← HistoryExtra podcast
HistoryExtra podcast
Wolfmen and amazons: why did the Greeks and Romans demonise their neighbours?
00:37:45
Dr Owen Rees reveals why classical Greeks and Romans were so fascinated by the 'barbarians' beyond their borders
Loading summary
Transcript60 lines
- [00:00]
Shopify Advertiser
When you think about super successful businesses that are selling through the roof like Heinz or Mattel, you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But there's a secret the business behind the business making selling simple for them and buying simple for their customers. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout as Heinz and Mattel. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com promo all lowercase go to shopify.com promo to upgr package you're selling today. Shopify.com promo today at T Mobile I'm.
- [00:39]
Snoop Dogg
Joined by a special co anchor.
- [00:41]
What up everybody? It's your boy. Big Snoop deal.
- [00:42]
Double G Snoop where can people go to find great deals?
- [00:46]
Head to T mobile.com and get four iPhone 16s with Apple Intelligence on us plus four lines for 25 bucks.
- [00:52]
That's quite a deal. Snoop and when you switch to T Mobile you can save versus the other big guys. Comparable plans plus streaming respect.
- [00:59]
We up out of here.
- [01:01]
See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys. AT T Mobile Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later.
- [01:07]
Over the past several days, three females.
- [01:11]
Have been found dead.
- [01:13]
Amanda Seyfried
Looks like someone's going after these girls.
- [01:16]
Snoop Dogg
Then they have to know to wash their backs. Streaming now.
- [01:20]
You only want what happened if it's when it happened to you. Exactly why I need to keep going on this.
- [01:25]
Starring Emmy Award winner Amanda Seifried. I'm worried about what you're going to find so My Long Bright River a limited series. Streaming now only on Peacock.
- [01:38]
Amanda Seyfried
Your data is like gold to hackers. They'll sell it to the highest bidder. Are you protected? McAfee helps shield you blocking suspicious texts, malicious emails and fraudulent websites. McAfee Secure VPN lets you browse safely and its AI powered tech scam detector spots threats instantly. You'll also get up to $2 million of award winning antivirus and identity theft protection, all for just $39.99 for your first year. Visit McAfee.com, cancel anytime. Terms apply.
- [02:11]
Spencer Mizzen
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Fearsome Amazons, men who turned into wolves and tribes who never grew old. Ancient Greek and Roman texts are packed with extraordinary descriptions of the people living beyond their borders. Here in conversation with Spencer Mizzen, Dr. Owen Rees, who's written a new book on the subject, explores these classical superpowers, sense of cultural superiority and reveals what we can learn about the ancient world by Exploring life on their frontiers.
- [02:54]
Dr. Owen Rees
So, Erwin, why do you think it's important that we look at the ancient world from the perspective of frontiers, of the boundaries of empire, rather than say, the great centres of power such as Athens and Rome? What can we learn from the approach that you've adopted in your new book?
