive right in.
00:15Of course, we know it's also a serious topic for contemporary scientists, as well.
00:20But fascinatingly, despite it all perhaps seeming like quite a recent theory, it isn't.
00:26The multiverse, and more broadly, parallel universes, are actually one of humankind's
00:31oldest concepts of all.
00:34This is Unveiled, and today we're taking a closer look at parallel universes in ancient
00:38history.
00:41Do you need the big questions answered?
00:43Are you constantly curious?
00:44Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?
00:47And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!
00:51Ancient Greece, during its prime, was without a doubt the most advanced civilization on
00:55the European continent.
00:57The Bronze Age collapse had caused a Dark Age to descend, lasting from the 12th to
01:019th centuries BCE.
01:03But after this, Greece flourished, bringing about the hugely successful and influential
01:08Archaic Era of Greek history.
01:11It was during this time that the culture came to dominate, eventually growing so prosperous
01:15that the Greeks colonized much of the Mediterranean basin.
01:19And it was in that era that Western philosophy and astronomy found its feet as well.
01:23The Greeks were looking up to the stars with increasing skill and seriousness, trying to
01:28understand the vastness of space.
01:31Their curiosity ultimately led to the formation of various theories, making them among the
01:36earliest minds to ponder creation.
01:39Famously, the Greeks became so embroiled in philosophy that they established specific
01:43schools of thought.
01:45These are important because they came long before we used science to explain the world
01:49around us.
01:50Instead, philosophy was the primary tool that the greatest thinkers applied, to muse on
01:55how and why things were and are.
01:58Math, astronomy, biology, politics, ethics… the first philosophers tried their hand and
02:03minds at all of them.
02:05Today, they're all distinct areas of research, but back then they all merged into one, more
02:10general quest for knowledge.
02:13Two Greek schools of thought in particular could be considered responsible for pioneering
02:17the multiverse.
02:18First we'll cover Atomism, and then Stoicism.
02:21But briefly beforehand, there was Anaximander.
02:25He lived in the 6th century BCE, born in Iona, in modern-day Turkey.
02:30He was a pupil of Thales, and later taught Pythagoras.
02:34Disappointingly, not much of his work survives, but he is credited as possibly the first to
02:39create a theory of cosmology.
02:41Anaximander believed that our world was born from the Apiron, which translates from Greek
02:46to mean infinite.
02:48He then said that eventually the world would end and return to the Apiron, at which point
02:53new worlds would be spawned.
02:55Since there is so little of his work to look back on beyond second-hand accounts, historians
03:00are still unclear about the specifics of his beliefs.
03:04Exactly how Anaximander saw the universe is an ongoing topic of debate, but it does provide
03:08a seeming starting point for ancient multiverse ideas, including from the Atomists and the
03:14Stoics.
03:15The Atomists, as their name implies, believed that all matter is composed of fundamental
03:19particles called atoms, a term we of course still use today, and which stems from the
03:25ancient Greek word atomos, which translates to mean uncuttable.
03:30The Atomists held the belief that the universe's origins stem from the interactions between
03:34these base particles.
03:36Invisible to the human eye, they were hypothesized to float through a vacuum or void.
03:42Eventually this became a developed natural philosophy.
03:45The Atomists were led by Leucippus and his pupil Democritus, who lived in the 5th century
03:50BCE.
03:51The pair left a substantial amount of theory behind, but it's difficult to determine who
03:56wrote what.
03:57Whether or not Leucippus even existed is still a topic of debate.
04:00Democritus is at least someone we know significantly more about.
04:04It's thought that he lived until the age of 100 and traveled extensively.
04:08He visited places as far as India, continually writing extensively.
04:13Regardless of the specifics, though, Leucippus and Democritus left the world with a central
04:17theory, that of atoms, that wasn't actually proven until the 18th century.
04:22Eventually, their work became the foundation for chemistry and physics.
04:26More than that, though, the Atomists' line of thinking also led all the way up to many
04:30of today's ideas on the multiverse.
04:33Because not only did they rightly think that our world was created by the collision of
04:37atoms, but they also believed that these collisions gave rise to an infinite number of parallel
04:42realms.
04:43It's a key idea towards what's known as Cosmic Pluralism, which is, and was, the belief in
04:49the existence of worlds other than Earth.
04:51Naturally, with modern observational technology, we are certain about this.
04:56We know that there are other planets in the universe, but the Cosmic Pluralists saw things
05:00a little differently, even back then.
05:03For them, other worlds were more similar to the parallel universes of today, rather than
05:08just being planets beyond our solar system.
05:11Democritus, for example, believed the universe originated from the random vibrations of atoms
05:16amidst an infinite void.
05:18This vibration caused atomic collisions, which then combined into larger and larger objects,
05:24eventually creating worlds.
