Tides of History

The Greatest Dynasty of Medieval France: Interview with Professor Justine Firnhaber-Baker

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's been a while since Tides of History has gone to the Middle Ages, and a wonderful new book - House of Lilies: The Dynasty that Made Medieval Franc...

Sicily, Defeat, and the End of the Athenian Empire

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Peloponnesian War lasted for nearly 30 years, decades of ceaseless battles, sieges, and human misery that covered the whole of Greece. In the end,...

Understanding the Alien World of Ancient Greece: Interview with Professor Greg Anderson

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's often said that the past is a foreign country, where our basic assumptions about how the world is supposed to work don't apply. But what does tha...

The Peloponnesian War, Part 1: Plague, Attrition, and a Decade of Bloodshed

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta finally broke out in 431 BC, it was small conflicts on the fringes of the Greek world that pulled...

The Athenian Empire and the Coming of the Peloponnesian War

09 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Peloponnesian War, the epic 30-year conflict between Athens and Sparta for control of Classical Greece, was a long time in coming. In fact, its ro...

What Made Classical Greece Special? Interview with Professor Josiah Ober

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We're often told that Classical Greece lies at the root of our modern world in some way, but what made it a special place? Professor Josiah Ober, auth...

Warlords, War, and Society in Early Rome: Interview with Professor Jeremy Armstrong

25 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Rome and war are inseparable topics, but how far back does their connection go? What was war like in the earliest days of the city's rise to prominenc...

Classical Greece

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We're often told that Greece's Classical period lies at the root of "Western Civilization," but what was actually special about that time and place? W...

Carthage, Syracuse, and the Battle for Sicily

11 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

By 480 BC, the same year Xerxes and the Persians descended on Greece, Sicily had become a battleground for the rising powers of the Central Mediterran...

The Archaeology of the Indus Valley Civilization: Interview with Professor Cameron Petrie

04 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Archaeology is changing quickly, and few people are playing more of a direct role in the wave of fascinating new studies exploring the Indus Valley Ci...

The Rise of Carthage

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Carthage is known mostly as Rome's great rival, but it was a fascinating and meaningful Mediterranean civilization in its own right. Today, we track t...

The Mediterranean World in 500 BC

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After our long sojourn in Central, East, and South Asia, it's time to return to a Mediterranean on the cusp of enormous changes. Around 500 BC, Rome w...

Why Do Ordinary People Do Terrible Things? Daniele Bolelli and Patrick Discuss

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

History is littered with terrible deeds and atrocities: conquest, genocide, mass enslavement, forced displacement, crimes of all sorts. Why do people ...

The Buddha and His World

07 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Buddha - born Siddartha Gautama - is one of the most impactful people in human history, founder of a religious tradition that has shaped the world...

Climate Change and the Fall of the Indus Valley Civilization: Interview with Dr. Alena Giesche

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The world's climate isn't stable, but how can we understand climate change in the past? Dr. Alena Giesche is an expert on ancient climates, and she ex...

The Rigveda and the Dawn of the Iron Age in South Asia

22 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Rigveda, a collection of hymns written in the Sanskrit language more than 3,000 years ago, is the oldest religious text in the Hindu tradition. It...

The Fall of the Indus Valley Civilization

15 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Indus Valley Civilization is one of the most enigmatic, sophisticated, and compelling ancient societies. For seven centuries, it thrived in the we...

The Rise of China's Warring States

08 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Warring States period in China (c. 481-221 BC) was an era of mass-mobilization warfare unlike any other the world had seen to that point. Armies o...

Ordinary People in Ancient East Asia: Interview with Professor Kate Pechenkina

01 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Kate Pechenkina is an expert on the bioarchaeology of East Asia, utilizing cutting-edge tools to tell us about the lives and experiences of ...

Confucius and His Age

25 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Confucius is one of the most famous and influential thinkers in all of human history, but who was he? What did he believe, and what did he teach? And ...