- [03:17]
Snoop Dogg
The kind of core lesson by looking at the periphery, by looking away from the usual stories we hear are just hearing different stories. I think ancient history is told from a very. Not one dimensional point of view, but a very specific perspective. And it's like you said, it's those cultural centers of, you know, all the ones we kind of grow up with, Athens, Rome, Alexandria, you know, all these amazing places doesn't take away from just how phenomenal these places were. And their stories are just fascinating. That's why we're so captivated by them. But in the back of my mind, whenever I'm reading these sort of histories, I'm always thinking, well, what's everyone else up to? Rome had a large population, but it's nowhere near the population of its entire empire. So what is the rest of Rome, shall we say, up to? And what I found as I started to explore this question is first of all, an awful lot. They're up to an awful lot. But the other thing was, because we move away from central stories and the sort of the traditional source material, the actual evidence we use of the sort of the history histories coming from these cultural hubs, you know, the Roman historians, the Greek historians, we start to actually find works or writings or just evidence of, for want of a better word, normal people. People just living normal lives and just getting on with their sort of normal days. And so whilst, you know, from the center we get obsessed with political intrigue and emperors taking over from other emperors and all these things out on the periphery, a lot of that doesn't really hit them day to day. And I just find that fascinating. I find that really fascinating. The kind of comparison I often give when thinking about this is the way we look at ancient history is a bit like going to New York and thinking we've seen America. So it's all about those kind of perspectives and what you start to find also at the periphery. So out on the edges, when you're far away from the judgmental eyes of the center, shall we say, you find rules stop applying so vehemently and so fastidiously. So I'll give you an example. In classical Greek history, so we're talking 5th and 4th century Greek history, something we hear a lot about is the Idea of the barbarian. So this foreign speaking, foreign entity, and it's kind of juxtaposed with Greek civilization, so to speak. And if you read people like Plato, the great philosopher, Plato from Athens, he even talks about this, and he talks about the mixing of Greeks and barbarians through marriage and things like that is almost a very negative thing. So we build this impression that the Greeks don't like foreigners. And what I was intrigued by as I look, as I explored certain Greek cities outside of Greece, so one in Ukraine, one in France and one in Egypt, is they're all marrying foreign peoples, they're all intermingling with these supposedly barbarian cultures that they think is the opposite of them, that they think is almost less than them, if we believe are Athenian writers. So I became really intrigued by this idea of what are the cultural rules that don't apply out on the edge. So this is kind of what this perspective offers us. It offers us different ways of looking at the ancient world and finding different stories that perhaps we're not used to hearing.
- [06:39]
Dr. Owen Rees
How much of a challenge was this? Because I assume that ancient history, or the telling of ancient history, has dominated by a certain perspective, I. E. Those in power, Greek and Roman writers. So how do you get beyond their perspective?
- [06:54]
Snoop Dogg
There's a couple of ways of getting around it. So I'm a historian by background, so the written texts is where I live. And to find different perspectives within written texts, it's all about the questions you're asking to kind of drive your interpretation in different directions. So just by asking the question of what's going on at the edge, you actually start to look at writers like Thucydides and Herodotus and Livy, the Roman writer. You bring to it a different perspective and start to look at it through a different lens. Now, as you say, like, quite rightly, you haven't solved the entire problem because they're still at the centre and they still have very strict views on what they think is going on at the edge of the world. So what we have to do is we have to blend it with other forms of evidence. Archaeology becomes an important discipline here.
- [07:40]
Dr. Owen Rees
The book spans millennia and it travels enormous geographical distances. Ranges from ancient Egypt, Vietnam, the ancient Greek presence in what's now Ukraine, and all the way up to Hadrian's Wall. Did you find in your research that that sense of cultural superiority is kind of part of the human condition? That, you know, all great powers, whether we're talking about Han Chinese or ancient Romans, is there a tendency for them always to look down their noses at those living at the boundaries of their empire and beyond.
- [08:16]
Snoop Dogg
Absolutely, unquestionably. And I'm really intrigued by why. What does it serve? And there's lots of different ways that you could kind of explore this. I mean, ultimately, as cultures and many of them turn into empires, expand, they start to try and justify that expansion because obviously this drains resources, this drains attention. Human life is often lost as a result of this. You know, how are you justifying this? So you get these kind of civilization missions. We're going to civilize the world, Whether it's Egypt, the text about the pharaohs talk about chaos and how the pharaohs are basically going to undo that chaos and create order. Or if it's the kind of civilizing missions that we know of in more modern empires, I think the underpinning's still the same. What I found particularly interesting because my interest in the book wasn't what do the people at the center think about this? My interest, what is life like at the edge? So from that sort of perspective, what I was more interested in is what does it cause for everyday life? And what we see is in all these examples, whether it's China, Rome, Egypt, whatever it be, is a sense of othering. So you create this identity of yourself not by saying we're the same, because often that can lead to some awkward conversations because we're not all the same. But what we can agree on is what we're not. And what we're not is chaotic. What we're not is disgusting. What we're not is disorderly or doing immoral things. That's what other people do. So you get this sense of we create a group identity by defining what we are definitely not. And so we can spread out and almost try and for want of a better term, help these other people not be like that too. And this is where you get that civilizing mission turn up time and again. Irrelevant of the religions involved, irrelevant of the cultures involved. It seems to be one of the motivators. Is it a universal human trait? I don't think so. Otherwise we'd see it in every single culture, in every single way, Whether that be nomadic, pastoral or sedentary, you know, cities, urbanism. But I do think it is inherent in all empire building or empire ideologies. You don't wake up dreaming of McDonald's fries. You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns. McDonald's breakfast comes first. Ba da ba ba ba.
