Templar's Tunnels, HMS Victory and Troy: History's Best Historical Sites with Dan Jones

The two great Dans of history - Dan Snow and Dan Jones - team up to explore the stories behind some of the world's best historical sites. Dan Jones explains the mysteries of the Templars' Tunnels in the Old City of Acre and Dan Snow tells the story of Nelson's last moments on HMS Victory (now in Portsmouth's historic dockyard). They explore the myths and reality of Harselik - believed to be the site of Troy- as well as Easter Island and Runnymede where the Magna Carta was signed. If you want more of Dan Jones, you can check out his podcast This Is History. They are giving History Hit listeners 90% off their first month on Patreon. Consider it This Is History’s royal court with bonus episodes, BTS, ALL ad-free. Claim your place just in time for their new season, The Tudors, launching on September 22. Use code: DAN at checkout! https://www.patreon.com/c/Thisishistory/membership Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcast Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Dan Snow's History Hit is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 1:13Speaker 00

  Hey, folks. Welcome down to those History Hit. Now, if you're in the northern hemisphere like me, well, it's, guys, it's high summer. Like me, maybe your routine's a little different. The kids are off school, the days are long, we're spending long evenings sitting out, beer in hand in the pub garden. So in that spirit, I'm going to bring you something a little different on the podcast today, something different to our usual offering, some bit loose on these hazy summer days. I'm not saddling in a pub garden, but the vibe is the same. I'm hanging out with my great friend, my fellow history obsessive, history's other great, Dan, Dan Jones. Dan, how are you doing?

• 1:47Speaker 03

  I'm good. I'm good. Thank you for talking to me.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Well, this is, um, this is nice because the last time we were together, we're in a nice cosy studio, but last time we were together, we were freezing our little najas off in Runnymede, the place where Magna Carta was, to which the seals were affixed to Magna Carta.

• 2:01Speaker 03

  It was bone shatteringly cold that day, so much nicer to live.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  It was obviously a high summer day, shivering. And thank you because you've invited me to your lovely podcast studio. You're recording This is History, it's your podcast. Thanks for having me in. We're going to talk about things we get asked about quite a lot, so I thought we could just do it together.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  Well, thank you very much for coming into the studio. And one of the things I've been wanting to talk to you about for ages is your favourite places that doing history has taken you around the world, because one of the great pleasures of this job, as I see it anyway, is the opportunity to travel, to explore, to go places for research. So I thought that we could have a little discussion of our favourite places. And we're going to put this out on the This is History feed and on our YouTube channel.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  Yes, you can listen to it here. You can also watch on This is History YouTube.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  You certainly can.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  Go and check it out.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Dan, welcome to the show.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  Thanks, man. Thanks for having me.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  I want to talk today about the greatest places that we've visited in the course of doing history, because I think one of the great privileges and pleasures of this job is it kind of takes you around the world. And I don't know, is there a continent you haven't been to?

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Uh, there is not. I have the, I'm involved in, I've been to Antarctica, although I've stood on the ice off Antarctica, which I think counts. I spent, I spent three weeks trapped in a vessel in the ice of the Weddell Sea, and some absolute knobs said to me, you haven't been to Antarctica, have you? But it's like, if you're in Lyme Bay, if you're in Lyme, if you're in the, in the Bristol Channel for, for three weeks, I think you're allowed to say you've been to Europe, aren't you?

• 3:36Speaker 03

  I think you are.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  I think so.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  I think you've been to Antarctica. You've certainly been closer than I have. But what I want to do is, is talk about some of the, the most memorable historical places that you've been in the past. And I'll, I'll throw in some of my own. And I thought maybe we could start with the last place I think I saw you, which was in Runnymede. Because we were down there, it was quite a cold day, as I recall. But we had rather a nice time talking about Magna Carta there. It was 2015 was the big anniversary for Magna Carta, so that was the 800th anniversary. And I live about three miles away from Runnymede, so it's.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  So despite all your travels, actually, you came home.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  I'd say home.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  So you, you've been down there before.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  I've been down there loads, but it was brilliant going with you. And it's a very particular, it's kind of particular, it's quite fun. Sometimes you go to historic sites, don't you, where the geology or the farming or there's been urbanisation and there's almost no reason for being there. When you're at Runnymede, it all makes sense. It's like a water meadow, the Thames is there, you can see it, and you can imagine it burst. And you to explain to me that it was flat, it was, but it's, but it's, it's damp, it's a safe place for meetings, it's a place where people go to parley. And actually, the geography is quite important there, isn't it?

