Conversations: Life At the Far Edges of a Crumbling Empire... w/ Owen Rees

Liv speaks with returning guest Owen Rees about his new book looking at the fringes of ancient empire... From Egypt to Greece to Rome and China. Learn more about Owen's book https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/far-edges-of-the-known-world-9781526653741/, Bad Ancient https://www.badancient.com/, and Substack https://owenrees.substack.com/. Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

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• 1:39Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv, here with another conversation episode. This one is with returning guest Owen Reese. So Owen was on the show a few years ago now, which is so wild, time is a flat circle. Owen was on the show when we talked about Sparta, because not only is he a classicist, but specifically, he runs this website called Bad Ancient, which is all about, it's kind of like a Snopes, but for the ancient world. So clarifying these, like,

• 2:18Liv Albert?

  I want to use the word myths, but obviously not in the way I always use it. But just these ideas about the ancient world that have been perpetuated and they go through and they kind of answer whether or not it was real. Anyway, that's all to say Owen was a great guest on Sparta. We had so much fun. We also had a terrible internet connection. So I am so thrilled that we got to talk again with a better internet connection this time. There was no point where we had this crazy lag where I didn't know whether or not I was going to talk over him. This time we had such an incredible conversation because Owen has a new book out called Far Edges of the Known World. Okay. So interesting.

• 2:58Liv Albert?

  Generally, it's just all about these places at the edge of empires. And I, I won't spoil everything we talked to, but here is just a talked about rather, but here is just a taste to get you excited because what an incredible concept, like all of these different empires over like this grand swath of ancient history. Like what is it like when you're living in a town at the farthest edges of that empire? With anyway, long story short, turns out there were Greeks in Ukraine. Stay tuned for this full conversation because oof. Oh my gosh. So interesting.

• 3:43Liv Albert?

  We had so much fun. You all know I'm obsessed with this kind of topic. Sit back and enjoy.

• 4:04Liv Albert?

  Conversations. Life at the far edges of a crumbling empire.

• 4:26Liv Albert?

  I started by saying I didn't have your book yet because I just went on and like did a, you know, I looked up the synopsis. I was like, I know we're gonna have a great conversation, but this way I'll have a better guide. But so, I mean, based on what I've been able to read so far and also just knowing you, which meant that I was looking forward to this because

• 4:43Speaker 02

  That's very kind.

• 4:44Liv Albert?

  I was so ready to be like, oh, because you do Bad Ancient. And then I know that we would then talk about Bad Ancient. So we're not going to. But you do, you've looked at, it's like the fringes of the empire, right? And like, the cultures and the civilizations at those fringes. I'm so interested in that. And like, kind of what, like, I mean, you, I think you know as well as most, that I don't love imperialism. It's not my favorite.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Not a fan.

• 5:11Liv Albert?

  I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan. And so I'm always so fascinated by sort of the alternative in these worlds, and especially Rome, because Rome is a horror show of imperialism. So like, what do we know about these places that are, you know, in the empire, but also so far away from the empire that I imagine they get to have some level of freedom for their own culture? I don't know. And now I'm giving things away. Tell me about it.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  No, they absolutely do. They do have that kind of freedom. And that's kind of what drew me to them. Because the story of Rome has been told over and over again, and it's been told well. And the story of Greece has been told over and over again, and it's been told well. And every so often, you kind of get to the point where, you know, you kind of pick up another book on it, and you go, yeah, I know these stories. And sometimes you just kind of want to ask, just find out a different story, really, of these same cultures and people that we find interesting. So you, you're still in your comfort zone, shall we say, you're still in the ancient world, you're still in the, you know, but you're just seeing it from different perspectives. And I suppose that's what this book was all about, really. I wanted to see it from a different perspective. And for me, that's life

• 6:19Speaker 02

  at the edge. Because like you said, you're away from the center, you're away from everything, you're Rome, you're Greece, you're whatever it is in name.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  And often what we find when people from the centre go and visit these places, they're not convinced you're the same. And I just find that amazing. If we think of Ovid's exile,

• 6:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  where, you know, he goes off and is in a Greek speaking town. And he's there going, they don't even speak Greek properly. And you're like, Ovid, you're not even Greek.

• 6:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  What are you talking?

• 6:52Liv Albert?

  And you're so far from Greece. Like, yeah, they're gonna speak a different dialect. That's just how people work.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Yep. And it is, it's a beautiful moment where also in his life, I mean, he kind of bookends my book because I just find him a perfect encapsulation of this entire topic.

• 7:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  He is much like ourselves, where we, you know, he goes around the ancient world, he goes to this place and discovers that what he thought should be there isn't there. And so he sort of clings to, but that's not how life is. So he's, he's a bit grumpy in his letters home. He's rather grumpy about the fact that he's been made to do military service. And of course, at that point.

• 7:30Liv Albert?

  Dude, you're in exile.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're in exile. You're not special.

• 7:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah, you're, you're, you're not meant to enjoy it. Actually, it's a punishment.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  So, you know, I, I was always fascinated by this. I've always been interested by underdog stories. I've always been interested by narratives that kind of get consumed by larger stories of these kind of empires, of these big central cultures. So I wanted to write a book that just didn't centre that. So, you know, the whole book floats about the entire ancient world.

• 8:02Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  By which I mean Europe, Asia and Africa.

• 8:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I saw like, just even the synopsis, you went from like Morocco to like the far edges of the Black Sea. Like, that's such a, yeah, huge amount of space, but also so tied together. And we so rarely talk about those edges.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, precisely that. And at the edge is where cultures not only have that kind of freedom away from the, the centre. So, you know, they don't have to be exactly like the Romans demand of them and things like that. But also what we find is at the edge is when, is where cultures come together most.

• 8:37Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  And this really is what drives this book. Ancient history is often told from the perspective of boundaries and borders and control, which is valid, especially when you're talking about someone like Rome, Egypt, Greece, where the Athenians have these very set ways of looking at the world. And very much who's in their world, who's not in their world. And of course, the Romans kind of embody that most with their borders. Um, but it's just not realistic. It's it's not the reality of the ancient world. And actually, when we look at the edge, this distinct

• 9:14Speaker 02

  categorization doesn't exist. They come together, they blend, they merge, and they uh usually produce something new. So they usually produce a different culture. And if we look at it just through the lens of the Greeks in Ukraine, the uh, I don't know, um, the Romans in Morocco. Um, and you constantly look at it through that lens, you end up.

• 9:37Liv Albert?

  Greeks in Ukraine, though, can we, can we, like?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Oh, we will get back to them. Do not worry about that. We will get back to the Greeks in Ukraine, because that is mind blowing.

• 9:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  But uh, because the ancient world is one of movement, it's one of migration, it's one of colonization, especially the Greek world, the Roman world, you know, if you think of it through imperialism or just a general trade migration. It's one of movement. And as they move, they uh they interact with other cultures and they

• 10:08Speaker 02

  absorb basically parts of other cultures and other cultures absorb parts of themselves. Um, so what my book tries to do is take us through thirteen case studies around the ancient world and through a large chronological span. So we go from pharaonic Egypt, where they're building the pyramids, all the way through to beyond the fall of the Western Roman Empire, we go uh to the fall of Aksim, which is in Ethiopia. Which times in with um, well, the prophet Mohammed has died historically at this point. So in European terms, we're in early medieval, the Middle Ages.

• 10:45Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  But in Ethiopian terms, we're no, we we've just ended the ancient world.

• 10:50Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  And I just find that a beautiful moment. So the book is about challenging cultural perceptions, historical perceptions, and also our own chronological perceptions as well.

• 11:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Uh, oh, well, that's the ethos of the book.

• 11:04Liv Albert?

  Well, I'm obsessed with all of that. That, I mean, I, this is always what I want to be talking about is this sort of like, the more, the other people, you know, because eighteen thousandth time I've said this, but like the ancient world was enormous. And this big mixed melting pot of people, and we always just talk about Greece and Rome. So I'm so thrilled. And of course, you know, we have to still use a lot of this lens of Greece and Rome because they were such talented colonizers. But still, it's, I mean, it's such an interesting difference. Like, I've talked to people here and there about like the Hellenistic empires and things like that, too, or I guess maybe not empires, Hellenistic kingdoms.

• 11:45Liv Albert?

  Um, and you know, that's another, it sounds like, well, they maybe they're in there as well, in your book as well, because I know there's a lot of really good evidence in like the Seleucid Empire that, you know, the, the cultures were melding in this way that, I mean, I think it's, it's important to look at this particularly as sort of the antithesis of like modern imperialism, which seeks to like stamp out and crush existing cultures rather than, you know, incorporate them. And that's what's so interesting about these ancient ones.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Well, and rather ironically, a modern imperialism is very much built on a false model of ancient imperialism. So you, you know, um, it's, it's no surprise that the, the Roman imagery and the Greek imagery epitomizes, uh, British statements of imperial power, um, French statements of imperial power, even the blimmin Third Reich. Uh, you know, they're all trying to emulate what they think the Romans and or Greeks were doing and like. And of course, it's, it's built not on a fiction, but on a simplification of the ancient world. So take the Romans, for example, we have this old model of Romanization, which is the Romans turn up, stamp Roman identity on everything. Everyone has to speak Latin. Um, everyone has to wear a toga, you know, all that kind of stuff.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  And when we actually look at the edges of the Roman Empire, when we actually look at people living there and what they're up to, this isn't the case at all. I mean, you have obviously the infrastructure, Roman infrastructure gets brought in, the Roman languages get adopted for administration, that all happens, absolutely. So Romanisation with a little r, maybe, might be one way of thinking about it. But the idea that you remove and eradicate a culture, replace it with your own, is just not a Roman or Greek one. It's just, it's just not there at all. So actually, what we get is this kind of synthesis of cultures. So we sometimes talk about the Romano-British

• 13:47Speaker 02

  culture, we talk about the Romano-Gaelic cultures, you know, even as historians, we accept that we're not really looking at quote unquote pure Roman identity, Greek identity. And it challenges

• 14:05Speaker 02

  oversimplification of the ancient world. But even like, you mentioned the globalisation of it all, you know, the fact that the ancient world is enormous and we only talk about a small part of it. This is something that comes up in the book a lot, the Mediterranean basin and are obsessed with it. But one of my favourite little anecdotes in the book comes from a chapter on the site of Megiddo, which is in ancient Canaan. It's pre-Israelite, so we're talking an old site. And just south of there, there's a burial of a individual who they were able to study the plaque in his teeth, to basically see what he was eating.

• 14:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  So don't brush your teeth, people. Historians and archaeologists need that. But they studied the plaque in his teeth and they found banana proteins.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Now, during this period, so we're talking late second millennium BCE. Bananas, domesticated bananas haven't really left Southeast Asia.

• 15:12Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  And we might, we haven't really got any concrete evidence they've left Indonesia at this point.

• 15:17Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  So, you know, we don't know how far this person's gone to get this, but what we've got is probably come via a trade network through India and then beyond.

• 15:27Liv Albert?

  This is a really dumb question, based in my knowledge being so specific to the Mediterranean that I'm realizing that they've got a problem. Isn't all of Indonesia an island too? Or no, does it have, does it have mainland? That's my dumb question.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  That's a valid question.

• 15:42Liv Albert?

  Okay, good, great.

• 15:45Liv Albert?

  Because I'm like, that makes it even more impressive.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  In terms of, what do you mean?

• 15:51Liv Albert?

  Oh, just like bananas reaching.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:53Liv Albert?

  But I guess not, because it's, I mean, it's also connected, but I don't know, that just feels even more remote. Like if they were just on, like in these Indonesian islands.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Well, this is it. So it's connected, I mean, you are right in terms of the island nature of it, but it is connected through a waterways network in that region of Southeast Asia. So, you know, oddly enough, this also gets covered in my book in a completely different chapter. Which is the, the importance of that trade network and how it links up with the Indian Ocean in a later period. So whilst we don't have lots of direct evidence of that trade, what we do have is indirect evidence that it's probably going on. So this Indonesia, the banana thing, we can't prove that that's coming from Indonesia, but we have no evidence it's really coming from anywhere else.

