A podcast for all ancient history fans! The Ancients is dedicated to discussing our distant past. Featuring interviews with historians and archaeologists, each episode covers a specific theme from antiquity. From Neolithic Britain to the Fall of Rome. Hosted by Tristan Hughes. New episodes every Sunday and Thursday.From History Hit, the world's best history channel and creators of award-winning podcasts Dan Snow's History Hit, Gone Medieval, and Betwixt the Sheets.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every wee...
Latest episodes
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1 h 03
Bronze Age Syria: Cradle of Cities
Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Hittites usually dominate the story of the Bronze Age. But Syria was home to some of the region's most powerful cities and kingdoms and helped forge the…
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59 min
Origins of Constantinople
Why did Emperor Constantine abandon Rome to build a spectacular new capital from scratch? In the year 312 a bloody civil war and a miraculous heavenly vision changed the Roman worl…
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1 h 09
The Ninth Legion: Did They Disappear?
It's one of history’s most compelling cold cases. What happened to the Ninth Legion, a crack unit of 5,000 Roman soldiers who vanished from the historical record without a trace?Tr…
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1 h 07
Viking Origins: The Nordic Iron Age
Two thousand years ago, centuries before the Vikings, there was another Scandinavia. An Iron Age world.Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Marianne Hem Eriksen to uncover the deep roots…
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1 h 06
Caratacus: King of the Britons
Before Boudicca, another British leader brought the Roman war machine to a grinding halt. Meet Caratacus; the cunning King of the Britons who spent seven years outmaneuvering the e…
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57 min
Ancient Antarctica
The frozen continent of Antarctica was once a land of forests, rivers and thriving ecosystems. And millions of years before humans ever existed it was home to a whole host of ancie…
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41 min
Prehistoric Penguins
When the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, one remarkable avian survivor traded the skies for the sea. Tristan Hughes and paleontologist Dr Steve Brusatte explore how prehistoric p…
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55 min
Life and Death in Ancient Babylon
Babylon was one of the greatest cities of the ancient world. But what was life really like for the people who lived there? Behind its magnificent temples and royal palaces lay a ci…
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1 h 03
The Gospels: Are They Historical?
How much can we really know about the historical Jesus? The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have shaped Christianity for nearly 2,000 years, but they were written decades a…
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49 min
Maya Hieroglyphs Decoded
Forget everything you thought you knew about the ancient Maya. Cracking their mysterious hieroglyphs didn't just reveal boring calendars, it exposed a cutthroat, Game of Thrones-st…
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1 h 01
Human Sacrifice in Ancient Britain
WARNING: This episode contains descriptions of graphic violence from the start.When we picture human sacrifice in ancient Britain, the iconic, flaming Wicker Man often comes to min…
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58 min
Ice Age America: The Clovis Culture
Before the mammoths disappeared, people hunted them across Ice Age America. Armed with distinctive stone spear points, the mysterious Clovis culture left behind traces of a world f…
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1 h 01
The First Punic War
How did the Romans ambush a massive Carthaginian fleet from behind a Sicilian island to win one of history's fiercest sea battles? For over 20 years, Rome and Carthage fought a bru…
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53 min
Iron Age Ireland
How much of Iron Age Ireland is myth, and how much is archaeological reality? At the monumental Hill of Tara, sacred kings ruled over a landscape steeped in ancient ritual and ance…
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59 min
Human Origins: Did We Begin in Africa?
The story of human origins is often imagined as a simple journey from Africa, but is the truth actually much messier? Tristan Hughes and leading palaeoanthropologist Prof. Chris St…
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60 min
Egypt's Lost Cities
What happens when an entire city disappears? Beneath the sands and wetlands of Egypt lie the remains of forgotten cities that once stood at the heart of one of the ancient world’s…
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57 min
Roman Emperor Augustus and His Trusted General
Augustus was Rome's first Emperor. But who made his empire possible? Behind the throne stood Marcus Agrippa, the brilliant general whose victories secured the Roman world yet whose…
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50 min
The Vandals
The Vandals have gone down in history as the barbarians who helped bring down the Western Roman Empire. Their name became synonymous with violence and destruction, but who were the…
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45 min
Terror Birds
What kind of predator needs no teeth to terrify its prey? The terror birds were enormous flightless hunters that ruled South America for millions of years, standing metres tall and…
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1 h 07
The Maya Ballgame
A rubber ball. A stone court. And a sport where the stakes could be life and death.For more than 2,000 years, Mesoamerican peoples played a remarkable ballgame that became far more…