Tides of History

Latest Episodes:

What was the Indus Valley Civilization? Interview with Dr. Adam Green Apr 07, 2022

Show notes

The Indus Valley Civilization doesn’t get much attention compared to Mesopotamia or Egypt, but it covered an area of a million square kilometers, was home to hundreds of thousands or millions of people and a unified culture, and lasted for the better part of a millennium. More than that, the Indus Civilization doesn’t seem to fit the models we have for how early states functioned. Dr. Adam Green of Cambridge University joins me to explain the unusual way in which the Indus Civilization was organized, its lack of powerful elites, and how and why it eventually fell apart.

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Languages of the World in 1200 BC Mar 31, 2022

Show notes

Language is fundamental to how people experience the world, but how can we know what languages people spoke in the distant past? By 1200 BC, the linguistic outlines of the world were becoming a bit clearer, thanks to an explosion in written texts. Follow along as we go on a historical linguistic tour of the globe around 1200 BC, from the first Bantu-speakers of western Africa to the Indo-Iranians of the steppe to the Austronesians of southeast Asia.

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Kathryn de Luna on Africa, Bantu, and Historical Linguistics Mar 24, 2022

Show notes

About one in every five people alive on the planet today speaks a language belonging to the Bantu family, and Bantu-speaking peoples have shaped the history of Africa in profound ways. But how did they expand from their original homeland, and how can we tell? Professor Kathryn de Luna joins me to talk about historical linguistics, archaeology, and how they can shed light on one of the most important processes of the past several thousand years.

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

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What is the State? Mar 17, 2022

Show notes

The state - a centralized administration that exerts control over a territory and can coerce the people living there - is one of the driving forces of the last several thousand years of history. But when and where did states appear, and why? And can we really call all of the various forms of political control that emerged around the world “states?” We can’t understand the world today without understanding the state, but that’s no easy task.

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

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Mary Prendergast on Ancient Africa Mar 10, 2022

Show notes

Ancient DNA and new archaeological work have changed our understanding of many different parts of the global past, but nowhere more so than Africa. Professor Mary Prendergast sits on the very cutting edge of both fields, having worked on both the largest-scale studies of ancient DNA in Africa and some of the most fascinating and innovative work being done on the continent.

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

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The Green Sahara and African Neolithics Mar 03, 2022

Show notes

The most striking environmental shift on the planet in the Holocene epoch was the greening of the Sahara. For thousands of years, the now-deserts of northern Africa were a mosaic of savannahs, river valleys, and shallow lakes. This unique environment produced the ways of life that eventually brought pastoralism and food production, as well as a variety of language families and populations, to the furthest corners of the continent.

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

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Africa and the Many Cradles of Humanity Feb 24, 2022

Show notes

Africa is rightly known as the “Cradle of Humanity,” because that’s where the most recent wave of modern human migrants originated and so much of our species’ evolutionary history took place there. But the reality is far more complex. Africa is a big place, and its relationship with our species spans hundreds of thousands of years, different environments, and multiple instances of interbreeding with other archaic human groups.

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

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Who Were the Human Sacrifices in Shang China? Interview with Dr. Christina Cheung Feb 17, 2022

Show notes

Human sacrifice is an ugly but essential topic in understanding the Shang Dynasty, but we know very little about precisely who these people were, where they came from, and what their lives were like prior to their deaths. Dr. Christina Cheung is a bioarchaeologist specializing in the study of stable isotopes, and she has produced some of the first work to shed light on who the sacrificial victims were. But that’s just one part of Dr. Cheung’s fascinating body of work, which extends all the way to Roman Britain and Neolithic France.

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

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The Genetic Origins of Indigenous Americans: Interview with Professor Jennifer Raff Feb 10, 2022

Show notes

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 troublesome relationship between science and Indigenous peoples, and her fantastic new book, Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas, which is available now.

Get Origin here: https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/jennifer-raff/origin/9781538749715/

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

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The Shang Dynasty, Oracle Bones, and the Roots of Chinese History Feb 03, 2022

Show notes

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 of the famous inscribed oracle bones. Thanks to that writing, we can peer inside their society and understand its logic - the logic of violence, authority, and the power of the ancestors.

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

Please support us by supporting our sponsors!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.