- [10:40]
Amanda Seyfried
I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger so I can get in more squats anywhere I can. 1, 2, 3.
- [10:54]
Snoop Dogg
Will that be cash or credit?
- [10:56]
Credit.
- [10:57]
4 Galaxy S25 Ultra the AI companion that does the heavy lifting. So you can do. You get yours@samsung.com compatible with select apps. Requires Google Gemini account. Results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy.
- [11:10]
Dr. Owen Rees
I'm ready for my life to change.
- [11:12]
Snoop Dogg
ABC Sundays. American Idol is all new.
- [11:16]
Give it your all.
- [11:17]
Shopify Advertiser
Good luck. Come out with a golden ticket.
- [11:18]
Snoop Dogg
Let's hear it.
- [11:19]
Spencer Mizzen
This is immense world.
- [11:22]
Dr. Owen Rees
I've never seen anything like it.
- [11:25]
Snoop Dogg
And a new chapter begins. Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryant and Ryan Seacrest on American Idol News Sundays, 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.
- [11:40]
Dr. Owen Rees
Now. I wonder if I could turn now to I think it's probably the earliest anecdote in your book, and that's the brutal murder of a group of people, including women and children, that Lake Turkana in Kenya. I think this is going back 10,000 years. I mean, how does this grim episode fit into your overall story? What does that tell us about human attitudes to sort of those living on the edges of frontiers and beyond?
- [12:12]
Snoop Dogg
That's a really good question. Lake Turkana was put in for a couple of reasons. One is the edge of the known world is as much an imaginary concept that we have today as it is a historical one. So something I was really wanting to kind of challenge was what history do we not include when we talk about human history? And because of our obsession with the civilizations of the world and our interest in written word as our main source, we discount a lot of history that we know about through archeology that we've talked about. So that was the reason why I really wanted to get these stories in. But the incidents you're giving, which is quite a horrific, unarguably a massacre, and it is said by some anthropologists to be the earliest human massacre we know of. I mean, it is a nasty story and it includes pregnant women within that massacre. And thematically, what it picked up is this idea of us and them. So what drives one group of human beings to massacre another group of human beings? So my academic background is in psychology of conflict and war. And I'm always fascinated by what is it that drives people to do it? How can you motivate people to do this? Why would you motivate people to do this? And as an earliest example of what are ultimately pastoral nomadic groups, why would you go about tying up these individuals and killing them in cold blood. But also thematically, it brings up this idea of moving groups. So conflict comes through movement, conflict comes through a sense of ownership quite often. So is that what's going on? Is it that one group felt that this was theirs, this land, this hunting ground was theirs, and then another group came in to do it? We don't know, we can't answer those questions, but. But it just sets up the kind of themes that we see throughout the book as we go through all the cultures. We see these almost like these breadcrumbs that go through every single example. We keep seeing those little threads, those little themes come through time and again and again.
- [14:05]
Dr. Owen Rees
Now, as you write in the book, the ancient Greeks were masters at cultural superiority. They really did think they were better than everyone else. And you give one very good example of that comes through the Greek historian Herodotus, where he writes about the Scythians. I just wonder if you could tell us how Herodotus writings on the Scythians sort of tell us about Greek attitudes to other cultures.