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Well, in 1215, and listeners to our, our regular fixture, Dynasty's Die For, will cast their minds back and remember when we were talking about King John. But in this time, there was, you know, you had the barons very angry with John for all of his, his manipulations of the law and all of his oppressions and all of his tyrannies, camped in stains. And then you had the king at Windsor. And it was this, this sort of meeting point in the middle, where because of the geography of the river, it was almost impossible to launch an ambush.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  Whenever we think about historical places, I think it's always worth trying to go. Do you agree?

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  If you're trying to narrate a story about a place and, and you haven't, you don't know what the physicality of that spot is like, you can often miss the most obvious things about the story.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  There are two kinds of historians in the world. And there are those who go away on holiday and lie on a sun lounger and chill out. And then there are those who immediately scale the cliff behind hotels, go and look at the castle or the gun battery.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  Do I need to ask which one?

• 5:45Speaker 00

  No. Well, and what I like about you, Dan Jones, is you are absolutely in that category because I think it does matter. And when you're writing wonderful narrative history like you do, or, or talking on, on the pod so eloquently, it's nice to be able to say now, the problem with that slope is, you know, the gravel's very loose. And it, which is true.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  It is true. And it's like the First World War, you walk across the Somme after, after it rains, which is most days, and within five minutes, you've got a plate of clay, the size of a plate, a large plate thing, a salmon serving dish on each foot. Because that is the nature of the soil. So you're like, and that is something, actually, you can read about it, you know, well, mud on feet, what am I complaining about? You know, there's certain things that in the comfort of your own library, it's very hard to internalise. And so I have enjoyed enormously going to places and, and getting that sense of things. And, and as a view through the writing, I can tell you, always trying, whenever I talk to you, you're always going somewhere to do some research. And I do think if you're privileged enough to do that, it is absolutely essential.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  It really helps to, the geography, the geology, the weather can really help to sort of just fill, to fill the picture out when you're telling the story. And I guess the interesting about Runnymede, I like, last thing I'd say about my own history, is I do think that 2015, we marked, so it did feel important, because at the moment, we are now wrestling game with this. And actually, it's the oldest question in human existence, which is, how do we, normal people exert any control over, over those who, who rule over us?

• 7:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  And that question seems quite lively again now today, right? How do we go, hang on, mate, person who run, who rules over us for reasons that are sometimes slightly obscure, you can't, we need you not to do certain things, we need you to. And I think that feels to me, when I was, when I was at school and growing up, I thought those questions were settled. Turns out that's not settled anymore. And if you're in China, if you're in Russia, if you're in other countries, those are really very live questions like that. And, and Magna Carta is, that's essentially what it's about, right?

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Well, it's, it's interesting that we're sitting here marveling somewhat, I mean, and not just sitting here in this room at this moment, but sitting here in society, marveling at the idea that, you know, these, these individual leaders can be out there making decisions and then just kind of doing stuff. Because for the, the way I see it, for the most part in human history, that's been normality. And, and the, the questions about how do you restrain, you know, a leader who really goes a bit off, off grid, as it were, off, off the rails. But we being of the same generation have grown up through probably the most unusual time in human history.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Precious.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  In which the, we probably grew up in the high point of the rule of law, of international norms.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Not everywhere, but by and large, being like, okay, we really do have restraining mechanisms on, on individuated power. And all of that seems to be regressing towards the historical mean.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  It does seem like that, yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Runnymede's close to home for me.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I grew up nearby and I, but I understand why you've chosen it.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  But what about you?

