Fall of the Sumerians

Tristan Hughes continues our special series on Great Disasters, journeying back to ancient Mesopotamia with Dr Paul Collins to explore the fall of the Sumerians. 4,000 years ago, the great cities of Sumer — Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Girsu — stood as glittering centres of power, crowned with mighty ziggurats and ruled by ambitious dynasties. Yet within a few generations, this world of splendour and tradition unravelled. From the collapse of the Akkadian Empire to shifting power struggles and environmental pressures, uncover why these prestigious city-states declined — and ask whether we can truly talk of a 'fall of Sumer.' Join us as we step into the chaos of Mesopotamia’s first great age of empires and witness how disaster reshaped the cradle of civilisation. MORE The Sumerians https://open.spotify.com/episode/6toJCMdM2XgaPDLGppKAQI?si=eoOPonOERgm2Fryr8ttiQg Sargon of Akkad https://open.spotify.com/episode/4QsuLWDCOZy6GvSEfissD7?si=_Zpkk0UbRLmYjTDFloykGQ Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan and the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. 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 take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on 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.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  This is Steve Covino from Covino and Rich. Quick trivia, fellas. Every guy listening is a contestant. Answer honestly to yourself. You got a belly and a little chest? Gassed by the afternoon, no drive left in the tank? You lack that confidence and mental edge? Those are classic signs that your testosterone's been sliding. And nothing drags it down faster than extra weight. So why not take matters into your own hands? Strip off the weight that tanks your testosterone with Bioma GLP-1 Booster. Every serving is packed with science-backed ingredients that crank up your natural GLP-1 production. Visit bioma.health/GLP1 and use code CRSHOW for 15% off your first order.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  This is Nick and Jack from the best one yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business.

• 1:17Speaker 03

  Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Find exactly what your organization needs with their ever-expanding business assortment and everyday low prices. Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need. It's Walmart, built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart Business account today at business.walmart.com.

• 1:47Speaker 04

  If you're listening to this, there's a good chance you're a small business owner. And like every small business owner, you started with a dream to do what you love and watch it grow. What you probably didn't dream about? Keeping up with cyber threats. That's where Mastercard can help. With access to tools that help identify cyber threats to better protect your business. Building your dream business? Priceless. For cybersecurity in a changing world? There's Mastercard.

• 2:15Speaker 04

  Learn more at mastercard.com/smallbusiness.

• 2:22Tristan Hughes?

  Hello everyone, a quick note from me before we start the episode. Just a thank you. Thank you to everyone who came to our Ancients live show last Friday, where we explored the story of Carthage with Dr Eve Macdonald. We absolutely loved it. It was wonderful to meet so many of you in person. And I'm here to say that we will be releasing the audio of that live show for you, our subscribers, next week. So if you want to listen to that live show, if you couldn't make it but really want to listen to it, well, you can. You just need to subscribe to The Ancients. We'll put a link in the show notes where you can do just that. And it's going to be released next Friday.

• 3:09Tristan Hughes?

  A dozen different sources from the period say something very strange. They say basically that the sun disappeared. Witness a world where nature reigns supreme and catastrophe rewrote the story of civilisation.

• 3:24Speaker 05

  Huge volcanic bombs are coming out of the sky. These great rocks, about three feet across, crashing through the material.

• 3:31Tristan Hughes?

  In the ancient world, disaster was always lurking. Earthquakes and volcanoes flattened and buried mighty cities in an instant. Drought and plague wiped out civilisations without mercy.

• 3:43Speaker 06

  So if you've got an empire, that too becomes immensely vulnerable and prone to collapse.

• 3:50Tristan Hughes?

  Life in the ancient world often hung by a thread. Over the next four episodes, we'll discover that survival was never guaranteed. It's like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in the six holes. It's time to step into the chaos and witness the catastrophe, to uncover how disaster reshaped civilisations and the world itself. This is Great Disasters.

• 4:24Tristan Hughes?

  Four thousand years ago, a great shift was happening in ancient Mesopotamia. The Akkadian Empire, sometimes called the world's first empire, had collapsed. And the prestigious cities of Sumer it had once ruled over, Uruk, Ur, Gersu, Lagash, had experienced a resurgence. It was a time of splendorous Neo-Sumerian cities, ruled by powerful dynasties, defined by great ziggurats, centred around ancient Sumerian as the chosen written language of these states. And yet, these new dynasties would soon also meet their own violent ends. In this episode, we are going to talk through the story of these famous Sumerian cities

• 5:09Tristan Hughes?

  at the turn of the second millennium B.C. A time of powerful early empires rising and falling, a time often linked to when the Sumerian civilisation collapsed. We're going to explore just how far we should believe such a statement, with our guest, Dr Paul Collins.

• 5:32Tristan Hughes?

  Paul, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast.

• 5:35Speaker 06

  Thrilled to be back, thank you.

• 5:36Tristan Hughes?

  It's almost like we've done this before, quite a few times, and in this room, in the British Museum, to talk all the things the Sumerians and the Akkadians.

• 5:43Speaker 06

  Very happy to be doing it again.

• 5:45Tristan Hughes?

  And we are keeping on that topic, but we are also doing an episode on, and I have it in, I don't know if quotation marks is the right word, but with a little bit of hesitancy, the fall of the Sumerians, to kick off this brand new series on the ancients about these disasters, these big declines of ancient history. When we talk about the fall of the Sumerians, do we mean the fall of some of the earliest known cities in the world?

• 6:10Speaker 06

  Well, I think you could start thinking about it from that point of view, for sure. I mean, it's one of the most interesting questions we need to address is really why certain ways of living come to an end. And the civilisation that the Sumerians were certainly part of...

• 6:29Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 06

  Has come to an end.

• 6:31Tristan Hughes?

  And do we have much source material for this topic? Because I'm presuming we're going back quite far in the story of ancient Mesopotamia.

• 6:39Speaker 06

  Well, I think it depends where you want to start the story really, because of course, rise and falls, depending how you define that, happens across numerous periods, at different periods, at different times. So I think certainly where you want to start will define how much information we've got.

