Tides of History

The Rise of Egypt's New Kingdom

21 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Most of what we think we know about ancient Egypt is actually things we know about the New Kingdom, the last of Egypt's three classical golden ages: a...

Lost Landscapes of the Ancient Pacific: Interview with Professor Mike Carson

14 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sea levels rise, hills erode, and rivers change course over decades and centuries, dramatically affecting how people choose to live in their landscape...

Encore: Chivalry and Knighthood in Medieval Europe

07 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of the Middle Ages, the first thing that comes to mind is usually knights in shining armor. Chivalry - the ideal of behavior that guided...

The Coolest Archaeological Site in the World: Interview with Professor Chantal Conneller on Star Carr and the Mesolithic

30 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Star Carr, located in the Yorkshire region of northern England, is one of the world's richest archaeological sites, a waterlogged window onto the Euro...

The Polynesians and the Pacific: Interview with Professor Patrick Vinton Kirch

23 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Of all the Austronesian-speaking peoples, none have gone further than the Polynesians. Professor Patrick Vinton Kirch of the University of Hawaii is o...

The Austronesian Expansion, Part 2

16 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The first wave of migration out of Taiwan brought speakers of Austronesian to the northern reaches of the Philippines, the homeland of the Malayo-Poly...

The Austronesian Expansion, Part 1

09 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

More than 4,000 years ago, a remarkable migration - one of the great journeys in human history - began in Taiwan. Within just a thousand years, people...

How Did Civilizations in the Andes Deal with Environmental Upheaval? Interview with Professor Jason Nesbitt

02 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The harsh, unforgiving conditions of the Andes and the nearby Pacific coastline make it one of the best places in the world to study the relationship ...

Human Sacrifice, Oracle Bones, and Shang China: Interview with Professor Rod Campbell

26 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

China's Shang Dynasty is something of an enigma. It produced the earliest written evidence in China, in the form of inscribed oracle bones, and decade...

The Beginnings of Civilization in the Andes: The Mounds of Norte Chico

19 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The arid shoreline between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific seems like an unlikely place to host one of the world's earliest complex societies. But...

The Rise of the Olmecs

12 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mesoamerica is one of only a few places in the world where "civilization" - states, writing, cities, monumental building, and so on - emerged independ...

Migration, Ancient DNA, and European Prehistory: Interview with Kristian Kristiansen

05 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past several decades, ancient DNA and other archaeological sciences have transformed our understanding of Europe in prehistory. Professor Kri...

The Steppes of Central Asia in the Bronze Age: Interview with Professor Michael Frachetti

28 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Eurasian steppe is central to grasping the past 5,000 years of human history, and in the past couple of decades, new tools of analysis have transf...

Indo-Aryans, the Rigveda, and a World on the Move

21 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Four thousand years ago, the sprawling cities of the Indus Valley Civilization dominated much of South Asia; a millennium after that, however, the cit...

The World of the Indo-Iranians

14 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

More than a billion people around the world speak a language of the Indo-Iranian family today. These languages all trace their origin to a group of in...

What was the Indus Valley Civilization? Interview with Dr. Adam Green

07 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Indus Valley Civilization doesn’t get much attention compared to Mesopotamia or Egypt, but it covered an area of a million square kilometers, wa...

Languages of the World in 1200 BC

31 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Language is fundamental to how people experience the world, but how can we know what languages people spoke in the distant past? By 1200 BC, the lingu...

Kathryn de Luna on Africa, Bantu, and Historical Linguistics

24 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

About one in every five people alive on the planet today speaks a language belonging to the Bantu family, and Bantu-speaking peoples have shaped the h...

What is the State?

17 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The state - a centralized administration that exerts control over a territory and can coerce the people living there - is one of the driving forces of...

Mary Prendergast on Ancient Africa

10 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ancient DNA and new archaeological work have changed our understanding of many different parts of the global past, but nowhere more so than Africa. Pr...

