Mary Prendergast on Ancient Africa
Ancient DNA and new archaeological work have changed our understanding of many different parts of the global past, but nowhere more so than Africa. Professor Mary Prendergast sits on the very cutting ...
10 Mars 20220s
The Green Sahara and African Neolithics
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 northern Africa were a mosaic of savannahs, river v...
3 Mars 20220s
Africa and the Many Cradles of Humanity
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 of our species’ evolutionary history took place there. Bu...
24 Feb 20220s
Who Were the Human Sacrifices in Shang China? Interview with Dr. Christina Cheung
Human sacrifice is an ugly but essential topic in understanding the Shang Dynasty, but we know very little about precisely who these people were, where they came from, and what their lives were like p...
17 Feb 20220s
The Genetic Origins of Indigenous Americans: Interview with Professor Jennifer Raff
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 about Beringia, waves of migration, the troublesome...
10 Feb 20220s
The Shang Dynasty, Oracle Bones, and the Roots of Chinese History
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, we have access to the written word, in the form of...
3 Feb 20220s
The Complicated World of the Bronze Age Near East: Interview with Aaron Burke
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. Different ethnolinguistic groups, lifestyles, dynasti...
27 Jan 20220s
The Dawn of History in China
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 those first legendary texts when discussing a world...
20 Jan 20220s