• 16:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  You know, perhaps we could speculate that it's hit Southeast Asia, but that's still, you've got to think of the distances we're talking about.

• 16:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Talking thousands of miles.

• 16:51Liv Albert?

  It is such a far distance, like it's, I want to use the phrase that I think we should all be using all of the time, but that Canaan is Palestine, it was Palestine after it was Canaan, these Canaanites are connected, but that it is the Levant that we're talking about so far. From bananas.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's, if you think of the trade route going east, that's how far we're talking, potentially. We've also got evidence, similar types of evidence that show the markers of soybean production being consumed probably as an oil. So that's coming from most likely the Yellow Valley rips. We're talking China.

• 17:26Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Um. So that's all coming from the east.

• 17:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  To the west.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Um, the same region, we have evidence of bronze items. Um, in which the tin within bronze. Uh, is often the issue of, uh, trying to understand the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, because there's not a lot of tin in the Mediterranean. Um, and, uh, they've studied some of the, uh, bronze items dating from this period. And the tin seems to be coming from northwest Europe, most likely Cornwall in England.

• 17:57Liv Albert?

  Wow. So wait, okay. What period? You're talking, this is Bronze Age. This is me going crazy trying to wrap my head around that.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  This is oddly enough, around about the period, the Greeks think the Trojan War is happening.

• 18:07Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  There you go. It's a random, uh, marker for you.

• 18:10Liv Albert?

  Right. So like, what, what's that year they give it? Like?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Was it 1170 something?

• 18:16Liv Albert?

  I know. I'm mixing it up between the fall, the end of the Bronze Age being 1177 and.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  That's Eric Klein's fault.

• 18:24Liv Albert?

  Exactly. I know. He's confusing us. Uh, no, that's, yeah, that's wild.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. So in terms of a trade network in the, uh, late second millennium, we are talking potentially linking the southwest of England all the way to potentially Indonesia or China via the Levant region. Um, as one network. Now, of course, the people in Cornwall have no idea what's going on anywhere, anywhere near. We can't make assumptions about any of that.

• 18:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  The idea that there is this network and the idea that there is this potential for bringing together of trade, of course, but with trade comes up with ideas, with people, with language, with, you know, all the stories. Um, that's the span we're talking about potentially. And I just think that's mind blowing. And when we only talk about the Mediterranean, I think we really cut out a large potential of our human story.

• 19:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, I, I'm in awe of that, particularly as it, you know, connected way back to, to my point because I'm always just so frustrated that even when we're specifically talking about the Med, it is so, tends to be so focused on Greece and Rome. Like, obviously it's changing now to a degree, but, you know, it is still so focused on that. But that's even, I mean, that's, that's just me trying to broaden my knowledge of the Mediterranean, let alone going so far beyond like.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 19:51Liv Albert?

  That, that's wild. That kind of connection is.

• 19:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I can't even fathom that.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Well, and then by the time the Romans come in and really establish their empire, this trade network becomes more and more solidified.

• 20:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  So the Romans tap into a network that already exists and has existed for nearly a thousand years in some way or another. So when we start to get the Roman imperial writers talk about trade and talk about geography and talk about the world, they're drawing upon these traditions, they're drawing upon the sailor narratives, the trade narratives to understand the world. So by the first and second century CE, so the common era, we start to get accounts of the Romans, obviously know well, they know well, they're very well aware about India. They seem to be very well aware of as far as Thailand.

• 20:42Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  And there is even a suggestion that they might even be pretty aware of Vietnam.

• 20:48Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  And they obviously have an inkling about China as well. So the Vietnamese one's interesting because they're not 100% sure. They just think there's this sort of place that exists even further than the Gulf of Thailand that they're kind of loosely aware of. And yet, interestingly, Chinese sources from the Han courts tell us a story of the Romans reaching the Chinese court. No Roman source tells us this happened at all. The Chinese source says it happened and that it happened by them landing in Vietnam and then travelling north. So historians are like, what's going on here? Because it's quite

• 21:30Speaker 02

  an amusing story where the Romans come to the court of the Chinese emperor and basically bring gifts that are underwhelming.

• 21:39Liv Albert?

  Well, China's been pretty kicking ass by this point.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Precisely. And it's things like, we bought you tortoise shells. You're like, what do you think we have? So they tell this story and very much, but like the Chinese sources are even like, I'm not even sure these are true. Because they considered Rome this distant superpower that they didn't know much about, but they very much considered it equivalent to themselves.

• 22:02Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  So they were like, I'm not convinced these people were actually Roman envoys, they were probably traders. Cause this would be more impressive than that.

• 22:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Um, but it's just a lovely story and I love that we have evidence of Roman Chinese interaction. But it doesn't come from the Romans.

• 22:18Liv Albert?

  Yes, that makes it so much more interesting.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  It does make it so much more interesting and the Chinese, we do have Chinese sources that talk about the Roman Empire as this distant thing that they sort of are vaguely aware of. There's even a story of an individual who was sent as an envoy to enter the Roman Empire and try and make contact with them.

• 22:36Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  And he gets to a point, um, he goes beyond India and he gets somewhere and he basically goes, I'm trying to get to the Roman Empire. I'm trying to get there and he gets told by someone, oh, no, it's thousands of miles that way. Like you're nowhere near them.

• 22:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  But you've got to keep going. And he was like, oh, that's too far. I'm not going to go.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  And actually what he had entered, he was on the verge of entering the Eastern Empire.

• 22:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're in India and you're not that far, you've gotten like most of the way there.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  So he was either lied to.

• 23:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Or.

• 23:07Liv Albert?

  Or they were like, well, the city is really far.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  I just love the idea. He might've met a real pedant.

• 23:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  He was like, oh, well, technically.

• 23:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Rome's that way. What are you talking about? Wow.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  But yeah, so they do tell these stories. So it is interesting. There isn't a lot of this. We don't have a lot of other cultures giving us their insight into the Romans. Into, not even really the Greeks very much, um, other than the Romans themselves. So when you get it, you just jump on that. You go, this is amazing. What does it tell us? What does it tell us about, um, the globalization of this world? What does it tell us about the interactions and the perceptions? And also what does it do to challenge our perception of the Roman world by looking at another powerful empire? Who is judging them?

• 23:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Um, and it's beautiful.

• 23:54Liv Albert?

  Being forced to remember via this kind of like tangible evidence, like just being forced to to remember that all of this is happening at the same time, I think is so important because it is bizarrely easy to separate the ancient world into these groups, these people who we can convince ourselves like never contacted each other or that like, yeah, the, the, you know, ancient Mediterranean existed on a different planet or timeline than, than ancient China, who were, you know, they were both regions were, were doing these incredible things at this time and building these incredible empires. And I mean, terrible ones too. And, you know, but like, yeah.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  There's also a lot of, um, there's also a lot of, uh, odds crossover. Um, so, you know, nothing to read into. It's just one of those, um, temporal and chronological coincidences. So, um, Rome in the first century CE is dealing with, um, a province on the far edges of his empire, which has an uprising that in particular is being led by a woman, which is the Boudicca revolt.

• 24:59Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. I was ready for that. I don't know anything about her. So please, any and ev- I know. I know. I've been working on it.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  She's awesome.

• 25:08Liv Albert?

  Well, one, I need to have Elodie Harper. Why haven't I already scheduled that? But yeah, so just feel free.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Put very simply, um, she, uh, so the story goes, there's a lot of mythology around her and she is one of the great icons of British identity. Um, but so the story goes, um, she, um, is basically, her family is betrayed by the Romans. Uh, she's sort of married to a local lord who has promised one thing and doesn't get it. And then, um, when it gets to the point where Boudicca should technically inherit some sort of power and land, um, from him, uh, the Romans come in and basically take it. They end up, uh, like, uh, raping and pillaging and do nasty things to both her, her family and her community. And she's, uh, basically creates an uprising in the east of England.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  So Britannia and leads, so the story goes, hundreds of thousands of warriors against the Romans over a period of a couple of years. And you know, they actually do go through and they sack and they pillage and they burn Roman towns. You can go through London and all this kind of stuff. And then they are finally put down and, you know, the Romans save the day and all that kind of stuff. So that's the kind of story of Boudicca. In a nutshell, during the same period, first century, you have another powerful empire in China, dealing with a province on the far edges of their empire, which we would nowadays

• 26:34Speaker 02

  call Vietnam, in the southeast of Asia, obviously. And there's a focal point around a city of Koh Loh, which is one of the chapters in my book. So at Koh Loh, there is an uprising against the Han Chinese, and it is led by the Trung Sisters, who also lead a massive army against them. They defeat the Chinese in battle. They end up, they don't just sack about three cities and take control of three cities like Boudicca. They are said to have taken control of over 60 cities in Vietnam.

• 27:08Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  So they really take control of Vietnam.

• 27:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Or parts of Vietnam. From the Han Chinese, they then have to send their most experienced commander with a crack force of Chinese troops to finally defeat them in battle. And there's a story about, you know, there's various traditions about how the Trung Sisters died or killed themselves, or whatever it was they did. And then they became, just like Boudicca, this symbol of resistance to oppression, the symbol of resistance to imperialism in the country, and was used time and time again. Even when you look at like French imperialism in Vietnam, the Americans going into Vietnam, all this stuff, the Trung Sisters get brought up time and again, to kind of talk about that time where, you know, we stood up to

• 27:54Speaker 02

  the greatest powers and we can resist them. And it is, it's a phenomenal story. And I just love the chronological coincidence.

• 28:01Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Of it.

• 28:03Liv Albert?

  That's the coolest thing.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it is amazing. And it's, we see a few, there's a few other things where you just kind of asked the question of like, is there, is there like a memo going around?

• 28:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  In the world. So my other one is. The Chinese, when dealing with Vietnam, they have this idea of the barbarian. They have their own version of what they think a barbarian is, and they talk about the Vietnamese as this type of barbarian.

• 28:31Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Um, and when you read the descriptions of them, you could just as easily be reading a description of the Greeks talking about the Scythians or the Thracians. It's exactly the same, even down to their, you know, they wear animal skins and they don't live right and their women have too much authority. And they have sex in a weird way. And, uh, or my personal favorite, they have tattoos.

• 28:54Liv Albert?

  They

• 28:54Speaker 02

  There's an obsession with tattoos.

• 28:56Liv Albert?

  They love to consider these people with tattoos to be just these awful barbarians.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  This is it. This is absolutely it. So, um.

• 29:03Liv Albert?

  Can't fight them.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  So I, it is just, it's an interesting moment where you're kind of under like, what's going on here? Is this, is this just another coincidence? Are we actually going, are we getting to like a thing about, is this like how we don't like people? Is there like an innate human, humanity? To this kind of hatred? Is this?

• 29:20Liv Albert?

  Xenophobia. Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  But xenophobia in a particular way, like this is how we do it. Um, it's, it's just interesting. It's just one of those like, oh, I wonder what that's, I wonder what's going on there. I wonder what's that's about. There, there's no answer. And I think that's the beauty of that. It's just one of those, there it is again.

• 29:37Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Human nature in action.

• 29:39Liv Albert?

  I'm happy to be considered a barbarian in, in all ancient empires, cultures. I realized even just my jokes about this, I'm like, I'm, I assume most of my listeners have like, looked up a picture at some point, but in case you're curious listeners, I'm covered in tattoos. So I'm a barbarian. That's fine.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  That's how it is. That's exactly how it works. Uh, yeah. Well, it's, it's one of those interesting things. The history tattoos is always one of those interesting things. Um, it's actually something I ended up doing a load of research on for my academic work, cause I've got just fascinated with it. Um, do, do you know the Greek word for tattoo is stigma?

• 30:12Liv Albert?

  Yes. I feel like I've looked that up and always forget, but I love it every time.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  And, uh, and that's ultimately the Greek perception of it is sort of what's influenced modern European perception of tattoos. It comes with that stigma that comes with it.

• 30:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  And, uh, when you actually track it, there is a, there's a whole religious trend to tattooing that kind of then gets passed by the by. Um, cause across to the Greeks, only people that were tattooed were slave, enslaved people or prisoners of war.