The Green Sahara and African Neolithics

03 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The most striking environmental shift on the planet in the Holocene epoch was the greening of the Sahara. For thousands of years, the now-deserts of n...

Africa and the Many Cradles of Humanity

24 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Africa is rightly known as the “Cradle of Humanity,” because that’s where the most recent wave of modern human migrants originated and so much o...

Who Were the Human Sacrifices in Shang China? Interview with Dr. Christina Cheung

17 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Human sacrifice is an ugly but essential topic in understanding the Shang Dynasty, but we know very little about precisely who these people were, wher...

The Genetic Origins of Indigenous Americans: Interview with Professor Jennifer Raff

10 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Jennifer Raff, a longtime friend of the show, returns to discuss her work on the genetic ancestry of America’s Indigenous peoples. We talk...

The Shang Dynasty, Oracle Bones, and the Roots of Chinese History

03 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

More than 3,000 years ago in China’s Central Plains, the Shang Dynasty crossed the threshold from prehistory to history. For the first time in China...

The Complicated World of the Bronze Age Near East: Interview with Aaron Burke

27 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The reality of the Bronze Age Near East was much messier and harder to understand than a straightforward story of city-states, empires, and kings. Dif...

The Dawn of History in China

20 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

China’s written history goes back more than 3,000 years, stretching deep into the Bronze Age. But just how far back does it go, and how reliable are...

Encore: How Latin Became the Romance Languages

13 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How did Latin splinter into the Romance languages? In this episode, we explore how Latin transformed from a single, widely dispersed language into a s...

The Rise and Fall of China’s First States

06 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

China’s late Neolithic period saw the emergence of increasingly powerful groups of elites who buried themselves in lavishly decorated tombs and buil...

Li Liu on the Rise of States in China

30 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

States have defined China from the very beginning of its recorded history more than 3,000 years ago, but how did they come into being? Professor Li Li...

Hittites, Trojans, and the Late Bronze Age World: Interview with Professor Trevor Bryce

23 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The late Bronze Age world of the Near East was an incredibly rich and complex place, full of long-distance trade, the exchange of ideas, bickering kin...

The Rise of the Late Bronze Age Empires: The Hittites, Mittani, and Assyrians

16 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Viewed from the perspective of international trade, political complexity, and written culture, the late Bronze Age world of the Aegean and Near East m...

Hammurabi’s World - The Near East in the Age of Fragmentation

09 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If we know the name of an ancient Near Eastern ruler, it’s probably that of Hammurabi, thanks to his famous Code. But Hammurabi was just one ruler i...

Mike Parker Pearson on Stonehenge and British Prehistory

02 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Archaeology has come a long way since the first crude excavations at Stonehenge more than a century ago. Our guest, Mike Parker Pearson, spent the bet...

Stonehenge

25 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The societies of the European Bronze Age lacked writing, but their illiteracy shouldn’t fool us: These were rich and sophisticated civilizations tha...

Bronze Age Europe

18 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The societies of the European Bronze Age lacked writing, but their illiteracy shouldn’t fool us: These were rich and sophisticated civilizations tha...

Writing a New History of the Middle Ages: Interview with Dan Jones on Powers and Thrones

11 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Friend of the Show, TV presenter, author extraordinaire, and historian Dan Jones returns to Tides to discuss his new book, Powers and Thrones: A New H...

The Hyksos - Foreign Kings in Ancient Egypt: Interview with Dr. Anna-Latifa Mourad

04 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ancient Egypt didn’t exist in isolation from the world around it. Trade goods, ideas, and especially people flowed in and out over the millennia, bu...

Ancient Nubia

28 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Just to the south of ancient Egypt, a civilization we think we know well, was a deeply connected but unique world that existed along the Middle Nile: ...

Interview with Shane Miller and Jessi Halligan on the White Sands footprints

21 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The discovery of 21,000-23,000-year-old human footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico is one of the most exciting developments in the st...