China in the Eastern Zhou: Spring and Autumn

18 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Spring and Autumn period, lasting from 771 to 481 BC, marked the high point of aristocratic power in ancient China. This was an age of nobility an...

Venice through the Ages, from Salt-Panners to Maritime Empire to Tourism: Interview with Professor Dennis Romano

11 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Venice's lagoon is an unstable environment, but it has hosted one of the longest-lasting and most stable cities in world history. The history of Venic...

The State and the Environmental History of Early China: Interview with Professor Brian Lander

04 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The environment of China has been so thoroughly shaped by human activity that it's difficult to imagine it as a wild landscape, as it was at the end o...

The Western Zhou, 1046-771 BC

28 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Zhou Dynasty ruled for longer than any other in Chinese history. Much of the cultural foundation of China was laid down during that age, from Conf...

The Fall of the Shang Dynasty and the Rise of the Zhou

21 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Shang Dynasty marks China's entrance to history, but it was very different than the China we know from later periods: Human sacrifice on a massive...

The Rise of the State in China

14 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Chinese history is defined, more than anything else, by the importance of the state: its origins, its development, and the precise lineage leading bac...

The Languages of Eurasia around 500 BC

07 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As an age of bronze gave way to one of iron, and then classical empires, the importance of writing grew all across Eurasia. That means more written so...

Cities, the Etruscans, and Global Urbanism: Interview with Professor Simon Stoddart

30 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Cities are one of the defining features of the Iron Age Mediterranean, as urbanism spread across the sea and beyond to form the backbone of the classi...

Did Justinian Restore the Roman Empire or Ruin It? Professor Peter Sarris on the Emperor Justinian and His Legacy

23 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Justinian is, without a doubt, one of the most impactful historical figures of the past 2,000 years. Professor Peter Sarris, a longtime favorite histo...

The Scythian World

16 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Scythians transformed the Eurasian steppe. They built giant burial mounds for their powerful kings, raided and plundered their sedentary neighbors...

The Iron Age Steppe and the Emergence of the Scythians

09 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For millennia, the Eurasian steppe has been the highway connecting the distant ends of Europe and Asia. But at the beginning of the Iron Age, somethin...

The Greco-Persian Wars 4: Plataea and the Aftermath

02 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Persian Wars came to an end in the spring of 479 BC, when the land forces of the allied Greeks met the Persian army in an epic clash at Plataea. B...

Cutting-Edge Archaeology on the Eurasian Steppe: Gino Caspari on the Scythians

26 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In excavating massive Iron Age burial mounds in southern Siberia, Dr. Gino Caspari is doing some of the most innovative archaeology in the world, and ...

The Greco-Persian Wars, Part 3: Athens in Flames and the Battle of Salamis

19 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Persian invasion of Greece aimed to do one thing above all else: punish Athens for its transgressions against the Great King. After defeating Leon...

The Greco-Persian Wars, Part 2: Xerxes and the Invasion of Greece

12 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 480 BC, the Persian Great King Xerxes descended on mainland Greece with one of the largest armies and navies the world had ever seen. The Persians ...

The Greco-Persian Wars, Part 1: The Ionian Revolt to the Battle of Marathon

05 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The wars between the Persians and the Greeks have become a cornerstone of the idea of "Western Civilization," a defining moment when Greeks became Gre...

Thinking Like a Persian King: Professor John Hyland on the Persian Perspective of the Greco-Persian Wars

28 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When we think about the wars between the Persians and the Greeks, our perspective is quite explicitly that of the Greeks. But how did the Persians vie...

Persia Ascendant

21 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

While Cyrus the Great built the Persian Empire from the ground up, his successors expanded it until the new state stretched from the Indus Valley of P...

Midas, Croesus, and the Lost Kingdoms of Iron Age Anatolia

14 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The kingdoms of Iron Age Anatolia survive only as whispers in the archaeological and historical record; others exist through enigmatic references and ...

The Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Judah: Interview with Professor Avraham Faust

07 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What was life like in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah? Few people are better qualified to answer that question than Professor Avraham Faust, ...

Patrick is Hosting a New Show! Check out the "Pursuit of Dadliness" Now!

05 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to "The Pursuit of Dadliness." This is a podcast for folks who want to enjoy their passions and their hobbies, whatever those might be, and ge...

Cyrus the Great and the Rise of the Persian Empire

31 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Persians were unlikely successors to the Assyrians and Babylonians, a fringe people of no particular importance, until Cyrus the Great became the ...

Theocracy, Fragmentation, and the Kushite Kings: Egypt after the New Kingdom

24 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Egypt's New Kingdom, the peak of its monumental building and international power, ended in the aftermath of the Bronze Age Collapse. Once again, Egypt...

The Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Destruction of Jerusalem

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Despite controlling a huge swathe of the Near East for the better part of a century, the Neo-Babylonian Empire is nearly forgotten today, aside from o...

The Rise of the Persian Empire: Professor Matt Waters on Ancient Empires and Cyrus the Great

10 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Persian Empire followed in the footsteps of the Assyrians and Babylonians, but it was a much different entity than its predecessors, and its found...

Summer Book Club: Dr. Keith Pluymers on Indigenous America

03 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's summertime, and I hope you're reading some great books. Dr. Keith Pluymers joins me once again to talk about one that you all might enjoy, by the...

The Iron Fist of Empire and the Destruction of Israel and Judah

27 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Israel and Judah flourished for centuries as kingdoms on the margins of the Near East's great empires, but when the Assyrians turned their attention t...

The Roots of Israel and Judah

20 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The roots of ancient Judaism, and the Abrahamic religions, are to be found in the arid hills and fertile valleys of Canaan more than 3,000 years ago. ...

Headhunting, Migration, and Ancient DNA in Iron Age Europe: Interview with Professor Ian Armit

13 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Ian Armit has ranged both widely and deeply over the study of European prehistory, examining everything from headhunting practices among the...

Childhood, Motherhood, and the Body in Iron Age Europe: Interview with Professor Katharina Rebay-Salisbury

06 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Thanks to cutting-edge tools, archaeologists can study the lives of past people in ways that were never before possible. Professor Katharina Rebay-Sal...

The Last Kings of Rome and the Foundation of the Roman Republic

29 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What really happened in the last years of the 6th century BC? The Romans believed that this was the time when they overthrew their last king, Tarquini...

The Hallstatt Culture, the Celts, and the Rise of the European Iron Age

22 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Hallstatt Culture defines the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age in Continental Europe. It was a time of long-distance connec...

Burial Urns, Warrior Chiefs, and the Origins of the Celts

15 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

While the Mediterranean world was experiencing its Bronze Age Collapse and the beginnings of the Iron Age, continental Europe north of the Alps was in...

The Urbanization of Archaic Rome: Interview with Dr. Francesca Fulminante

08 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How and why did so many people come to Rome in the Archaic Period, and how did it become a city? Dr. Francesca Fulminante is an expert on the archaeol...

The Orientalizing Mediterranean

01 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ideas, goods, and fashions bounced around from place to place in the Iron Age Mediterranean, the most recognizable of which was a particular style of ...

Iron Age Iberia and the Lost Civilization of the Tartessians

25 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Iberia is the hinge between worlds: Europe and Africa, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. That was never more true than at the end of the Bronze Age ...

Building Archaic Rome: Interview with Dr. Andrea Brock

18 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What was Rome like before it became one of the biggest cities in the ancient world? How did its early inhabitants adapt to the threat of flooding, and...

The Birth of Rome

11 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rome eventually became the heart of one of the largest and most powerful empires the world has ever known, but in the beginning, it was just a collect...

Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient Mediterranean: Interview with Professor Peter van Dommelen

04 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of the ancient Mediterranean, our minds first turn to familiar names, such as the Greeks and Romans. Yet the ancient world was full of p...

The Emergence of the Etruscans

27 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Etruscans are often called "mysterious," but we actually know quite a bit about them, from their unique language to their amazing metalwork and im...

Greek Colonies and Networks in the Iron Age: Interview with Dr. Lieve Donnellan

20 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the best ways to understand how the ancient world functioned is to think in terms of networks and interactions between people and places. Dr. L...

Iron Age Italy

13 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

At the beginning of the Iron Age, around 950 BC, Italy was a land of farming villages; just a few centuries later, it was one of the wealthiest and mo...

Competition, Tyranny, and the Birth of Ancient Greece

06 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Archaic Greece went through some of the most explosive and rapid transformations of any ancient society, but why? What stands out the most is the inte...

Sicily and the Making of the Greek Mediterranean

30 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the space of just a few decades toward the end of the 8th century BC, Greek colonies sprang up across across southern Italy and Sicily. These new f...

How Data Happened: Professors Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones on the History of Data

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones, authors of the new book How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms, join Patrick to...

Who Were the Phoenicians? Interview with Professor Carolina Lopez-Ruiz

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Despite their obvious importance to understanding the Iron Age and Classical Mediterranean, the Phoenicians remain something of an enigma. Professor C...

The Roots of Archaic Greece

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the year 800 BC, Greece was an unremarkable corner of the Aegean. Over the next century, however, it underwent a remarkable transformation. Greece'...

The Phoenician Mediterranean

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Soon after 1000 BC, Phoenicians began to take ever-longer voyages away from their homeland. Within just a few decades, they were already present at th...

The Emergence of Phoenicia

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Few places weathered the Bronze Age Collapse better than the Levant, the strip of land bordering the eastern Mediterranean that runs from Syria to Egy...

How to Write Historical Fiction | Interview with historian and author Dan Jones on his new novel Essex Dogs

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Every historian I know has a secret dream of writing historical fiction, but few ever do it. Dan Jones, a longtime friend of Tides of History and an o...

Greece's Dark Age

09 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After the Bronze Age Collapse, Greece changed dramatically. The palaces were gone, long-distance trade declined, and crafts became much simpler. Most ...

Wondery Presents: Stolen Hearts

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sergeant Jill Evans is a small town cop in Wales with an impressive record in her job, and a less than impressive record in her love life. After three...

The Global Mediterranean of the Iron Age: Interview with Professor Tamar Hodos

02 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Iron Age Mediterranean's new density of connections between people and places was about more than the economy and trade; it also remade the cultur...

Greece after the Bronze Age Collapse: Interview with Professor Alex Knodell

26 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What happened after the Bronze Age Collapse and the end of the palaces that had defined Mycenaean Greece? It's easy to present this time as a "dark ag...

The Interconnected Mediterranean of the Iron Age

19 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Prior to the Iron Age, the Mediterranean had already been a highway moving around goods, people, and ideas for millennia. But as a new era dawned, the...

The Fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

12 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When the end came for the Assyrian Empire, it came quickly. Former enemies pounced on the weakened state, and brought home the violence that for so lo...

Introducing: History Daily

11 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On History Daily, we do history, daily. Every weekday, host Lindsay Graham (American Scandal, American History Tellers) takes you back in time to expl...

The Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire: Interview with Professor Bleda During

05 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Assyrian Empire had a well-deserved reputation for brutality, but brutality alone doesn't explain why it lasted for so long; its residents must ha...

The Rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

22 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Neo-Assyrian Empire has been almost forgotten in comparison to the other massive states of the ancient world, but at its peak, it stretched from t...

Weavers, Scribes, and Kings in the Ancient Near East: Interview with Professor Amanda Podany

15 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The sheer amount of time separating the establishment of the first cities in the ancient Near East, and the invention of cuneiform writing, from the e...

