Everywhere around us are echoes of the past. Those echoes define the boundaries of states and countr
China's Shang Dynasty is something of an enigma. It produced the earliest written evidence in China,
The arid shoreline between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific seems like an unlikely place to host
Mesoamerica is one of only a few places in the world where "civilization" - states, writing, cities,
Over the past several decades, ancient DNA and other archaeological sciences have transformed our un
The Eurasian steppe is central to grasping the past 5,000 years of human history, and in the past co
Four thousand years ago, the sprawling cities of the Indus Valley Civilization dominated much of Sou
More than a billion people around the world speak a language of the Indo-Iranian family today. These
The Indus Valley Civilization doesn’t get much attention compared to Mesopotamia or Egypt, but it co
Language is fundamental to how people experience the world, but how can we know what languages peopl
About one in every five people alive on the planet today speaks a language belonging to the Bantu fa
The state - a centralized administration that exerts control over a territory and can coerce the peo
Ancient DNA and new archaeological work have changed our understanding of many different parts of th
The most striking environmental shift on the planet in the Holocene epoch was the greening of the Sa
Africa is rightly known as the “Cradle of Humanity,” because that’s where the most recent wave of mo
Human sacrifice is an ugly but essential topic in understanding the Shang Dynasty, but we know very
Professor Jennifer Raff, a longtime friend of the show, returns to discuss her work on the genetic a
More than 3,000 years ago in China’s Central Plains, the Shang Dynasty crossed the threshold from pr
The reality of the Bronze Age Near East was much messier and harder to understand than a straightfor
China’s written history goes back more than 3,000 years, stretching deep into the Bronze Age. But ju
How did Latin splinter into the Romance languages? In this episode, we explore how Latin transformed