- [14:31]
Snoop Dogg
The Scythiads are a vague group in Greek writing. So as a culture they exist sort of north of the Black Sea and east. And archaeologically we find evidence in what is now modern Ukraine, all the way to Siberia. So culturally we're talking about a large expanse, but it's not a unified group of people. So what we see in Herodotus, who's fascinated with ethnography, he's fascinated with other cultures, the Scythians become this almost like antithesis of everything he knows. So what he knows from the Greek perspective is subservient women, men in control, politics, city building, even militarily, it's heavy infantry, cavalry play a subsidiary role. Archery is not the most masculine form of warfare, but it has a place. And then you have the Scythians who live this nomadic to semi nomadic life on a horse, they don't really build cities, they don't really build towns, they don't really have agriculture, they don't write, they don't do all the hallmarks of Greek civilization. And to top it off, women have some sense of authority or autonomy, which is just like, almost like the straw that breaks the Greek camel back. So his description of the Scythians is kind of imbued with that. What's interesting is he's not always wrong. So it's not like he's inventing this. So he's obviously fascinated by this culture that isn't anything really like his. The classic example of this is the Greeks mark of Greek culture is to drink wine, and to drink wine in a very particular way. So you drink it with water, and it's all very civilized. You're not going to get drunk or you're not purposely getting drunk. If you're doing that, you're doing it in a particular environment and for a particular reason. But there is this sense of you drink wine and you talk philosophy and, you know, this is sort of high culture. Scythians don't do any of that. And one thing he does describe is their use of cannabis. That's kind of a different thing as well. But we know archaeologically that that is true. We have found the evidence of cannabis use in what we consider Scythian cultural burials and things like that. So he's not necessarily making all this up, which just makes the whole thing more intriguing. So what we're seeing in Herodotus is sometimes a really open reflection from one culture, just kind of surprised by another. And I just think that's quite beautiful.
- [16:52]
Dr. Owen Rees
To stay with Frodatus and obviously there's plenty of other examples of this. There's some extraordinarily outlandish descriptions of life beyond the frontiers. You've got tales of Amazons fighting on horseback until they take a husband and lose their virginity. You've got the tribe that would turn into wolves for a few days and then turn back into humans. I think you mentioned it. The hyper Boreans of people who never get ill or grow old. Why did ancient writers sort of feel moved to tell such remarkable stories? And did their readership believe what they were saying?
- [17:32]
Snoop Dogg
Oh, now, that's a very interesting question. So why are they driven by it? Greece and Rome, in particular, Greek and Roman writers were driven by trying to understand what was around them. This is what drove their sort of intellectual development. They want to understand everything around them, whether it be nature, whether it be geography, whether it be the weather, you know, whatever it is, they were trying to understand it. So I think a lot of this is trying to push human knowledge as far as it could and then try and explain what goes beyond it, just so they have a full picture. But what we see is they disagree with each other a lot because of this. So one of my favorite examples of this is Pythias, a Greek sailor makes it to the British Isles. And his description of the British Isles and a land called Thule, or Thule, which might be maybe possibly Iceland, or it could be maybe the west coast of Norway. No one's really 100% sure, but his descriptions tell us, he's near the Arctic Circle. And his description of Britain is discounted by many contemporary writers as just being ridiculous. You know, how could there be this cold land where it always rains? What are you talking about? This is nonsense, and I just love that. So even when they're pushing the boundaries of their knowledge and finding truth, for want of a better word, other people are skeptical of it. So when it comes to, like, these sort of semi mythical stories, that's the tradition I see it in. So Herodotus, there's a good chance he went to possibly Scythia or Scythian lands, but even he knew there was a limit to what he knew. So he's projecting based on stories he may have heard and things like that. And what you see in his account of Scythia is you can literally track it from the Greek city of Olbia, which is the city I write a chapter on. You can track it the further away he goes, north from Olbia, he starts to move from historical culture to fantasy myth, really. And that's where we end up with the werewolves, and that's where we end up with the Hyperboreans who never grow old. But before that, we see actually pastoralism, semi nomadism. We see this almost evolution from civilization, as he would refer to it, civilization to barbarianism, or as you and I might think of it, reality to myth.
- [19:45]
Dr. Owen Rees
But your argument then is actually in real life, there was quite a lot of cultural exchange going on between the cultures on the edges of the empire. And there was a lot more pragmatism going on. People had to rub along and they had to live cheek by jowl. You know, there wasn't this big divide between quote, unquote, civilization and barbarians.
