Ancient

The Roman Republic was the most remarkable state in history. What began as a small community of peasants camped among marshes and hills ended up ruling the known world.

The incredible true story of a Galilean stonemason who changed the course of the world forever, beautifully told through the eyewitness accounts of those who knew him best. This real-life story will never leave you. He lived and died over 2,000 years ago, fulfilling expectations that existed...

Come on a journey with Aboriginal elder Aunty Munya as she guides you in discovering your purpose in life and how to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors. Learn what it means to truly belong and be family to everyone and everything....

The past truly comes alive as you take a series of imaginative leaps into the world of history's anonymous citizens....

Learn how a single tongue spoken 150,000 years ago evolved into the estimated 6,000 languages used around the world today....

Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt....

This fascinating history tells the story of the people of Japan, from ancient teenage priest-queens to teeming hordes of salarymen, a nation that once sought to conquer China, yet also shut itself away for two centuries in self-imposed seclusion....

This audiobook narrated by acclaimed archaeologist and best-selling author Eric Cline offers a breathtaking account of how the collapse of an ancient civilized world ushered in the first Dark Ages....

Here in a single volume is the entire, unabridged recording of Gibbon's masterpiece....

What can we learn from the stunning rise and mysterious death of the ancient world’s greatest conqueror? An acclaimed biographer reconstructs the life of Alexander the Great in this magisterial revisionist portrait. “[An] infectious sense of narrative momentum . . . Its energy is unflagging...

Do you know how many wives Zeus had? Or how the famous Trojan War was caused by one beautiful lady? Or how Thor got his hammer? Give your imagination a real treat. This Mega Mythology Collection of eight audiobooks is for you....

Learn what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how the insights they offered into religious and ancient history came into focus....

A new history of two centuries of Jewish revolts against the Roman Empire, drawing on recent archeological discoveries and new scholarship by leading historian Barry Strauss. Jews vs. Rome is a gripping account of one of the most momentous eras in human history: the two hundred years of ancient...

Even after deciphering its hieroglyphs, and marveling at its scarabs, mummies, obelisks, and sphinxes, Egyptian civilization remains one of history's most mysterious....

These 36 eye-opening lectures deliver a comprehensive political and historical overview of one of the most fascinating and complex countries in world history....

Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Find out....

Bronze Age Pervert explains that ancient man had something you have lost: confidence in his instincts and strength, knowledge in his blood. BAP shows how the Bronze Age mind-set can set you free and help you embark on the path of power....

These 34 astonishing lectures will introduce you to the major language families of the world and their many offspring, including a variety of languages that are no longer spoken but provide vital links between past and present....

These teachings claim to explain how reality works—mind, matter, cause, and transformation. Preserved for centuries by mystics and philosophers, they offer a framework for understanding consciousness and the unseen laws shaping experience.

These lectures consistently deliver a fresh level of understanding about medieval England, its rulers and subjects, and their significance....

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From a renowned National Book Award–winning scholar, an extraordinary new account of the life of Jesus that explores the mystery of how a poor young man inspired a religion that reshaped the world. “This is a brilliant and necessary book. Sober, wise, respectful...

Part scholarship and part yarn, tying together some of the most intriguing tales of all time - from the Knights Templar and Prester John to Parsival and the Holy Grail - this book will appeal to anyone fascinated by the revelation of hidden truths and the discovery of secret mysteries....

Funerary rituals show us what people thought about mortality; how they felt about loss; what they believed came next. From Roman cremations and graveside feasts, to deviant burials with heads rearranged, from richly furnished Anglo Saxon graves to the first Christian burial grounds in Wales...

This fully updated edition of Barry Cunliffe's classic study of the ancient Celtic world presents new finds, new ways of using DNA records to understand Celtic origins, and new ideas about the proto-urban nature of early chieftains' strongholds....

James Romm, professor of classics at Bard College, brings to life the cutthroat competition and the struggle for control of the Greek world's greatest empire....

