PreHistoryPodcast
27 episodes listed below
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The Near East - the region known politically as the Middle East - is the home of both a long and eventful history as well as a much longer and fascinating prehistory. Here on Pre History I will cover the story of the Near East as we know it from the archaeological study of what people left behind as hunter-gatherers turned into farmers, as villages turned into cities, and as empires rose and fell.
A microscopic dung clue suggests an ancient stable; Jane Gastra makes you care about the floor plan.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear, grounded look at how shared landscapes and dating evidence frame Neanderthals' end in the Near East.
The episode frames the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition as a story of closeness, movement, and survival in the Near East. It traces humans leaving Africa, Neanderthals already present in the Levant, and later Middle Paleolithic sites stretching from southern Jordan to the…
A familiar collapse becomes a careful story of regional change, material evidence, and societies taking separate paths.
The PPNB Collapse is handled less as a clean endpoint than as a question worth staying with. Jane sets the period inside a longer shift: villages emerging from seasonal or year-round settlement, managed wild plants changing over time, and tighter control over food animals across…
A measured Wadi Rabah review centered on storage pits, handmade pottery, and the difficulty of defining a culture.
Wadi Rabah is framed through the plain evidence of storage: pits near houses, coarse pithoi, and the possibility that some household stores were shifting outdoors.
A careful look at Transcaucasian villages, where walls, floors, and animal traces reveal Neolithic settlement patterns.
Transcaucasia comes into sharp focus in this Neolithic episode, as the story moves from the mountains, foothills, and valleys of eastern Anatolia into the southern Caucasus.
Greek myth told with fatal momentum.
Ancient empire told in old public-domain voices.
This episode explores the transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic periods, focusing on the interactions between anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals in the Near East and what ultimately led to Neanderthal extinction.
This episode explores the lives of anatomically modern humans in Arabia during the Middle Paleolithic, comparing their tools, settlements, and environmental adaptations to Neanderthals.
This episode explores the process of animal domestication in the Neolithic Near East, comparing it to plant domestication and examining archaeological evidence from sites like Pinarbashi and Ashikli Hoyuk.
This episode introduces the Neolithic period in the ancient Near East, focusing on the transition from foraging to farming and the division into Early and Late Neolithic, with an emphasis on the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
This episode explores the transition from the pre-pottery to pottery Neolithic in Anatolia, examining archaeological evidence and regional developments in modern-day Turkey.
This episode explores technology and social networks in the pre-pottery Neolithic Near East, focusing on developments like lithic tools and their implications for societal interactions.
This episode explores the unique prehistory of Cyprus as an isolated island in the eastern Mediterranean, examining how its separation from the mainland affected human colonization and the development of its native flora and fauna during the Neolithic period.
This episode explores the transition from the pre-Pottery Neolithic to the Pottery Neolithic in the Ancient Near East, focusing on societal changes, settlement patterns, and debates over interaction spheres versus local groups.
This episode explores the Epipaleolithic period in Near Eastern prehistory, examining its transitional nature between the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic eras as humans shifted from hunting-gathering toward early farming practices.
This episode explores life in the Upper Paleolithic period in the Near East after Neanderthals disappeared, focusing on human hunter-gatherer lifestyles and stone tool technology.
This episode explores the early Chalcolithic period in Anatolia, highlighting the consensus on its timeline but the complexity of defining it due to the absence of typical Chalcolithic features like metalworking and craft specialization.
This episode explores the Pottery Neolithic period in the Levant region, examining how societies changed and the geographical divisions between northern and southern Levant during this archaeological era.
This episode explores the development of villages and housing structures during the pre-Pottery Neolithic period in the Near East, examining how community design reflects societal changes.
This episode explores the archaeological developments in Cyprus during the Pottery Neolithic period, comparing it to broader Near Eastern trends and focusing on social changes like the shift to private property.
This episode explores the discovery and early perceptions of Neanderthals, debunking common stereotypes and discussing their classification as a distinct ancient species.
This episode examines technological and social developments in the Upper Paleolithic Near East, focusing on innovations in tool-making, hunting weapons like spear throwers and bows, and regional variations in human adaptation.
This episode explores the later Epipaleolithic period in the Near East, focusing on increased connectivity and movement of goods like shells, obsidian, and ochre between communities.
This episode explores the later Pottery Neolithic cultures of Halaf and Hasuna in northern Mesopotamia, comparing them to earlier 7th millennium cultures and discussing their historical discovery and significance.
This episode explores the Late Neolithic period in Mesopotamia, focusing on its geographical definition and the division between northern and southern regions.
This episode serves as a prologue to a podcast on Near Eastern archaeology, focusing on human evolution before Homo sapiens.
This episode introduces the Middle Paleolithic period in the ancient Near East, starting around 215,000 years ago, focusing on archaeological evidence from stone tools and rubbish.
This episode introduces the Lower Paleolithic period in the Ancient Near East, focusing on Homo erectus's migration out of Africa and the tripartite division of the Stone Age.
Jane Gastra examines the Samara culture, a ceramic Neolithic tradition that developed in southern Mesopotamia around 6400–6200 BCE and ended around 5500 BCE.
This episode explores the Neolithic period in Transcaucasia, focusing on eastern Anatolia and the southern Caucasus region during the 6th millennium BCE.
This episode explores the so-called PPNB Collapse, examining how Pre-Pottery Neolithic villages in the Near East developed through domestication of plants and animals, architectural changes, and social structures before their eventual decline.
This episode examines the Wadi Rabah culture of the 6th millennium southern Levant, exploring its significance and the archaeological debate over whether it qualifies as a Neolithic culture.