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What is Civilization?
Season 4 Episode 25
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 doe…
5 years, 8 months ago
Alcohol and Agriculture in Prehistoric East Asia: Interview with Professor Li Liu
Season 4 Episode 24
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 fa…
5 years, 8 months ago
Agriculture and Complex Societies in the Americas, 4000-1500 BC
Season 4 Episode 23
Agriculture was invented in no fewer than three, and probably four, places in the Americas. It went along with sedentary living and complex societies…
5 years, 9 months ago
The Americas from Foraging to Agriculture, 10,000 BC-4000 BC
Season 4 Episode 22
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 pe…
5 years, 9 months ago
Agriculture, Migration, and the Births of Language Families: Interview with Professor Peter Bellwood
Season 4 Episode 21
The relationship between agriculture, migration, and the distribution of today's most prominent language families is direct but complex. Professor Pe…
5 years, 9 months ago
Classic Tides | Europe After the Black Death
Season 3 Episode 61
Plague, war, and a worsening climate drastically changed Europe in the years and decades after 1350. This new state of affairs laid the groundwork fo…
5 years, 9 months ago
Neolithic China and Jomon Japan
Season 4 Episode 20
East Asia was one of the world's primary centers of agricultural innovation. Farming was invented there, rice and millet domesticated, and the people…
5 years, 10 months ago
East Asia in Prehistory
Season 4 Episode 19
Hominins have lived in East Asia - what's now China, Korea, and Japan - for millions of years, at least as far back as Homo erectus if not further. A…
5 years, 10 months ago
Why Were There So Many Neolithic Farmers? And What Can Big Data Do For Archaeology? Interview with Professor Stephen Shennan
Season 4 Episode 18
Professor Stephen Shennan is one of the world's leading experts on the early farmers of the Fertile Crescent and Europe. In this interview, I pick hi…
5 years, 10 months ago
Classic Tides | Peasants' Rebellions and Resistance
Season 3 Episode 60
Peasants and common folk were oppressed by their social superiors, but they didn't accept that as a natural state of affairs: They resisted in small,…
5 years, 10 months ago