Is it accurate? Sure, more or less (at least the parts I watched). But you can make something like this accurate off of Wikipedia: it's a glorified timeline of the "Key Words" box at the end of each chapter in a grade-8 history book. Yes, scholars talk about a Renaissance in Italy that occurred after the Black Death, and during the "Renaissance" time frame, the printing press was invented in Germany.

There are some quibbles with the timeline part of things, of course. Some are factual: the silk trade between China and the Mediterranean is older than Jesus, for example. Others are the result of his methodology of working in regions (so the video gives sense that the Spanish Inquisition happens much earlier than it did, because it talks about Lots of Spain at one time). That one makes some sense methodologically--it's how textbooks and such are organized, by some necessity. However, it becomes a problem in the video because there are no dates to keep events in different regions lined up.

The rapid-fire, name-check-only methodology of the video leads to the perpetuation of some misconceptions. For example, there's quite a fixation on 'the pope' in the late antique/medieval sections. The video implies, through the fall of Rome and the Holy Roman Empire name-checks, that the pope is "still" the pope. This invites us to retroject a modern (or even late medieval) understanding of the papacy's role in Christianity back onto the early Middle Ages and late antiquity. Dude was basically just the bishop of Rome, enmeshed in local politics.

Then there are things like the Black Death killing half of Europe. Sure, you can find published scholarship saying a 50% mortality rate, but today scholars would generally agree that's too high, generally we think around 1/3. Or the map: no, Muslims did not conquer all of Iberia. In fact, the division between al-Andalus in the south and Christian Iberia hanging on in the north is kiiiinda crucial to how later events in the peninsula evolved.

Or take "the printing press means books!" Well, yes, the printing press increased exponentially the availability of texts across Europe. However, that doesn't mean there weren't books beforehand (indeed, there would have been no need for mass production of books and, more to the point, pamphlet and broadsheet literature, if people weren't already reading them in massively increased numbers from earlier centuries).

The video's real problem, though, is that its brevity is so extreme as to become banality. "The Black Death kills people, there's a rebirth in Italy, the printing press equals books." It's like an 18-minute long in-joke: nothing has meaning unless you already know it.

An analogy would be: it's Honors Biology class (yay!) and you're starting genetics (double yay!). The teacher walks into class. She writes CGAT on the board, turns around and smiles at the class, turns back, crosses of the T and writes U above it, then walks out the door. You know that what she has just done is write the four nucleobases that are the building blocks of DNA, then show how the composition of DNA differs from RNA. You know the difference between DNA and RNA, and the role of each in genetics. And so the teacher's actions mean something to know. But if you didn't know any of it, you'd know two sets of four letters. Period. I can't shake the feeling that if someone made a "Mathematics from counting to calculus, I guess..." version of this video, it would be posted on The Onion, or trotted out as yet another sad example of how STEM education is failing American children and we're all scared of math these days. But those same people afford the parallel video credibility when it comes to history?

So yeah, you'll probably be able to come away from the video saying words like Silk Road and Axum, and knowing that both India and China were sometimes each groups of kingdoms and sometimes united into one-ish kingdom apiece. You won't know why. You won't really know when. You won't know how.

You'll have that neat little colored box of bold words, but you won't be able to define them. You might know something, but you'll understand nothing.

For my views on the "accuracy" of whether or not Sykes-Picot divided the Middle East, which is referred to at one point: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5gc8jq/askhistorians_podcast_076_the_end_of_world_war/

TL;DR:"NO!"

edit: typo.

I noticed that he perpetuated the myth about the Maya disappearing, and didn't mention anything about the Andes between Norte Chico and the Inca (he could have flashed Wari and Tiawanaku and the Chimu on screen at least). He never said anything about Mesoamerica outside central Mexico and the "mayans", there he could have done a quick blurb about the Mixtecs and Zapotecs if nothing else. So it was a little disappointing to me because a popular video like that can go a long ways towards correcting myths and misconceptions, or it can just drill them in. People often have an idea that nothing much was going on in the Americas and it was dominated by stagnant, ancient, monolithic, all encompassing civiliatons and this video didn't do much to address that although I did appreciate mentioning Teotihuacan and the Toltecs.