• 30:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  So negative. Groups, but then there became this whole trend of being a enslaved person to a god. So you take sanctuary in a temple by giving yourself over, much like a slave is given over to another human being. So we get this kind of religious underpinning to it as well. If I remember rightly, there is still a place in Jerusalem that does the tattoos of the pilgrimage.

• 31:07Liv Albert?

  I was literally just gonna say, I recently learned that like the oldest tattoo shop in like the world is in is in Jerusalem, in the occupied territories, the illegally occupied territories run by Palestinians who've been doing it forever, forever.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  It is a fascinating one. So yeah, the idea that tattoos still hold this stigma is

• 31:33Speaker 02

  it is just interesting and how, you know, conceptions in 2000 years ago are still influencing the way we talk about them to today. I just find amazing. And then the cultural, not continuity, because they do not have contact. The Chinese and the Roman or the Greeks in particular, they're not talking to each other. So the fact that they both pick on this thing of like, there are these strange groups who ink their skin and that makes them bad and untrustworthy in some way is just amazing.

• 32:03Liv Albert?

  It is. It's so odd. Like, yeah, you have to kind of wonder where that comes from. It's one of those things that feels so impossible to understand because it is so longstanding. That it's like, it's just ingrained into humanity somehow. But yeah, no, I love that. And I'm going to remember that it's stigma now because it is a delight. There's so many Greek words like that, though, which like have become like a related but totally different word in English.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Well, the other one would be the plural of tattoos. Which is stigmata.

• 32:36Liv Albert?

  Right, right, but, right, that would be plural, wouldn't it? I was like, I was, when you were saying that, I was like, trying to make that connection and thinking of what the mata was. But yeah, it's just plural. It's not, I was like.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, uh, so, you know, the, the, the wounds of Christ are actually the, the marks of Christ, which is what the word stigma really means.

• 32:54Liv Albert?

  Right, yeah.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  So, yeah, it is, it's interesting. It's, it's, I just find it's interesting. It's one of those, uh, you know, sound clever at parties and that's it.

• 33:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah. That's like 90% of my brain at this point. And it doesn't leave any room for like, you know, staying on time or doing things, remembering.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  No, no, absolutely not. None of that nonsense. Um, but yeah, so like, I suppose the other way of thinking about it is, if you broaden our idea of the ancient world, if you broaden the idea of the chronological span, if you start thinking about what is overlapping with what, you can just find the most amazing stories. Um, so one of the ones that I got a bit too excited about,

• 33:35Speaker 02

  was, uh, is a well-standing, is a well-standard, uh, known thing in the ancient historical sort of community, um, that in northwest India and Pakistan,

• 33:48Speaker 02

  uh, sort of the, that's the furthest the Greeks really get.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  So during the time of Alexander the Great and his expansion, and then the, the breakup of his empire, the Greeks are sort of in and around Pakistan. And they, we get a, uh, another, you know, on the edges of the world. So we get that cultural blending and, uh, bringing together of ideas, of art, of styles, of philosophy, of, of literature, you go, all this amazing stuff going on in and around Pakistan.

• 34:18Liv Albert?

  Suddenly elephants are in all the stories.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Precisely that.

• 34:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  And, uh, if we start to think about, okay, so we're talking sort of third century-ish,

• 34:29Speaker 02

  as we kind of move through into the second century, um, this is the period in which Buddhism is really expanding as a religion in, um, India.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  And we get things like, uh, the, um, the kingship of Ashoka Marie, um, uh, in India, who is sort of a patron of the Buddhist religion.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  And this is all whilst the Greeks are in North West India. So they're all part of this.

• 34:54Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  And in terms of our historical terms, this is often the time where from about the second century B C through to the sort of first century A D is when we start to get the adoption of Greek sculptural trends in India.

• 35:12Liv Albert?

  Really?

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the embodiment of that. It also goes the other way, I should point out, at Pompeii, we have a table leg from India or of an Indian sort of divine body.

• 35:26Liv Albert?

  Cool.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Being, so it's going the other way as well, not to mention it's just a single way. But

• 35:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  The sculptural trend through into India is often talked about because, among other things, Hercules starts turning up in Indian art, which I just love.

• 35:40Liv Albert?

  Yes, he gets around, that guy. I mean, literally and figuratively.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  They also really get into Atlas as a figure.

• 35:47Liv Albert?

  Interesting.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  And they give him wings.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  So again, so we get this real unique take on Greek myth, Indian stories, Indian myth, and the two art styles coming together to produce something quite new.

• 36:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  And the embodiment of this is that it's generally considered that the northwest of India, Pakistan, is where Buddha gets his physical form as a sculpture.

• 36:13Liv Albert?

  Oh.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Because before this, Buddhists never portrayed his human body.

• 36:18Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  It was considered sacrilegious.

• 36:20Liv Albert?

  Interesting, very common now.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Well, it's very common now. And if you think about it, you know, Buddhists may not depict, they may not depict their gods, well, their Buddha, but the Greeks definitely do. They love doing this stuff.

• 36:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  So you tell them there's a divine being of some sort, they will make a statue.

• 36:38Liv Albert?

  Oh, my, yes. Probably another eighteen of them.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, precisely that. So Buddha starts to get his form. So, you know, this is often said, you know, look at the Greek influence on India. You know, look at how we've influenced Buddhism, isn't that, we, like, we're all Greek. That's the European tradition. But what they don't often talk about and what is being studied now, and it's getting really exciting what's coming out, they're starting to study it going the other way. So what of Indian culture, Indian ideas, Indian literature is going into the Mediterranean? So.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  One example would be there's a whole study on whether or not Buddhism is influencing, well, not just Buddhism, Buddhism, Jainism and other philosophies, may well have influenced Greek philosophy.

• 37:22Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  And how deep that might go. Of course, your sources will never tell us this.

• 37:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  So it's about, you know, trying to work it out, trying to dig deep into into the philosophies and also try and work out timelines and all that kind of stuff.

• 37:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  It's done by much cleverer people than me. Okay.

• 37:40Liv Albert?

  That's why I get those people to come talk to me, because I'm not doing that. I'm not doing the stuff you're doing, so thank you. I'm doing that. But I can talk myths forever.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  We all stay in our lane, that's what we do.

• 37:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  So we've got, we've got this kind of stories going on, but also, when I was sort of reading this, I was like, oh, that's really interesting. But there is also a story of Ashoka, the Indian ruler I told you about, he actually sent a load of, what would be the word, Buddhist envoys, basically, to spread the religion.

• 38:13Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  One of them, interestingly enough, is described as being Greek. He's a Greek Buddhist.

• 38:19Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  But he wasn't sent to Greece. He was sent, I think, to like, east of Afghanistan, if I remember off the top of my head.

• 38:25Liv Albert?

  It would have been very practical to send him to Greece.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  It would have been, wouldn't it?

• 38:28Liv Albert?

  I think he would have gotten a lot farther. They didn't like barbarians. You send in a real one and you say, listen to Buddha, that could have worked.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Could have worked. But what's interesting is we do have evidence of Buddhists in the Mediterranean.

• 38:40Liv Albert?

  Cool.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  So there is a, there is a, there was one source that described Buddhists living in Alexandria. So this isn't an Indian source, this isn't a Chinese source, nothing like that. This is actually, you know, for want of a better word, a canonical European source.

• 38:57Liv Albert?

  Western civilization.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  One of those proper ones.

• 39:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Tells us that there are followers of the Buddha, spelt with two Ts, in Alexandria. Doesn't tell us much more than that. I think it might mention that the vegetarian, but it doesn't say much more than that.

• 39:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  But it is just one of those, there are Buddhists in, we're like, okay, that's quite cool.

• 39:18Liv Albert?

  Are we talking like, Hellenistic later?

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Later, so we're talking Rome in Egypt.

• 39:22Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  And then we also, Roman period, we have in Plutarch, a description of a, an Indian envoy that gets sent, or like an ambassadorial group, gets sent to try and meet the Emperor Augustus. And they meet him in Athens.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  And among that group is, is described an individual who some scholars think is a Buddhist monk. And he ends up self-immolating himself. So he sets himself on fire to prove his faith. And to sort of show the power of the faith of, of his religion and dies. And Plutarch tells us that the Athenian people were so enthralled by this and so impressed by this, that they built a tomb in his honor. And erected a, an inscription that basically said that this Indian, this man from India, they give him his name and everything. This man from India has died and become immortal in accordance with his own faith.

• 40:26Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  And that's just an amazing statement.

• 40:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Because often, I think we, I say we, it's often belittled, Greek and Roman religion is just, oh, they'll just steal anything. You know, although just, you know, even in a technical term, they'll say, oh, syncretism. And you're like, this is a real amazing moment of engaging with a different religious perspective, a different perspective on life, on death, on everything.

• 40:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  And going, we don't really know what you've done and why it matters so much to you. But we do know it does matter. So we will honor that.

• 40:59Liv Albert?

  That's actually like, that's, that's an enormous statement. I mean, I think it's an enormous statement for the ancient world, but also I just, I can't help but thinking of like, modern, you know, zealot religious monsters in the way that like, that would never happen, you know? It's all about mine being the best, the only one, this is the only God, you are all heathens, you know, this bullshit. And meanwhile, the ancient Athenians who were. Notoriously, some of the least like, you know, empathetic to outsiders people in the world of ancient history, but they were like, no, this was in accordance with his faith. Like, what an acknowledgement.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  It's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. But you'll notice, as I've been telling these stories, you know, you mentioned about Alexandria, we're talking Hellenistic, like, yeah, it's a perfectly valid question. No, but we're in Roman Egypt. So you've always kind of going, oh, yeah, because all these things are going at the same time, but talking about the same place, talking about the same religions.

• 41:58Liv Albert?

  Well, in Alexandria, the layers of religion over thousands of years are like unbelievable.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  It's phenomenal. My favorite example for this, and I judge any excuse I have to tell this, I'll take it, which is there is a Greek city of Berenike in Egypt. So during the Ptolemaic period of Egypt, so that's the kingdom that succeeds Alexander the Great's empire falling apart, Egypt is given to Ptolemy, his commander, and then he sets up the Ptolemaic kingdom.

• 42:29Liv Albert?

  And then a lot of sisters marry a lot of brothers.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Yes, and

• 42:33Liv Albert?

  A lot are called Berenike and Ptolemy.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  It's not very Greek. And it's a perfect example of like, the whole uselessness of us talking about these cultural silos in the ancient world. Like, even when you just look at the Ptolemies, you're like, come on, you can't talk about the Greeks in Egypt. It doesn't work like that.

• 42:49Liv Albert?

  No, they're wacky.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  But they're also not Egyptian. So there's something new. So Berenike is a town that's established on the coast of the Red Sea. It is one of these important towns in the trade routes through the Indian Ocean that connect the Mediterranean right through to, really to China, if you think about it. And at Berenike, we have a temple of Isis, the Egyptian goddess. And within that temple, they, two years ago, discovered a statue of Buddha.

• 43:26Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  So at some point during probably the Roman period.

• 43:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Um, a, an Indian trader, maybe an envoy, maybe an ambassador, maybe a messenger, it could be anything. Um, has clearly come to the temple and dedicated a statue, perhaps of thanks for his successful arrival or for the trade going well, or whatever it is, that they've given, they've given this statue to the temple. And that in itself is, is interesting. It's a lovely story. But this, when you step back and you go, hold on. We've got an Indian individual coming with a statue of Buddha, which shouldn't have a human form.

• 44:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  A statue of the human Buddha being dedicated by an Indian man in a Egyptian temple, in a Greek city, in the country of Egypt, which is under Roman rule.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's all the cultures. Yeah, I've got all that. So the idea that you would talk about this individual doing this act as being an Indian or a Roman thing is ridiculous. It just completely falls apart. This is absolute nonsense. All these cultures are going on at the same time. And it's when you're at the edges of the world, when you actually get away from this cultural purity nonsense. Though you actually see this amazing grey area in which, I argue in the book, much more interesting things happen. But.