05:26Since he thought both atoms and the void to be infinite, this implies that there must
05:31always have been infinite universes all composed of atoms.
05:36These ideas were so impactful that even Alexander the Great, the legendary King of Macedon,
05:41had heard of them.
05:42Anaxercus, an atomist from the school of Democritus, regularly accompanied Alexander on his conquests
05:49into Asia.
05:50And from the essays of the historian Plutarch, we know that when Alexander heard from Anaxercus
05:56about the belief in infinite worlds, he fell down weeping.
06:00When asked why, he's said to have said, quote, have I not good cause to weep?
06:06There are an infinite number of worlds, I am not yet lord of one.
06:11Perhaps more than any other moment at that time, it shows just how far-reaching the atomists
06:16believed that parallel universes should be.
06:19But for now, let's switch focus to the second ancient school of thought to seemingly predict
06:23parallel worlds… stoicism.
06:26The Stoics had a significantly different philosophy.
06:28For context, their school emerged a little later, around the close of the fourth century
06:33BCE, a century or so after the atomists.
06:37This was what's known as the Hellenistic period, generally regarded to have begun after
06:42the death of Alexander the Great.
06:45It was a time of social upheaval.
06:47The city-states of old lost their prominence and were instead replaced with monarchistic
06:51states.
06:52Individual freedoms were replaced with obligations to singular rulers.
06:57Hellenistic kingdoms were the new norm.
06:58It was during this era that many of the most noted philosophers today, such as Euclid,
07:04Aristotle and Archimedes, also rose to fame.
07:07It was generally a prosperous time, with science and philosophy flourishing, which is a backdrop
07:13that many believe helped to shape Stoicism as a whole.
07:16While the atomists believed the cosmos arose due to randomness, independent of a higher
07:21power, i.e. via random vibrations and shifts between atoms and the void.
07:26The Stoics thought the universe, instead, had a soul of its own.
07:30This soul was undying, and they believed it connected everything in the cosmos.
07:34Essentially, the Stoics viewed the entire universe as one singular organism, and all
07:39life on Earth to be just one component of it.
07:43From the point of view of the multiverse, though, the ideas of one leading Stoic, Chrysippus,
07:49are front and centre.
07:50In short, he believed that the universe recycled itself continuously.
07:55Since its soul is indestructible, he proposed that our world slowly degrades into nothing,
08:00but once this happens, it regenerates itself anew.
08:03Many Stoics then thought that this cycle should repeat for eternity, essentially allowing
08:08for infinite parallel universes over time.
08:11Clearly, this is a model that differs from the atomists in one key way.
08:16It suggests a sequential multiverse, rather than a truly parallel one.
08:20And even so, we can again see how ancient philosophy gave rise to what we might today
08:25consider contemporary theory.
08:28Unfortunately for the atomists and the Stoics, however, and despite the popularity of their
08:32ideas in their time, a multi-world stance was eventually discarded.
08:37The kickback was led, in particular, by Aristotle.
08:40He favoured a geocentric view of the cosmos, where the Earth was at the centre of all,
08:45and the stars and the heavens rotated around it.
08:48Importantly, though, Aristotle's approach and work would lay the foundation for the
08:52scientific method.
08:54As such, his influence is still felt in science today, even if his geocentric ideas have since
09:00been proven wrong.
09:01Nevertheless, in ancient times, geocentrism soon became the most popular model around.
09:07All systems suggesting parallel worlds, therefore, fell away.
09:11Thinking that the Earth was at the centre of everything, Aristotle and his followers
09:15simply couldn't allow for a multiverse, in their view.
09:19Given that geocentrism then became the mainstream ideology for almost two millennia, it's
09:24easy to see why, upon their return, modern ideas on the multiverse can feel new.
09:30The fact is, though, that they aren't.
09:32On a grand historical scale, it's more like they've simply come back into fashion.
09:38That said, it's not as though the Greeks were the only ancient civilization to develop
09:42and entertain such notions.
09:44If we head to the Indian subcontinent, there are yet more examples of parallel worlds being
09:49predicted very early on.
09:51Here, during an Iron Age in around the second millennium BCE, we also saw Hinduism become
09:57a widespread religion.
09:59Hinduism doesn't stem from a single individual, such as with Christianity, Buddhism, etc.
10:04Instead, it's an amalgamation of a range of beliefs, and because of this, it's a
10:08religion well-known for touching upon a huge variety of ideas.
10:13And we know that the multiverse was certainly one of them, even in those formative days.
10:17At roughly the same time as the Greeks were musing over multiple worlds, Indian philosophers
10:22were also deeply considering the same or a similar thing.
10:26Ramcharitmanas is one scripture which details this idea.