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Well, I've, weirdly, I've also chosen one that's closer. I don't know, it's a bit embarrassing. We both came promising to tell stories of the far off and exotic, but I guess this is a landscape and a seascape that's very close to me. The sole is the strip of water, for those who don't know, between, on the south coast of England, between the Isle of Wight, which is a sort of a diamond shaped island off the south coast. You've got Portsmouth and Haling Island in, in the east, and it runs all the way through to sort of Hurst Spits, amazing geology. World's oldest boat building site has been found there, a meansolithic boat building site, Sostournage Boat Building Site, you've got hollowed out canoe, evidence hollowed out canoe, world's oldest. You've got, and then, and then you've just got a very dynamically, lots of Romans, Vespasian

• 9:25Speaker 00

  as a young legionary commander invades, past Parth, the Claudian invasion of the, of the 40s AD, he invades and captures the Isle of Wight, we know that. And then you get lots of Viking, Anglo-Saxon Viking activity. You've got the big cities of Southampton, where Henry V leads to, leads to.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Where do you stand on Southampton? There's a great, there's great rivalry for international viewers and listeners between Portsmouth and the nearby town of Southampton.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  Well, I live close to Southampton, so I'm afraid I'm a, I'm a Southampton guy.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  What's the name in Portsmouth for Southampton?

• 9:55Speaker 00

  The wonderful saints.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  I thought it was the scum.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  The scum, yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  I may have got that wrong.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  It's the, no, there is a, there's antipathy between the two cities, as only neighbours can have. So Portsmouth, great naval base. Henry VIII does a lot of work there and then subsequently that's the site of H M S Victory now. And it's a wonderful, it's also Britain's, still Britain's premier naval base. And Southampton's more a commercial trading city, very interesting position on the outs of, where two rivers converge. And it's got this beautiful deep water harbour, Titanic leaves from Southampton, Henry V leaves Southampton. D-Day, roughly speaking, a huge number of the largest fleet, of ships from the largest fleet ever assembled in human history in June 1944. They leave from Southampton, Portsmouth, other ports from there. And the Solent, which this stretch of water was so busy, it was said you could walk from one side to the other without getting your feet wet.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, I mean, I cannot tell you.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  So in a way, it's the sort of the epicentre of naval history, really, in.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  I think so. I like to think of it as part of all history. No, but yes, naval history in particular, maritime history, a lot of important, very important maritime history.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  Which is kind of your, your like nerd specialty, right?

• 10:59Speaker 00

  No specialty.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  You're a naval guide.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Maritime guide, yeah, absolutely, yeah, for sure. Until, you know, 1830, when, when George Stephenson got that little old train running down between Liverpool and Manchester. If you had a heavy object and you wanted to take it somewhere, you did it by, on the water, you did it by boat. And, and you see this, you know, at the very dawn of our species, you see it with Stonehenge, whatever you. And, and it's, and it's so that the sea, if you looked out to the sea now, it looks empty. And one enormous container ship going, come past, carrying the entire gross national products of a small country every week. But the rest of the sea looks quite empty and the sea would have looked busy until the modern ones. So there would have been fishing boats, there would have been coastal traders, there would have been passenger ships, there would have been little pirates, whatever it might have been. The seas around Britain, the seas around France, the seas of the Mediterranean would have just been crowded with sails.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  That's where humans did their business, it's where they traded, travelled, moved. And that's something I think it is difficult for us to get our heads around now.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Also, in a, in a way, that sounds a bit like a, a kind of unseen revolution in human history. But I was, I talk a lot about the pain revolution at the beginning of the 20th century when pain effectively became somewhat optional with the, with the, the availability of, of anaesthetic. And, and its introduction into everyday life as well as the medical system. As being, you know, one of these massive revolutions that we kind of forget about because we live on the other side of it. So I wonder if we've lived through a similar one in terms of transport where it's so hard for us to, to imagine the world when, when seaborne power was and, and was everything.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  And you've written about this so beautifully, but you know, now if you look, show us on a map, the blue bit is, oh God, sea sites are barren. That, and, and on, on the map, there's, there's highway, the highway map, the motorway map here in the UK. It's the, those are the big arteries of travel, you get from London to Manchester really easily. As, as you well know, until very recently, the links between Brittany, Cornwall, Normandy, southern England, Norfolk and the Low Countries, absolutely vastly more important than the links between Norfolk and Chester.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Right? So, so you would, in terms of language, marriage, whatever, power structures. So, and trans maritime empires would have, would have been very, very common. And, and, and so that, that is just something, that, that has been a revolution. We see the water as a barrier, the water traditionally was a bridge, a bridge to places. And so that has been, that is a challenge of telling that story a little bit, is that people just go, you what? I mean, yeah, that's just, it's madness, doesn't make sense, I don't want to travel across water, it's pain.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  I'll feel ill.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel ill. Dan, where's one of the best places, a little further away, where's one of the best places you've been?