• 6:58Tristan Hughes?

  But before we get to that chronological date, I've got one in mind. But where are we talking first and foremost with the Sumerians? Where in the world?

• 7:06Speaker 06

  So Sumer is effectively southern Iraq. Today, it's the area covered by retreating marshlands under enormous threat from climate change, but the area roughly from south of Baghdad down to the head of the Persian Gulf.

• 7:26Tristan Hughes?

  And was this right in the centre? Was this almost one of the birth places of farming in the fertile crescent? Was this a key area for the emergence of these earlier cities?

• 7:35Speaker 06

  So cities we now know have their origins, if one's thinking about large populations concentrated in one place, much earlier than perhaps was previously thought. And we see some of the earliest big urban centres emerging in places like Syria, but almost certainly in parallel with similar developments in what's now southern Iraq. So across a broad sweep of the Middle East, we see from around 4,000 B.C. these concentrations of populations.

• 8:08Tristan Hughes?

  And 4,000 B.C., is that the rough time period that we should be talking about with the Sumerians? And how far forward can we go with their story? I'd like to begin the story, if we're talking about the decline, as far back as around 2,400, 2,500 B.C. But that's still quite a jump from 4,000 B.C. That you've already mentioned.

• 8:28Speaker 06

  Well, of course, as early as four thousand B C, the evidence we have becomes increasingly less. So it becomes more difficult to work out exactly what was happening in those cities and then the causes of their decline. But by the middle of the third millennium B C, the date you're interested in starting the conversation, we have a much clearer idea about the political world. And of course, we can actually talk about Sumerians because they're writing their language. And that allows us to really begin to think about groups of people, their identities, the ways in which they operated and worked together, and of course, the impact of change on those societies.

• 9:13Tristan Hughes?

  Well, you mentioned writing there, so it feels like we need to talk about this first of all. What types of sources do we have surviving then from the Sumerians to learn more about their culture?

• 9:23Speaker 06

  So we have from Mesopotamia, some of the earliest writing in the world, of course. And this is inscribed on clay tablets, so little tablets of clay, but just large enough to fit neatly into the palm of your hand. And then using a piece of sharpened reed or wood, impressed with signs which represented ideas, sound values which could be built up into words and meaning.

• 9:51Tristan Hughes?

  So is it phonetic? Is that what we should be thinking?

• 9:53Speaker 06

  It's syllabic.

• 9:54Tristan Hughes?

  It's syllabic.

• 9:55Speaker 06

  So each of these little wedge shaped cuneiform signs represented sound values which you could rearrange effectively in different orders to create words.

• 10:05Tristan Hughes?

  And we have lots of these tablets surviving, but do we also have active archaeology happening in the fields in southern Iraq today? Learning more about the story of these people?

• 10:14Speaker 06

  So a huge amount of archaeological work going on, both by Iraqis and foreign teams. Of course, many are focused on much earlier or later periods, but there's certainly really exciting work going on for the third millennium B C, when we're seeing some of these big urban centres.

• 10:35Tristan Hughes?

  We mentioned their big urban centres, so can you paint a picture of the Sumerian world in, let's say, the middle of the third millennium B C? What did the Sumerian world look like by that time?

• 10:46Speaker 06

  Well, southern Mesopotamia, we know, was divided between a series of city-states. So there would be a capital city with surrounding towns and villages, which were understood as belonging, as it were, to a fixed political area. And these city-states would be governed, at least theoretically, by a divine figure.

• 11:11Tristan Hughes?

  A divine figure?

• 11:12Speaker 06

  A god or a goddess sat at the heart of each community. And of course, they had temples where they were worshipped. But those temples were built by dynasties of kings. So you had mortal rulers, serving the gods, usually passing on their power from father to son. But inevitably, as with all political powers, there was a rivalry and dynasties came and went.

• 11:40Tristan Hughes?

  And did these kings, these rulers, did they see themselves as more than mortals? Did they see themselves as the prime people who communicated with the gods? Do they see themselves as priests as well?

• 11:50Speaker 06

  So there's certainly a sense in these early cities that the kings, the rulers, were responsible ultimately for mediating between the people of the city-states and their gods. And we see images of them, we have texts written by the kings on their behalf, talking about building temples, feeding the gods, clothing the gods, and then inevitably receiving the gods' blessings.

• 12:19Tristan Hughes?

  So we have these sophisticated city-states, you know, controlling the urban centres and then the surrounding countryside for their food. But also, as you say, their contact with each other and beyond the borders of the Sumerian lands, but also these growing rivalries between them as well. What main city should we be thinking of? Because I would think straight away of a city like Uruk.

• 12:43Speaker 06

  So Uruk is a very good example. I mean, certainly, Uruk is one of the most ancient large urban centres in Mesopotamia. And by the middle of the third millennium, was one of the largest. So a vast sprawling network of canals and houses and agricultural lands, perhaps with many tens of thousands of people living together. But there were other great centres as well, places like Ur and Eridu, Nipur, Lagash.

• 13:14Speaker 06

  There are about twenty or thirty great cities that were dividing the alluvial plains of southern Iraq between them.

• 13:23Tristan Hughes?

  And so we get to the latter half of the third millennium B.C. What is this big event that happens at that time that really shakes up the political order of, well, the Sumerian city-states? What happens?

