History Time (2025)

20/04/2025

A year and a half ago I was lucky enough to visit Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan - The most extensively excavated and well preserved early Bronze Age city found anywhere. It was an unreal experience. I finally got round to writing an article on my journey there for my Substack newsletter. The link is in the bio of this insta.

If this sort of thing is something you like then you can put in your email address for more of the same every month or so.

All the best and Happy Easter! - Pete

01/04/2025

Hi all. I’ve just released a piece of writing on one of the greatest archaeological sites in the world. Read it for free on the History Time Substack. Link in bio

05/02/2025

QUESTIONS. Let me know any you may have. I will then answer them all in a video to celebrate 1.25m subscribers.
Thanks everyone, I hope you’re enjoying the latest video. - Pete

02/02/2025

Delos isn’t just unusual. It’s like nowhere else on earth.

In its prime some 2500 years ago this was sacred ground. One of those places where the veil thins between our world and the next. Ruled by shared tradition as much as the actual priesthood of Artemis and Apollo who oversaw habitation here - no one was permitted to die or be born. Pregnant women and people of old age would be removed to the adjacent island of Rhenia or further afield before any potential affront to the gods.

But just like other special places - the likes of Mecca, Gobekli Tepe, Cahuachi, Poverty Point and Stonehenge among them - people flocked. Travelling here en masse from far away, both on festivals at certain times of the year, and at other times. Still today it holds a special reputation for the spiritual.

In the Classical Age and as early as the Archaic, Delos was fixed in place as one of the cardinal points in the world of the Greeks. Where the god twins Apollo and Artemis were said to have been born and could still be reasoned with. As a site of utmost importance, Delos was up there with the other foremost centres of Delphi, Olympia and Dodona. Roughly situated at the centre of the Cycladic islands, their very name stems from their encirclement of this religious centre.

Unlike Olympia, where the legendary Heracles was said to have instigated the famous Olympic Games, the origins of Delos are shrouded in mystery. Talk of Hyperboreans coming down from distant lands beyond the north wind to leave offerings have long intrigued scholars, though in truth we have no idea where Hyperborea was. Ideas ranging from Central Asia to the Nordic Bronze Age. Archaeological digs over the past 150 years have began to tell a new story backed up by all the science of the modern age, and yet raised so many more questions too.

Above all, today, and for the last two thousand years, Delos has been a dead place. Its once verdant lagoon dried up. Most life besides lizards and feral goats gone. Remnants of the once thriving ancient city left forlorn. In its later days tuned into a vast open air Roman slave market. No one lives here now.

Find out more in the latest History Time on YouTube!

01/02/2025

WE ARE LIVE NOW ON YOUTUBE

31/01/2025

Out on the wild west of Greece an immense visage is to be found. Though few visitors head to the Prokopos lagoon today at the far north westerly point of the Peloponnese, its importance in ancient times can clearly be seen by the awe inspiring cyclopean masonry bastion that still lines a natural acropolis on the adjacent ridgeline. With only a little shoring up of the defences, during the Second World War this mighty fortress served as a ready made command centre for the invading Italian army. Long before that it was a medieval castle and a Hellenistic bastion, linked to the nearby classical city of Dyme from where it gets its name.

But the Dymaean Wall is older even than that far-flung age. Though damaged by its conscription during The War, subsequent excavations have nevertheless revealed an astonishingly ancient past. First settled during the later Neolithic in the Fourth Millennium BC, The Wall of Dyme remained a flourishing settlement all through the Bronze Age. Beginning as a modest power centre in the Early Helladic, and finally by the late Bronze Age growing into the mighty proto-castle we see today.

Like many Mycenaean citadels of that distant epoch, the Dymaean Wall remains largely a mystery. The identity of its builders and even its name being unknown. If there ever were tombs here of the local elite, as far as we are aware they do not survive, leading to the suggestion there never were any in the first place. Those who ruled here having hailed from elsewhere.

Once hypothesising rule from as far away as Pylos and Mycenae far to the south and the east, in Messenia and Argolis respectively, of late archaeologists have looked to the major modern city of Patras. Here, just to the east along the coast, at the natural embarkation point to Italy, large tombs and impressive grave goods have been studied for close to a century. The search is still on for a palatial complex hidden somewhere beneath the metropolis.

New video TOMORROW. It’s over 6 hours long and took me years to make.

30/01/2025

Heading east from Mycenae the land gradually rises from the Argos plain. Wild hill country and jagged peaks beyond. Believe it or not, there has been a road heading this way, to the vicinity of the classical healing sanctuary of Epidaurus, for some three and a half thousand years. Seen today in the well-built bridges and tracts of stone lined roadways that still survive.