• 13:26Speaker 03

  Well, so one of my favourite places that I've visited is probably the Templar tunnels in Acha. This is northern Israel, just near the Lebanese border. And you can, these dates to the era of the Crusades, so it's from high Middle Ages. But they're tunnels that run under the city from what was probably the Templar base through to the port. It's somewhere that I had a really interesting time visiting and don't think I, I could have really got into the history of, of this, this particular bit of history without seeing. I found that this took me into both the real history and the sort of the mythology of, of a subject, which in, in this case is the Knights Templar.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  You know, I, gosh, nearly 10 years ago, I wrote a book about the Templars and you can't really go into Templar history hoping that you won't encounter Templar mythology as well. And there's, there's a really interesting place in the city of Acha in Israel where you can, you sort of get a feel for both. Acha was once the capital of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. After the first crusade, Jerusalem was in Christian hands, but after Saladin, Jerusalem was lost and so Acha became.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  It becomes a toehold, doesn't it?

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Acha became the, the capital and eventually the last city standing of the Crusader Kingdom. And the Templars set up one of the great headquarters in this, in this town and had tunnels that seemed to have run from the Templar headquarters to the port. So they could, possibly so they could evade taxes, but probably just to give ease of access. And you can still go down into these tunnels today. I think, off the top of my head, they're a couple of hundred metres long. And in themselves, they aren't particularly spectacular, they're tunnels. But they take you into this world firstly of the Templars in their real crusading historical setting, you know, in this, this time when

• 15:20Speaker 03

  that there was this coming together of religion and of, of military conquest and of trade and of all of these things sort of piled together in this, in this really quite small bit of the Mediterranean, of the eastern Mediterranean. But just, but just by virtue of saying Templar tunnels, it implies this sort of deep, what the hell are they up to?

• 15:40Speaker 00

  You've got me there.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  And that I found so fascinating when I was doing a lot of work on the Templars and still do now. Because it's an organisation where people almost, I mean, they, they want the mythology to be there. And you, you're in this position, you're in this position as a historian, when you, when you start to say, well, I don't think the Templars necessarily did hide the secret bloodline of Christ and, and, and take a load of treasure up to Scotland and to hide Shakespeare's real writings on Oak Island. You just feel you're really disappointing people by not playing along.

• 16:10Speaker 00

  But you, but you're allowed to tap into it, you have fun with it though, I mean, that's great.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  Well, I think that's the key. If you just sort of put your foot down and say, no, absolute bollocks, don't be so stupid, you, you kind of drive people away.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  Yes, and the, well, the, what we tell each other, isn't it, Dan, that we tell each other, in fact, the true stories are more exciting. So you, so you go, come, come for the Templar gold, but actually leave with a much more nuanced understanding of the Templars. And that's the real, that's the, those are the friends you make along the way.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Yes, it's about having this attitude of, of welcome in. There's a reason why people are interested in the Templars. And if, if one approaches the subject by saying, well, there's a perfectly good hospital, a fortress in Acha, I don't see why you're not as interested in that as the Templar tunnels. In fact, well, that happens to be true, but it's.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  Also, people are allowed to be interested in what they're interested in. I mean, I think it's, you have to meet people where they are, you can't get, I, I've always found you can't get angry at people for being interested in things. And it's just wonderful, it's a great springboard, innit? You wrote a great book on Templars, wonderful, loads of people bought it, it's fantastic, everyone's happy.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  You've got a lot of credit for it.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  I, I go around the world getting thanked for it, I take that credit, I'm, everyone's a winner.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  You listen to Dan Snow's History Hit. Don't give up on us just yet, there's more coming.