• 13:39Speaker 06

  Well, it's an event which really repeats what had been going on earlier, and that's rivalry between city-states. So around 2350 B.C., more or less, we see the emergence of one powerful ruler in a city called Agade or Akkad. He's a ruler that calls himself, he's a ruler who calls himself Sargon, which means the king is true or the legitimate king. So it's obviously a title that he's taken on coming to the throne. And he doesn't speak Sumerian, or at least his inscriptions suggest otherwise, and he

• 14:21Speaker 06

  speaks a Semitic language, a language related to modern-day Arabic and Hebrew, and which has completely different grammatical structure to Sumerian. And it's clear that the region of southern Mesopotamia was a very mixed population, with some people speaking Sumerian, perhaps closest to the Gulf, whereas others, perhaps further north, largely spoke the Semitic language, which we call Akkadian, after Sargon's capital. And one can think of this not as two distinct populations in opposition, but rather the result of mixed populations sharing the same cultural outlook, but simply recording

• 15:06Speaker 06

  that in different languages. And Sargon, this Semitic speaker, marches out with his army and does what earlier kings, some of whom spoke Sumerian, had been doing, and defeating rival city-states, building from them. Their city-states, larger kingdoms. And Sargon is simply more successful than others. He defeats his rivals across the alluvial plain, claims control of the entire region, and then marches, according to inscriptions, beyond the alluvial plain. So beyond ancient Sumer and the region that we could call Akkad,

• 15:50Speaker 06

  up the river Euphrates, up the river Tigris, or down the Persian Gulf, extending his authority.

• 15:56Tristan Hughes?

  So does he conquer all of the Sumerian people then? All of Sumer, all of these city-states that we've mentioned, like Uruk, Ur and so on?

• 16:03Speaker 06

  He claims to do so, and that seems to have been the case. I mean, I'll say some of these earlier city-states, places like Ur and Lagash, had also been extending their control by defeating their rivals. But nobody had taken it quite as far as Sargon. He managed to consolidate control across the entire alluvial plain.

• 16:26Tristan Hughes?

  We have dedicated an entire episode to Sargon not too long ago, and we really focused on his character and his expansion and so on. But we didn't focus as much on what happens in those cities that he conquers. So let's focus on that now, on the Sumerian city-states. Because how does this new Akkadian overlordship of places like Uruk and Ur, does it really affect their prominence? Does it affect the day-to-day runnings of these cities? Do we know how they fared?

• 16:55Speaker 06

  So in many respects, again, as far as we can tell from the rather limited evidence, and we've got lots of tablets talking about the economies of these cities, life probably continued to some extent as before. So some of the rulers were left in charge. The way in which they organized their lives wouldn't have changed dramatically. So material would have been brought in from the countryside and offered to the gods. There would have been the exchange of goods across the alluvial plain. But of course, Sargon would have expected taxation. To have come into the centre. And so through his control, his dominance of these great trading networks and

• 17:41Speaker 06

  the agricultural wealth of the region, he was able to grow immensely wealthy. And we can see that to some extent, under his successors, where they invested in extraordinary art and architecture to reflect their power.

• 17:58Tristan Hughes?

  And do they build that art and architecture in the cities that they conquered or their predecessors had conquered, like Sargon?

• 18:05Speaker 06

  We certainly see buildings of the Agadei period reflecting their dominance. And they, of course, talk about that dominance through inscriptions. And they continue to use the Sumerian language to express power and authority. And in many ways, the Sumerian language begins to emerge as the language of kingship and of the language associated with the gods. Whereas the Semitic language, Akkadian, is used increasingly for economic documents. So again, a separation in the use of these different languages

• 18:46Speaker 06

  to define themselves in terms of their own time, but also that of the past.

• 18:52Tristan Hughes?

  And how long does this Akkadian overlordship of the Sumerian city-states, how long do we think it lasts?

• 18:58Speaker 06

  Well, of course, Sargon begins a process which then is expanded by his successors over about a century and a half, two hundred years at most. And then, under his grandson Narum-Sin.

• 19:11Tristan Hughes?

  Narum-Sin.

• 19:12Speaker 06

  The empire probably reaches its greatest extent, reaching into modern day Syria and down the Persian Gulf. But it's always vulnerable because the Akkadian kings are dependent on local rulers to maintain their relationships with the centre. And of course, on numerous occasions, those local rulers would come together in coalitions and rebel against that overlordship.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  This is Nick and Jack from the best one yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business. Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing. Find exactly what your organization needs with their ever-expanding business assortment and everyday low prices. Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment. Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need. It's Walmart built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart Business account today at business.walmart.com.

• 20:27Speaker 06

  Are you looking for the perfect podcasts to hunker down with during the longer, colder, darker nights?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Well, look no further than the award-winning After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds, and the Paranormal with me, Maddy Pelling.

• 20:40Speaker 06

  And me, Anthony Delaney. We are historians and love all things gloomy and macabre.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  From Tudor executioners and ancient Egyptian death rituals to witch trials and folklore, feel transported back in time on After Dark. Out every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 20:57Speaker 06

  And guess what? We're also now on YouTube. After Dark, a podcast from History Hit.

• 21:17Tristan Hughes?

  We'll get more into those rebellions in a bit, but I wanted to focus on this particular period first of all, because when we think of city-states being conquered, you usually think that that symbolizes a fall of that city-state from power and prominence. And yet, as you've stated there, Paul, from the limited evidence we have surviving, it seems that many of these city-states continued as they had before. The Sumerian language remains really important and arguably increases in importance. So how far can we say that the Sumerian people, the Sumerian city-states, endured a decline during this period when the Akadians were dominant?

• 21:58Speaker 06

  So I think we need to be thinking about then Sumerian as a language rather than necessarily a people. There's very little evidence to suggest that the people on the ground, as it were, in the street, thought of themselves necessarily as Sumerian, as opposed to being the residents of particular city-states. And identity was very much with the city and the god that, or goddess, that looked after that city. And the fact that some people spoke Sumerian and some people spoke Akkadian may not have been defining in terms of their local identities.

• 22:39Speaker 06

  So if we think about the Akkadian conquests, they are very much about repeating a pattern we've seen from much earlier, when more of the written documents were in Sumerian than they were in Akkadian. But nonetheless, politically, there really wasn't a great deal of difference. But the Akkadian consolidation of control over the alluvial plain created a new way of thinking about the region. And it was that that perhaps was its greatest impact, was that future generations of kings, regardless of the language that they spoke in Mesopotamia, looked back to the Akkadian

• 23:19Speaker 06

  period as a time of great power and prestige that they wanted to emulate. And so creating a control over the alluvium became the desirable thing to do for future kings.

• 23:33Tristan Hughes?

  This is almost, dare I say, the origins of empire, imperial thinking in the Mesopotamia.