- [20:07]
Snoop Dogg
Absolutely. And you see it most clearly at the periphery. You see it most clearly at the edge because our written evidence often cultural exchange either. Well, I say that cultural interaction either occurs in battle or in war or between, like palaces, basically. So the elite, you know, exchange of letters, exchange of envoys and things like that. What we see at the periphery is where actually cultures and influences cross and meet with each other. And it's undeniable. And we see it really clearly in every single chapter in my book. And this is kind of the point of it, to kind of go look at the periphery. And this is where we see coexistence. We don't see us versus them in the same way. There's a bit of it. I'm not deluded. You know, there is a bit of it, but it's not in the same way, for the reasons you mention. What I think is one of the clear cut examples of this is the city of Taxila in Pakistan, modern Pakistan, ancient India. And it is interestingly on the periphery of the Indian sort of cultural hub. So it's on the periphery of that cultural sphere, of Indian cultural sphere. It's also on the periphery from the Western cultures, whether it be Persia, Greece, Rome, whichever time period you're talking about, it's always on the periphery of all of these powerful influences. And as a result we see this amazing blend of ideas and intellectualism, but also artistic trends. So Taxila is famous within ancient history as being sort of one of the strong hubs of the early religion of Buddhism. It's kind of a center of learning and the Buddhist traditions. But then it becomes part of the Greek sphere after Alexander for a bit. So it takes on Greek influences. And that's where we see Greek style of sculpture, of art come in and mix and blend with Indian religion, Indian intellectualism, Indian philosophy. And historians at the moment are exploring this in amazing detail. And there's like questions about whether or not Buddhism influences Greek philosophy, Roman philosophy. Just how much is there this interchange? We don't know yet. We're still exploring it. But the one that is quite clear is that the Greeks give Buddha his human form. So the style of Greek art influences the way the statues of Buddha become. And before that, Buddha is usually depicted in symbolic form. So he has various symbols that you use to show his presence, but not him as a human. And then when he does appear, it's based on ultimately Greco Roman sculpture style, but done in the northwest of India, in India itself. So I just think that's a lovely moment in that direction. So from west cultures influencing Eastern cultures. But what I'm really interested in now is it going the other way and about Indian culture influencing Western culture.
- [22:54]
Dr. Owen Rees
So you've got this continual back and forth of ideas between different cultures. Let's talk about the Romans, because as we said, the Greeks saw themselves as being culturally superior to their neighbors. But you kind of write that under the Romans this is a supercharged of anything they saw as kind of a polarity, as you write, between civilization and order, with barbarism and chaos. I mean, how did that happen? Why did the Romans see themselves as so utterly exceptional?
- [23:23]
Snoop Dogg
So the Romans thought they were exceptional because they were exceptional in many ways. Not necessarily culturally, but imperially and militarily. They have this massive empire for a reason. So I suppose the world confirmed their beliefs. It's an interesting one because the Roman period is really where we get our idea of barbarianism being an innately bad thing. So the Greeks, barbarian was an innately foreign thing, but that kind of sense of its danger and a problem that seems to come more through the Roman writers. There's lots of reasons for it. A Roman history is filled in the earlier years with problems with northern, shall we say, Celtic or Gallic tribes coming down. I mean, Rome was sacked at one point, and this kind of instilled a fear that this could happen again. So I think early on, Roman writers really wanted everyone to be aware of this danger. I mean, we see it all the way up to, like, the period of Julius Caesar. So when we kind of think of the Roman Republic at its kind of height and, you know, growing after its victories with its great enemy Carthage, and, you know, the birth of the Roman Empire is really happening. And around the time of Julius Caesar and his invasion of Gaul, we're still seeing this rhetoric of they're a real problem, problem, and we should be really scared of them because they could do horrific things and we need to go and help our allies to stop them doing these bad things. So that kind of fear of the foreigner, rather than a misunderstanding or a mistrust of foreign peoples, is particularly Roman. And I think that underpins their imperial message, their imperial journey, their imperial ideology. And so as they get more and more victorious, they take Gaul, they take Britain, you know, they go into Germany, they go down to Spain, they go east. All these victories kind of reaffirm that. And then it becomes, you know, and we're now helping people so we don't have to believe them about this, but it's undeniable that they do very much see this as almost a mission of their own as they go and grow their power.