• 44:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Our evidence is a lot less, uh, giving to tell the narratives and stories. Yeah.

• 45:14Liv Albert?

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• 46:51Liv Albert?

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• 47:53Liv Albert?

  Are you working off of, you know, mostly archaeological and then the evidence from like the bigger cities, the, the, you know, the hubs of cities, like the empires, or are, is there a lot of like, you know, written evidence? Like, what do you, what have you been finding to sort of document?

• 48:08Speaker 02

  A lot of it relies heavily on the archaeological evidence.

• 48:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Narratives can be built from wider source material, but when you are trying to do something entirely different, when you're trying to look at a town that doesn't really get talked about, there's usually a reason.

• 48:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  And, and one of those reasons is a lack of evidence. So, but that doesn't mean you can't piece it together. And that doesn't mean narratives can't be found. It just means that our ancient evidence hasn't given us a preset one.

• 48:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  So.

• 48:40Liv Albert?

  Which sometimes I imagine is good because.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  It is good.

• 48:43Liv Albert?

  You can't always trust the preset.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  This is it. You can go so much more interesting topics, but ultimately my book is not a narrative history from start to end. That's not how it works. Because if you want to do that, you can only tell the same sort of stories. So you've got to think, how can we tell different stories? Okay. Well, you know, it's almost like, every chapter is almost like a short story. Or even built up of short stories to understand this, this town and what life was like there and the themes and the ideas that come out of it. So, you know, there's one, which is a Roman site in Morocco, Volubilis, which starts basically as probably a Berber settlement, or what we would now consider a Berber settlement, a local group called

• 49:27Speaker 02

  the Maori by the Romans. They seem to have started a settlement. It then becomes a Carthaginian town.

• 49:34Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  We still haven't got any evidence, by the way, at this point. We've just got a bit of physical evidence. It then becomes under the control of the Romans, but it's not under their direct control. It's given to the king of Mauritania, which is a guy called Juba II, and his wife Cleopatra Selena.

• 49:52Liv Albert?

  This is so funny. I literally just recorded with Jane Draycott.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Oh, have you?

• 49:55Liv Albert?

  On Catripes.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Jane's amazing.

• 49:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like last week.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Read her book.

• 50:00Liv Albert?

  This is great. Yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Read her book. So, yeah. So, her book covers that whole story in amazing detail.

• 50:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  But even within her book, she can't go into Volubilis in much detail. Because of the narrative she's trying to build. So it's only when you focus in on a town on its own. And you kind of get, okay, to build an idea of what's going on this town, we've got to take almost a long duration approach. So let's look at its entire life and find the stories and find the themes and find the ideas that are coming out. And you do, they are there. So this town goes through all this, it goes through um an attempted uprising against the Romans that just catastrophically fails. Um but it sides with the Romans. Doesn't side with the locals. So that's interesting. It then gets betrayed by a later Roman Empire, our emperor, who actually shrinks the Roman Empire. To kind of control it better.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Um. And so all of a sudden, this town that had been in the Roman Empire for hundreds of years is now no longer part of it. In a day.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Um. So you're like, what's going on now? It's gonna fall apart. They can't possibly do anything. Of course, that's nonsense. What you get is what you always get, humans persevering, ingenuity winning out, and generally continuity, because no one really likes change.

• 51:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Uh. And that was something that I kept coming back to within this book. I kept finding it time and time again. Um. Empires come and go, rulers come and go. Um. Who's powerful in the region, who you're paying tax to changes, but towns generally persevere.

• 51:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  And I just think that's, it's fascinating. And it's in many ways quite humbling. Because we often find ourselves today kind of obsessed with this idea of, you know, well, what would happen if this occurred? And from a historical perspective, you're like, probably not a lot.

• 51:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Day to day, like a lot politically, and you'll get horrific big events occur that are nasty and disgusting and terrible.

• 51:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  But farmer in a field, probably not a lot.

• 51:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, it kind of reminds me of how we are all just continuing on with our regular day to day lives. While the world descends into fascism, or certainly the West, like.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, so we often assume because, okay, without going on a soapbox, uh, because history is told as a narrative. We are encouraged to think of it as a story. So it's got a beginning, middle and end. And every history has a beginning, middle and end. It's why we love the rise and fall of empires. Okay, a- as a narrative device. Um. But history is not a story. It's not a narrative. We find narratives within it.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  And so we get so obsessed with like, take the fall of the Roman Empire, the Western Roman Empire. It's this idea that everything just goes catastrophically wrong in a matter of a year. And, you know, books just suddenly disappear. No one can read all of a sudden, you know.

• 52:48Liv Albert?

  It's like the end of the Bronze Age. It's gone.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  It's just, it's just.

• 52:50Liv Albert?

  Human intelligence, poof.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Precisely that. One thing that my book keeps, and it comes from the very beginning, because I was fascinated with this idea of, what is the constant through human stories? You know, I don't like the concept of universality, but you know, what are the common threads through all human history? And one of them is ingenuity, problem solving. So different cultures solve problems in different ways. But it's only the narrative we tell ourselves that there is a particular way humans are supposed to do it. And if you've done it one way, that means that you're more, less developed or you're more developed than another way. Okay. So it's like sociological Darwinism, basically.

• 53:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Human evolution includes social evolution and it's absolute nonsense. Humans solve problems. And you solve problems in the most efficient and effective way you need to. And it's only when you encounter another culture that's had to solve their problems differently because of different reasons. And they've decided that they're more powerful than you, or indeed have proven themselves to be more powerful than you, that they decide that you are less than them.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  So this book really kind of goes, look at all these cultures solving very similar problems in very different ways.

• 54:02Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Isn't this amazing?

• 54:05Speaker 02

  And it means that we get to talk about histories that we don't often associate with ourselves. So, you know, we get to talk about the nomadic histories. We get to talk about the non-literary cultures.

• 54:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  As well.

• 54:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah. They're, okay. I, I mean, I, there's so many things, basically. This is all fascinating. And then this is my brain going, okay, where do I, where do I go next? Because like I, I have, this is so interesting and I want to know more ideally about some of those like, I mean, nomadic cultures. Like, can you talk a bit about what you learned there? Because.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, earlier I meant, I name dropped the Greeks in Ukraine.

• 54:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah, we gotta bring that back.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  We've got to bring her back. We've got to bring her back. So.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  During the sort of seventh and sixth century, the Greeks go out and put up basically erect colonies around the Mediterranean.

• 55:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Not colonizing in an imperial sense.

• 55:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  We are talking about setting up colonies generally for trade.

• 55:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and like movement, they would, you know, immigrate and make a colony.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  So they then grow out from that.

• 55:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  But we're not talking, this is an empire building.

• 55:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it wasn't just as destructive and deadly.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  No, no, no. So the Black Sea was an important point of, a important place within the European map that was particularly vital in terms of trade networks. So of course, if you can control the Black Sea or have anything on the Black Sea, you actually connect a lot of Eurasian land to your trade network. So it's an important place. So what we see is Greeks setting up colonies around the Black Sea. And to the furthest north, they do set up colonies in Ukraine.

• 55:50Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  In particular around Crimea.

• 55:54Liv Albert?

  Huh, wow.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  So my favorite and this chapter of the book is the Greek site of Olbia. So they set up a town called Olbia that we know a little bit about in our narrative histories. It comes up a bit.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  Not loads, but it comes up a little bit and we can work with that. But also because it's such an important trade route, whenever we talk about trade coming south from what would be Ukraine, we're talking about Olbia as part of that network.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  And also we have the archaeological site. Well, I say we have it, we had it. We will find out if we still have it.

• 56:29Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Once the war in Ukraine is settled.

• 56:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  I should point out, it was on my list of places to visit.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  So not the worst thing to come out of Putin's invasion, but it was a, it was a frustrating moment.

• 56:43Liv Albert?

  Unfortunate and hopeful, I mean.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  We certainly hope that comes to an end.

• 56:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  But anyway, Olbia.

• 56:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  So the site of Olbia is, it began as a market town. But what's important to note is that Olbia in Crimea is slap bang in the middle of an area the Greeks call Skithia, which is the home of the Skithians.

• 57:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Now, the Skithians, brilliant culture.

• 57:09Liv Albert?

  I was hoping it was gonna be them. I said nomad, but I really meant Skithian.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Of course you mean Skithians. Everyone loves the Skithians. So the Skithians, they have tattoos. They do have tattoos. And you can see them to this day.

• 57:21Liv Albert?

  They smoked a ton of weed and I love it for them. I don't know. I just, they might be my spirit animals.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Okay. Okay.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  There's no evidence they smoked it. There is evidence that the, yeah, they hotboxed it. Yeah. That's like what they did. So they created a steam room, basically.

• 57:40Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  And then sat in that.

• 57:42Liv Albert?

  I mean, that's close enough.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  So yeah, so it's Herodotus. Herodotus tells us about this. He tells us about, it's also that one of the first times the word cannabis appears in the Greek language.

• 57:53Liv Albert?

  Hell, yeah.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  But he's talking about the seeds. So they throw the seeds on the hot stones and they create a tent around it and yeah.

• 57:58Liv Albert?

  That's so cool. Anyway.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  So that's all amazing. Cleansing ritual and all that. But the Skithians are a, to the Greeks, they are the quintessential barbarian.

• 58:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Okay. So they're nomadic. They don't live in towns. They are archers in military prowess. They are, they hit and run. This is the antithesis of Greek warfare, Greek ideology of masculinity, everything.

• 58:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And they're like horse culture. They're always on horseback and yeah.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  And of course, worst of all.

• 58:27Liv Albert?

  They let women in. Oh my, they allow women to be a part of things and it's disgusting.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  It is disgusting. It's unacceptable. To the point where women are not only allowed to be involved, they are also allowed to be involved in the masculine realm of warfare.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  So it's the idea of

• 58:49Liv Albert?

  Get the Amazon.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  Well, so the link is, the link has been argued. Um, I can't really see how anyone can disprove it, but it's not, it's not like set in stone.

• 58:59Liv Albert?

  It's not official, but yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  Um, but yeah, so the, the, the idea is this may well have inspired the, the Amazon myths. So the eschewing of men in an entirely female warrior culture.

• 59:10Liv Albert?

  I do love that they went from women being allowed to be warriors to they were the only ones.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 59:16Liv Albert?

  Because I think it's the Greeks way of understanding that, like, because they can't conceptualize like an egalitarian world between genders.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Or even close to one.

• 59:25Liv Albert?

  No, they like, they literally think it is impossible. And so if in order for women to be warriors, they cannot have men around them is like.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  This is it. This is exactly it. So we've got, um, we've got this culture that is said to do all these things. Um, and interestingly, the archaeology backs it up. So there is archaeological evidence of the burning of cannabis. There is archaeological evidence of, um, Skithian bodies covered in tattoos, the frozen bodies in Siberia. So

• 59:51Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  If an exhibit of, um, the Siberian, uh, Skithian culture does ever come to wherever you are. Um, chances are you will see a piece of human flesh with a tattoo on it.

• 1:00:04Liv Albert?

  That's so cool. I did not know they were all the way up in Siberia.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Skithian culture is not a single, um, civilization, for want of a better word. It is a culture that spreads from sort of, um, eastern Siberia through to western Ukraine and south down into almost Iran.

• 1:00:25Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Okay. So Skithian culture is an archaeological culture. It's not really like a, a real one. It's one that gets identified by other people.

• 1:00:33Liv Albert?

  Got it.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  They probably

• 1:00:35Liv Albert?

  By these aspects, these, yeah, certain things.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  They have something called the, the golden trilogy of, um, Skithian archaeology, uh, which is all to do with the particular arrowheads and bridle usage and things like this.

• 1:00:47Liv Albert?

  Interesting.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  And if you have those things in a burial, you have a Skithian burial. Okay. Whether or not these Skithians would have agreed about that and whether or not they would have agreed that we're friends and family, uh, is another matter. But this is how, when we talk Skithian, that's what they're talking about. What's interesting, um, so in Olbia.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  If you're living in the land of barbarians, it's a bit hard to hate barbarians.