From a World of Iron to Classical Empires

08 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to the Iron Age, and to a new season of Tides of History! The first millennium BC saw the emergence of two huge and enduring empires at either...

Retrospective: Prehistory Season

01 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

After two and a half years and 126 episodes, Season 4 of Tides is coming to an end. Patrick recaps what we've learned, how things have changed in a ra...

Revisiting the Ancient Americas with Professor Shane Miller

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

I've had the opportunity to talk to a lot of great people during this season, and Professor Shane Miller of Mississippi State University has been incr...

What is "Collapse?" Interview with Professor Guy Middleton

17 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

"Collapse" is an evocative and powerful term, but what does it really mean? And how can we use it to help us understand the actual processes and event...

The Battle of the Tollense Valley

10 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

More than 3,000 years ago, two armies met in a titanic Bronze Age battle along a river in northern Germany. We don’t know why they fought or who won...

Tutankhamun's Trumpet and the Long, Winding Past of Ancient Egypt: Interview with Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson

03 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What ties the long history of ancient Egypt together into a meaningful whole? Professor Toby Wilkinson, one of the most renowned Egyptologists on the ...

After the Bronze Age Collapse

27 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As dramatic and transformative as collapses are, they're rarely a complete apocalypse. People survived the Bronze Age Collapse, and then they had to w...

Season 4 Mailbag: Prehistory and Early History

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's mailbag time! Patrick answers a variety of questions about topics covered (and not covered) in this season of Tides, ranging from Svante Pääbo'...

Empires, Networks, and the Hittites: Interview with Professor Claudia Glatz

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What is an empire? It sounds straightforward enough, but figuring out what the term means - much less whether it really helps us understand past polit...

Who Were the Sea Peoples?

06 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When assigning blame for the Bronze Age Collapse, the most common culprits are said to be the Sea Peoples: nomadic raiders and sackers of cities who p...

The Fall of Mycenaean Greece and the Trojan War

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mycenaean Greece was one of the glittering jewels of the late Bronze Age world, but it fell to pieces in dramatic fashion: burned palaces, abandoned s...

How Ancient Economies Fell Apart: Interview with Professor Sarah Murray

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We're often told that trade was central to the interconnected world of the late Bronze Age, but what were people really trading? Why did trade matter ...

What was the Bronze Age Collapse?

15 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The term "Bronze Age Collapse" is by now common, but what do we actually mean when we talk about "collapse?" Is it a matter of political reorganizatio...

Clashing Empires in the Late Bronze Age

08 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The late Bronze Age was a time of powerful empires and intense competition between them. Never before had true states covered such a large area, or ha...

Living as a Regular Person in Ancient Egypt: Interview with Professor Anne Austin

01 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What was it like to be a regular person in ancient Egypt? What did people do when they got sick or injured? Professor Anne Austin is an Egyptologist a...

The Interconnected World of the Late Bronze Age

25 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We know the late Bronze Age world eventually collapsed, but what made it a world in the first place? The answer lies in the intense connections - trad...

Daily Life and Common People in Egypt's New Kingdom

18 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When we think about ancient Egypt, the vast majority of our attention goes to its elite: pharaohs, queens, priests, and nobles. But the elite made up ...

Why Did the Bronze Age World Collapse? Interview with Professor Eric Cline

11 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If we know one thing about the Bronze Age world, we know that it collapsed. But what made it a world? And why did it fall apart? There's nobody better...

Kings, Images, and Violence in Ancient Egypt: Interview with Professor Laurel Bestock

04 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Kings are one of the constants of ancient Egypt's long history. But what, exactly, were kings supposed to do, and how did ancient Egyptians understand...

Egypt's New Kingdom: Empire, Religious Change, and the Tomb of Tutankhamun

28 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Egypt's New Kingdom lasted for more than 400 years. In that time, Egypt changed dramatically, weathering ups, downs, and turmoil of all kinds. Much of...