Podcast
The Dirt Podcast
Hosted by The Dirt Podcast · EN
Join Anna and Amber; friends, archaeologists, and big nerds, for an exploration of the lives of people in the past.
12episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
The Big Game!
Dec 3, 2022Tap to summarizeEvery year, the American football season ends with the Big Game, but this week, Anna and Amber are superfans of a much bigger game: the 3500-year-old Mesoamerican ballgame. From its Olmec origins to the athletes keeping it alive today, learn all about how to play, why you might not want to (ouch), and what makes it so significant to past and present communities. To learn more about this week’s topic, check out: Scarborough, V. L., & Wilcox, D. R. (1991). The Mesoamerican ballgame. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Whittington, E. M., & Mint Museum of Art. (2001). The sport of life and death: The Mesoamerican ballgame. New York: Thames & Hudson.Ballgame (NEH Summer Teachers Institute)The Mesoamerican Ballgame (Metropolitan Museum of Art)The Brutal and Bloody History of the Mesoamerican Ball Game, Where Sometimes Loss Was Death (Atlas Obscura)Early evidence of the ballgame in Oaxaca, Mexico (PNAS)Maya Ritual and Myth: Human Sacrifice in the Context of the Ballgame and the Relationship tothe Popol Vuh (OpenSIUC)Popol Vuh (Mesoweb)Glyphs for “Handspan” and “Strike” in Classic Maya Ballgame Texts (The PARI Journal)Death Ball (National Geographic)Tlachtli (Polymer Science Learning Center)
Transcribe →
Green Sahara: The African Humid Period - Ep 85
Apr 13, 2020Tap to summarizeThe grass is always greener on the other side (of the Holocene). What is today a vast and inhospitable home to many people and creatures was, between ten and five thousand years ago, a lush environment replete with lakes, forests, and grasses. We examine the first clues that suggested a Green Sahara to researchers, explore the technologies and societies that lived there, and contemplate what the Sahara’s past might suggest about its future.Links Megalakes in the Sahara? A Review (Quaternary Research) Saharan Dust Blows Across the Atlantic (NOAA) The emergence of pottery in Africa during the tenth millennium cal BC : new evidence from Ounjougou (Mali) (Antiquity) Ounjougou Technological and Cultural Change Among the Last Hunter-Gatherers of the Maghreb: The Capsian (10,000–6000 B.P.) (Journal of World Prehistory) Capsian (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archaeology) The 8,000-year-old dugout canoe from Dufuna (NE Nigeria) Africa’s oldest boat set for exhibit in Nigeria (Africa Times) First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium BC (Nature) History of the Domestication of Cows and Yaks (ThoughtCo) Chad Genetic Diversity Reveals an African History Marked by Multiple Holocene Eurasian Migrations (American Journal of Human Genetics) End of the African Humid Period (NOAA) End of the African Humid Period (Nature) Climate Change in North Africa: The Past is Not the Future (Climatic Change) ContactEmail the Dirt PodcastAffiliates Wildnote TeePublic Timeular
Transcribe →