The hottest Ancient History Substack posts right now

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Back To The Garden

Adjacent Possible ā€¢ 142 implied HN points ā€¢ 02 Mar 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. For about four thousand years, thriving settlements grew in lush wetlands rather than arid deserts, with cities built on marshes and supported by diverse local foods like fish, waterfowl, dates, and legumes.
  2. Because these societies built with reeds, wood, and other biodegradable materials, their physical traces mostly rotted away, so archaeology and period labels like the Stone/Bronze/Iron Ages give a distorted picture of the past.
  3. Their dispersed, hard-to-measure 'hortipiscoral' economies made them illegible to would-be rulers and to archaeologists, but a cultural memory of that vanished abundance may survive in ancient scriptures such as the Book of Genesis.

READING: THOUKYDIDES: On the Civil War in Korkyra

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 207 implied HN points ā€¢ 27 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Civil war and bitter factionalism tear a city apart, causing widespread violence, revenge, and the collapse of law and religion.
  2. War and partisan struggle corrupt language and moral norms so treachery is praised, trust evaporates, and established institutions lose authority.
  3. Ambition, envy, and the lust for power let ruthless or clever rogues take control while moderates are destroyed, and the political culture can take generations to recover.

The Myth of the West: Democracy and the State

God's Spies by Thomas Neuburger ā€¢ 90 implied HN points ā€¢ 18 Feb 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. For most of human history people lived in small, largely egalitarian groups rather than in states with kings. Living under a state is a very recent and uncommon part of our speciesā€™ experience.
  2. States only arose when special conditions ā€” like control over easily stored resources ā€” let a few people seize power, so agriculture did not inevitably produce states. Large, organized societies without kings have existed and still offer alternatives.
  3. Modern 'democracy' as a state structure is different from the long-standing practice of collective decision-making, and genuine self-governing community life can exist without a state. State-backed notions of freedom can mask elite dominance and imperial claims.

Econ 196 :: Societies of Domination :: Pre-Class Assignmentā€”do before 2026-02-15 23:59 PST

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 76 implied HN points ā€¢ 12 Feb 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Pre-industrial agrarian societies were societies of domination where a small, often predatory elite extracted a large share of crops and crafts from peasants and artisans, typically by force or fraud. They were constrained mainly by the need not to destroy the society they depended on.
  2. Even inside that extractive, Malthusian system there were real but temporary efflorescences when material living standards improved for many people beyond the elite. These booms were limited and didnā€™t overturn the underlying structure of domination.
  3. Elites and later storytellers mythologized and glorified their actions, turning extractive rulers into heroic figures. Stripping away that heroic glaze helps reveal the predatory mechanics of power.

Introducing Planet Of The Barbarians

Adjacent Possible ā€¢ 284 implied HN points ā€¢ 05 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. A new five-part, mid-length series will explore the birth of agriculture, cities, and early states in a deep, serialized essay format.
  2. Each essay will be paired with an interactive NotebookLM bundle of sources, quotes, and multimodal extras so readers can query the material and explore further.
  3. The project tests a new AI-enabled publishing model that both monetizes long-form work and uses recent revisionist scholarship and archaeological discoveries to challenge familiar origin stories.
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Against Hankins: You Can't Use Moral Relativism to Claim a Warrior Is "Great" in Any Sense Connoting Admirability

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 215 implied HN points ā€¢ 02 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Using moral relativism to call a warrior "great" because atrocities were "normal then" simply excuses war crimes and is morally dangerous.
  2. Saying conquerors were divinely favored and thus beyond criticism treats violence as sanctified and undermines basic moral and Christian principles.
  3. Itā€™s false that past generations ignored the ethical costs of wartime violence; people then debated actions like firebombing and nukes, so we have standing to judge historic atrocities.

No, Aleksander the Great Was Not "Great" in Any Sense with a Strong Connotation of "Admirable"

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 215 implied HN points ā€¢ 02 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Some people argue that Alexanderā€™s victories show an exceptional, even divine, greatness and that modern critics are too materialistic or small-minded to recognize this kind of extraordinary leadership.
  2. Others insist that centering the victims and the violent realities of his campaigns makes it hard to call him admirable, and modern scholarship highlights his imperial aggression and moral costs.
  3. The dispute is tied to larger cultural fights over how to teach and define "Western civilization," with critics pushing for narrower, historically grounded frames like the "Dover Circle" rather than a grand, continuous West narrative.

HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVES: Yes: Pre-Modern Economies Were Meaningfully "Malthusian" (Which Does Not Mean Incomes Were Stable)

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 76 implied HN points ā€¢ 04 Feb 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Pre-modern economies were essentially Malthusian: slow technological gains could raise living standards only temporarily because higher incomes typically led to faster population growth that eventually offset those gains.
  2. Random shocks and long-run eventsā€”like plagues, good harvests, trade booms, or imperial peaceā€”can produce centuries-long rises, falls, and plateaus in incomes and urbanization even inside a Malthusian system.
  3. Cultural and institutional factors (luxury tastes, marriage customs, infanticide, larger trade zones) can raise average incomes and create long "supercycles," but they do not by themselves produce sustained, compounding livingā€‘standard growth for the broad population.

