The Ancients

More than 3,500 years ago, a massive volcanic eruption devastated Thera - modern day Santorini - engulfing the Bronze Age world in ash and fire. Entire landscapes were buried, ash darkened the skies, ...

Professor Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins join Tristan in this episode all about Greece and Rome - the two greatest civilisations of classical antiquity. How did the Romans borrow, adapt, and sometim...

More than 5,000 years ago, in what is today southern Iraq, one of the world’s first civilisations emerged. A civilisation often credited with the invention of writing, the wheel and cities. The Sumeri...

Tristan Hughes sits down with Professor Eric Cline to explore the enigmatic Sea Peoples, often blamed for the catastrophic Bronze Age collapse over 3,000 years ago. Together they explore surviving sou...

Where do we come from? The origins of modern humans stretch back hundreds of thousands of years, and new discoveries are reshaping how we understand our species’ story.  In this episode, recorded on l...

Known as the 'King of the World' and the last great king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal bestrode the ancient Mesopotamian world as a warrior but also a scholar, ruling the great Assyrian empire at the heigh...

The Huns weren’t just Attila’s warriors in Europe — in Central Asia, the White Huns built the most powerful Hunnic empire, ruling for a century and dominating the ancient Silk Roads. While the Europea...

How did Roman aqueducts help build an empire? They’re some of the most iconic structures from the ancient world — feats of engineering that transformed cities. But how exactly did Roman aqueducts work...

From towering tenements to Punic porridge — step into the streets of ancient Carthage. In this immersive episode of The Ancients, Tristan travels back to 210 BC to explore daily life in the heart of o...

Iconic monumental stone heads, the intriguing Lord of Las Limas, the enigmatic 'were-jaguar' figures, so much survives from the ancient Olmec civilisation. Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. Jillian Moll...