• 1:01:10Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  But of course, from the Athenian perspective, from the central perspective of the Greeks, barbarians are this other, they're dirty, they're a bit weird, they're a bit odd. We put up with them. You know, we don't hate them, but we kind of do. It's sort of the perspective. Whereas in Albia, you can't have that because these are people that you're living with, you're trading with, you're, and we actually have evidence of intermarriage.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  So one of my favourite things is that Albia, we have an inscription in which they opened up citizenship of the city. In a time of emergency, they opened up citizenship to basically get more people to defend the city.

• 1:01:46Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  And one of the groups they gave citizenship to were called the mixa lenas, which is the half Greeks.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  And so this is your intermarry groups. And what's interesting about that is they don't, they're not said to live in the city. So they've set up their own community.

• 1:02:05Liv Albert?

  Right, because they probably still have this nomadic lifestyle, kind of, or like a different.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Or at least they're blending it. So one of the reasons that's particularly interesting is because Herodotus specifically describes a group of quote unquote scythians, who are rather suspiciously Greek.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  In everything they do.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  But anyway, so we're kind of getting this, oh, that's interesting. So we're getting sort of commonalities there. The reason why it's particularly interesting for the theme of my book is if you look at our central Greek writers like Plato. Plato talks about intermarriage between foreigners and Greeks. And he calls them mixo barbaroi, the half foreigner.

• 1:02:46Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  And he's very much saying it with disdain.

• 1:02:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  And disgust.

• 1:02:50Liv Albert?

  Very much a different, a different thing than a, than a mixed Greek or a half Greek. Yeah.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  So don't get me wrong. I'm not saying either of these are actually good things. But what I am saying is, from Plato's perspective, if we only read Plato's perspective, we would get this idea that the Greeks thought that intermarriage was bad. But when we look at Olbia, we can go, clearly the Greeks did not think that.

• 1:03:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  But probably some did.

• 1:03:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's so true for everything. That's why the biggest problem with like any kind of generalization about any, like anything is that humans are individuals, you know, and it's.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  What does this radical madness live?

• 1:03:29Liv Albert?

  Oh, I mean, also, just to make the joke, like, if we only listened to Plato's opinion on anything, we'd be much worse for it.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  We would be in quite some trouble. We certainly would. So Olbia kind of has all these stories and actually Olbia survives the rise and fall of classical Greece. It survives the rise and fall of Alexander the Great. It goes into the Roman period and then it's actually, it is sacked by a Dacian group around about the time of, I think it's Julius Caesar.

• 1:04:01Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  So this town's continuing on. It sees the rise and fall of the Persians. It sees the rise and fall of Athens. It sees all of that.

• 1:04:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah. So you said seventh century is like around when it.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  Uh, I think it's sort of six, seventh century is where it's founded.

• 1:04:13Liv Albert?

  The typical sort of colonial period of Greece.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  It's that period where the Greeks were really going out and doing this. It actually doesn't start at Olbia. It starts as a smaller market town on an island just off it and then goes. So, you know, there's no like exact date.

• 1:04:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Cause it's kind of a simplification.

• 1:04:26Liv Albert?

  It, it, it feels to me like that kind of area, like setting up a colony in that kind of area would also be pretty dangerous. Like, do we know if they, yeah, like, that's why, I mean, I was gonna ask how long it lasted, but you beat me to it and that was. Yeah, that's a surprisingly long time.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  But one of the suggestions is that the reason it survives is it because it is happy to be under the, what would be the word? Not governance, but protectorate.

• 1:04:51Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Of other powerful nations. So.

• 1:04:54Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like they're not trying to be so separate that they have to fight everyone.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  No, precisely that. So when the Athenians are controlling trade in the Black Sea, it starts to do things the Athenians tell it to do. So it becomes a democracy, for instance, during this period. So it does things like that. But when that all falls apart, it then starts to come under the protector of what looks like Scythian kingship. So they then become under the protection of the Scythian people. It finally falls and then interestingly, it is resettled a couple of hundred years later. After, the story goes that the Scythians asked for it to come back. So they basically went back to the Greek group and went, can you please resettle Olbia and bring us this trade market back? Um, now, how true this story is, we don't know.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  But I just, I love the idea that Olbia survives, not because of the Greeks, but because of the want of the Scythians. And I just think that's amazing. We have a Roman writer, a Greca Roman writer, who then meets, who then journeys to this new Olbia. And he interacts with a, um, an 18 year old, clearly elite man in the, in the city. He's only 18. Um, but he's described in a very elite manner. Um, but, uh, our source talks in, uh, admiration because he finds him very attractive. Um, but in disgust because he's wearing trousers, which is the most foreign and barbaric thing you could do.

• 1:06:19Liv Albert?

  It is the most girly.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  I'm glad you said it.

• 1:06:22Liv Albert?

  Girly thing you could do. Yeah.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  He's wearing trousers. And then interestingly, going back to what we were saying about Ovid, um, our Roman source, when he talks to this guy, also mocks the way, um, he mocks his understanding of Greek poetry. And he's like, oh, he's so simple. And you're just kind of like, oh, hold on.

• 1:06:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  Like, let's leave the lad alone. He's like, who's your favorite Greek poet? And the guy goes, I like Homer. And then, oh, isn't that ridiculous? He only likes Homer.

• 1:06:52Liv Albert?

  He's not alone.

• 1:06:56Liv Albert?

  It's kind of their thing.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  It is their thing. Um, so yes, so Olbia kind of has this story. But what I wanted to do with the book is like, it's really easy to find these ways of, oh, look, I haven't really flipped the narrative enough by telling a story of the Greeks interacting with the Scythians in a positive way. All I've done is found another way of telling the Greek story. So what I wanted to do was to find a way of telling a story from the Scythians' perspective. Um, and to do that, that was hard. Because that's entirely a archaeological culture that is also nomadic and generally doesn't leave things behind.

• 1:07:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  Um. So um. I ended up being able to do this by finding um a well-known site further north in Ukraine called Bilsk, which is a huge, and I mean huge, fortification.

• 1:07:46Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  Okay, so it dates from, we're sort of talking like fifth, fourth century BCE, sort of that kind of time period. Um. So it would have been around, there's the famous story of the Persians invading Skithia and then having to flee. It was a fort at that point. So it would have seen these sort of things going on. Um. And it is enormous. It is, um, if I remember, if I get the numbers right, it's something like thirty-three kilometres is the length of the walls.

• 1:08:14Liv Albert?

  Holy shit.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So for context, Rome in the third century A D C E, the Aurelian walls and all that is about nineteen kilometres. So it is enormous.

• 1:08:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's huge.

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  In terms of acreage, you could fit it on the island of Manhattan and not have a lot of wiggle room.

• 1:08:34Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  So this is enormous, an enormous fort. So you've got to ask the question, who's built it? What's it doing there? What's going on? Um. And it has um local uh groups that are not Scythian. They clearly started building small forts on on the on the plateau. And then the Scythians seemed to turn up at some point. Um. And that's when we see the massive expansion of this fort. So there's a weird conundrum in that a nomadic group have caused the uh the building of a static fort.

• 1:09:10Liv Albert?

  Yeah, the opposite of what we're supposed to think they do.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  That's not what they're supposed to do.

• 1:09:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Um. And most of the fort is empty. So this huge space is predominantly empty. So there's there's clusters of industry and housing and stuff like that in the corners, but the predominant space is empty. So some people have argued, some scholars have argued that this is possibly because this is where the nomadic groups brought their um livestock in to keep it safe.

• 1:09:35Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  Because you've got the space. Or perhaps it's where like a a large royal cohort or um sort of a royal party might have set themselves up um as they moved through their land. Um. It's all guesswork. We're not really sure. Um. But we have a beautiful site that we have Scythians there, we have local indigenous groups there, and we have Greek evidence there as well, because the Greeks are trading with it.

• 1:10:02Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  So we have all this mix. So we're able to tell the story of Bills from this perspective of not what the Greeks are telling us about it. But actually, what it is telling us about these people and what it tells us about these people is one, a lot of the Scythian graves are starting to tell us they may not have been that nomadic.

• 1:10:19Liv Albert?

  I was, I mean, going back to all humans, we're just, there's, it's hard to do a big generalization, particularly over thousands of years.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  Well, and also humans adapt, humans change. So nomadic groups do decide to, do decide to stay still at some point, sometimes it happens.

• 1:10:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  And ultimately, at some point, every culture that, every culture that is sedentary, that has to have occurred at some point for that to happen.

• 1:10:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  So we get that. We also get evidence there. There seems to be art commonalities between Scythian art and what we might colloquially call Celtic art. So from the Latent culture in Western Europe. So we get trade routes and Albia is evidence of those trade routes. So, you know, I've spent a lot of time talking about the global trade routes that very much go through the Mediterranean. This is a trade route that very much goes through Europe.

• 1:11:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  Possibly, well, we don't know how far east it goes, but we're talking a land bridge or land route and Albia is there.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  If you kind of place it on a map, it links east, west and south to the Black Sea. It is a perfect crossroads.

• 1:11:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  But because these cultures that we're talking about were not literate and they did not write anything down, they're ignored. Well, I say they're ignored. They're ignored from mainstream narratives.

• 1:11:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  I mean, academically, they're not, they're fascinating and we love them.

• 1:11:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  Because they're brilliant.

• 1:11:38Liv Albert?

  Even academically, there hasn't been nearly as much about groups like them compared to the Greeks and the Romans. So, you know.

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  Notably, for a lot of the research for this, I had to go into the Russian, Russian language scholarship and the Ukrainian language scholarship to find it.

• 1:11:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, because there's just not a lot of it in English.

• 1:11:54Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  Because there isn't that interest.

• 1:11:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah, which is too bad. And I mean, false civilization.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  Because they are a fascinating culture. They're a fascinating group and they the stories that kind of come from is interesting. So unfortunately, we're left with the Greek perspective, which is that they're weird, they're foreign, they're different. And they're almost a caricature. But also, the Greeks very much used them as like the archetypal noble savage.

• 1:12:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  So if they are taught positively, you can't really trust that either.

• 1:12:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Because it's like, oh, well, you know, they do it. They're more into human nature and we should be more into human nature. You're like, okay.

• 1:12:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  Is that true? Do you?

• 1:12:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  What are you talking about? So you, you know, you've got to get through, what is it that our sources are using the Scythians to say? Which is a balancing act, let's be fair.

• 1:12:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's, that's so interesting. I've always, I mean, ever since I kind of learned about this connection between the Scythians and the Amazons. You know, I've wanted to know more about them, but it's, it's, yeah, they seem very mysterious. And now that I know they go all the way up to Siberia, I'm like, okay, I'm going to have a lot of other people come on to keep telling me about the Scythians wherever possible.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  They're absolutely amazing and we keep finding more and more. There's, recently they've just announced some burials in Kazakhstan that they're very excited about because they're strange shapes.

• 1:13:17Liv Albert?

  Ooh.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  And so like one's described as almost rectangular. I haven't seen them. I haven't seen the image of that. I just saw the news article come up recently. But like rectangular grave mounds or rectangular looking grave mounds. One that seems to be, it was described as having like two concentric circles sort of intertwined. And I was like, this sounds amazing and it doesn't sound Scythian.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  So Kazakhstan is considered one of the kind of heartlands of it. So yeah, the archaeology, the scholarship on this that's coming out is just, is going to be brilliant. And I can't wait to hear more.

• 1:13:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's so cool. It's, I forget why I was, I was trying to center myself in the region recently and was looking on a map. But I'm just always, I'm always surprised by how big Kazakhstan is for one. And just like, yeah, how, how big, how a country so big and so in the heart of like the earliest of human existence, you know, is.

• 1:14:14Liv Albert?

  Otherwise, pretty like, you know, quote unquote, backwater for like the the west, you know, just in that way of like, the west has made us in believe that that that whole region, you know, I don't know.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  Has nothing going on, it's empty. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, the Skythians from the European tradition is a useful moment to remind ourselves of the interconnected nature of the world.

• 1:14:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  Because the Chinese have interactions with them as well. Because like I said, they go all the way Mongolia and Siberia.

