Who Were the Proto-Indo-Europeans?
Today, everywhere from Bengal to British Columbia, some 3.2 billion people speak an Indo-European language. All of these diverse languages are descended from a common ancestor spoken long before the a...
5 Nov 202050min
The Lost Civilization of Old Europe: The Copper Age and the First Cities
The first farmers of Europe and their descendants persisted for thousands of years. In the Neolithic heartland of eastern Europe, along the Danube River and through the northern Balkan Mountains, they...
29 Okt 202047min
Classic Tides | Peasants and the Medieval Countryside
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 order was the humble peasant. In this rebroadcast from...
22 Okt 202054min
Prehistory Mailbag! Archaeology, Language, and the Advantages of Farming
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 so miserable, did farmers have so many children? I ...
15 Okt 202059min
Megalithic Europe
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 with us today: enormous earthen tombs and standing s...
8 Okt 202051min
The Neolithic Revolution: Europe's First Farmers
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 Asia and the Atlantic Ocean. But how did this hap...
1 Okt 202045min
How Did People Domesticate Animals? An Interview with Professor Greger Larson
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 world does "domestication" even mean? How did this h...
17 Sep 202058min
The First Farmers
The domestication of plants and animals has remade the way that people feed themselves, organize their societies, and interact with the landscapes around them. But for most of the human past, this isn...
10 Sep 202046min