10:31It's an epic poem written in the 16th century AD, and is a simplified version of another,
10:36much older book, the Ramayana, which was written sometime between the 7th and 4th centuries
10:42BCE.
10:43The Ramayana is generally considered to be one of Hinduism's two most important epic
10:47poems, along with the Mahabharata.
10:50In the modern era in the West, most people know of Homer's epics, the Iliad and the
10:54Odyssey.
10:55The influence of these works can still be felt today.
10:58And in Indian literature, the same goes for Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
11:03Both of them were actually written over centuries, and were authored by multiple people.
11:08The Ramayana, in its final form, is 24,000 couplets long, which is three times the length
11:13of the Iliad.
11:14It details the life of a god, Rama, covering his whole story from birth to death.
11:20Both the Ramayana and the later Ramcharitmanas reference the multiverse.
11:25For instance, one chapter has divine beings approach Rama and ask him to end corruption
11:31on Earth.
11:32The god responds by telling them that this happens to the planet in every timeline across
11:36multiple universes.
11:38Another somewhat psychedelic passage details Rama's mother feeding him as a child.
11:44When he opens his mouth, she witnesses the entire multiverse within it.
11:48It says she saw multiple suns and planets, experiencing countless timelines.
11:54In these, she saw various versions of herself, from a child to an old woman.
11:59It's said that she saw suns, moons and planets, kings, queens and children, all infinitely
12:05existing.
12:06She's said to have seen the entire wheel of time, just through Rama opening his mouth.
12:12Naturally, she's also said to have begun to panic.
12:15What's clear is that it was ancient India where the first examples of parallel universes
12:20appeared in works of literature.
12:22Although the exact date it was written is unknown, the Ramayana is more than 2,000 years
12:27ahead of Marvel's Doctor Strange, for example.
12:30And really, there's more than just this one-off story.
12:32The multiverse is actually a core concept in Hindu beliefs.
12:36Generally, Hindus believe in fourteen worlds called lokas, all of which are parallel to
12:41each other.
12:42These are then split into two categories, the Vyartas and the Patalas, or the upper
12:46and lower worlds… with there being seven of each.
12:50Earth is the seventh, upper world, called Burloka.
12:54The model then says that alongside our planet, there exist billions of other, inhabited planets.
12:59Meanwhile, time is also infinite, and the universe is cyclic.
13:03Hinduism says that the universe will be destroyed and recreated over and over again, in cycles
13:08called yugas, of which there are four separate types.
13:12The dazzling, baffling multiverse that appeared to Rama's mother, then, may arguably have
13:16been a visualisation of this fundamental structure.
13:20In some ways, the Hindu approach might be seen as similar to that of the Stoics in Hellenistic
13:24Greece… except in Indian history, there was never anything like Aristotle's geocentrism
13:29to ultimately push it out of favour.
13:31Clearly, and significantly, the Hindu multiverse is also more heavily tied to the religion
13:36that spawned it.
13:37It's a much more fleshed-out concept than the Stoics, or even the Atomists, ever truly
13:42had.
13:43It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that elements of the Hindu multiverse can be seen elsewhere,
13:48as well.
13:49Buddhism, for example, emerged from Hinduism, and because of this, both religions share
13:54similarities.
13:55The two agree on several key ideas, such as on the importance of karma and reincarnation.
14:02More specifically, though, on the presence of parallel universes.
14:06Buddhists generally reject the idea of a god, and have one sole founder, the Buddha.
14:11But there is still a deep metaphysical quality to the Buddhist ideal.
14:15It's said that through meditation, the Buddha achieved nirvana, a state of enlightenment.
14:20And once he did this, he saw every single one of his many, many lives across a grand
14:25cosmos of infinite universes, all existing in parallel to each other.
14:30Naturally, many practising Buddhists aim to achieve a similar heightened state.
14:35But even if they never reach it, the knowledge of the infinite nature of reality is a cornerstone
14:40of the Buddhist approach.
14:42Buddhists also believe in an infinite cycle of worldwide destruction and rebirth, a model
14:47closely related to that of Hinduism.
14:49The Avatamsaka Sutra is the most comprehensive known Buddhist scripture, written about five
14:54hundred years after the Buddha's time.
14:57And within its texts, parallel universes are discussed further.
15:00There is talk of interconnected realms, with each realm containing an infinite number of
15:05other realms, and with that set-up repeating again and again and again.
15:09The overriding feeling is that nature is far more complicated than we could ever perceive
15:13it to be.
15:14The human view is inescapably limited when it comes to multiple worlds.
15:19Elsewhere, and another Buddhist sutra, the Mahavairakena Sutra, says every moment in
15:24time exists simultaneously.
15:26In today's world, we know that this was extremely ahead of its time, seeing as it
15:30bears a lot of similarities to modern quantum physics.
15:34Particles in quantum mechanics are said to be in superposition, where all possible outcomes
15:39for that particle exist simultaneously.
15:42It's only once we observe them that their state becomes defined.
15:45It's as though, at the very bottom-most layer of physical reality, all possible states
15:50of matter exist, to mimic the Buddhist teaching.
15:54Meanwhile, we know that through the rules of quantum entanglement, that subatomic particles
15:59are intrinsically linked, no matter the distance between them.
16:02Again, there are comparisons to draw between this physical truth and the spiritual ideas
16:07on connectivity in Buddhism and Hinduism.
16:11Another general prediction of Buddhism is that the sun will get hotter and hotter, eventually
16:15ending life on Earth.
16:17And although this isn't directly linked to parallel worlds, it does serve as a reminder
16:21of how close to scientific fact some of the earliest recorded beliefs get.
16:26To a modern astronomer, Buddhist projections for the sun may be similar to the death of
16:31a star, a supernova.
16:33And today, we know the sun will turn into a red giant, eventually expanding to, most
16:39probably, burn Earth away into nothingness.
16:42The process won't start for a billion or so years, and it won't end for another five
16:46billion years… but it was seemingly predicted hundreds of years pre-science.
16:51Could the same be true, then, for the multiverse?
16:54We are yet to scientifically prove it… but when we do, will we only ever be confirming
17:00what ancient minds surmised centuries ago?
17:04Given that such beliefs were formed via religion and culture, long, long before there were
17:08scientific observations to back them up, this might be creative intuition at its most impressive.
17:14Or is there more to it than that?
17:16There are ancient teachings to pre-empt theories on the universe, the multiverse, the nature
17:20of time, extraterrestrial life… the list goes on.
17:24Ancient groups seemingly knew many things that we're only now beginning to wonder
17:28about.
17:29For some, that's proof enough to follow Hinduism, Buddhism, or to subscribe to any
17:34of the many ancient Greek schools of thought.
17:37And still, there are other ancient beliefs erring toward a multiverse as well.
17:41In truth, most civilizations can be said to have come up with explanations for the universe
17:47in one way or another… and many of them relied on there being alternate planes of
17:51reality in some guise.
17:53For example, the ancient Egyptians developed their own rich theories on cosmology, and
17:58while they didn't describe parallel universes, they did believe in a multi-layered reality.
18:05Alongside the physical world, there existed spiritual realms called the Duat and the Aru,
18:10plus various other celestial landscapes in between.
18:13The Duat was the first place a soul goes after death, from which it must embark upon a perilous
18:18journey.
18:19It was the Egyptian underworld, with a series of connected regions… until, if the soul
18:24is deemed worthy enough, it's allowed passage into Aru, or the Field of Reeds, an eternal
18:30paradise.
18:32With many of the highest celestial spaces, it was believed that only deities and pharaohs
18:37could ever access them.
18:38But even so, the Egyptians clearly weren't content to accept that this world or this
18:43universe is all there is.
18:45They too believed in something more.
18:47Of course, this more abstract splitting of reality is common throughout most religions,
18:52particularly in relation to what happens after a person dies.
18:55The ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia had similar notions.
18:59At the beginning of the Sumerian poem Gilgamesh and the Netherworld, a cosmological structure
19:03is laid out in which the heavens and the earth were at one time united, but were split long
19:09before humankind came along.
19:11Again, while this doesn't directly imply a multiverse, it does at least hint toward
19:15the assumed existence of parallel worlds.
19:18Moving forward in time, Norse mythology had it that the cosmos comprised nine worlds in
19:24total, all connected by Yggdrasil, the world tree.
19:29Each realm occupies its own space, and they all exist concurrently.
19:33It's just that Midgard, the human realm, is the only one that's accessible to us.
19:38Asgard is where the Norse gods are said to live.
19:41And it's also divided into twelve smaller realms, including Valhalla, where warriors
19:45who die a glorious death in battle are taken.
19:48For some, this can also be thought of as a precursor to the parallel universe theories
19:52of today.
19:54Ancient Norse was developed before the Viking Age, with evidence of its existence dating
19:58back to the 5th century AD, all of which makes it the last pre-medieval ancient culture to
20:03include belief in parallel universes.
20:07It's a long journey from Greece to India via Egypt and Scandinavia.
20:11However, while science has ruled in more recent times, and largely with good reason, it's
20:17bizarre, intriguing, and remarkable to discover that even the most cutting edge of modern
20:22thought may only be a rehash of what's come before.
20:26The vivid ideas of ancient times are clearly still popular today, in science fiction, but
20:32also in science fact, as we probe ever deeper into the possibility that there may be more
20:39to this world than just this world that we know.
20:43What do you think?
20:44Is there anything we missed?
20:46Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you
20:50subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.