Egypt’s Middle Kingdom

14 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Middle Kingdom, beginning around 2000 BC, was the second of ancient Egypt’s classical ages. Powerful pharaohs ruled from the cataracts of the Ni...

Ancient Nubia and the Kingdom of Kush: Interview with Dr. Geoff Emberling

07 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Located to the south of Egypt, in today’s Sudan, ancient Nubia had a complicated relationship with the old state of the Nile, and scholars have trad...

Old Kingdom Egypt

30 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of Ancient Egypt, we think of the pyramids: vast, eternal monuments to the glory of long-dead pharaohs. But we shouldn’t take them for...

When Did Things Happen in the Ancient World? Interview with Professor Sturt Manning

23 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We can’t understand the past without understanding when things happened, because if we can’t place them in some sort of chronological order, we ca...

Mycenaean Greece and Minoan Crete

16 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Late Bronze Age was a remarkable time in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. An interconnected world sprang up, tying together the lands ...

How the Industrial Revolution Changed the World: Interview with Economist Duncan Weldon

09 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the whole of human history can be divided into two parts: before the Industrial Revolution, and after. Economis...

The Early Aegean Bronze Age and Minoan Crete

02 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From mainland Greece to Minoan Crete and the famous city of Troy, what made the Aegean Sea one of the constituent pieces of the Bronze Age world? All ...

Mike Duncan on the Marquis de Lafayette and His New Book, Hero of Two Worlds

26 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Bestselling author and history podcaster extraordinaire Mike Duncan returns to Tides to talk about his new book, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis ...

Sargon of Akkad and the World's First Empire

19 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

More than 4,000 years ago, a ruler came to power in the fractious, war-torn lands of Mesopotamia. He ruled a small state north of the region's ancient...

Mike Duncan and Patrick in Conversation at Powell's Books: "The Verge," Ancient Rome, and Doing History

12 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

To mark the release of Patrick's book The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years That Shook the World, he did a virtual event with Powell's ...

Colonies and the Quest for Resources in Early Modern Europe: Interview with Dr. Keith Pluymers

05 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Friend of the Show Dr. Keith Pluymers returns to tell us about how people thought about and fought over resources, especially wood, in early modern En...

Cities, States, and Living in Ancient Mesopotamia

29 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We're often told that ancient Mesopotamia was the "Cradle of Civilization," but what made the region stand out in comparison to its neighbors and cont...

"The Verge" Audiobook Sneak Peak: Mercenaries and the Military Revolution

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to an exclusive sneak peak of Patrick's book, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World, which comes out today,...

Patrick Wrote a Book! With Leah Sutherland and Rachel Kambury

19 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Patrick's book, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World, comes out next Tuesday, July 20th! He worked really hard on...

Iran, Central Asia, and the Caucasus Mountains

15 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

While Mesopotamia and even the Indus Valley get the lion's share of the attention, sophisticated and long-lasting societies inhabited the lands fringi...

The Lives of Herders on the Ancient Steppes: Interview with Professor Alicia Ventresca Miller

08 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of the open grasslands of the Eurasian steppes, we usually imagine nomadic herders taking their livestock from place to place on horseba...

The Bronze-Age Steppe and the Emergence of the Indo-Iranians

01 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Things didn't stop happening on the vast grasslands of the Eurasian steppes once the first waves of migrants had departed to make their mark on Europe...

Ancient DNA, Indo-Europeans, and the Steppe: Interview with Professor David Anthony

24 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Professor David Anthony is one of the world's foremost experts on the archaeology of the ancient Eurasian steppes and sits at the cutting edge of Indo...

The Archaeology of Human Bones and the Iberian Copper Age: Interview with Dr. Jess Beck

17 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Human bones are one of our most valuable and illuminating sources of information about the past, but how do we use them, and what can they tell us abo...