- [25:20]
Dr. Owen Rees
And how does somewhere like Hadrian's Wall play into this? Because this is a very sort of solid, immovable manifestation of this great boundary between, you know, the Roman Empire and the wilds beyond. What does Hadris Wall tell us about Roman attitudes?
- [25:37]
Snoop Dogg
Well, what I think it tells us, I don't think. I don't. I don't know if many would agree with me. But what I think it tells us is they went, wow, Scotland's a bit much. We'll stop just before it. Because if you think they penetrated deep into what we now think of as Scotland, so, you know, they know it has an end. The fact that they do this cutoff point, I think, is a really revealing moment. It is a statement of power. There's no question It's a statement of power, it's a statement of authority, It's a statement of intent. It is interesting that, you know, they go, this is now too far. We won't go beyond that. Although of course the Antonine Wall was later built. So they do try and go beyond it and then pull back. I personally, I'm tempted to see a lot of action in the ancient world through pragmatism. I think we have underlined pragmatism and replace it with ideology or, you know, highbrow concepts or individual power. That's often what we look to. I often look at it through pragmatism and ultimately they build this wall to stop the one emperor that attempts to go beyond it. It just doesn't work. It's clearly not worth it to keep trying to take this last bit of land. And so of course, if they ever do talk about the northern lands beyond the Hadrian's Wall, it's often done in quite this. You know, these are wild, exactly like you said, these wilds kind of barb places. But the Romans did push beyond it. There is evidence of Roman settlements and falsification stuff beyond Hadrian's Wall. But this is a real statement of intent. The investment that went into this, it's very much, this is where our authority stops. This is where civilization starts. You know, if you want to go down that route, it is a clear indication of that. And they just don't invest in a symbol like this anywhere else. We've got large frontier fortifications in sort of Germany, North Africa. We've got equivalent, but not that looks like Hadrian's Wall.
- [27:25]
Dr. Owen Rees
Okay. I wonder if I could mention one final location that you stop at during your book, and that's Koh Lua in Vietnam, which you describe as arguably the furthest point in the world of which the Romans had a vague knowledge. Why is this such a fascinating place to study in know in the context of your book?
- [27:47]
Snoop Dogg
There are two reasons. One is it allows us to talk about really beyond what Roman writers knew about, but we're still interacting with. So a Greek and Roman writers do not know about ancient Vietnam. What they do know is that there is a land beyond India that is not China, and they know it's towards the south. They seem to know about the Malay Peninsula, so they know about the sort of area around Malaysia, and they know that there is a land beyond that across what we would call the Gulf of Thailand. So they know it exists. They don't know anything about it. They give it a name which seems to come from a Sanskrit term which means basically like great city, great town, something along those lines. So it's got this vague name, vague concept, and they have to talk about it because it's within the knowledge of the Roman trade network. And I just find that amazing. So we're now beyond the knowledge of the intellectuals of Greece and Rome and the Mediterranean, but were within the knowledge of the workers, so the tradesmen, the marketers, you know, all these people. So there was. From that perspective, Kolawar itself is an amazing town city, really, in northern Vietnam. And it's on the periphery of the Han Empire in China. And the other reason why I want to talk about it is by exploring its history with China, you notice all the parallels that we saw in the sort of the Mediterranean, more focused parts of the book as well. So when we move out of the Mediterranean entirely, we still see the same themes. We see what we might describe as racial profiling. We see the frictions ideologically between the center, the imperial center, and the periphery. But we also see the blending of cultures and we see the freedoms to such an extent, like I mentioned with the Scythians and Herodotus. We see the same thing in Vietnam, where the Han Chinese, strongly influenced by Confucian ideals, are kind of shocked to see women have autonomy. And at its most extreme level, Koloa has its own version of the Boudicca rebellion with the Trung sisters, who were actually a lot more successful than Boudicca was, even though it does fail. So again, in there as well, just