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The Genetic Origins of Indigenous Americans: Interview with Professor Jennifer Raff
Season 4 Episode 80
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 troublesom…
Published on 3 years, 10 months ago
The Shang Dynasty, Oracle Bones, and the Roots of Chinese History
Season 4 Episode 79
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 o…
Published on 3 years, 10 months ago
The Complicated World of the Bronze Age Near East: Interview with Aaron Burke
Season 4 Episode 78
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, dynast…
Published on 3 years, 11 months ago
The Dawn of History in China
Season 4 Episode 77
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 worl…
Published on 3 years, 11 months ago
Encore: How Latin Became the Romance Languages
Season 4 Episode 76
How did Latin splinter into the Romance languages? In this episode, we explore how Latin transformed from a single, widely dispersed language into a series - French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Rom…
Published on 3 years, 11 months ago
The Rise and Fall of China’s First States
Season 4 Episode 75
China’s late Neolithic period saw the emergence of increasingly powerful groups of elites who buried themselves in lavishly decorated tombs and built palaces and public buildings at the hearts of the…
Published on 3 years, 11 months ago
Li Liu on the Rise of States in China
Season 4 Episode 74
States have defined China from the very beginning of its recorded history more than 3,000 years ago, but how did they come into being? Professor Li Liu of Stanford University is one of the world’s le…
Published on 4 years ago
Hittites, Trojans, and the Late Bronze Age World: Interview with Professor Trevor Bryce
Season 4 Episode 73
The late Bronze Age world of the Near East was an incredibly rich and complex place, full of long-distance trade, the exchange of ideas, bickering kings, and empires rising and falling. Among those e…
Published on 4 years ago
The Rise of the Late Bronze Age Empires: The Hittites, Mittani, and Assyrians
Season 4 Episode 72
Viewed from the perspective of international trade, political complexity, and written culture, the late Bronze Age world of the Aegean and Near East marked a high point before the fall. But how did t…
Published on 4 years ago
Hammurabi’s World - The Near East in the Age of Fragmentation
Season 4 Episode 71
If we know the name of an ancient Near Eastern ruler, it’s probably that of Hammurabi, thanks to his famous Code. But Hammurabi was just one ruler in a time of conflict throughout the region, and the…
Published on 4 years ago