• 1:14:46Liv Albert?

  Well, and I was gonna say, yeah, because Mongolia, this is again, me not having a great grasp on on broader history. But like, that's the Huns, right? This is me going to move on. But like, is that?

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  Well, the thing is.

• 1:15:01Liv Albert?

  At least I'm honest. I'm honest. But yeah, so they, sorry, go ahead.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  No, no, so what it is.

• 1:15:06Liv Albert?

  Skythians to me, or like the same kind of culture.

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  So the problem we have is we're put the labels that are part of these groups are often the labels of their enemies.

• 1:15:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  So my advice would be, don't worry too much about the names. Think about these as the nomadic groups that exist in the lands of the steppes. So the great steppes of Kazakhstan, of Russia, of Mongolia. Yeah, absolutely. We include that. And, you know, we can get really stuck on, is it the Skythians? Are they Sarmatians now? Are they Saramatians? What's going on? Are these the Huns? Are they not the Huns? Those are just labels the enemy gives them.

• 1:15:43Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  And to kind of sum it up, if you go to Roman sources, when our Skythian culture that we identify as Skythian has long ended, like, there's no archaeological evidence they exist at all anymore. And our Roman sources are still calling them Skythians as well.

• 1:15:57Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  So it is just the label you give nomadic groups causing trouble in your eyes.

• 1:16:02Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Speaker 02

  And of course, then you get specific ones. So the Huns are particularly the problem, or, you know, whoever it is. So the Chinese have their versions of it as well. I remember reading a while, a long time ago, an argument about the migration of these groups being linked. So actually, what is going on in the east of with these nomadic groups with China and places like that, might be having a knock on effect to all the other sort of social groups within this expanse. So maybe migrations in the west. Are occurring because of this movement of people. So each one's pushing another one further west. So, you know, even when we're like, so of course we get the sources like, oh, this nomadic groups just turned up and is crossing our borders and we need to go to war with them.

• 1:16:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  Whereas actually, are they potentially being pushed out of their homeland?

• 1:16:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  So if you look at it from a global's perspective, it becomes a very different story.

• 1:16:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. Oh, I'm, I was so not expecting you to connect all the way to China too, but like now it makes so much sense and I'm just picturing a map of, you know, Europe and Asia and like, of course, like these people are all, I mean, it's all coming from that, that center region in the middle of the steps, as you, as you rightly said too, but it's, that's, yeah, of course, that makes so much sense. They're all dealing with these issues and like, they're all in the same region, they're moving, they're migrating, of course, something is likely or possibly, you know, pushing them that way or, or affecting something like, I mean, all of, of human history has been full of, of migration and, and refugees in various ways and I think.

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  Well, if there's one, if there's one thing humans do, it's move.

• 1:17:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  We move, we adapt.

• 1:17:47Liv Albert?

  Either forced or on purpose.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  Or on purpose. Uh, we move, we move, we adapt, we, um, uh, I mean, the reason why humans can live on every continent of this planet in some way is tantamount to the fact that we can adapt. Um, that is, if you're going to say the one good thing about the human, uh, creature is that ability to adapt, um, and in rather radical ways. So, um, you know, the fact that we can live in the Arctic Circle and live in and around the Sahara Desert is ridiculous. Like animals shouldn't really be able to do that, but the fact that we can is, uh, is indicative of what it is we do best, which is move, adapt and solve problems.

• 1:18:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Not to get dark, but I just hope our problems of climate change don't make it so that even we can't, let alone.

• 1:18:37Speaker 02

  It's all right, we'll move.

• 1:18:38Liv Albert?

  Everything else.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  Well, even the fricking ridiculousness, you know, the whole ridiculous, we'll just go to Mars nonsense is also indicative of this kind of thing. Well, humans move, so we'll move, we'll just move.

• 1:18:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, we don't have to actually stop causing all of this destruction. We'll just, we'll just move.

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so I guess this is kind of the point, is the reason why I wanted to write this book, is the reason why I wanted to be the central thread of this book. And for it to not, I wanted us to get away from history needs to be a narrative, I'm following a story and that story needs to make sense. So instead, I mean, don't get me wrong, each chapter generally follows some form of chronology, if nothing else.

• 1:19:19Liv Albert?

  That's good writing.

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  Just for a bit of sensibility. But it is that, right? Let's look at this, let's look at that, let's look at this movement. Now, let's look at this other place where movement's a real problem. Let's look at how cultures' perceptions of each other is influencing their interactions with each other. Let's also look time and again about how people who don't have to deal with any of this on a day-to-day basis suddenly have the strongest views.

• 1:19:44Liv Albert?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:19:47Speaker 02

  Well, I'll leave that one there.

• 1:19:50Liv Albert?

  No, but rightly so, rightly so. It's always the most privileged that are also somehow the most annoyed.

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I think, I think that's, I think that's probably a fair, a fair point to make.

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  One of the other things I wanted to do in this book was to not get, I didn't want to, like, there's a movement in the ancient historical community to kill classics. Or like, you know, classics should be brought down in some way. And this was never about any of that. This is not about the Athenians and the Roman stories are not interesting, fascinating. It's what, it's what got us into all this.

• 1:21:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Speaker 02

  So I don't think, I didn't want to dismantle any of that. So I very much saw this book not as a rewriting of their history, but as a broadening of it.

• 1:21:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  These people are interesting. These stories are interesting. Have you ever wondered what the Antonine Plague might have actually had as an impact in a poor village in Egypt during this period? So one of my chapters is on the village of Karanis, which is an amazing village in Egypt. And it's amazing because I kept saying, we've got no evidence, Liv. It's a slight lie. We haven't got the evidence.

• 1:21:58Liv Albert?

  You've found enough.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  I've found enough. We haven't got the evidence that generally historians like to have, which is the nice grand narratives, your Thucydides and your Tacitus and stuff like that.

• 1:22:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  But we do have a few sites that have a lot of evidence that's unique. And the Fayum Oasis, which is to the southwest of Giza, is one of those places. So we have lots of villages and towns in the region from the Roman period, the Greek period control over Egypt, but also pharaonic Egypt as well. And it's because of the conditions, the anaerobic conditions of the sand basically means we have organic material that survives. So we get amazing things like sort of clothing that still survives. But we also have things like wooden toys from children still survive. So you can see the sort of wheeled horses that they played with and it's just beautiful.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  It's, it's the most humanizing of evidence that we have. One of the other things we have is a lot of papiry, which normally would degrade.

• 1:23:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  But we have a lot of it. So, and a lot of it is found in the homes of people who have saved it. So it's like, basically they're described as like family archives, but they're more like, The documents in your life that you can't lose.

• 1:23:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  And you put in a safe box.

• 1:23:19Liv Albert?

  Your passport, et cetera.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  It's stuff like that.

• 1:23:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:22Speaker 02

  So we get, um, we get contracts, which gives us insight into day to day. We get, uh, business contracts, we get teaching contracts, we get, um, uh, education contracts, all this kind of stuff. We also get like receipts, so quite boring things, but it gives us insight into day to day.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  But we also get, um, letters people have written and have kept.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  We also get letters that people didn't kept and obviously threw out, but we get those as well.

• 1:23:51Liv Albert?

  But we love a trash pit.

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  We do love a trash pit.

• 1:23:54Liv Albert?

  Which I'm not one of you, but I know archaeologists love a trash pit.

• 1:23:58Speaker 02

  They do, because you never think through what you're throwing out.

• 1:24:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  So, you know, we, we, we have like personal letters from people. Which gives us amazing stories of everyday life. And Coranis is a, is a lovely site because among other things, it has, um, it was, it was built in the Ptolemaic period. That's when it was founded. But it's always had a community of military veterans living there. And when the Romans took over Egypt, they kept that going. So it became a military, uh, a military veteran town. So, um,

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  a sizable portion, uh, it's under 20%, but I think it's about 15% of the population are military families. So we get this amazing insight into people who have gone and served in the Roman army. Come home. What happens after you leave the Roman army? Places like Coranis tell us their stories.

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  It tells us things like, um, there were laws in Rome that if you were a veteran, you were exempt from certain punishments. You were exempt from certain taxes. So if you looked at the laws, you go, a veteran had these privileges and this is what they were given. And this is what they, you know, you could not do this to a veteran. If you then look at the letters in Coranis where they're complaining to their local magistrate going, I was just beaten as a punishment and I'm a veteran and I did this and I should not be being beaten. Or I'm being made to do this work and I should not be made to do that. You know, it's the reality behind the laws. Which is like, no, they shouldn't be, but yes, they are.

• 1:25:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I mean, that sounds like, I mean, I would say broadly legal issues in the West, but right now I'm just, you know, that sounds an awful lot like everything in America.

• 1:25:40Speaker 02

  Well, the example.

• 1:25:41Liv Albert?

  You're not technically allowed, but.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  But it's happening. Um, the example, the example I always give is in the UK. So cannabis is still a restricted drug in the UK. So even if you went back to when it was at its most strict ruling, and you kind of go, so that period to smoke cannabis or to use cannabis in any way like that was illegal. So no one did it.

• 1:26:03Liv Albert?

  Nobody.

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  Those are two very different statements.

• 1:26:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it used to be illegal in Canada too, and I could still walk down the street and pop into an open store and buy it.

• 1:26:15Speaker 02

  No, no one was doing it.

• 1:26:16Liv Albert?

  No, no.

• 1:26:18Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so it allows us to give different perspectives, different approaches to it. And like, the other thing I love about Coranis is it's a poor village. There's not a lot of money there, even the temples are quite modest.

• 1:26:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  So there's a few, you can go there. It's the most amazing site. You can go there. I was almost arrested there.

• 1:26:37Liv Albert?

  I want to go to Egypt.

• 1:26:39Liv Albert?

  Seems appropriate.

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a bit of a, clearly I didn't understand some things going on and I wasn't supposed to be there. I had my nine year old daughter with me at the time, so that was great.

• 1:26:48Liv Albert?

  Oh, no. You're like, this is really not my, my attempt. This is not what I was trying to do.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  So not how it was supposed to go. And the tour guys and stuff were really helpful, really pleasant, but the police were there. I should point out, I didn't get arrested in the end. But, you know, but to walk around the site. So the, the museum is tiny and it's amazing. And it's got the, it's got a couple of examples of the Fayum portraits.

• 1:27:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's all I think of when you said that word. That's what I know of.

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  The Fayum portraits are the painted portraits of mummies from the Greco-Roman period. So Coranis is one of the places these are found. So it's got, and it's got loads of lovely toys from kids and all that. It's a lovely little museum.

• 1:27:30Liv Albert?

  Well, in a real town.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:27:32Liv Albert?

  It's not, yeah, not a big town, not a glamorous town, just real people.

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  Predominantly what it is, is a village and you can walk around it.

• 1:27:41Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  So I've never, oddly enough, as an ancient historian, I've never been to Pompeii.

• 1:27:46Liv Albert?

  Really?

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  I've never been. Um, and I walked around Coranis and I was like, I imagine this is like a poor Pompeii.

• 1:27:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:54Speaker 02

  Because also the remains that exist are um over a story high.

• 1:27:58Liv Albert?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, in theory, you can walk into the houses, you know, there's not a lot there, don't get me wrong.

• 1:28:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:05Speaker 02

  Um, but you walk the streets and you can feel how compact it is. You can feel how narrow and overawed you are by the buildings around you.

• 1:28:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:13Speaker 02

  Um, and a lot of these houses were shared living accommodation. Um, and that people would share courtyards as like what you might think of as an English garden, basically.

• 1:28:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  Um, and they share that space, but it was also where they would work the, uh, where they would grind the mill, uh, to get flour and, you know, stuff like this. And they got, uh, the little temples. You can go into the little temples. They're still there. Um, I haven't got any roofs or anything. I'm not, I'm not talking.

• 1:28:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, you get that idea.

• 1:28:38Liv Albert?

  Those don't tend to survive. But if, I mean, if you even have a wall taller than you, that's, that's pretty impressive for an ancient site.