• 23:38Speaker 06

  It was a shift of thinking, for sure. Smaller kingdoms had always been created and then collapsed politically. And of course, what we tend to be looking at is just the inscriptions of the elites and of kings. So we're getting a rather small snapshot of the reality on the ground. And as kings and princes and fell and rose, life in the streets may not have altered very much at all, regardless of the language you spoke.

• 24:08Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely, and these city-states do seem to be still doing Pretty well at that time, but also, as you hinted at, also sometimes not being very, uh, I say loyal to the Acadians. They want to rise up. So talk to me about these rebellions that start to erupt in many of these city-states as the Akkadian Empire as time goes on.

• 24:34Speaker 06

  Well, you see this through the Akkadian period. There are moments when there are coalitions of these city-states that retain their original identities as independent cities. And they come together in opposition to this idea of an overlordship. Obviously, there are kings, there are rulers who want to emulate the Akkadian kings and replace them, but others simply that want to free themselves of the obligations to the centre and benefit from the enormous agricultural wealth and the trading connections that are bringing extraordinary materials into their centres that they want to control. And so Narim Seem, our greatest Akkadian emperor perhaps,

• 25:20Speaker 06

  is faced by a major rebellion which takes him a number of years to to quell. He claims in his inscriptions to do it, but it's literally an uprising of the entire alluvial plain against him.

• 25:33Tristan Hughes?

  Wow. And you mentioned he's an emperor there. Do we know that for sure?

• 25:36Speaker 06

  Well, that's a modern term, of course, in a way, that we can then, whether we want to think of the this Akkadian period as an empire in the sense that its control stretches beyond the traditional boundaries of this sort of cultural world or not is is up for debate. I think probably many scholars would would look for much later for the first true empire.

• 26:06Tristan Hughes?

  With the Assyrians and so on, isn't it? And that that's for another day entirely. But it was interesting what you were highlighting there. So the reign of Narim Seem, so Sargon's grandson?

• 26:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's right.

• 26:17Tristan Hughes?

  And this big rebellion against him, is he able to quell that rebellion? But is it at the same time, even though he is successful? Is it a symbol of things to come? How these various city-states, aruk, ur and so on? They are still prominent and they are still pretty troublesome and they will come back.

• 26:38Speaker 06

  Yes, and that's the structure that's in place, that's embedded in the system. Independent city-states. And inevitably, unless you can find a way of breaking down that traditional way of organising things. This will happen in the future. Effectively, a country of Babylonia will be created in the second millennium B.C. But it takes a long time to overcome that traditional fragmentation of the alluvium. And so built in to any expansive kingdom in the third millennium B.C. Is this underlying problem? That the independent cities will reassert their authority and want to throw off your authority.

• 27:18Tristan Hughes?

  So these cities are still very much prominent and certainly don't seem to be in decline at this time. So let's move on then, Paul, to the big event that then almost inevitably happens. Which is the fall of the Akkadian Empire. So what happens?

• 27:34Speaker 06

  The fall of the Akkadian Empire in many ways is again, one of those great debates in scholarship. Because it almost certainly evolved a number of different factors. We see in the inscriptions, pressure on the centre from obviously the rival city-states. As they take advantage of weakness at the centre. But also pressure from outside. Other groups, not least the Elamites from south-west Iran. Dominating the mountains to the east of Mesopotamia.

• 28:10Speaker 06

  They are always looking for an opportunity to take advantage of weakness. And ultimately, it is their invasions, the inscriptions tell us, that bring the Akkadian Empire to its knees. But nonetheless, other factors were at work. And it now seems as if the end of the Akkadian period, so around 2200, 2150 B.C., was a period of climatic change. Drought affected the region dramatically. Now, these are city-states that were dependent on a world of agriculture sustained by irrigation.

• 28:51Speaker 06

  And the decline in water in the rivers, or the advance of sea waters up those rivers from the Persian Gulf, affects the agricultural potential of the land. And even if it's just for a few years, this makes these city-states very, very vulnerable. It disrupts, obviously, the supply of agricultural goods, but also means that it's no longer possible to acquire traded material coming in from outside. So the whole system, it becomes very vulnerable and prone to collapse. And so if you've got an empire, or an extensive control over these city-states, that too becomes immensely vulnerable.

• 29:35Speaker 06

  And this seems to be a major contributing factor to the ultimate control over that region by the kings of Agade.

• 29:42Tristan Hughes?

  So it becomes vulnerable because all of the links become strained, as they're all, it's not just Agade suffers from the famine, it's that they all suffer from the famine. And then the whole, the fledgling, if I can even say the fledgling bureaucracy, the structure of this control, it falls apart. And it just shows the fragility, doesn't it?

• 29:59Speaker 06

  Absolutely. And I think this has been a recurring theme throughout Mesopotamian history, and was almost certainly happening, of course, much, much earlier. And we have less evidence for that surviving. But the rise and fall of these cities, their political and economic structures, are all dependent on this extraordinary environment, but a very fragile one.

• 30:25Tristan Hughes?

  Well, I think we can talk about the fall of a particular city here then, in the case of Agade. You mentioned the Elamites earlier. Are these also the people that equate with the so-called Guti?

• 30:36Speaker 06

  So the ghouti are again difficult to define precisely, but they're peoples that seem to be located somewhere in those mountains to the east of Iraq, the mountains that now divide Iraq from Iran, the so-called Zagros Mountains. And the people of those mountains are always attracted by the agricultural wealth and the resources of the alluvial plain.

• 31:02Tristan Hughes?

  It's this repeating idea, isn't it? These kind of montane pastoral herdsman or so on, a bit more like descending on the fertile plains in the valleys below. You see that again and again across the ancient world.

• 31:14Speaker 06

  You see it again and again, but you also, of course, it's repeated in the inscriptions of the alluvial plain as a sort of repeating motif. So it's perhaps an easy explanation, if you're living on the flatlands of southern Iraq, to blame those uncivilized barbarous people up in the mountains.

• 31:35Tristan Hughes?

  Highlanders descending.