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  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty. From Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  But when Acre Falls, unbelievable siege, go and check it out, it's one of the great medieval sieges, they kill, is it the hospitalers that they slaughter, or is it the temple? I think it's...

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Well, at various times in crusading history, they both get it quite literally in the neck. So it's after the Battle of Hatton in 1187.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  The Templars get lined up.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  The Templars and the hospitalers, because they're kind of the crack troops in the crusading army. Saladin, kind of, he's willing to ransom everybody of any value, except for the Templars and hospitalers. So even King Guy of Jerusalem, yeah, off you go. But the Templars and hospitalers, I mean, it's like having all the Navy Seals and the SAS. You really can't let them go? I think it might be better to just chop all the heads off, and so chop all the heads off is what he does. But I suppose it's the ultimate backhanded compliment.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  I suppose so. I suppose so. That's true. That's true. Tough for them. So I, my quote, those tunnels, which I would love to see, I'm going to put on my list, is HMS Victory, which I think is a massive 18th century battleship that you can still go and see today. It's the ship that was Nelson's flagship, Battle of Trafalgar. Where is it?

• 20:56Speaker 03

  I...

• 20:57Speaker 00

  It's in Portsmouth, obviously. It's one of the best things in the world to go and see. So this is, at the time, the biggest warship ever laid down, ever built in Europe. 1759, the keels laid down. The year of victories, when Britain wins all these victories over the world. So it's called HMS Victory. Awesome. And it then serves from 1759, amazing investment, all the way through to the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805. It goes on serving after that as well. So you're getting, they're getting their money's worth. 2,000 oak trees went into building it. Something like 60 acres of trees, 27 miles of ropes and rigging. It's got over 100, just over 100 guns. Like, it was the most complicated item on Earth. Like, if a giant picked up something on Earth at the time, that was the most complicated single thing that existed.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Because, again, remember, matched with the thing that the ports, ports are very important. And so if HMS Victory drops anchor off your port, and you're in China, you're in Peru, you're in wherever you are, it's like, okay, now we've, we can't, this person's just got their heel on our jugular, you know, on our windpipe. So that's why, that's why navies sort of matter so much in that period. And it's capable of, obviously, defeating the enemy fleet in battle. It's just astonishing. But to build it, to man it, to crew it, to ensure no one crashes it into rocks, you need an incredibly sophisticated, the beginning is a really early, interesting, modern state. You need officers who can pass exams, who

• 22:22Speaker 00

  are not just there because their grandad is posh. You need, you know, army's fine. The army, you can have officers that are posh and thick, because their only job, an officer's only job in the army is to show the men how to die. To not flinch when bullets go past. Sergeants show them how to fight, officers show them how to die. But that's not good enough in the navy. You need exams. You need, you know, you need a sort of objective criteria which to test people. You can't give them that much responsibility and not have them know what they're doing. And so this is the beginning of a kind of meritocratic state. It's the beginning, the state has to find funding for this. It has to upkeep, you know, you can't just, you can, as you know, a medieval army, you can, if you've got gold, you can sort of get an army together. You've got a problem retaining it, but you can just get

• 23:04Speaker 00

  it together. Armament, yeah, blah, blah, blah. You can train peasants in a year or so, you know, give them a primitive firearm, maybe a few months, you can get them going. You can't wish a navy to be. You need dry docks, you need seasoned oak, you need canvas. So you're talking about a multi-year, multi-generational project. A, build HMS Victory, and B, keep it going. And so if people are listening to thinking, I'm just sort of war, you know, excited about war, yes, that's an amazing, you know, extraordinary part of it. It's, it's story at the Battle of Trafalgar is unbelievable. But actually, what I love about it is what it represents in terms of what, it's the tip of the iceberg and what's going underneath it. And that talks a lot about, you know, why Britain, France, and these other European countries sort of conquered the rest of the Earth in this period. They put together all these

• 23:49Speaker 00

  kind of killer apps.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Is there a moment from, that represents the beginning of that process, if HMS Victory is the kind of, you know, the high point of it? I mean, when, when, when does this all begin in terms of the British state?

