New Books Network — Ancient History

Episode: Owen Rees, The Far Edges of the Known World: Life Beyond the Borders of Ancient Civilization (Norton, 2025)
Host: Ryan Tripp
Guest: Dr. Owen Rees
Date: September 15, 2025

Episode Overview

This lively interview features Dr. Owen Rees, lecturer at Birmingham Newman University, discussing his new book, The Far Edges of the Known World: Life Beyond the Borders of Ancient Civilization. The episode explores what life was like beyond the familiar centers of ancient civilizations—Rome, Athens, Alexandria—and instead highlights people and cultures at the peripheries: border towns, frontier settlements, and crossroads where cultural interaction flourished. Rees’s central aim is to move the focus away from the elite and the imperial centers, revealing how ordinary people adapted, persisted, and shaped their worlds in unexpected ways. The book draws on wide-ranging archaeological and written evidence, investigating thirteen sites that upend our usual understanding of who mattered and what counted as “history” in the ancient world.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Inspiration and Approach

[01:58–10:12]

• Interests & Academic Path:
  Owen Rees began as a specialist in ancient Greece, but also co-manages a history fact-checking website (badancient.com), busting myths and misconceptions (e.g., “aliens built the pyramids”).
  "My path to this book was almost an amalgamation of the two. I wanted to write a book that was about the ancient world...that kind of was familiar, told familiar stories, but felt unfamiliar." — Owen Rees [02:05]

• Breaking the Centered Narrative:
  The book moves away from elite, male perspectives at cultural hubs. Instead, it asks: What about everyone else? What was life like on the periphery—for Greeks in Ukraine, for Romans at Hadrian's Wall, for traders in Pakistan?

• Modern Resonance:
  The Brexit debate and questions about borders inspired reflection: What happens at the edges of civilization—where borders meet, cultures cross, ideas mingle?

• Structure & Challenges:
  The book is organized chronologically through 13 case-study “sites,” from Pharaonic Egypt to the fringes of China, each revealing unique and overlooked stories.

• Notable Quote:
  "It's a bit like going to, let's say, New York and claiming you've seen America, or coming to London and saying you've seen Britain, you haven't...you've seen something unique, but you haven't seen everything." — Owen Rees [07:25]

2. Pastoralists and the Edges of Ancient History

[10:12–19:03]

• Lake Turkana Massacre (Kenya):
  The book begins before the traditional start of “ancient history” (before Mesopotamia), focusing on pastoralist groups in East Africa.
  Archaeologists discovered a ~10,000-year-old massacre site—27 (really 28) skeletons, including a bound pregnant woman, raising questions about violence, community, and the complexity of human societies. "In the site there is a pregnant woman...so actually, I mentioned the 27 bodies, but really there's 28 deaths here in this massacre. So it is not a pleasant element of the human story..." — Owen Rees [12:29]

• Pillar Sites and Pastoral Monumentality:
  Pastoralists erected megalithic “pillar sites” for burials, challenging assumptions that only settled, hierarchical societies build monuments. "Pastoralists more than capable of building monuments, which challenges a normal narrative that you need agriculture and you need sedentary life to build monuments." — Owen Rees [15:13]

• Duality in Identity:
  The chapter bridges nomadic and sedentary lifeways: Nubian pastoralists settled, formed urban centers, but retained traditions (cattle, mobility, prestige items).

3. Egyptian-Nubian Frontiers: Cultural Exchange at the Borders

[19:05–27:23]

• Fortresses along the Second Cataract:
  A series of massive forts along southern Egypt (now Sudan) showcase both Egyptian imperial ideology—the “wretched Kush,” fort-naming like “destroyers of the Nubians”—and practical day-to-day coexistence.

• Material Evidence of Blending:
  Nubian cooking pots (with Nubian foods) are found in Egyptian military households, showing likely intermarriage and shared daily life—even as official rhetoric demonized the “other.”