I'm gonna take a slightly different stance than some of the other people in this thread and say videos like this can have value. Places like the pre Colombian Americas are often completely misunderstood and your average person knows practically nothing about them. Even a quick overview of the various cultures and a blurb about each can show people a depth of history that they never knew about. The absence of a little extra time to expand on that is my problem, but of course I'm biased. I suspect everyone would like a little extra time for their topic.

Edit: expanded my point

While he was correct about the Qin dynasty reuniting China, the Qin did not follow Confucianism as their state philosophy. Their successor, the Han dynasty, was the one that adopted Confucianism in addition to Taoism, and Legalism. (They were also the ones who opened the Silk Road, invaded Vietnam, and broke into the Three Kingdoms. Weird that he didn't mention the Han by name.)

One part of the video really stuck out to me as an instance of "what? No, that is really wrong!"

At the 12:15 mark, the video mentions the Ottoman turks conquering Constantinople and "banning Europe from the Indian spice trade", and Portugal reacting to this Ottoman action by exploring the coast of Africa to find a sea route to India.

1. The Ottoman Empire did not cut off trade to Europe after the fall of Constantinople. It is true that the Ottomans pursued aggressive military action against Genoese and Venetian outposts in the Black Sea and in the Aegean sea in the 1450s-1470s. However, Venetian and Genoese merchants continued to trade in Constantinople and in the Aegean, just in a much weaker position than they had enjoyed prior to 1453.^1

2. The Ottomans weren't in a position to cut off trade from India after 1453, even if they wanted to. Genoese, Venetians, and other Mediterranean powers continued to trade in Syria and in Egypt^2, which at the time were under the power of the Mamluk sultanate. The Ottomans would eventually conquer the Mamluks in 1517, after Da Gama's trip to india in 1498.

3. Portuguese exploration of the Atlantic coast started 30 years before the fall of Constantinople Early Portuguese expeditions were happening in the context of the later stages of the Reconquista. Once Portugal, Castile and Aragon had consolidated much of the Iberian peninsula, these Christian kingdoms began to mount expeditions to raid or capture territory in what is now Morocco and Algeria, circa 1400.

As a corollary to these expeditions, the Portuguese also sent out scouting expeditions to try and find out exactly how far Moorish/Muslim influence stretched along the coast, in the hopes of finding the mythical realm of Prester John and seeking an alliance of Christian kingdoms against their Moorish foes.^3

These explorations resulted in finding Madiera in 1415, the Azores by 1427, and reaching the Senegal river by 1444. It is also important to note, Portuguese expeditions that reached West Africa in the 1440s and early 1450s were immediately trading for gold and for slaves, skimming off a portion of the trans-saharan trade.

So, prior to 1453 the Portuguese were already well on their way and had plenty of reasons to continue their exploration. The fall of Constantinople of course was felt, but it was not the cause.

1 the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans by Michael Angold, pp 172.

2 Levant Trade in the Middle Ages by Elihu Ashtor

3 "Prester John: a Reexamination and Compendium of the Mythical Figure who Helped Spark European Expansion" doctoral dissertation by Michael E Brooks. University of Toledo, 2009. pp 8

I'm no historian, but i noticed few errors that Bill made in the video.

1. Bill stated the meteors caused the dinosaurs to extinct, but scientists still debate what really caused it. Others think it may be a volcano, a tsunami, or meteors.
2. He stated that the Maya fell during around the Crusades or close to that time period. It should be noted that the Maya civilization only declined since the 900 AD, not collapsed. There were still some Maya states and rural areas in the next 600 years when the Spanish colonized some of them.
3. The French Revolution sequence: It's Louis the 16th, not Louis the 14th (Although Bill may correct this later as he did in his History of Japan video with the YT cap box)

Other than that, fun video. But i'm kinda disappointed he didn't mention European nationalism which was very essential to how countries was formed like Germany or Italy.