The Bell Beaker Phenomenon and the Rise of the Bronze Age

10 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Around 4,500 years ago, bell-shaped ceramic drinking vessels called "beakers" begin showing up with the dead in tombs all over western Europe. Everywh...

Indo-European, Migration, and the Corded Ware Culture

03 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Five thousand years ago, small groups of herders began making their way from the open grasslands of the Eurasian steppe into the hills and forests of ...

Cuneiform Literature, Medicine, and Mental Health: Interview with Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid

27 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

At the heart of the ancient Middle East, a sophisticated, urbanized, and long-lived world, was a writing system: cuneiform, used for everything from h...

The Yamnaya Culture and the Proto-Indo-European Migrations

20 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

More than 5,000 years ago, a group of wandering herders on the Eurasian steppes - the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European - began to move outward...

Achilles, Gilgamesh, and Epic Poetry: Interview with Professor Michael Clarke

13 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What do Achilles and Gilgamesh, two of the most renowned literary figures of the ancient world, have in common? A great deal more than you might expec...

The Indus Valley Civilization

06 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Egypt and Mesopotamia are the most famous civilizations of the ancient world, but at the same time in South Asia - today's Pakistan and India - an eve...

Ancient South Asia

29 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

South Asia - encompassing Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan - is one of the cradles of human civilization, and today it's home to one in every four peop...

Bananas, Civilization, and Ancient Farming in New Guinea: Interview with Professor Tim Denham

22 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Tim Denham is one of the world's leading experts on Kuk Swamp, the most important archaeological site for understanding the origins of agric...

The Invention of Agriculture in New Guinea

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Highlands of New Guinea are one of the most remote places on the planet, a maze of crosscutting valleys and enormous mountains that weren't reache...

Ancient Egypt in Context: Interview with Professor David Wengrow

08 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Professor David Wengrow is one of the world's leading experts on Egypt before the pharaohs. He's also one of the most creative and wide-ranging archae...

Ancient Tattooing: Interview with Aaron Deter-Wolf

01 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Tattoos, and other forms of body decoration, are as old as humanity itself. But what can we know about the skin of long-past people that no longer exi...

North America After the Ice Age: Interview with Professor Shane Miller

25 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Understanding the first migrants to the Americas more than 13,000 years ago is a big task. So is figuring out how the ancestors of indigenous peoples ...

Languages of the World in 3000 BC

18 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Language is one of the foundational pieces of being human, but in the absence of writing, what can we know about it in the deep past? Historical lingu...

Understanding Prehistory Through Ethnography

11 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

There are still people living now who make their living by foraging, and understanding them is an essential component of grasping the breadth of human...

Egypt and the Rise of the Pharaohs

04 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Kings are practically synonymous with ancient Egypt, and it's not just because their monuments - like the pyramids - still tower above the desert and ...

Hunter-Gatherers, Archaeology, and Prehistory: Interview with Professor Robert Kelly

25 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What can we learn about the deep human past by studying present-day hunter-gatherers? I asked that question to Professor Robert Kelly of the Universit...

Uruk and the Rise of Civilization

18 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

More than 5,000 years ago, the city of Uruk in what's now Iraq was the heart of a new civilization. Cities, kings, armies, monumental temples, and wri...

Egypt Before the Pharaohs

11 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Pyramids, mummies, and pharaohs define our understanding of ancient Egypt, a timeless and eternal land. But the Nile wasn't always ruled by god-like k...

Classic Tides | Boxing, Race, and the Gilded Age: An Interview with Professor Louis Moore

09 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Boxing has a long past, one deeply connected to race, labor, and broader developments in American history. Professor Louis Moore joins me to talk abou...

Mesopotamia at the Dawn of History

04 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Civilization first emerged in the fertile floodplains of Mesopotamia - present-day Iraq - with priest-kings and cities full of temples and ziggurats, ...

What is Civilization?