• 24:02Speaker 00

  It's so interesting, because Europe is this just little promontory on the end of Asia, and most of the action in the economic and political military action throughout much of history has been Indian Ocean, you've got Persia, empires of India, slightly adjunct South China Sea over there. And suddenly, these mad little Europeans. And it's the great expression, on the peninsulas of the peninsula. So not just in Europe, but in Devon, in Brittany, in Portugal and Spain. So these are like, these are the outside bits of the outside bits. They sort of put together, they put together shipbuilding technology, navigational advances, heavy weapons, cannon, and they start sailing very long distances, reasonably safely. I mean, still, I wouldn't want to do it, but reasonably safely. They're

• 24:47Speaker 00

  highly competitive, these absolute blighters, you know, Spanish, Bretons, Portuguese, Brits, Scots, all compete. So arms race, absolutely frantically, nicking each other's talent, nicking each other's braid. Magellan's going here, Columbus going there, Cabot's going over there. They're stealing ideas from each other. They're perfecting, they're getting a bit of kit and adding on to it. And, and so, yeah, from about 1500, and then it just starts to, it's the kind of snowballs. And initially, as you know, they turn up, you know, the British military will turn up, English from British military will turn up in a place like India, and they'll fight a reasonably even battle for a couple hundred. And then suddenly, you just see, weirdly, these Europeans just screaming ahead. And that's the other thing about navies, very hard to catch up, like insanely difficult.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  If you're a very wealthy Mughal emperor, you look at, you can summon a lot of troops together, but you look at a navy ship, you're like, I don't know how to get one of those.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  No.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  I need, I need factories, I need, I need, you know, ironworks. It's a lot of tech.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  I mean, it's making me think at the moment of the age that we're living in, and there are several parallel, huge technological leaps forward. One of them is the sort of latest age of space exploration. And I wonder if the comparable capital spend and just vision, and just like dogged determination and belief that this technological revolution and everything that will have to go into it, is, you know, isn't the musk, and to a slightly lesser extent, Bezos, encouraged and supported by the American economy, saying, you know what, we can build this new generation of ships that will take us reliably back and forth and back and forth to the moon and eventually to Mars. I mean, is that too far fetched an analogy for what happens in Britain and the United States?

• 26:33Speaker 00

  No, I think that's, look, all the analogies, as you know, in history, kind of, you know, you have to take with a pinch of salt. But I think it's a really useful way to think about that, yeah. And, and I think we need to think about, the rest of us, who aren't lucky enough to have our own space companies, need to think about the consequences and how we kind of regulate and go, well, when we get to Mars, when we got to North America, all we did was like, right, this is work, let's immediately export our European squabbles to North America. So do we want, do we want to get to a world where there's American flags and Chinese flags and then private company flags being planted on Mars? Or do we want to kind of head that off before we get there and really try and be, learn the lessons, I guess, of that period of the dash for global empire?

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Well, here's a, here's a big historical question. Do you, do people ever learn the lessons?

• 27:17Speaker 00

  I don't. What do you think about, you get asked, I get asked that at every talk, don't you? You same thing, I'm sure you get the same thing. Like, do we learn the lessons?

