The Mycenaeans: Was Agamemnon Real?
They built the great fortresses of the Bronze Age, developed a mysterious writing system and, according to Homer, led the Greek assault on T...
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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 671 episodes
Easter Island
How do you make a giant stone statue walk? On one of the most isolated islands on Earth, the people of Rapa Nui carved AND moved the extraor...
Bronze Age Syria: Cradle of Cities
Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Hittites usually dominate the story of the Bronze Age. But Syria was home to some of the region's most powerful c...
Origins of Constantinople
Why did Emperor Constantine abandon Rome to build a spectacular new capital from scratch? In the year 312 a bloody civil war and a miraculou...
The Ninth Legion: Did They Disappear?
It's one of history’s most compelling cold cases. What happened to the Ninth Legion, a crack unit of 5,000 Roman soldiers who vanished from...
Viking Origins: The Nordic Iron Age
Two thousand years ago, centuries before the Vikings, there was another Scandinavia. An Iron Age world. Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Maria...
Caratacus: King of the Britons
Before Boudicca, another British leader brought the Roman war machine to a grinding halt. Meet Caratacus; the cunning King of the Britons wh...
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...
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...