Why are we so fascinated by pyramids? Is it their massive scale, the mystery of their construction, or their mystical quality—rooted in the earth yet pointing to the heavens? In the 12 lectures of Pyramids of the World, archaeologist and anthropologist Dr. Karen Bellinger, answers “yes” to all these questions and more. She explains that the pyramid form appears across a wide range of cultures and eras, often developing independently in societies with no contact. In fact, in many ways its creation by human civilization seems almost inevitable.

An often overlooked, yet very important, environmental process in world history is known as the “Late Antique Little Ice Age,” which took place during the 6th century A.D. across most of the Northern Hemisphere and received its name because it was shorter and less well-known than the Little Ice Age, which took place from the 16th-19th centuries.

Aucune nation dans l'histoire n'a laissé au monde un héritage aussi grand que celui des Grecs. Il semble à peine croyable qu'un peuple aussi dispersé, installé sur les îles et péninsules rocheuses de la mer Égée, ait pu accomplir tant de choses ; mais il a excellé dans tout ce qu'il a entrepris, qu'il s'agisse de guerre ou de politique, d'art ou d'athlétisme, de littérature ou de philosophie. Les Grecs ont donné une nouvelle définition de l'humanité. Leurs idéaux, leurs héros sont devenus les nôtres.

Africa may have given rise to the first human beings, and Egypt probably gave rise to the first great civilizations, which continue to fascinate modern societies across the globe nearly 5,000 years later. From the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria to the Great Pyramid at Giza, the ancient Egyptians produced several wonders of the world, revolutionized architecture and construction, created some of the world’s first systems of mathematics and medicine, and established language and art that spread across the known world.

Long ago, on a spring morning in Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate passed judgment on a mysterious preacher. Jesus of Nazareth was nailed to a cross shortly after and died in agony. The effects of this verdict have reverberated throughout the world and have shaped two millennia of history. Even so, the trial remains shrouded in mystery to this day. Killing the Messiah determines why and how Pilate deemed Jesus guilty of criminal behavior and the roles played by various people in ensuring Jesus' crucifixion.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE) was one of the most influential figures in late republican Rome, a moment of great social, political, and cultural unrest that would lead to the transition from republic to empire. Cicero was a statesman who held the highest political office, the consulship, and then suffered politically motivated exile. His career was grounded in his continued success as an orator: his speeches were famous during his lifetime and, together with his rhetorical treatises, shaped the practice and theory of public speaking for centuries to come.

Step into the chariot-charged sands of history and witness the world’s first recorded battle in astonishing detail. The Battle of Kadesh recounts the dramatic clash between the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite king Muwatalli II in 1274 BCE—an epic confrontation that shaped the power balance of the ancient Near East.

This book reveals how a nomadic empire engineered the most ambitious peace of the medieval world—and what it cost to keep it. From the relay-station highways of the yam to the cosmopolitan capitals of Dadu, Tabriz, and Sarai, this volume shows how the Mongols turned conquest into governance, revived the Silk Roads, and moved people, ideas, and technologies at unprecedented speed. Readers meet rulers like Ögedei and Khubilai, merchants underwriting caravans with paper money, monks and qadis negotiating pluralism, and engineers dredging canals to feed cities.

Unplagued explores the profound transformation of human civilization in an era largely free from the devastating plagues that once shaped history. This comprehensive volume examines how science, technology, medicine, politics, economics, society, culture, and the environment have evolved in the absence of widespread infectious disease.

In the early 13th century, a coalition of steppe clans transformed into the most dynamic war machine and governing enterprise of its age. Forged in the Steppe follows the ascent of Genghis Khan from fractured tribal politics to continental empire, tracing campaigns across North China and Central Asia and the devastating clash with the Khwarazmian state. Beyond the battlefield, it reveals how the Mongols built a state that ran on speed, law, and logistics—postal relays, multilingual chanceries, merchant partnerships, and a disciplined guard that enforced clear rules from Karakorum to Bukhara.