28 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

I'm not just talking about the wonderful Sid Meier game series, which I've spent far too many hours playing; how do we define "civilization," how does...

Alcohol and Agriculture in Prehistoric East Asia: Interview with Professor Li Liu

21 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Stanford University's Professor Li Liu is one of the world's leading experts on prehistoric East Asia and one of the world's primary inventions of far...

Agriculture and Complex Societies in the Americas, 4000-1500 BC

14 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Agriculture was invented in no fewer than three, and probably four, places in the Americas. It went along with sedentary living and complex societies,...

The Americas from Foraging to Agriculture, 10,000 BC-4000 BC

07 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The initial migrations to the Americas get most of the attention, but people didn't stop living there in the aftermath of those first movements of peo...

Agriculture, Migration, and the Births of Language Families: Interview with Professor Peter Bellwood

31 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The relationship between agriculture, migration, and the distribution of today's most prominent language families is direct but complex. Professor Pet...

Classic Tides | Europe After the Black Death

24 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Plague, war, and a worsening climate drastically changed Europe in the years and decades after 1350. This new state of affairs laid the groundwork for...

Neolithic China and Jomon Japan

17 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

East Asia was one of the world's primary centers of agricultural innovation. Farming was invented there, rice and millet domesticated, and the people ...

East Asia in Prehistory

10 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Hominins have lived in East Asia - what's now China, Korea, and Japan - for millions of years, at least as far back as Homo erectus if not further. An...

Why Were There So Many Neolithic Farmers? And What Can Big Data Do For Archaeology? Interview with Professor Stephen Shennan

03 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Stephen Shennan is one of the world's leading experts on the early farmers of the Fertile Crescent and Europe. In this interview, I pick his...

Classic Tides | Peasants' Rebellions and Resistance

26 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Peasants and common folk were oppressed by their social superiors, but they didn't accept that as a natural state of affairs: They resisted in small, ...

Neanderthals, Our Closest Kin: Interview with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes

19 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What were Neanderthals really like? Our closest relatives shared an incredible amount in common with us, argues Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of the...

Ötzi the Iceman: The Neolithic Ice Mummy

12 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Five thousand years ago, a man died more than 10,000 feet high in the Alps of northern Italy. He had been shot in the back with an arrow, the corpse l...

Who Were the Proto-Indo-Europeans?

05 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today, everywhere from Bengal to British Columbia, some 3.2 billion people speak an Indo-European language. All of these diverse languages are descend...

The Lost Civilization of Old Europe: The Copper Age and the First Cities

29 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The first farmers of Europe and their descendants persisted for thousands of years. In the Neolithic heartland of eastern Europe, along the Danube Riv...

Classic Tides | Peasants and the Medieval Countryside

22 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of the medieval world, our minds usually turn to knights, royalty, and clergy. But the backbone of the medieval economic and social orde...

Prehistory Mailbag! Archaeology, Language, and the Advantages of Farming

15 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How do we know what we know about the deep past? What languages did people speak in prehistory? And why, if the life of an early farmer seemed to be s...

Megalithic Europe

08 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It didn't take long for the first pioneering farmers of Europe to establish mature and stable societies. The monuments of these societies are still wi...

The Neolithic Revolution: Europe's First Farmers

01 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Farming came into existence in the Fertile Crescent, but it didn't stay there. By 5000 BC, agriculture had spread east and west, reaching both Central...

How Did People Domesticate Animals? An Interview with Professor Greger Larson

17 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The domestication of animals has transformed the way that people eat, clothe themselves, and live over the past 10,000 or so years, but what in the wo...

The First Farmers

10 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The domestication of plants and animals has remade the way that people feed themselves, organize their societies, and interact with the landscapes aro...

After the Ice: The Younger Dryas, the Mesolithic, and the Birth of a New World

03 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For most of Homo sapiens' time out of Africa, we lived in a world defined by ice. But by around 20,000 years ago, the ice had begun to melt, the glaci...