• 31:36Speaker 06

  How much reality behind that, of course, is much more difficult to determine. This is just a way of explaining why your great civilization eventually declines. But almost certainly, the decline politically, economically of these centres would attracted other people in to take advantage of a situation, whether brought in as mercenaries or as workers or as invading armies. Again, probably a mixture of all those.

• 32:08Tristan Hughes?

  So famine could have weakened one of these city-states and then the hammer blow, the destructive hammer blow could be outside, external invaders coming in and destroying a city and looting it?

• 32:19Speaker 06

  Correct, exactly. And that may have happened from city to city or one big moment, which was the ultimate death nail, as it were, to the empire.

• 32:30Tristan Hughes?

  Do we think that happens? That does happen to any cities at this time? Because is it the case with Agade that we don't know where it was? One of the theories is that it was just so brutally destroyed.

• 32:39Speaker 06

  Well, Agade hasn't been located. We have a sense of where it might have been, and it may well now lie under a suburb of modern Baghdad. It's certainly positioned very strategically on the river Tigris or close to the Tigris to benefit from the trade with the mountains of Iran and the alluvial plain to the south. But it's never been yet located. No doubt when it is, if anything survives after modern building, it will no doubt show some of the most spectacular material from this period.

• 33:17Tristan Hughes?

  But at the same time, the Akkadian Empire falls, but the city-states, we've already talked about, Aruk, Ur and so on, endure past the fall of the Akkadian Empire. And normally after the the fall of an empire, or if you can call it an empire, you see periods of chaos, you know, kind of confusion, not really knowing what's going to happen next, almost a power vacuum. Do we know how these city-states fared in the years following the fall of the Akkadian Empire?

• 33:46Speaker 06

  So the Akkadian Empire certainly seems to have brought an idea of chaos. Later inscriptions in Mesopotamia look back to that period, the end of the Agadei Empire, and actually ask the question, who was king? Who was not king? I mean, it was unclear who was actually in control. So that that system of a single dynasty dominating the region had collapsed. So what was the the new way that in response to a new world as being imagined? And of course, the city-state structure remained.

• 34:25Speaker 06

  And so it was back to individual cities and their rulers attempting now to restore the Agadei Empire. And of course, within that moment of chaos, there were the Guti, the Elamites and the local rulers all vying to claim the Agadei mantle.

• 34:46Tristan Hughes?

  So they're all still in the area of lower Mesopotamia, of Sumer at that time. They like the Guti and the Elamites, they haven't gone back to their mountains. They decided to kind of stay in the region, have they?

• 34:56Speaker 06

  So they they again were dependent, of course, on later inscriptions, which describe this period of chaos and then the emergence of new centres of power.

• 35:06Tristan Hughes?

  But could we then say that actually these city-states, they are weaker at that time? If, as I said, from the surviving evidence, may well be that there was a famine that contributed to the fall of the Akkadian Empire. These other city-states, they do endure. But can we see potentially in this time, it's it's a time of rebuilding, of regaining their strength, of recovering from things like famine?

• 35:30Speaker 06

  Again, it's difficult to know how much we should take literally these literary descriptions of later about this period of decline of the Agade political control. Because of course, for many of these city-states, it was a sense of being liberated to do their own thing once again. And yes, no doubt, the period of drought and upheaval would have affected things very widely. But after a couple of years, the agricultural resources returned and then cities could once again start flourishing as they had always.

• 36:12Tristan Hughes?

  And so what time period should we be focusing in on now, Paul? How far ahead have we gone from where we began in the mid-third millennium B.C.?

• 36:21Speaker 06

  So the Agade Empire has collapsed around 2150 B.C., something like that. Again, the chronology slightly imprecise, but we begin to see some city-states reasserting their independence, their identities. And one of the best known of those city-states for this particular period is one called Lagash, which is located on the alluvial plain relatively close to the mountains of Iran. So it's able to benefit enormously from close links to the Elamites and the rich resources, the mountains, the woods, the stones, the metals.

• 37:03Tristan Hughes?

  And is this the first sense, real sense of stability then from our surviving sources post the fall of this empire's decline?

• 37:11Speaker 06

  So what we see probably is a continuity, in a way, that the dynasties at Lagash had always benefited from its geographical position, its control over those trade routes and being wealthy as a result. And there are enormous temple buildings from the earlier third millennium at Lagash and its cult centre of Giasu, for example. So it's always an important centre. But now with the fall of the Agade control over the region, we see a dynasty of kings emerge in Lagash that reassert that control over the wealth.

• 37:49Tristan Hughes?

  And is this the figure I have in my notes? Is it King Gudia or Gadea? I'm probably saying it, butchering the pronunciation.

• 37:57Speaker 06

  Yes, so Gudea is certainly the most famous of the kings of this period, who is a ruler of the city-state of Lagash, and uses his new independence and control of all this wealth that the the city-state is able to dominate, trade, bringing in metals and stones from the mountains of Iran and elsewhere, that he's able to create a sense of a new start, a new beginning, which he's in control of.

• 38:36Tristan Hughes?

  It shows, doesn't it? So these city-states, they're still very much thriving, or at least Lagash is. But Lagash doesn't remain the only one that we see in the surviving sources that does seem to have a resurgence. Because, Paul, talk to me about the rise, the rise again of Ur in particular, because this city-state experiences a brand-new life at this time, it feels.

• 39:00Speaker 06

  Well, again, is it about a revival? Or is it rather that continuity, but suddenly we're able to see it?

• 39:08Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 39:08Speaker 06

  It's no longer blanketed by this Agade overlordship, but rather able to exert its independence. But of course, all these city-states, whether it's Lagash and Ur, that emerges to then dominate the region, they are in a new world in the sense that their rulers are building on the traditions of the Agade period.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  This is Nick and Jack from the best one yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business. Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing. Find exactly what your organization needs with their ever-expanding business assortment and everyday low prices. Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment. Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need. It's Walmart, built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart Business account today at business.walmart.com.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Mr. Monopoly here. Miss me? Monopoly is back at McDonald's with millions of prizes. A 2027 Jeep Cherokee, a Carnival Cruise Vacation, gift cards from DoorDash, and Best Buy. You'll then play in the McDonald's app. Get your bag! No purchase necessary. 50 U.S. and D.C. Age 18+. See Play at MCD.com for rules and Play at MCD.com/AMOE for info on playing without purchase by mail by November 2nd. Chance card game ends November 8th. Game ends November 22nd, 2026. See rules for prize details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro.