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  And I also think if you're gonna walk into a temple, if you get to walk upstairs, you've got to live that experience.

• 1:28:49Liv Albert?

  Absolutely.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  You get to go up the stairs and you get to walk up the walls and all this sort of stuff. Um, and it is amazing sight and you can see where like a mummified crocodile was found and all that kind of thing. Um, and it's just the most amazing and beautiful sight. But it is, it is clearly small. It is clearly poor. And when you think of the narratives we get, it is usually elite, rich Roman perspective. And what Coranis is, is poor Greca Roman. So it's, they're not even Roman. They would identify themselves probably more as Greek. But also they're living, uh, the community also has Egyptians.

• 1:29:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  And there is Egyptian cults in the town. And so there's this lovely blending of all these things going on at the same time. Um, and it is just amazing. And the stories are amazing and the evidence is amazing. We also have evidence that contradicts Roman preconceptions. So we have evidence of women working and running businesses. We have evidence of, uh, houses full of women with no men.

• 1:29:51Liv Albert?

  Ooh.

• 1:29:52Speaker 02

  Three generations of women living under one roof and things like that.

• 1:29:54Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:29:55Speaker 02

  Um, so, you know, I know in Roman law and things, you need a guardian, you need someone who's sort of writing on your behalf. But that doesn't mean you've got to live with them. And it doesn't mean they're governing everything you do.

• 1:30:05Liv Albert?

  I love that.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  Challenges those narratives.

• 1:30:08Liv Albert?

  Yes, and I think about that about Greece all the time because I know, I know there were all of these outliers. Like there were, there were women doing stuff. I just want to know about it, you know, but it is so rare that we get to know about it. And that is so cool.

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  This is it. So most of Greek evidence about women is usually, oh, I was, my, my wife would never do that because my wife's a proper wife.

• 1:30:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah, she's not like Clytemnestra.

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's not one of them. Because of course, there's a story and you've got to go, one of them. So they are doing it.

• 1:30:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  You know, that's the kind of idea. So when you come to somewhere like Egypt, you actually find, you get away from that bullshit and you actually get, this is them doing it. And there's no embarrassment. There's no, oh, you know, not my wife. There's none of that nonsense. This is life. This is real. And it is fantastic. And it meant that I got to tell stories of people whose stories, especially to the public.

• 1:31:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  Don't get to be told very much.

• 1:31:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's the truth for so much. I mean, and that, that's kind of what I think about when I, you know, when I've spoken earlier and said, things like we mostly talk about Greece and Rome and the ancient Med, you know, and that, that's because I'm, I try to remember to come at this at least because I think I'm so deep now that I, even though I'm not an academic, I, I think like one, for good and bad. Um, but I try to remember that for, for the listeners broadly, because I think, yeah, like this is what I want to bring to the not academic world. Is, is any and everything that I can find about like the everyday people, the stuff that, that you don't get taught in school about ancient Greece.

• 1:31:43Liv Albert?

  You know, the real, just like the visceral, the dark, the nasty, but also the exciting and wonderful and just like real, like real people. It's so cool.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  Well, and also what you get to do is you get to find out what is missing from the evidence and what have years of scholarship ignored. And so one of the things that comes up in a lot of these sites is, uh, we know that there was a, uh, older cultures there or newer cultures there. But the original archaeology was only interested in anything that had Greek or Latin on it.

• 1:32:19Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  Um, and that sounds like an oversimplification, but it's not. Um, we have evidence of, uh, original, um, excavations, finding something that had Greek and Latin on it. Writing down, copying the Greek and Latin and destroying the object.

• 1:32:37Speaker 02

  Because the object wasn't important. What was important was the written evidence. So these kind of innate, when we talk about biases, I think we can oversimplify, but this is one of those examples of the innate bias of Greek and Roman is what matters. And the language is more important than the object.

• 1:32:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  Um, we don't now have that as archaeology evolved, as ancient history and classics has evolved. We don't have that now. Actually, we're very much like the object is more important than what's written on it. To contextualize it.

• 1:33:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:03Speaker 02

  Um, you know, it's a bit like the, you know, the thousands and thousands of Greek vases we have of paintings.

• 1:33:08Liv Albert?

  Um, yeah.

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  Your first question should be, what does that vase do? What is its job?

• 1:33:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:14Speaker 02

  To then understand why this picture is on it. So the object matters more in many ways than what you see.

• 1:33:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:22Speaker 02

  So, uh, yeah, so we, we kind of move through those biases. Um, but it doesn't mean the evidence isn't there. It also doesn't mean the stories aren't there. They're just waiting to be found. I mean, the final one. Is actually how I end the book as well. Is I end the book in ancient Ethiopia.

• 1:33:37Liv Albert?

  Oh.

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Cause it really. I wanted the symmetry. I start the book in, in northeast Africa and I wanted to end it in northeast Africa. Um, so, uh, well, East Africa, northeast Africa, um, I wanted that kind of symmetry of bringing us back to near where we began.

• 1:33:53Liv Albert?

  Um.

• 1:33:54Speaker 02

  In our minds at least. Um, and the kingdom of Aksim, which is in Ethiopia, was considered by at least one author that we have. Um, was considered one of the four most powerful empires in the ancient world. Next to, um, Rome, Greece and Persia. Later Persia, not the Persia of Greece, uh, the Greek wars and all that. Um, so Aksim holds this position. It turns up around about the first century CE. Probably earlier, but our evidence, first century CE, and it turns up immediately as being an important player in that trade route I was talking about.

• 1:34:31Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  A trade route that goes from Aksim all the way down to Tanzania. So the east coast of Africa.

• 1:34:37Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:38Speaker 02

  Um, and Aksim has this most amazing story where, um, it grows, um, in importance because of its root, its role in the trade route.

• 1:34:48Speaker 02

  It then interacts and tries to, it tries to build its own empire in Arabia, in the Arabian Peninsula. Uh, it doesn't go particularly well. But it, it becomes wealthier and wealthier, more influential, more influential, more powerful, more powerful. So everyone's talking about it, everyone's aware of it. And by about the fourth century, it becomes a Christian kingdom. But interestingly, its kings become Christian and then they've got to try and convince the people. Whereas if you know anything about the history of Christianity, Christianity began as a popular religion. It came from the people themselves. And then it was the, uh, the elites that were the last to kind of get on board. So in Aksim, it's the other way around.

• 1:35:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:29Speaker 02

  But also they are removed from all of the ecclesiastical arguments and debates of Europe.

• 1:35:35Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 1:35:36Speaker 02

  So the Ethiopian church becomes this very different orthodox, um, Christian tradition.

• 1:35:42Liv Albert?

  Oh, wow. Yeah, because it's completely separate.

• 1:35:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:44Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:35:45Speaker 02

  So the Ethiopian church has the claim of being one of, if not the oldest, um, continuous Christian tradition in the world.

• 1:35:54Liv Albert?

  I bet Americans love hearing that story. That was a generalization. I bet evangelical Americans love hearing that.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  Um, but there's, they, as a result, they have their own stories. So one of the stories is the Queen Ashiba.

• 1:36:06Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  Being from Aksim and being a queen of the Aksimites. Um, and having a child with, uh, I think it's Solomon, uh, King Solomon. And then her son being given as a gift, the Ark of the Covenant.

• 1:36:18Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  Bringing it to Ethiopia. So there is a, a strong Ethiopian Christian tradition that the Ark of the Covenant is in a church in Ethiopia.

• 1:36:27Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:36:27Speaker 02

  And you can visit that church, but you cannot see it. Um, so obviously there's traditions of the, you know, obviously the sanctity of, of, of the object. But, um, you know, so it's just amazing that there are these traditions that are out there and we're not talking about. Other reason I wanted to end with Aksim. Is, I think I mentioned it earlier, but Aksim continues and thrives during the fourth and fifth century, which is when Rome is falling apart.

• 1:36:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  So the classical world that we think of as ancient history is ending.

• 1:36:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  And we're entering what used to be called the Dark Ages. And Aksim is having the time of his life.

• 1:37:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  It's in a golden age. It's in its own classical period. And I just love that juxtaposition.

• 1:37:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:13Speaker 02

  And so it then becomes involved in the story of the rise of Islam because of its interactions with Arabia.

• 1:37:22Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  I mean, there's one story, it's in the Quran, where the Aksimites attempt to sack, well, basically attempt to take Mecca before the time of the prophet.

• 1:37:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:33Speaker 02

  It's actually the year of the prophet's birth. It's the year of the elephant, as it's called. And they attack Mecca and there is an elephant, a great war elephant that is supposed to rip down the walls of Mecca and it refuses and it bows down in the direction of Mecca. So you get all these miracle narratives within the Quran about it and it's called the year of the elephant. And it's remembered in that tradition. And then later on, when the followers of Muhammad, the prophet, are exiled from Mecca,

• 1:38:03Speaker 02

  most of them take sanctuary in the city of Aksim. The Christian city of Aksim brings them in and gives them sanctuary and says, don't worry, we'll look after you. And then the people who were trying to get the exiles and basically punish them and kill them, said fundamentally, hand them over and we'll give you whatever you want. But the king, the Christian king of Aksim went, no, they're under our protection. We will look after them.

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  And they stay there and they stay there for a long time, like over a decade. And then finally, when Mecca is taken by the sort of Muslim followers, the exiles are returned or allowed to return or do return.

• 1:38:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:41Speaker 02

  And they go back and there is a late Muslim tradition that the prophet said in one of his sort of edicts. It's not in the Quran. But he says, um, basically, um, you cannot declare or wage jihad on the Achaemenids. So do not touch Ethiopia is basically his rule. Spread whatever you want, but we owe them a debt. Do not touch Ethiopia. Interestingly, we have medieval Islamic scholars questioning whether or not Muhammad actually said this, whether or not this is even true. Um, but what's more interesting is during the expansion of Islam and the Islamic, um, uh, the various caliphates and things like that, not one of them attacked Ethiopia.

• 1:39:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:27Speaker 02

  And attempts to capture it. And actually, it's not until the Ottoman Empire that Ethiopia is taken.

• 1:39:32Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, even if it wasn't necessarily true, uh, the Islamic tradition was strong enough to at least kind of go, we'll leave it alone.

• 1:39:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and I think that, I mean, not to, you know, pick and choose, but that's basically most religion, you know? It's like, it, it, maybe it didn't actually happen, but the like impact of it as a story is enough to, you know, influence people in that way. And I say that like lovingly, not like as a criticism, but just in that way that, yeah, that like, that's how religion kind of like works. And it's so interesting to know that, yeah, like whether or not he said it, like, but, you know, the, the importance of Ethiopia was solidified there. That's so cool.

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  It's, it's amazing. And the, the Achaemid Kingdom is an amazing kingdom and, um, the researchology there, there's an amazing, um, site of, uh, sort of a burial ground of what we believe to be a royal burial ground with these large stele, um, sort of monuments that look, uh, like tower houses and it's amazing. It's an amazing place. It's an amazing history and it's one that's not talked about. And a lot of the sites I write about, uh, there's not a lot of evidence. So it takes a very particular way of asking questions to kind of get to that evidence. But the Achaemid Kingdom, there absolutely is. And it's in the narratives that we're used to telling. We just don't include them.

• 1:40:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I wonder why.

• 1:40:53Speaker 02

  It's a mystery.

• 1:40:54Liv Albert?

  Oh, hmm, hmm. African history being ignored in favor of pretending like the whole continent is just not doing anything?

• 1:41:04Speaker 02

  Well, it also brings into uh the lens of um something I get a lot online is this idea of sub Sahara in Africa being a thing. Um but also it's the idea that civilization never went further south than the northern reach of the Sahara Desert. This is something, it's a claim I hear a lot. No one invented writing south of the Sahara. No one did it. It's all based on racist ideology. Of course it is.

• 1:41:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:28Speaker 02

  Aixom is the counterpoint, if you wish to engage with this. Like, it's stupid, it's ridiculous, it's even not true in later periods, but Aixom, it's not even true in the ancient period. Like, what are you talking about?

• 1:41:40Liv Albert?

  Yeah, no, it's also just like so on its face racist to suggest that.