  "We know from traces of food left in some of the pots that actually they have some of the culinary markers associated with Nubia...marriage becomes the simplest explanation." — Owen Rees [22:43]

• Continuity through Chaos:
  Despite shifts in control (Egyptian → Kushite → Egyptian again), life persists. The pots even increase in number, and garrison-leader families serve successive regimes.

4. Crossroads of the Bronze Age: Megiddo

[28:54–37:03]

• Megiddo as the Ultimate Crossroads:
  Pre-Israelite Megiddo in Canaan, famous as the biblical “Armageddon,” was never powerful but always pivotal—situated at the hinge of Egypt, Babylonia, and the Aegean world.

• Archaeobiology & Global Trade:
  Dental analyses reveal imported food proteins—bananas (from SE Asia), soya (China), vanilla (India)—reflecting astonishingly early, globalized trade routes. Tin in local bronze came from Cornwall, England.

  "We have evidence that there is a trade network that links the south of England in Cornwall all the way potentially to Indonesia and China via the Levant region in western Asia." — Owen Rees [34:54]

5. Greek-Scythian Interactions: Olbia

[37:03–48:36]

• Olbia (Ukraine) as a Greek-Scythian Port:
  Greeks considered the Scythians the “ultimate barbarian”—nomadic, horse-archered, female autonomy—utterly unlike Greeks.

• Cultural Adaptation for Trade:
  Greeks minted coinage shaped like dolphins and Scythian arrowheads, explicitly tailored for their Scythian neighbors.

  "They need to want to trade with you...how do you create value...with a culture where they do not use coinage?...[So] we see coins used and shaped so that it had meaning to Scythian groups." — Owen Rees [41:59]

• Intermarriage and Identity:
  Olbia offered citizenship to “mixelenes”—children of Greek-Scythian unions—even as Plato denounced such mixing in Athens.

  "From the edge of the world, intermarriage is fine. We could even give you citizenship...it counters a narrative from Athens specifically." — Owen Rees [44:49]

6. Greek Outposts in Egypt: Naucratis

[48:36–53:58]

• Naucratis: Trading Post, Cultural Innovator:
  The Egyptian state allowed one Greek town, Naucratis, as a legal trade hub. There, Greek monumental architecture (like Doric columns) may have been inspired by Egyptian models.

• Site of Courtesans and Intellectuals:
  Famous courtesans (like Rhodopis) made fortunes, and the city gained a reputation as a destination for Greek intellectual sojourners—real or mythologized.

  "It becomes a place where you go or you're said to have gone if you are a Greek intellectual. So this is true of Egypt generally...if you're a wise man in Greece, you will have gone to Egypt." — Owen Rees [51:12]

7. Life at Hadrian's Wall: The Mundane Frontier

[53:58–59:44]

• Hadrian's Statement and Limit:
  The wall bisects Britain, the “end of civilization” to Romans—yet evidence shows Roman outposts even farther north.

• Vindolanda Tablets: Letters of Boredom and Domesticity:
  The famous tablets document daily life: requests for socks, beer orders, birthday party invitations. Life was remarkably “normal” and often dull; soldiers and their families formed a diverse, multiethnic community.

  "We get examples of someone literally writing a letter asking to be sent more socks...it's really, really boring and really, really normal. And it's a beautiful thing." — Owen Rees [56:15]

8. Volubilis: Punic, Berber, Roman, and Beyond

[60:58–65:48]

• Layered Identities:
  Volubilis (Morocco) began as a Berber settlement, then Punic, then a Roman outpost. Even after Rome’s withdrawal, “Roman” practices—like mosaic commissions—persisted.

  "We see this real cultural blending...but actually not a lot really changes at Volubilis. And this is most clear when Rome leaves." — Owen Rees [63:18]

9. Veterans, Widows, and Women’s Work at Karanis (Egypt)

[65:48–70:46]

• Karanis: The Veteran’s Village:
  Established for retired soldiers, Karanis yields a trove of papyri revealing everyday concerns: jobs for women, networks among veterans, widows managing property, and the tangled blending of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian cultures.

