Ancient History Fangirl

Latest Episodes:

Nazca Lines: Secrets in the Sand Dec 29, 2022

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Imagine a desert stretching over 1,500 miles along the Peruvian coastline, between the high Andes to the east and the vast Pacific coastline to the west. A place of brilliant colors and contradictions. This is the driest desert in the world. Astronauts use it to simulate conditions on Mars.

This is the home of the Nazca Lines: huge, beautifully made 2,000-year-old geoglyphs, visible only from the sky. Some are elaborate images of animals, plants, and people. Others are perfectly straight lines that stretch for miles in the empty desert.

What were they for? What did they mean? Their story–and the story of the people who made them–is so much more than it seems.

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Frau Holle: Wicked Woman of Yule Dec 22, 2022

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This year, we’ve found one of the most metal and wild Yuletide goddesses yet – Frau Holle.

Human sacrifices, spindles in yer vag, plague, starvation, caves of offerings and bones, the Grimms brothers, golden showers, child cannibalism, ZOMBIES – are any of these putting you in the Yuletide spirit? They should. Because we’re about to share with you the story of a very Frau Holle Christmas.

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Teotihuacan: Eat the Rich Dec 15, 2022

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Teotihuacan is an ancient pre-Colombian city in central America, founded two thousand years ago. It’s the home of some of the most iconic Mesoamerican monuments in existence, including the Pyramids of the Moon and Sun.

The city was abandoned after about 750 years of habitation. When the Aztecs first encountered it, it had stood empty for 600 years. Walking through the empty ruin, they marveled at the towering pyramids, the incredible murals, the enormous palaces—and wondered where the people had gone. They thought these people must have become gods.

This city has something for everyone: mysterious skeletons. Volcanoes. An eating of the rich. And so many mysteries, it’s hard to pick just one.

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Mohenjo Daro: Mound of the Dead Men Dec 08, 2022

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The Indus Valley civilization is one of the oldest, largest, most sophisticated Bronze Age civilizations we know about today. Roughly 80 cities and towns have been unearthed that were part of it. The biggest—perhaps the most important—was a city called Mohenjo Daro.

There were no kings at Mohenjo Daro, no priests and few signs of organized religion. There are few if any signs of war, slavery, wealth inequality or violence. There was a very high standard of living for its time, including indoor flushing toilets in every home.

But they don’t call it “Mound of the Dead Men” for nothing. It turns out this peaceful, utopian ancient city has a gruesome secret…

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Where Was the Land of Punt? Dec 01, 2022

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For over a thousand years, the ancient Egyptians sent their ships out to trade with a fabulous kingdom. They dragged their ships from the Nile to the coast of the Red Sea, and those ships returned groaning with luxuries beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings.

The place they got it all from was the Land of Punt—known to the Egyptians as the Land of the Gods. The Egyptians described just about everything about it, except how to get there.

Was Punt in Africa? Was it in Arabia? Was it an island in the far-flung Indian Ocean? Or did it ever exist at all? Today, we try to unravel the mystery.

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Inside the Skara Brae Sex Cult Nov 24, 2022

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Perched on a cliff at the edge of the world in the remote Orkney Islands, the ancient village of Skara Brae is a picturesque and dramatic sight. Carved into an ancient midden, it’s a warren of interconnected dwellings with built-in furniture, secret compartments, and more than a few mysteries.

What did the people of Skara Brae get up to when the lights were out? Why did they build their village so that you had to go through your neighbors’ houses to get to your own? How many people were sleeping in a bed again? Was this in fact a sex cult??

In this episode, we try to get to the bottom of it.

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The Mound Builders of Cahokia Nov 17, 2022

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Hundreds of years before European contact, the biggest city in North America was located along the Mississippi River. At its peak, perhaps 15,000 people lived there—and over 30,000 in the surrounding suburbs. Today, we call it Cahokia.

Nobody knows what the original name of this city was. But there was a time when everybody knew its name—from the Great Lakes to the Eastern Seaboard, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. What was that name, and why was it lost to time and memory? That’s just one of the many mysteries of Cahokia.

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The Headless Megaliths of Gobekli Tepe Nov 10, 2022

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In our episode on the Sphinx Water Erosion Theory, we discussed the theory that the Sphinx was 10,000 years old. This date would require us to completely reorder our sense of how humanity evolved. We decided it’s simply too out there to be true.

But what if we told you that there is an archaeological site 10,000 years old whose shocking discovery did indeed require archaeologists to change the way they interpreted history? It’s like if the Sphinx really did turn out to be really 10,000 years old, except it’s not the Sphinx, and it’s not in Egypt. It’s in Turkey. It’s called Gobekli Tepe.

Join us as we explore a wild, weird world of decapitated megaliths, menacing animals in high relief, gardens of megapeens, and a lost culture far closer to the last Ice Age than they are to us.

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History Daily PIRATE TAKEOVER Nov 08, 2022

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Introducing History Daily, a podcast thattells the fascinating stories of what happened “on this day” in history, with host Lindsay Graham.

Today, we're hosting two episodes from History Daily, both about famous pirates from the Golden Age of Piracy!

First up: The arrest of famous pirate captain William Kidd ends the reign of plunder of one of history's most infamous pirates and sparks rumors of buried treasure. And second: The trials of notorious pirates Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and John Rackham begin in Spanish Town, Jamaica.

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Serial Killers of Ancient Greece and Rome (With Debbie Felton) Nov 03, 2022

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Serial killers may seem like a modern phenomenon. But there were serial killers in operation in the ancient world—or so it would seem. Evidence for them is everywhere—in mythology and in history, we see predators killing their victims in surprisingly modern ways.

Was it easier to be a serial killer in ancient Greece and Rome? Could they find victims more easily and operate more anonymously than they can today? Were there roles and professions that gave cover to those born with an urge to kill? Were the streets of Rome and the hills of Greece a playground for serial killers?

In this episode, author and expert Debbie Felton helps us answer those questions.

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