Ancient Antarctica
The frozen continent of Antarctica was once a land of forests, rivers and thriving ecosystems. And millions of years before humans ever exis...
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Society & Culture
The Ancients
A podcast for all ancient history fans! The Ancients is dedicated to discussing our distant past. Featuring interviews with historians and archaeologists, each episode covers a specific them...
Episodes
20 of 664 episodes
Prehistoric Penguins
When the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, one remarkable avian survivor traded the skies for the sea. Tristan Hughes and paleontologist Dr...
Life and Death in Ancient Babylon
Babylon was one of the greatest cities of the ancient world. But what was life really like for the people who lived there? Behind its magnif...
The Gospels: Are They Historical?
How much can we really know about the historical Jesus? The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have shaped Christianity for nearly 2,00...
Maya Hieroglyphs Decoded
Forget everything you thought you knew about the ancient Maya. Cracking their mysterious hieroglyphs didn't just reveal boring calendars, it...
Human Sacrifice in Ancient Britain
WARNING: This episode contains descriptions of graphic violence from the start. When we picture human sacrifice in ancient Britain, the icon...
Ice Age America: The Clovis Culture
Before the mammoths disappeared, people hunted them across Ice Age America. Armed with distinctive stone spear points, the mysterious Clovis...
The First Punic War
How did the Romans ambush a massive Carthaginian fleet from behind a Sicilian island to win one of history's fiercest sea battles? For over...
Iron Age Ireland
How much of Iron Age Ireland is myth, and how much is archaeological reality? At the monumental Hill of Tara, sacred kings ruled over a land...
Human Origins: Did We Begin in Africa?
The story of human origins is often imagined as a simple journey from Africa, but is the truth actually much messier? Tristan Hughes and lea...
Egypt's Lost Cities
What happens when an entire city disappears? Beneath the sands and wetlands of Egypt lie the remains of forgotten cities that once stood at...
Augustus vs Agrippa with Robert Harris
Augustus was Rome's first Emperor. But who made his empire possible? Behind the throne stood Marcus Agrippa, the brilliant general whose vic...
The Vandals
The Vandals have gone down in history as the barbarians who helped bring down the Western Roman Empire. Their name became synonymous with vi...
Terror Birds
What kind of predator needs no teeth to terrify its prey? The terror birds were enormous flightless hunters that ruled South America for mil...
The Maya Ballgame
A rubber ball. A stone court. And a sport where the stakes could be life and death. For more than 2,000 years, Mesoamerican peoples played a...
How Slavery Built the Roman Empire
Was the Roman Empire really made by conquest? Or was it powered by something much darker? For centuries, millions of enslaved people sacrifi...
Romulus & Remus
The story of Romulus and Remus is one of the most famous myths from the ancient world. But the Romans believed the founding of their city st...
Shapur I: Rome's Greatest Enemy?
Few rulers humbled Rome quite like Shapur I. A King of Kings, he rebuilt the Sasanian Persian Empire, defeated Roman armies and captured Emp...
Scotland's First Warriors
Three thousand years ago, prehistoric Scotland was a landscape of rival communities, raids and warfare. Bands of warriors fought for power a...
The Catiline Conspiracy
In 63 BC, Rome faced a conspiracy that threatened to tear the Roman Republic apart. At its centre stood two figures: Marcus Tullius Cicero,...