The Invention of Agriculture in New Guinea
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 reached by outsiders until the 1930s. Yet they're also o...
15 Apr 202140min
Ancient Egypt in Context: Interview with Professor David Wengrow
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 archaeologists working right now, and he has fascinating...
8 Apr 202154min
Ancient Tattooing: Interview with Aaron Deter-Wolf
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 exists? I talk to Aaron Deter-Wolf, Prehistoric Archa...
1 Apr 202145min
North America After the Ice Age: Interview with Professor Shane Miller
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 transformed themselves from hunters of mammoth and...
25 Mar 202156min
Languages of the World in 3000 BC
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 linguistics and the comparative method shed valuable li...
18 Mar 202145min
Understanding Prehistory Through Ethnography
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 experience. Today's hunter-gatherers aren't livin...
11 Mar 202147min
Egypt and the Rise of the Pharaohs
Kings are practically synonymous with ancient Egypt, and it's not just because their monuments - like the pyramids - still tower above the desert and the Nile. Egyptian society was organized around th...
4 Mar 202147min
Hunter-Gatherers, Archaeology, and Prehistory: Interview with Professor Robert Kelly
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 University of Wyoming, who's both one of the world's expert...
25 Feb 202156min