• 41:02Tristan Hughes?

  Because later you have the Neo-Assyrians versus the older Assyrians. Is this described as the Neo-Sumerian period?

• 41:09Speaker 06

  So it's called that really because the rulers of these city-states start to use the Sumerian language in a much more elaborate way than previously. So yes, they continue to create monuments with Sumerian inscriptions, but Sumerian increasingly is made the language of administration. And that's at a time probably when the spoken language is dying. And this happens to languages across the globe that they have a lifespan, they can be absorbed into other cultures and disappear from the spoken language.

• 41:54Tristan Hughes?

  But is the spoken language then also Sumerian? So it's still remaining prominent in writing but not being spoken?

• 42:01Speaker 06

  Correct. It's actually a political decision. So if one takes Latin as a better-known example, after the Roman Empire...

• 42:13Speaker 06

  Latin ceases to become a spoken language, would be eventually replaced of course with Italian in the heartland, but Latin continues as a written language of authority, of learning and administration, even though people in the street are no longer speaking it. And the same seems to be in the case with Sumerian. It's gradually replaced by the Semitic language, Akkadian and its relations. This isn't about conquest, this is just about cultural change. The majority of people start speaking that language and Sumerian becomes less and less spoken in the street.

• 42:53Speaker 06

  But at that very moment, the new authorities in power see this language as ancient, as connected to their land, but is specialised. It's so special that their administrators, their scribes, their scholars can use it, just like Latin would be used in the medieval period. And as a result, modern scholars, reading all these texts which are now in Sumerian, have recreated, have created a notion that this is a revival of a people. I think it's not.

• 43:33Speaker 06

  It's the use of a dying language as the script of power and authority.

• 43:42Tristan Hughes?

  So could you say then, getting my head around this, that the city-states that are often called Sumerian today, like Uruk, Ur, Lagash and so on, they're still very prominent at this time? The people who are often labelled today as Sumerians, who lived in those places, they're still prominent at the time and as you say, post-Akkadian dynasty, the fall of the Akkadians, there's a resurgence in some of these cities and would explore the rulers as well. But if we take the Sumerian Or Sumerian as meaning the language itself at this time of resurgence for the city and potentially a people you argue it's not.

• 44:26Tristan Hughes?

  The language itself, can we say, has experienced a decline at this time. It remains important, but it's not the spoken language anymore.

• 44:35Speaker 06

  So in terms, as a spoken language, Sumerian is declining and will eventually cease to be spoken. But it's being used now, it's being written much, much more extensively. And it becomes, becomes the language of the state and therefore its identity. So one could argue indeed that these are Sumerian states by virtue of the Sumerian language being at its heart. But in terms of people on the street, they're almost certainly not speaking it.

• 45:14Tristan Hughes?

  Well, we'll keep that in mind is we'll keep, we'll call these Sumerian states for the meantime then, just to make it as easy and streamlined as possible. So they are experiencing a resurgence at this time. Who are the figures, let's say as Ur, because this seems a prime example. Do we know much about the rulers who oversee this prominence of this city at that time?

• 45:36Speaker 06

  Yes, we have a lot of information increasingly about this particular period, which is often described as the third dynasty of Ur or the Ur three state. According to later Mesopotamian tradition, it's the third time that Ur has dominated the alluvial plain. But that's something of a construct. But the third dynasty of Ur, we have a great deal of written material, of course, largely in Sumerian.

• 46:08Speaker 06

  And we can talk about the dynasty of kings. Originally, the dynasty is emerging at the city of Uruk, a city just the north of Ur. But then it's the dynasty from Ur itself that takes control. And Ur Nama is credited with being the first king of this third dynasty. And he's very famous because he not only consolidates his control over many of the what had become independent city-states, again, an attempt to reassert control of the Alluvium. But he builds in those city-states some great monuments, most famously

• 46:51Speaker 06

  ziggurat towers, these stepped, solid mud brick structures for the focus of the worship of the gods who control these cities.

• 47:03Tristan Hughes?

  And is this still a great ziggurat of Ur today? And was that built then by Ur Nama some 4,000 years ago?

• 47:10Speaker 06

  Yes, so the ziggurat of Ur is one of the best surviving examples in these city-states. So you can go and visit it today. It has its origins under Ur Nama. He was the king who had it constructed. Subsequent dynasties of kings, of course, refurbished it and rebuilt it, not least Nabonidus much, much further on in the 6th century B.C. So it's a monument that's been rebuilt on a number of occasions. But it's largely the result of Ur Nama.

• 47:43Tristan Hughes?

  Given his expansion on the alluvial plain, is it possible to argue, if we call Ur a Sumerian city because of the prominence of Sumerian as the written language, does he actually form a Sumerian empire at that time?

• 47:58Speaker 06

  So he, like the Agade kings, Menroesveks, creates a dynasty that expands their control of the Alluvium. It takes a different shape than the Akkadian empire. That's because, of course, politics has changed and there are different powers in the region. And the Ur three kings look largely towards the east, towards those rich mountains of Iran, to control those. And so the Third Dynasty of Ur creates kingdom or larger.

• 48:35Speaker 06

  Empire that expands into what is today, modern day Iran.

• 48:39Tristan Hughes?

  Doesn't seem to be near any sort of decline at this moment, I must admit. But keeping on Ur Nama a bit more, he's famous for his law code. Can you tell us about this? Because I feel we have to talk about it.