The Wetlands Interregnum

Adjacent Possible ā€¢ 126 implied HN points ā€¢ 26 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Corona satellites used mid-air film recovery and dual panoramic cameras to capture stereoscopic, high-resolution photos decades before digital imaging, giving a true 3D view of the land.
  2. Those 3D images showed ancient landscapes were more varied and less permanently arid than earlier archaeologists assumed, which challenges the idea that states arose solely to build irrigation in hopeless deserts.
  3. The 1995 declassification and transfer of Corona film to public archives and the USGS opened a priceless historical dataset for scientists to study environmental change and rethink the origins of agriculture.

CROSSPOST: SAM BOWLES: The Origin & Future of Economic Inequality

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 138 implied HN points ā€¢ 16 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Enduring economic inequality isn't inevitable; it arose when certain technologies and institutionsā€”landā€‘limited production (like plows), protoā€‘states to enforce property, and slaveryā€”made material wealth heritable and defensible.
  2. For thousands of years after the Neolithic, aggressive egalitarian norms and institutions (communal storage, public eating, antiā€‘dynastic burials, even destroying productive assets) actively suppressed lasting inequality, but Bronzeā€‘Age shifts broke those norms and made inequality durable.
  3. The modern knowledge and care economy could either repeat Bronzeā€‘Age enclosure through things like intellectual property or be steered toward greater equality by democracy, unions, social insurance, and redistributive policy, because stronger intergenerational transmission of material wealth nonlinearly amplifies inequality.

2025 Reading List

Nemets ā€¢ 219 implied HN points ā€¢ 29 Dec 25
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Canadaā€™s political identity is fragile and regionally divided, with strong provincial differences and historic ties to both Britain and the United States shaping competing loyalties. Constitutional and judicial changes have amplified these divides and made separatist movements and political strain more plausible.
  2. Legal and institutional shiftsā€”especially expanded judicial review and civilā€‘rights era policiesā€”have empowered courts and bureaucracies to reshape public life and corporate practices, producing wide cultural and administrative effects often called ā€œwoke.ā€ These changes can discipline institutions without mass mobilization, but they also weaken direct democratic accountability.
  3. Geography, migration, and demography drive political outcomes: settlement patterns, resource booms, and crossā€‘border movements shaped provinces and regions and altered national trajectories. Paying attention to these material forces helps explain why states change, fragment, or endure.

After the Last David Graeber Post; or, Once Again Unto the Breach...

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 184 implied HN points ā€¢ 09 Dec 25
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Big, sweeping historical stories or speculative nonfiction that arenā€™t firmly grounded in facts can mislead readers and create attractive but unstable arguments.
  2. Ideas matter but donā€™t determine outcomes by themselves; material forces like production, distribution, coercion, and communication set the boundaries within which ideas compete.
  3. Careful, evidence-based and materialist thinking is needed to draw lessons from history, because isolated counterexamples or imaginative reconstructions donā€™t overturn broad patterns shaped by long-term constraints.

Why medieval artists drew ancient Romans in medieval clothes

weird medieval guys ā€¢ 1650 implied HN points ā€¢ 30 Mar 23
šŸŽØ Art & Illustration Ancient History
  1. Medieval artists depicted ancient Romans in medieval clothing to align them with the values and morals of their time.
  2. The Middle Ages saw a conscious effort to alter past narratives to conform with the present, rather than simply emulate the past.
  3. Through copying and adapting ancient texts, medieval scholars preserved and shaped the knowledge of classical antiquity, influencing how we perceive that era today.

Weekend Roundup

Classical Wisdom ā€¢ 864 implied HN points ā€¢ 14 Jan 24
šŸŽØ Art & Illustration Ancient History
  1. History can offer insights into modern problems.
  2. Plagiarism has historical roots and can be understood through the study of history.
  3. Classical Wisdom discusses a range of topics on their podcasts, including ancient animals and 'Big Caesars'.

Tuesday Economic Growth Blogging: The Preā€‘Modern Treadmill Was Real on Necessities, Not on Technology, or Luxuries, or Culture, or Means of Domination

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 146 implied HN points ā€¢ 20 Nov 25
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. For necessities and conveniences that affect reproductive fitness, average living standards stayed near subsistence from about 3000 BCE until the 19th century, leaving people nutritionally stressed and population growth very low.
  2. The Malthusian treadmill applied to necessities and reproductive outcomes, but it didnā€™t necessarily constrain luxuries, culture, or the technologies and institutions of domination, which follow different dynamics and matter for overall welfare.
  3. Human technological capacity for producing necessities rose a lot long before living standards visibly improved, so technology expanded steadily even while material wellbeing stayed near subsistence until the Industrial Revolution.

Rex Romae: Blood and Beauty

Cosmographia ā€¢ 619 implied HN points ā€¢ 08 Oct 23
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Early Rome was ruled by Kings called 'rex', with Romulus being the first King who founded Rome in 753 BC. The city remained a kingdom until the Republic was born in 509 BC.
  2. There were supposed to be seven Kings in total according to Roman tradition, even though early records are lost. Historical accounts by Livy and Plutarch, though sometimes unreliable, provide captivating stories about these Kings.
  3. Numa Pompilius, chosen as King after Romulus, is known for his peaceful reign where he established religious and political institutions in Rome and created the city's first codified laws said to be dictated by a nymph named Egeria.

Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde and an 842-year-old paternity test

Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning ā€¢ 263 implied HN points ā€¢ 14 Jul 25
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Genghis Khan had a complicated family dynamic, especially concerning his first son Jochi, whose paternity was often questioned. This doubt affected Jochi's legacy and his descendants in the Golden Horde.
  2. The Golden Horde played a significant role in Eurasian history, influencing politics and trade from Europe to Asia. They were not just conquerors; they helped connect different cultures and economies.
  3. Recent genetic studies are starting to shed light on Jochi's lineage, which might help us understand more about the origins and impact of the Mongol Empire on modern histories.

Conspiracy Theorists and Coincidence Cultists

Contemplations on the Tree of Woe ā€¢ 1425 implied HN points ā€¢ 10 Jan 24
šŸŽ­ļø Culture Ancient History
  1. The term 'conspiracy theory' was created to mock critics of the Warren Commission's report on JFK's assassination.
  2. There is a divide between conspiracy theorists who see hidden cabalistic actions in major events and normies who believe in coincidences.
  3. Conspiracy theorists face the challenge of choosing which theories to believe and often entertain contradictory ideas.

Supping with their forefathers in the other world

Wrong Side of History ā€¢ 132 implied HN points ā€¢ 04 Aug 25
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. The plague spread rapidly from the Golden Horde to many regions, affecting cities like Constantinople and north Africa. This highlights how diseases can travel far and wide, impacting various cultures.
  2. Historians from that time had different theories about where the plague originated. They often linked it to areas like Ukraine or Russia, showing how people tried to understand illness using the knowledge of their time.
  3. The plague not only impacted humans but also animals, according to one survivor. This suggests that outbreaks can have broader effects on ecosystems and communities.

Homesteading: Lessons from Ancient History

Who is Robert Malone ā€¢ 16 implied HN points ā€¢ 27 Dec 25
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Cities concentrate health risks: crowded urban living with poor water and sanitation has historically raised infant mortality and infectious disease compared with rural areas.
  2. Grain-based agriculture enabled cities and states but often worsened health: heavy reliance on wheat and other cereals increased cavities, nutritional deficiencies, and stunting, while diets richer in animal foods supported stronger, healthier bodies.
  3. Modern processed-carb diets repeat old mistakes: ultra-processed, calorie-dense but nutrient-poor foods produce an "overfed but undernourished" population, so increasing whole, nutrient-dense animal and plant foods and reducing processed carbohydrates may improve family and child health.

CROSSPOST: BRET DEVEREAUX: Once You Imagine Aleksander the Greatā€™s Victims as Peopleā€¦

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality ā€¢ 7 implied HN points ā€¢ 02 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. If you imagine Alexanderā€™s victims as real people, it becomes much harder to call him 'great' because modern historians emphasize his unprovoked wars, massacres, and the human cost of conquest.
  2. Thereā€™s a heated debate about teaching 'Western civilization' today: some defend a traditional canon while others say the term is outdated and often used by white supremacists, so alternatives like the 'Dover Circle' are proposed.
  3. Praise for ancient conquerors has political consequences now, with some right-wing figures celebrating them and critics warning that such endorsements can feed neofascist or extremist appropriations of classical history.

RKUL: Time Well Spent 03/03/2024

Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning ā€¢ 171 implied HN points ā€¢ 04 Mar 24
šŸ”¬ Science Ancient History
  1. Parents can now screen embryos during IVF using whole genome sequencing to check for hundreds of conditions, keeping families safe.
  2. The presence of maternal grandmothers has been linked to higher survivorship among grandchildren, showing the evolutionary importance of menopause.
  3. Research on ancient DNA and AI may offer valuable insights into human history, potentially surpassing the impact of ancient DNA studies.

How did the Babylonians know āˆš2 up to six digits?

The Palindrome ā€¢ 1 implied HN point ā€¢ 21 Jan 26
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. Ancient Babylonians recorded the square root of 2 to about six decimal places, achieving roughly 99.9999% accuracy for their time.
  2. Researchers can reconstruct the computational methods they likely used, showing how simple iterative algorithms produce very high-precision square roots.
  3. There is a modern, practical workshop that digs into the math behind machine learningā€”especially building linear regression from scratchā€”with vector/matrix theory, optimization, code notebooks, bonus materials, and a limited-time discount.

The Three Blessings of Musa

Outlandish Claims ā€¢ 0 implied HN points ā€¢ 21 May 24
šŸ’¾ History Ancient History
  1. The story of Musa and the three wishes shows the importance of being cautious when dealing with offers that seem too good to be true.
  2. The tale of Mansa Musa highlights the lesson that wealth can be a fleeting possession and emphasizes the value of wisdom over riches.
  3. The narrative of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi demonstrates how a name can become synonymous with wisdom and the lasting impact of contributions to knowledge.