to kind of show those continuity of theme. And finally, one of my obsessions, writing this entire book was just how interconnected the ancient world was. We have Roman remains or Roman objects found in ancient Vietnam, clearly traded. We've got medallions, we've got jewelry, we've got things like that. And we've also. We know at one end they're getting things as far as Vietnam. We know at the far western end they're all the way up into sort of Scotland. So in terms of the trade network, when we're thinking of Rome, that's the world we're talking about. We're not talking about the Mediterranean. We're talking about from Scotland to Vietnam and China. That's what we're talking about. And then as you go further back in time, there's another site I talk about in Megiddo, which is now modern Israel. There's a site around there where we've got evidence hundreds of years before the Roman Empire of a trade network from Cornwall that goes all the way to Indonesia, just through evidence we find in ancient Israel. I just blew my mind. Rather than seeing everything in these small cultural silos of the ancient world, I really wanted to go. But it's a whole world. That's what's going on here. It's the entire world. So let's just see how connected it actually was.
- [31:15]
Dr. Owen Rees
Finally, Owen, what can looking at these interactions tell us about the world we live in today? Is there anything we can learn from this in the 21st century?
- [31:25]
Snoop Dogg
There are two main things we can learn from this. The first one is it's interesting that so many of the sites I talk about are still areas of conflict. And that wasn't done on purpose. I'll be honest with you. I really wanted to travel the world whilst writing this book. Covid kind of ruined that. And then I prioritized going to particular sites. So I wanted to go to Ukraine. Putin kind of ruined that plan. And then I wanted to go to Megiddo and I wanted to go around Israel and what is ancient Palestine. And, well, everything going on there kind of changed that plan. Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, you know, these are beautiful places and conflicts that go there pop up or disappear. And it's fluctuating. There's still areas of fluctuation. And that in itself is interesting and kind of raises questions of why do we. Are these still places we think of as the edge of cultural spheres? Is that. Why is that what's going on? So that's kind of one thing, but the other is humans have always interacted. Humans have always tried to find ways to get along when they need to. So I think there's something to be said for conflict does exist. When cultures clash, that's inevitable. We know that. But there's something to be said for barriers of culture don't need to exist. They're usually imposed with this us and them ideology. A lot of that imposition and sense of cultural superiority comes from history and how we teach history and how we talk about history. And I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about our own histories because, you know, British history, American history, whatever it be, you know, there's amazing stories there and, you know, there's nothing innately wrong with being proud of the kind of heritage we come from, but there is something to be said for it's very narrow and, you know, can't we talk about more of it and actually talk about how we have blended and merged with other cultures and how we've actually collaborated to create amazing things? It's not about who did something first. It's about what came together to create something. And this is what I think themes of my book was really trying to show that ultimately we don't need to use history to reinforce division. We can ultimately kind of show that history has the power to bring us together. Really, if I was to be as.
- [33:34]
Spencer Mizzen
Ideological as I could be, that was Dr. Owen Rees. Owen's new book, the Far Edges of the Known World, is published by Bloomsbury. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.
- [33:53]
Snoop Dogg
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
- [34:20]
Hi, this is Jevon, your blinds.com design consultant.
- [34:23]
Amanda Seyfried
Oh wow, a real person.
- [34:24]
Snoop Dogg
Yep. I'm here to help with everything from selecting the perfect window treatments to wow.
- [34:29]
Amanda Seyfried
Well, I've got a complicated project.
- [34:31]
Snoop Dogg
No problem. I can even help schedule a professional measuring install. We can also send you samples fast and free. I just might have to do more. Whatever you need.
- [34:40]
Amanda Seyfried
So the first room we're looking at.
- [34:41]
Snoop Dogg
Is for shopblinds.com now and save up.
- [34:43]
To 45% site wide. Blinds.com rules and restrictions may apply.