• 48:52Speaker 06

  So we have attempts to show the king as the ruler of justice, that the ultimate source of of justice in the land was the king. We have earlier examples of that in Mesopotamia. But Ur Nama has indeed a so-called law code, which is an expression of examples of how justice would prevail. So there are examples effectively of good kingship. But they become the models of more famous law codes, not least, of course, that of Hammurabi of the 18th century B.C. So some 400 years later,

• 49:34Speaker 06

  which becomes the ultimate model of the expression of the king of justice.

• 49:39Tristan Hughes?

  And you mentioned how he is the founder of this dynasty, the Third Dynasty of Ur?

• 49:43Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 49:44Tristan Hughes?

  So how long does Ur remain prominent in this, you know, post Akkadian time and, you know, arguably, you know, being the prime Sumerian city at that time and ruling over many other city-states in the area?

• 49:58Speaker 06

  So the Third Dynasty lasts about a century. So in the scheme of human life, it's quite a long time. But in the overall scheme of Mesopotamia, of course, it's yet another example of the rise of political powers, centralisation across the alluring plain. But ultimately, as with the Agade Empire, it too collapses.

• 50:23Tristan Hughes?

  And so what happens? Why does it collapse? What are the theories behind why this Sumerian city collapses?

• 50:30Speaker 06

  So the reasons again can probably be a mixture of factors, as they were with the Agade Empire. And we read in the contemporary sources, in the administrative documents of the Urthri state.

• 50:45Speaker 06

  Evidence of pressure from harvests, so the collapse of harvests, the feeding of populations, the movement of grain in order to cope with challenges, whether that's around drought or other forms of climate change is actually unclear. But also evidence from those texts of pressure from outside. We read about walls being built between some of the major rivers to ward off groups that are identified as Amorites. So tribal groups or other groups, again, probably defined in some sense

• 51:25Speaker 06

  as these barbarians from the mountains in the traditional way of describing the enemies. They are exerting pressure. And that may well be, again, in response to a weakened centre. The Oirethry state was very, very bureaucratic. It controlled the taxation flowing in from the provinces to the centre in enormous detail. And we have literally tens of thousands

• 51:54Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 51:55Speaker 06

  cuneiform tablets which detail this taxation system.

• 51:59Tristan Hughes?

  And are they almost all in Sumerian?

• 52:01Speaker 06

  They're all in Sumerian, yes. Then the scribes, the administrators, trained at the centre in the language of administration, which was Sumerian, and then managed the resources coming in from across this extensive kingdom. And that also offers opportunities for disruption. So if some areas are prone to agricultural collapse or the movement of peoples, then it threatens the entire system. And so a very complicated picture is probably undermining that centralised control.

• 52:43Speaker 06

  We see only glimpses of that in the contemporary records.

• 52:48Tristan Hughes?

  And with the end of the dynasty, do we then think it is, if Oire has been weakened, is it a violent end? Do we think that Oire was sacked?

• 52:56Speaker 06

  That's what we get from the later in Scotians, from the Mesopotamians of that region, looking back to this period.

• 53:05Speaker 06

  And composing what are described as lamentations. These are long literary accounts of the terrible events that happened in their minds to the end of the Uthri Empire. So like the Agade kings, like the Agade Empire, the third dynasty would be viewed as a splendid period. Again, a period for to be repeated, to be emulated.

• 53:33Tristan Hughes?

  Of like the greatest city that had ever been created or to that point in history, do we think?

• 53:38Speaker 06

  Indeed. I mean, this is, you know, this is really what later kings look back on, even if they're creating it as a myth in their own making, rather than as a reality. But certainly we know that the dynasty of Uanama and his successors, not least the great ruler Shulgi, who created an idea of what the greatest ruler should be writing in Sumerian. His inscriptions would be looked back as the model by which all future kings should rule. So later kings would look back, write lamentations on the decline of the Uthri state.

• 54:22Speaker 06

  And in those descriptions, it's all about a violent end. And it's again those pesky Elamites from Iran sweeping in from the mountains, taking over and taking the last king of Uthri, Ibesin, in chains up to the mountains of Iran, where he disappears from history.

• 54:43Tristan Hughes?

  And is there a sense, I mean, in those written records that, as you mentioned, we do need to take with a pinch of salt, maybe a barrel full of salt, that they also sacked, external invaders also sacked other cities in the area like Uruk? Gersu and so on.

• 54:59Speaker 06

  Well, we get a sense that that is the case, that that dynasties of new rulers or take up residence in these cities, even if it's briefly. And and we see we're back to a period of chaos. Now, that's, of course, chaos politically. But it doesn't mean to say necessarily that it's the collapse of all other systems. That people's lives, perhaps at the lowest levels of society, may not even been aware of some of these big changes is very difficult.

• 55:33Tristan Hughes?

  So there's not the complete devastation. It's not like the sack of Carthage, or at least we don't know from our surviving records, where there is a brutal executions of people in these cities, population replacements, or the the taking of people from a city and placing them elsewhere in the world. We just don't know stuff like that. It's not as if the people are changing completely in these cities.

• 55:55Speaker 06

  So I suspect very much, and we have evidence from different periods, as well as these literary accounts, that terrible things were going on. That there were, of course, invading armies, there was great slaughter. There would have been major disruption. This, again, recurring theme, not just, of course, in this part of the world. But then again, after that, those terrible events, then life returns. And those old systems of bringing canals to the the fields and the agriculture is revived. And that sense of independent city-states at their centre, their gods,

• 56:37Speaker 06

  that that continuity is very clear.

• 56:42Tristan Hughes?

  What about the Sumerian language? Does its fate really intertwine with that of the the third dynasty of Ur? So when that dynasty comes to a violent end, does that also affect the survival of the Sumerian language?

• 56:57Speaker 06

  So the writing of the Sumerian language continues. And it is embedded in the training of administrators, of scribes. It becomes an important part of a very complex way of defining and describing the world by these, not just.

• 57:20Speaker 06

  Administrators but also scholars. Where the Akkadian language, the Semitic language, is combined with the Sumerian language to give a very complex and extremely rich way of describing the universe. And Sumerian in that sense is never lost. Because it continues to be used by these scribes, by these scholars, right the way down to the end of cuneiform culture in the early centuries of the Common Europe.