• 27:24Speaker 03

  I think, I suppose on this subject, I'm increasingly pessimistic, but not for the old reason. I used to be pessimistic. I used to think people repeatedly make the same mistakes in different eras of history because they don't know enough about history. And then the more sort of powerful political people I kind of bump into or off as I grow up, the more I think, no, they usually know quite a lot about history, but that they, it's usually, no, no, I've read a lot of history, and now I'm not going to do the same thing because I'm smarter.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Next time, I'm going to invade Russia in the summer. Yeah, exactly.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Or, no, I'm still going to invade it in the winter, but I, because I know. I've got tech. Yeah, yeah. Get some coats.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  So my, my, my thinking about that is, with regard to, you know, it would be very nice for us to go and colonize the moon and Mars, and then not immediately have a massive war about who gets the best bit of it. It would be lovely.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. I know, look, I hear what you're saying. And I also, though, think, well, we're sort of, we are learning something, otherwise we'd all be still living in, like, Wattle and Dorp, how's it? So it feels like in some ways, we are learning, but obviously there's eye-catching examples of areas in which there are certain human problems seem to be kind of intractable. They seem to be baked into the way that we do things.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  Yes. And, and that's why I suppose certain, like, foundational religious texts just endure, I mean, in their, in their moral dimension, because typically, they're dealing with a... The seven deadly sins.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, we have, we have fatal flaws.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. Talking of ancient texts.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  You're gonna love this segue. I mean, I just think.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  That's brilliant. I'm here for it. This is where, where do you want to go? Where do you want to go in the world?

• 29:00Speaker 03

  I want to go to Hesaric. And actually, we were just talking about it before we started recording. This time, almost exactly to the day, I, um, I went down to the putative site of the Trojan War.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  That's cool.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Troy. Absolutely amazing. So this is in, uh, in southwest Turkey, on the, um, the Gallipoli, the Dardanelles, the, you know, most famous historically for.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  The Gallipoli landings.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  For the Gallipoli landings, but there's an archaeological site that's been an archaeological site since the, the middle of the 19th century there, which is associated with whatever the historical event was that we now call the, the Trojan War. That's a hell of a mouthful because nobody knows the exact history of the, of the Trojan War and the, the delineation between myth and history, but.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  But there is an exciting destruction layer at about, about 1180 B.C. or something, 1200 B.C., which is about right. Which is so exciting, isn't it? It's about right for possibly the events described. So that's cool. I agree.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  It's an amazing place. And this is, this was somewhere that, um, I went because I was, you know, I've read this book about castles. And I was trying to trace the origins of fortifications and of the human, you know, thinking about war in the West at any rate. Back to this, this, this moment, which if it happened at all, happened in about 1180 B.C. But then there's an actual place, which certainly since Roman times, you know, Caesar visited.

• 30:23Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, people went.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  Was associated with the Trojan War is extraordinary. And there's actually quite, you've been there, right?

• 30:29Speaker 00

  It's epic.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  There's, there's, there's still quite a lot of it left, despite the, um, efforts of the first guy to, uh, to excavate it, Heinrich Schliemann, who, whose chief tool of excavation was dynamite. So just dynamited a gigantic trench through the middle.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  And, and but people should go and check out Google images of, he found some jewellery in a, in a, it was, he found a burial, which is actually before the period, but he thought it was, he thought it was the right period. And he called it Helen, Helen of Troy jewellery. And he got his wife to dress up in it. So you go to see some amazing 19th century images of his wife looking at Helen of Troy, which I think then got taken back to Berlin. And I think the Russians stole it after the Second World War. So I think it's now in Moscow, weirdly, that jewellery.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, the eminence or somewhere like that. Are you into the, the classics? Is this something that goes?

• 31:14Speaker 00

  What classics?

• 31:15Speaker 03

  I mean, these are these great sort of epics, the Greek.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love them, mate. Love them. So I've just come back from Greece where we were sailing around the island of Ithaca. So with that.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Were you indeed?

