Tides of History

Israel and Judah flourished for centuries as kingdoms on the margins of the Near East's great empires, but when the Assyrians turned their attention toward their smaller neighbors, disaster and destruction quickly followed. 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://...

The roots of ancient Judaism, and the Abrahamic religions, are to be found in the arid hills and fertile valleys of Canaan more than 3,000 years ago. That was where the kingdoms of Israel and Judah came into being, and their inhabitants began to develop traditions that still shape the world millennia later. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years t...

Professor Ian Armit has ranged both widely and deeply over the study of European prehistory, examining everything from headhunting practices among the ancient Celts to migration in the Bronze and Iron Ages. 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 ....

Thanks to cutting-edge tools, archaeologists can study the lives of past people in ways that were never before possible. Professor Katharina Rebay-Salisbury applies those tools to children and mothers in Bronze and Iron Age Europe, shedding light on the experiences of those often left out of traditional narratives. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty...

What really happened in the last years of the 6th century BC? The Romans believed that this was the time when they overthrew their last king, Tarquinius Superbus, and founded the Republic, but how much did they actually know about events centuries in the past? Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audio...

The Hallstatt Culture defines the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age in Continental Europe. It was a time of long-distance connections between rich and powerful elites, migration, trade, and the remaking of Europe's ethnic and linguistic map, when the people we know as Celts emerged into history. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and For...

While the Mediterranean world was experiencing its Bronze Age Collapse and the beginnings of the Iron Age, continental Europe north of the Alps was in the midst of its own fundamental transformation. A new way of burying the dead - cremation - and the arrival of warriors on horseback, leading armies, remade Europe and were likely responsible for the initial spread of the Celtic languages. Patrick'...

How and why did so many people come to Rome in the Archaic Period, and how did it become a city? Dr. Francesca Fulminante is an expert on the archaeology of ancient Italy, particularly the process of urbanization that turned small villages into some of the great cities of the ancient world. Rome was both unique and a part of these larger processes that took place not just near the Eternal City, bu...

Ideas, goods, and fashions bounced around from place to place in the Iron Age Mediterranean, the most recognizable of which was a particular style of art that we call "Orientalizing." But this distinctive and widespread artistic style, rooted in the imagery of the ancient Near East, was only a byproduct of the movements of actual people through an interconnected sea. Patrick's book is now availabl...

Iberia is the hinge between worlds: Europe and Africa, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. That was never more true than at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, when a new civilization - the Tartessians - arose in southern Iberia at the meeting point of these different worlds. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Sho...

What was Rome like before it became one of the biggest cities in the ancient world? How did its early inhabitants adapt to the threat of flooding, and change the landscape to suit their needs? Dr. Andrea Brock of the University of St. Andrews is an expert on the archaeology of Rome's first few centuries and especially the local environment. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformati...

Rome eventually became the heart of one of the largest and most powerful empires the world has ever known, but in the beginning, it was just a collection of villages on the Tiber River. How those villages merged and became a city, then a state, is one of the crucial stories in human history. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the Wo...

When we think of the ancient Mediterranean, our minds first turn to familiar names, such as the Greeks and Romans. Yet the ancient world was full of peoples, all of them living in sophisticated societies that were no less interesting than those we we know well. Professor Peter van Dommelen is an expert in these less traveled places of the ancient world, especially Sardinia, and how they fit into t...

The Etruscans are often called "mysterious," but we actually know quite a bit about them, from their unique language to their amazing metalwork and impressive cities. But where did the Etruscans come from, and how did they come into being? 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...

One of the best ways to understand how the ancient world functioned is to think in terms of networks and interactions between people and places. Dr. Lieve Donnellan of the University of Melbourne is an archaeologist who specializes in applying network theory to southern Italy and the Greek world in the Iron Age, and she's come up with some fascinating and innovative ways of understanding the ancie...

At the beginning of the Iron Age, around 950 BC, Italy was a land of farming villages; just a few centuries later, it was one of the wealthiest and most densely urbanized parts of the Mediterranean world. This dramatic change was a product of a new world driven by metalworking, cities, and powerful elite groups. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Ye...

Archaic Greece went through some of the most explosive and rapid transformations of any ancient society, but why? What stands out the most is the intense strand of competition running through every aspect of society, from athletics to the economy to politics. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiob...

In the space of just a few decades toward the end of the 8th century BC, Greek colonies sprang up across across southern Italy and Sicily. These new foundations would become the heart of the Greek world, just as Greek in every way as the better-known cities of Greece itself. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy,...

Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones, authors of the new book How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms , join Patrick to discuss the history of data, why enumerating things isn't a neutral act, and the ethics of building a world on the foundation of data. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in...

Despite their obvious importance to understanding the Iron Age and Classical Mediterranean, the Phoenicians remain something of an enigma. Professor Carolina Lopez-Ruiz is one of the world's leading experts on the Phoenicians, and she joins Patrick to talk about trade, migration, and what made the Phoenicians who they were. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance,...

In the year 800 BC, Greece was an unremarkable corner of the Aegean. Over the next century, however, it underwent a remarkable transformation. Greece's population exploded, cities came into being, long-distance trade boomed, and the first overseas colonies - the beginnings of an extended Greek world - had been founded. The roots of a recognizable ancient Greece had begun to sprout. Patrick's book...

Soon after 1000 BC, Phoenicians began to take ever-longer voyages away from their homeland. Within just a few decades, they were already present at the far end of the Mediterranean and even further, past the Straits of Gibraltar on the Atlantic coast of Iberia. The process of creating an interconnected Mediterranean had begun. Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissanc...

Few places weathered the Bronze Age Collapse better than the Levant, the strip of land bordering the eastern Mediterranean that runs from Syria to Egypt. One small part of that coastline, mostly in what's now Lebanon, became a launching pad for some of the most ambitious and wide-ranging commercial ventures in history. The Phoenicians, natives of this area, were the primary builders of the ancient...

Every historian I know has a secret dream of writing historical fiction, but few ever do it. Dan Jones, a longtime friend of Tides of History and an outstanding historian, has actually done it: Essex Dogs , his fantastic debut novel about a group of soldiers during the Hundred Years' War, is out now. I talk to Dan about writing historical fiction and what it can do that pure history can't. Patrick...

After the Bronze Age Collapse, Greece changed dramatically. The palaces were gone, long-distance trade declined, and crafts became much simpler. Most of all, there were fewer people living in Greece than there had been during the Mycenaean period. For all these reasons, scholars have often called this time the "Greek Dark Age." But how dark was it, and what was life like after the palaces fell? Pa...