Uruk and the Rise of Civilization
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 writing were all new developments. But why here? Why ...
18 Helmi 202146min
Egypt Before the Pharaohs
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 kings, and long before they emerged, Egypt was home...
11 Helmi 202144min
Classic Tides | Boxing, Race, and the Gilded Age: An Interview with Professor Louis Moore
Boxing has a long past, one deeply connected to race, labor, and broader developments in American history. Professor Louis Moore joins me to talk about those topics and about his outstanding book, I F...
9 Helmi 202136min
Mesopotamia at the Dawn of History
Civilization first emerged in the fertile floodplains of Mesopotamia - present-day Iraq - with priest-kings and cities full of temples and ziggurats, pictographs and cuneiform writing. But what were t...
4 Helmi 202141min
What is Civilization?
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 it come into being, and why does it matter?Listen...
28 Tammi 202137min
Alcohol and Agriculture in Prehistoric East Asia: Interview with Professor Li Liu
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 farming. I ask her about that, the deep continuities ...
21 Tammi 202147min
Agriculture and Complex Societies in the Americas, 4000-1500 BC
Agriculture was invented in no fewer than three, and probably four, places in the Americas. It went along with sedentary living and complex societies, but in complicated ways: fishing villages along t...
14 Tammi 202147min
The Americas from Foraging to Agriculture, 10,000 BC-4000 BC
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 peoples; they spread out over the Great Plains and th...
7 Tammi 202147min