• 1:41:45Speaker 02

  Well, look up uh Giezes is the language of um out of Aixom. Um and you can see the amazing illuminated manuscripts of their bibles. They date from this sort of period. And they're beautiful and they're amazing. And they're uniquely uh Axiomite in their design. Uh they don't really look like anything else. They're just so amazing and beautiful. Um and they're there and they're written in their own script, in their own alphabet. Um and it's, it is definitely one of those things where you're like, how are they not part of this narrative? And one of the reasons, there are many reasons, you've touched on a few of them. Um but one of the other reasons is because they disrupt the narrative we already tell.

• 1:42:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:28Speaker 02

  Because if you include the Axiomites, you've got to include Islam in the conversation about the ancient world. But the Islamist medieval world.

• 1:42:37Liv Albert?

  Yeah, you have to rewrite the narrative on, on like the entire time period when Europe was, you know, quote unquote, Dark Ages. And, and down there in Africa, they're kicking ass and, you know, have, yeah, like you said, having their own classical period. Like, yeah.

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  The beauty of it, the beauty of it, coming back to, oh, we've come full circle, Liv. Coming back to about the global nature of the world and the interconnected nature of all. So during this um supposed chaotic early medieval period where everyone forgets to read all of a sudden and no one can write anything apparently and all that kind of stuff. Um we have evidence from um graves in England of, for want of a better word, let's call them Anglo-Saxon. Graves, just to kind of give you an idea of what we're normally talking about in this period. And we have ivory objects that have come from the Aksomite Kingdom.

• 1:43:33Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:43:34Speaker 02

  So whilst I, you know, whilst we're sort of rather glibly talking about, oh, you know, Europe's collapsed and Ethiopia is doing great things, they're still connected.

• 1:43:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  They're still communicating, they're still trading, they're still interacting. And this is it. Nothing is ever that simple. No single narrative can ever do justice to the historical world.

• 1:43:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Speaker 02

  So often, the rewriting of history is not actually what's going on. What usually happens is a historian, an academic, a history writer, someone like yourself, a podcaster, has asked a different question.

• 1:44:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:07Speaker 02

  And so they're looking at it from a different, they are producing a narrative. So my book is full of lots of micro narratives.

• 1:44:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:12Speaker 02

  I am still producing narratives, but it is a way of just looking at things from a different perspective. And of course, the truth is, you've got to bring all these things together.

• 1:44:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:22Speaker 02

  Like a really ridiculous jigsaw puzzle.

• 1:44:25Liv Albert?

  Well, and ultimately too, one of the things that I think we're not really taught nearly enough is that all of history is subjective. Like, literally everything that we know or don't know is based on all of the people who came before and what they chose or what they learned from. Like, obviously, we can elaborate, we can learn new things from archaeology and other like material things, and we can learn new things now. But like, it is still being interpreted by a human being.

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:44:55Liv Albert?

  Who is biased. And therefore, like, it just inherently, but we, we so often conceptualize history as this like, solid state thing that happened.

• 1:45:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:45:06Liv Albert?

  Exactly like this. When like, nothing about that is true. It's all about how we interpret it, who's interpreting it, what their methods are, what their motivations are, what their, you know, there's, there's so many things that go into it. And it's like, that doesn't make anything about history less valid or less interesting. I think it's, I personally think it's way more interesting to look back at history and wonder or question and just consider the fact that, you know, this isn't everything that happened.

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  There's something that, it comes, it comes off my book, I'm impressed my editor, let me leave it in. But it's the Greek word.

• 1:45:46Speaker 02

  Is Historia.

• 1:45:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  Which is the word for inquiry.

• 1:45:50Liv Albert?

  Inquire, to seek knowledge.

• 1:45:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, or for want of a better word, to ask questions of things.

• 1:45:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  So when you look at the original historian, as we like to think of him, Herodotus, people think it's a narrative of the Persian Wars, and it's not. The narrative of the Persian Wars takes up less than half the book. What he's interested in is basically why it happened, why the Greeks won, and who was involved and what on earth's that about? So it's really an ethnography.

• 1:46:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  It's a study of culture, and it's a fascinating study of culture and a study of traditions. And so that's history. History is that inquiry. We are so used to the Thucydides approach, who interestingly doesn't call his work a history.

• 1:46:32Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:46:32Speaker 02

  He doesn't use the word Historia.

• 1:46:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:35Speaker 02

  But his approach is very much right. Let's get down the narrative, what actually happened, what was going on? Now, don't get me wrong, he is also a brilliant analyst of source material. And I'm not having a go at him at all in any way. He's brilliant at what he did. But his tradition has become the dominant tradition in history. Whereas my book is the Herodotus tradition of history, which is like, let's ask some questions. Let's see what goes on. Let's see what happens and see what that does to our understanding.

• 1:47:05Liv Albert?

  Oh, I love that. That's my, that's what I want out of history because I, I just ask these questions anyway. So I want, I want to know, or I want to hear that people are researching it or, you know, all of these things because, I mean, I think now more than ever, it's important to really questioning what we, how we understand history, like how we conceptualize it and just so many different moving pieces. So I'm thrilled that's kind of how you went about it. And this has been so much fun and I learned everything.

• 1:47:35Speaker 02

  It's, I must admit, it is, it must be very difficult to try and interview me about this book because it does cover about 6,000 years of history, three continents.

• 1:47:42Liv Albert?

  Oh, you've done great on it. I've barely had to ask anything. You're just telling me everything. It's perfect.

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  But like I said, it's, it's based on case studies. It starts in the sort of pre, pre-modern world. So pharaonic Egypt is one of the more dominant cultures that's around at this point. So it's sort of the periphery of that, if you want to think of it like that. It then moves into the Greek world and who, what's going on at the periphery of that. So I mentioned Ukraine. There's also Massalia, which is Marseille in France. Um, one of my favorites is um, Naukatus in Egypt, where the Greeks are the dirty foreigners. So that's an interesting uh, flip.

• 1:48:19Liv Albert?

  Damn right.

• 1:48:20Speaker 02

  We then move into the Roman world. Uh, so I mentioned Coranus, we mentioned um, uh, Volubilis in Morocco, and also Hadrian's Wall, because I live in England.

• 1:48:28Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:48:28Speaker 02

  It's up the road.

• 1:48:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:30Speaker 02

  It's amazing. Um, but also the last section, which is where we get into Pakistan, we get into Ethiopia, we get into China, uh, is is literally outside the classical world.

• 1:48:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  And it's what's going on outside of it. What's going on at the edges in their worlds?

• 1:48:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:46Speaker 02

  Um, and seeing what's happening there. And um, we see commonality, we see difference, we see inversions of what we're told by our evidence, what we're told by our Greek and Roman writers. Um, but we do see a lot of commonality. And I think I kind of end the book with a, dare I say, a message of hope. Um, but it is that kind of idea. I think history has a lot more potential to unite us than it does to divide us. Um, as long as we're asking particular questions, and as long as we actually let the narrative speak for themselves as best we can.

• 1:49:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I I love that. I love that. And that's, I mean, what I want to, I don't know. It's, I I feel like I want to be contributing to this and am with this show. So that was very poorly said on my part, but that's it. You know, that's just nice.

• 1:49:35Speaker 02

  It is. Thank you.

• 1:49:36Liv Albert?

  And I, history is great, and I love it, and I just want to question all the, you know, I just want to know everything. But I also, I love that, you know, there is this way of of, I mean, looking beyond, I think, or or, and I'm just so glad, I'm always so thrilled that there are so many people doing this type of history that is like, you know, asking these questions, but also I think like, being aware of bias, just people who are writing with the knowledge that they have bias, because literally everyone does. And I think it's just so important to have more and more of that of like, Examining this history, questioning history with this understanding that like you are still doing it through your lived existence and like that impacts things and that doesn't make it less valid. It just is a thing that we need to consider, you know, in, in everything.

• 1:50:22Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, um, I mean, I was literally writing this book during, uh, I mean, uh, the, you invented the escalation of violence in the Ukraine, uh, in Ukraine occurred. Um, obviously the escalation in violence in Gaza and Palestine occurred. Um, and also COVID.

• 1:50:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:50:43Speaker 02

  So you've got all these things going on and that's influencing everything you're doing. So you're absolutely right. And of course in Britain, we're in the aftermath of Brexit as well. So, you know, you've got to be aware of that. You've got to, and I also understand that's probably where half this book came from.

• 1:50:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And that's, that's great, you know, and it's just like about recognizing that I think is so, it's important, but it's also interesting. Like, I think that that's like, yeah, and it's an interesting like way to be going about, talking about this. Like, everything about my show is interest and is influenced by like, what the hell is going on?

• 1:51:12Speaker 02

  I thought you were about to say everything about my show was interesting and I was gonna agree.

• 1:51:16Liv Albert?

  Well, you know, I like to say that's true too, but sometimes I say wacky stuff. Who's to say? But no, yeah, it's just, you know, we are humans and, and humans are influenced by everything around us. And yeah, I just think there's this tendency in the past at least to pretend that everything that the old white male historian said was just the way it was. That's just how it was. That's, that's it.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It's all right. We can undo that.

• 1:51:40Liv Albert?

  To upturning that.

• 1:51:40Speaker 02

  We can undo that.

• 1:51:41Liv Albert?

  Exactly. Yeah. Now, this has been so much fun and I'm going to let you go. Um, is there anything you want to share with my listeners about reading more from you, following anywhere? I don't know what still exists, but.

• 1:51:52Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. I mean, um, I'm on Blue Sky, um, uh, under, um, oh, what's my handle?

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  Reese history, I think it is. I also run a Substack newsletter, which has a lot of these sort of random things that I find in my research that I just find interesting, some of which I've actually mentioned today. So like the Atlas statues in India and things like that is all stuff I like. So that's our ancient world is that Substack. So I'm on there. But ultimately, yeah, so this book has just come out. So the Far Edge of the Known World has just come out in North America as of the beginning of October. And I also run the Bad Ancient website. So if anyone has any dodgy ancient history claims they want to throw at me, you know, we shall do that.

• 1:52:45Speaker 02

  I've got a few myth ones that I might end up throwing at you, Liv.

• 1:52:47Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God, I would be so down. I would be so down because I'm kind of crazy. No, please, yeah, let's talk. That sounds so great. Thank you so much for doing this. It was a damn delight and almost two hours long, which means it was really good.

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  No, brilliant. Well, thanks so much for having me on. I've really enjoyed this and I've just been, it's nice to just have a conversation about a book.

• 1:53:12Liv Albert?

  I'm so glad because that's what I like. And yeah, that's the only way I can honestly talk to people in this show. Sometimes people want interview questions and I'm like, that's not going to work for us. Either we're going to have like a casual conversation or it's not happening at all.

• 1:53:25Speaker 02

  Can I let the ADHD go wild?

• 1:53:27Liv Albert?

  Exactly. Exactly.

• 1:53:45Liv Albert?

  Thank you all so much for listening as always. And a huge thank you to Owen for coming on the show again and chatting about this book because, I mean, I'll say it for the 10,000th time, but one of the most important things we can do in the study of ancient history, particularly right now, is look at topics like this. Look at the people who were part of or victims of the empire that were so far removed from the empirical center and like, what does that look like? And How do those people live differently? How are they just, you know, almost a completely different subset of this otherwise enormously

• 1:54:29Liv Albert?

  famous empire? Anyway, absolutely fascinating. Owen was so interesting and I'm so thrilled to have this book. You can find a link in the episode's description as well as a link to Owen's site, Bad Ancient, and various other things. Enormous thanks to all of you. Again, now I'm just rambling because I'm recording this at like eight in the morning and then scramble to edit it so it's not out too late. But here we are. Let's talk about myths, baby. It's written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Panglish is the Hermes to my Olympians, the wonderful producer. Select music is by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, a thing that exists slowly

• 1:55:13Liv Albert?

  and which we are still working on. I am the author of an upcoming children's edition of The Odyssey that is slowly devouring my soul in the best possible way because it's The Odyssey. Stay tuned for more on that. I am Liv and I love this shit.

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