  "What we find at Karanis is a lot of the people...whose letters they've kept, they are veteran families...at Karanis, we have clear evidence, for instance, of women working and having jobs and running businesses." — Owen Rees [66:15]

10. The Indo-Greek World: Taxila and the Pillar of Heliodorus

[70:46–76:59]

• Unexpected Connections:
  In central India, the Greek ambassador Heliodorus erects a pillar to Vishnu, inscribed in Indian script—evidence of cultural and religious blending at Taxila (present-day Pakistan), a major intellectual and trade hub for Greeks, Persians, Indians, and eventually Buddhists.

  "The Baronyka Buddha was brought by an Indian, probably an Indian man, dedicated in the temple of Isis, which is an Egyptian goddess...that's a lot of cultures at play with one item." — Owen Rees [75:13]

• Buddhist Art and Greek Influence:
  Greek artistic norms contributed to the first figural depictions of Buddha; Buddhist ideas traveled east and west from Taxila.

11. Axum: Christianity, Islam, and the End of Ancient History

[76:59–83:51]

• Axum’s Flourishing:
  At a time when “classical civilization” is supposedly in decline, the East African kingdom of Axum (Ethiopia/Eritrea) is at its height—a major trade and political power.

• Bridging Christianity and Islam:
  Comes Christian in the 4th century, maintains its own church tradition, and later acts as a haven for early Muslims fleeing persecution—a favor remembered in Islamic history.

  "The reason why I wanted to focus on Axum...it epitomizes the sort of the themes that have constantly been building through this book...Axum offers this story, it also offers this bridge between the ancient world and what we think of as the medieval world and in many ways disrupts our normal timeline." — Owen Rees [77:14]

• Redefining “The End of Antiquity”:
  For Rees, ancient history really ends with Axum’s decline in the 7th/8th centuries CE, not with the “fall of Rome.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "When you move away from the obsession with empires and palaces and the elite...we get to hear so many...much more interesting stories, much more exciting stories, and dare I say, unusual stories as well." — Owen Rees [09:50]

• "Pastoralists more than capable of building monuments, which challenges a normal narrative..." — Owen Rees [15:13]

• "It is not quite as exciting as perhaps you'd assume the frontier would be...for me, it's those other stories around Hadrian's Wall, those other stories of everyone else that's there." — Owen Rees [58:08]

• "It's a lot of cultures at play with one item, with one artifact...it just dispels the idea of cultural silos..." — Owen Rees [75:13]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:05] Owen Rees describes his academic background and fact-checking website
• [07:25] On why narratives from the “center” are misleading
• [12:29] Description of the Lake Turkana massacre and its archaeological significance
• [22:43] Intermarriage and cultural exchange on Egypt’s southern frontier
• [34:54] Globalized Bronze Age trade revealed at Megiddo
• [41:59] Adaptation of Greek coinage for Scythian trade at Olbia
• [44:49] Intermarriage and citizenship at Olbia versus Athenian ideology
• [51:12] Naucratis as a hub for Greek intellectuals in Egypt
• [56:15] Everyday details from the Vindolanda tablets at Hadrian’s Wall
• [63:18] Persistence of cultural traditions at Volubilis after Rome’s withdrawal
• [66:15] Women’s work and veteran social networks at Karanis
• [75:13] The cosmopolitan story of the Baronyka Buddha and Taxila’s legacy
• [77:14] Axum as the true bridge between ancient and medieval worlds

Conclusion

Dr. Owen Rees’s The Far Edges of the Known World offers an invigorating reappraisal of ancient history—not from the seats of power, but from the tangled, dynamic spaces where cultures met and ordinary lives unfolded. This episode’s journey spans prehistoric Kenya to late antique Ethiopia and everywhere in between, showcasing the richness, complexity, and sometimes the surprising normalcy of life at the “edges” of civilization.

Listen to the full episode for more on these sites, stories, and the evidence that brings them to life.