• 57:51Tristan Hughes?

  So is it the case that after the fall of the third dynasty of Ur, that although Sumerian continues, it never is as prominent as it was during that time?

• 58:03Speaker 06

  That's correct, because the language of the street, as it were, the Semitic languages, the Akkadian, is much more convenient in terms of administration, because so many other people speak it. And so you continue to get Sumerian used for royal inscriptions. Again, it speaks of antiquity and power and authority and harks back to the Agade and Ur three periods of brilliance. But for administration, now it's the language spoken in the street, the Babylonian, Assyrian languages, dialects of Akkadian, which come to dominate.

• 58:45Tristan Hughes?

  And is that epitomized by when you see the rise of Babylon soon after, Seth Hammurabi and so on, that the language that they are using is Akkadian? Sumerian is still there, but to a lesser extent is more as an intellectual pursuit?

• 58:58Speaker 06

  That's right. And I think that's what's given the impression that the Sumerians as a people have been defeated and has disappeared. But in fact, it's just a change in the use of language by the state.

• 59:15Tristan Hughes?

  And they've been speaking Akkadian anyway for some time up to that point?

• 59:18Speaker 06

  They've been speaking Akkadian for forever.

• 59:22Tristan Hughes?

  So the people endure, so that the Sumerian language changes at that time?

• 59:26Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 59:27Tristan Hughes?

  So when can we really say, I mean, it's a fascinating topic to to explore. When can we really say Sumerian has reached its end? When can we say that these Sumerian cities, as in cities where Sumerian was still written, does evidently experience a decline? These cities do fall.

• 59:49Speaker 06

  So Sumerian has an echo long after the last person has spoken it for thousands of years. But it doesn't define, as it were, a group of people or a particular culture. It is part of the rebuilding and the remodeling and the reshaping of Mesopotamian culture over the millennia as new peoples take power and bring in their own traditions. And we see new forms of economic and political organisation. But Sumerian is there within that framework.

• 1:00:31Tristan Hughes?

  So that legacy lives on. But do we have any idea? I mean, will the likes of Ur and Aruk, when you get to the the second millennium B.C., will they ever reach the heights that they had in previous centuries? Do we see a clear decline in importance of these cities now as time has moved on?

• 1:00:51Speaker 06

  In many respects, no. The major changes to many of these cities are largely a result of the movement of the major rivers. And so the shift of the Tigris and the Euphrates and their their tributaries and and or the the streams that flow from them across the alluvial plain, they shift in their bed. But that is very often a gradual process.

• 1:01:20Speaker 06

  Or when it's more violent change, then cities are left abandoned in the desert. But for places like Ur and Uruk, that doesn't happen until much later. The last centuries of the first millennium B.C. So we're looking way into the future for the decline of those cities. And many of them continue to survive even as the rivers shift courses. Because kings from other cities, recognizing their great antiquity and their importance, and the home of great gods, continue to build there even when the populations are no longer a major component of their existence.

• 1:02:04Tristan Hughes?

  So he's almost asking about, might have to retitle this, maybe with a question mark, Fall of the Sumerians, question mark at the end. Can we even say that there is a clear cutoff point for the fall of Sumer, for the fall of these cities, for the fall of the Sumerian language? If they manage to endure in these other forms, if when we mention the word Sumerian, you actually have to be more careful with how you say it because the people didn't identify themselves as Sumerian, you realise as an interviewer, it's much more complicated than simply Fall of the Sumerians.

• 1:02:37Speaker 06

  I think it's much more interesting. I think it's much more complex, real worlds that we're dealing with. And very often all we're seeing is that that top elite royal level, where of course there are changes of dynasties and changes of identities, but fundamentally, these mixed populations connected very much their identity with their cities. And that's something one finds in Iraq to this day.

• 1:03:07Tristan Hughes?

  And with the Sumerian language, so can we still imagine that there would have been people who knew how to write it, how to interpret it, all the way down to, let's say, the Neo Assyrians in the first millennium B.C., in the great library of Ashavanna, for instance, at Nineveh, or maybe even then transported into the Greco-Rhemen world? Do we know much about that, that longevity of Sumerian as a language?

• 1:03:31Speaker 06

  So Sumerian is, continues to be.

• 1:03:35Speaker 06

  Written, and I mean to some extent, of course, spoken in the same way that Latin would be spoken. But it's very much about a literary elite. It's the scribes who are trained in the system of writing and have the intellectual knowledge to be thinking about this. And they too were stumped by the tablets that were coming out of the ground, recording some of these earlier attempts to record Sumerian. And so we see in the new Assyrian period, in the first millennium B.C., cuneiform tablets, where the scribes are writing some of the more archaic forms of the signs and trying

• 1:04:20Speaker 06

  to work out their original meaning in the Sumerian language. So it's an intellectual endeavour. And it's that intellectual world that really comes to an end when the cuneiform system of writing ends in the early centuries of the common era. Because Sumerian is embedded in the script. And once the script is replaced by alphabetic systems, then Sumerian disappears.

• 1:04:51Tristan Hughes?

  Sumerian as a language endures all the way through the cuneiform tradition. Now, this is extraordinary, and yes, as you say, almost the equivalent of Greek, ancient Greek and Latin today, as an intellectual pursuit. Paul, this has been eye-opening. I didn't know much about this topic at all, and you've highlighted so much about these cities and the people and, of course, the language of Sumerian and how it endured over millennia. It just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast.

• 1:05:20Speaker 06

  Thank you very much.

• 1:05:24Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was fan favourite of the podcast, the British Museum's Dr Paul Collins. For this, our second episode in our Great Disasters mini-series this September, all about the Sumerian cities some 4,000 years ago, and how we probably shouldn't be looking at the fall of a Sumerian people, but rather the fall of the Sumerian language as a spoken language, quite like Latin today, becoming an intellectual pursuit. It's all really interesting. Would love to hear your thoughts about the episode in the comments. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps and you'll be doing us a big favour if you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, we'd really appreciate that.

• 1:06:09Tristan Hughes?

  Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe.