I'd love for someone to tell me about resources of history concerning the ancient middle eastern empires. Preferably good blogs, youtube channels etc to start off with easily digested information.
Here's the catch, most of what i'w found so far, ties very very heavily to religion of the area. And while that is interesting in it's own right, it's not what i'm looking for.
I'd like, more specifically, resources concerning architecture, habitats, farming, tools, technology, military etc etc. And with as little religious coloring and flavor as possible.
Anyone have anything?
P.S, What i mean by "Ancient" is pretty much everything from the Abassid Empire and backwards in time, which, i know, can hardly be considered "Ancient".
Preferably good blogs, youtube channels etc to start off with easily digested information.
Therein lies the rub. Because so much of the interest in these topics comes from people with a religious motivation (either Muslims uncritically repeating the "traditional" religious sources, or Christian apologists using some of the same material to cast the Islamic conquests in a negative light) it's pretty hard to find "pop culture" materials that treat this well. One exception I often point people towards are the In Our Time podcasts which feature actual academics discussing the topic in question and therefore tend to be quite good. Here's the one they did on the Arab Conquests, for instance
That being said I suspect you'd be better off with a pair of books by Robert Hoyland: Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam and In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire, covering basically pre-historic Arabia to the Ummayads.
It's terribly old but I also suspect for the late antique context of the wider Middle East you might enjoy Peter Brown's The World of Late Antiquity, unless one of the Byzantinists here might point you elsewhere. If nothing else it has the great benefit of being concise at a slim 216 pages.
For other parts of the ancient Middle East (Persia, Egypt, etc.) I'm afraid I can't be of much help and someone else may want to reply, but I'd also encourage you to take a look at our book list.
To continue with what /u/CptBuck has said, you are going to have a difficult time finding those resources, evermore so in easily digested formats. Part of the problem, I believe, is whether you should divorce religion from these daily practices. While not the driving force, it was a significant part of their cultural and is going to continue show up in most places. Even in the "In Our Time" podcast that as linked, the scholars continued to talk about religion because it was so essential to understand what happen (it was also delightful, thanks for sharing it!). Similarly, you would have a hard time fully understanding daily practices in 19th century America if you removed economics from the discussion.
For example, I recently listened to a podcast on the growth of Levant "bronze age" cities, which described the layout of the same town as time progressed and as it was built in layers. The discussion was centered on the temple that remained in the same spot but grew as time went on. The archaeologist also described how the homes were being connected and roads were developing, but it would have been rather unprofessional of him to not talk about the temple or the reasons that it changed the way it did compared to the other buildings.
I am sorry that things happen to be this way. Have you spent much time studying the area's historical religions and their practices? I avoided historical economics like the plague due to being a political science undergrad, and now I have an MBA (as well as an academic masters)! You might learn new interests you never knew you never knew!