The History of Constantinople28 Heinä 2025

S1E3: Prehistoric Thrace & Anatolia

Long before Byzantion rose on its rocky promontory, the Thracian Peninsula and the adjacent coasts of northwest Anatolia were carved and recarved by shifting seas and ice-age climates. As early as the Lower Paleolithic, hunter-gatherers left flint tools and butchery marks in caves around the Sea of Marmara, hinting at intermittent human presence driven south by expanding glaciers. With the last glacial retreat, Mesolithic bands expanded into the flooded coasts, mastering fishing in newly forming estuaries at the Bosphorus mouth. Over millennia, mobile foragers exploited rich woodlands and wetlands, their seasonal camps evolving into semi-permanent encampments as they tracked wild boar, deer, and migratory fish through an ever-changing landscape.

By the seventh millennium BC, these groups quietly ushered in the Neolithic revolution: they cleared oak groves, domesticated sheep and goats, and fashioned the first locally fired pottery on the peninsula’s sheltered bays. Obsidian from the nearby Anatolian highlands and copper ingots from the early Chalcolithic workshops testify to growing trade networks along Marmara’s shores. By the Bronze Age, tell sites atop low hills reveal walled settlements where metallurgy advanced alongside weaving and grain surplus. These early communities, forged in the crucible of climate change, resource exchange, and maritime corridors, set the stage for the great Greek migrations that would soon transform this crossroads into Byzantion.

Franz Gordon, Hanna Ekström, Anna Dager / Boxes of Memories / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com.

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S2E1: The First-Called at the Bosphorus (38 AD to 52 AD)

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S1E17: All Roads Lead to Byzantium (3rd-1st Cent. BC) - SEASON FINALE

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S1E16: Alexander the Great and the Diadochi (338 BC to 300 BC)

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4 Joulu 202544min

S1E15: The Rise of Macedon (404 BC to 338 BC)

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25 Marras 202538min

S1E14: The Aegean Tug-of-War (478 BC to 404 BC)

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18 Marras 202538min

S1E13: Byzantion in the Shadow of Persia (513 BC to 478 BC)

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6 Marras 202539min

S1E12: The Silent Years from Byzantion's Founding to Darius' Crossing (667 BC to 513 BC)

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31 Loka 202529min

S1E11: Founding & Early Years of Byzantion (667 BC) - Pt. 2

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