The Mycenaean World
7/20/202640 min
Before 1200 BC, the ancient world was more connected than you'd ever imagine. Egyptian pharaohs, Hittite emperors and Mycenaean warrior-kings trading gifts, forging alliances and going to war across the glittering Mediterranean. Then, in just a few decades, it all collapsed...
Professor Eric Cline joins us to unravel this lost Bronze Age world: the real diplomacy behind Homer's epics, the letters that rewrote history, and the catastrophes that erased Mycenaean civilisation.
Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.
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First 90 secondsDan Snow· Host0:00
Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History Hit and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe. [seagulls squawking] [waves crashing] Hi, folks. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. It was a world built on the sea. Merchant ships carrying copper, gold, ivory, olive oil, textiles across hundreds of miles of sparkling ocean. Kings exchanged lavish gifts and assurances of eternal friendship one year and sailed to war the next. Fishermen cast their nets. Pirates prowled the coastlines. Cities grew on international trade. The fate of entire kingdoms could rest on a particular ship making it safely into harbor. This is the world of twelve hundred BC, the closing years of the Bronze Age. Another name for it is the Mycenaean Age, and it's in that period that we believe the Odyssey takes place.