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was great for that. We're gonna make a show there. I, so but what, speaking of saying where I've always wanted to go. So my version of Troy is Easter Island. That's the, that's for me. That's the one I, I love the Polynesian, love Polynesia.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  Uh, not just because I watched Moana with my daughter and had sort of epic meltdown. Basically, Moana is a movie about a hus- a dad and a daughter that love sailing, an oral historical tradition. But the, but the dad's too scared to leave the reef and his daughter goes off and saves the world. And that, I think, really does roughly reflect me and my daughter's age shift. So I was, I was, I was shaking like a leaf coming out of there. And Easter Island was the furthest, is the furthest of this gigantic Pacific diaspora. And it's a great argument about Easter Island is, is they make these huge heads. The heads now are all knocked over. There was a theory that there was a sort of environmental eco side. They, they did chop down the trees, which was bad. We, we can all agree that there was trees, humans arrived, chop them down, bring in invasive species, destroy much of the flora and fauna.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  They build these amazing heads, they quarry these amazing heads. And it was thought that by the time the Europeans arrived, they'd already smashed the whole thing up with a few hundred people alive. And it was all a kind of Mad Max style kind of lesson to us all about eco side. I think the latest, it's fun because it's nice when there's disagreement on scholarship. The latest scholarship is that actually there was a pretty thriving community when the Europeans arrived. And the Europe, but the Europeans.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  Don't tell me the Europeans are the bad guys again.

• 32:42Speaker 00

  Well, you're not, you'll be amazed to find out. And, and partly, they did shoot a few people when they accidentally arrived. There was a misunderstanding, but most importantly, of course, disease. They were carrying disease on their ships that they, they had no natural, um, ability to withstand. And so, so this Dutch expedition arrives about 1722. The heads upstanding, they report a community of about 3,000 people, well organised. Then it's about 80 years before another ship goes past. And at that stage, it's just chaotic. Heads falling down. A hundred, a couple of hundred people scrabbling, lot, loss of ability to make significant boats. So a, and, and, and it's thought probably that's because of, of disease. So catastrophic pandemics. And then possibly other ships visiting who, who haven't left a good record. So, and then, because we know that after that,

• 33:27Speaker 00

  slavers came through, would take, would take, uh, the people of the islands in, into enslavement in South America. So just a complete catastrophe on, on every front, really. And I'm just, and I love the fact that, A, it's, I like monumental sort of archaeology and I find that very romantic. Go to those out of the way places or the idea of the siege or whatever. But I also like, yeah, I like the idea of, um, of, of that really trying to get to the bottom of what actually happened. Because it's quite important, you know, it's quite important to learn what happened to societies when they chopped down the trees or when they encounter, um, pandemic disease. Or, you know, those, those things I still think are quite, they're very thought provoking, aren't they? Very important, speaking of learning lessons. So, yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  You mentioned Stonehenge very briefly in passing earlier on. Are you, um, are you up on the, the Stonehenge mythology? Not the mythology, the, the theories about how, how do they get it? One of those stones came from Scotland.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  Also, stone came from Scotland. Isn't it exciting?

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Unbelievable.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Unbelievable. What does that tell you about the Isles? Fascinating to me.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  More than once, I've almost crashed into the ditch going past Stonehenge, just because, you know, and, and there is always a traffic jam going past it. Even though, when compared to the pyramids, let's be honest.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:38Speaker 03

  It's not very funny.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  It's less good than the pyramids.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  It's much less good than the pyramids and evidence that, to rehearse an early part, part of this, this conversation, that for most of history, uh, the very edge of Europe has been really quite primitive compared to the sort of beating heart of human civilisation. But put that aside, Stonehenge is still good. You go past it, you go, oh my God, they did what? What? And that's like the new bit of the monument. They brought some stuff from Wales.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Amazing. And something absolutely wild was happening in the very, very, very late Stone Age in that part of Britain.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Dan Snow, what are you up to at the moment? What should people be looking out for?

• 35:14Speaker 00

  I've had lots of fun this summer. I got to make a, um, went on a great journey around the Greek islands to make a podcast series and TV show about the Odyssey, timed with the movie. So speaking of Troy. So, yeah, just check out Dan Snow's history, wherever you get your pods.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Fantastic. Check that out. And, uh, for our royal favourites, um, This is History, please listen to this week's bonus episode where Dan and I will be dissecting your favourite places, teeming with historical intrigue. You can listen to that at patreon.com forward slash This is History.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Well, folks, thanks for listening. I really enjoyed that. It was great. Nice summer chat. Please go and check this out. You can go and watch this if you want to on the This is History YouTube. And This is History is available wherever you get your podcasts. Go and check those out if you want more. Dan Jones, who doesn't? See you next time, everyone.

• 36:20Speaker 02

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