In those distant days of the Bronze Age, Epidaurus, just like many religious sites of the classical age, must have been an important place too. Seen in archaeology at the hill-top shrine of Apollo Maleateas dating back to the Third Millennium BC, and in myth.

On the other side of Epidaurus to the Argos Plain lies the Saronic Gulf, an integral coastal node to the power of Mycenae, whose tendrils stretched far and wide across the Aegean. Here, on the edge of that great foundational sea, stands the classical port of Epidaurus Limera, where pilgrims and travellers of old arrived from all corners of the known world. Just above town, The tell-tale chamber tombs and even a probable acropolis by the shore suggest Bronze Age predecessors.

Around half way along that roadway linking up the ancient powers, stands perhaps its greatest surviving exemplar. The Bridge at Arkadiko. Still wide enough for a car or chariot to cross over. Its adjacent tholos tomb is one of the most impressive found anywhere in Greece. No doubt the remnants of settlement sites once existed nearby amidst the adjacent lowlands, farmed to oblivion over the past three and a half millennia. But one place remains.

Overlooking one of the most important highways in the entire Mycenaean world, the Kazarma Acropolis still stands guard. Though we know almost nothing about this majestic hill top fortress, coated in Byzantine masonry and classical rubble today as it is, beneath all that almost certainly is to be found a citadel of the age of Agamemnon. Only future excavations may reveal the secrets of this lost citadel of the Bronze Age world.

If you want to learn more you should tune in to my new documentary on Saturday 1st February. It’s over 6 hours long and covers no less than the entire history of the Mycenaean Greek World.

29/01/2025

History has not been kind to Eutresis. Once one of the great cities of the Aegean Sea. The glittering gold and silver objects hewn here by master craftspeople over three thousand years ago are all most visitors to Boeotia will ever know, housed as they are now at the excellent nearby Thebes Museum. Here too were found precious sealstones and jewellery shipped in from thousands of miles away at the outer limits of the known world. Testament to the interconnected elite system of the late Bronze Age world. Not just at the major palace centres of Thebes, Orchomenos, Mycenae and Pylos, but the cities and towns of the hinterlands.

Little remains above ground at Eutresis today. A low mound topped with the ground works of a battered medieval tower. For the most part it is near indistinguishable from the vast tracts of surrounding farms which still regularly plow over the extent of the once flourishing city. Its cyclopean walls, still visible a century ago when excavated by pioneering American archaeologist Hetty Goldman, enclosing a respectable area of 34,000 square metres, are now almost all gone. And yet, Eutresis clings on. How the place will look in another three thousand years, only time will tell.

If you want to learn more you should tune in to my new documentary on Saturday 1st February. It’s over 6 hours long and covers no less than the entire history of the Mycenaean Greek World (C. 1600-1100 BC). We will visit near enough every single Mycenaean settlement and discuss near enough everything that happened. Later sung of by Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey, it is not just one of the greatest tales ever told, but one intrinsically linked to the foundation of the Western World as we know it.

24/01/2025

Hello friends. Bad news I am afraid. Due to circumstances beyond my control the latest video has had to be delayed for a week to the 1st February. In comparison to the smorgasbord of errors and issues that have plagued the project since day 1 this is only a small setback. I am sorry nevertheless. I will be very pleased to finally release this beautiful cursed monstrosity in a weeks time. See you on 1st February. - Pete

20/01/2025

Like few places in Europe, the small Boeotian town of Thisbe boasts close to three thousand years of written history, featuring as it does in Europe’s oldest tale. As in many places in Greece, nestled amidst the jagged rocks that loom over its highest point, a ‘Paleokastro’ is to be found. The Old Castle. Like the near identical term ‘Hen Gastell’ in Wales, it is found in abundance across the Greek mainland and the islands of the Aegean. Reflecting both local recognition of the immense antiquity of certain sites, and very often, the still visible remnants of not just the medieval age but the ancient world before. But unlike ‘Old Castles’ in near enough every other corner of Europe, the staggering antiquity of many in Greece can still be viewed above ground. In the form of colossal stone blocks quarried, dragged here and stacked up to create mighty bastions some three and a half millennia in the past.

Thisbe is no exception. Left adrift in a forgotten corner of Central Greece, it has seen few investigations by archaeologists, though the scattering of pottery sherds from the Mycenaean world that have been recovered seem eerily to corroborate the written accounts. For Thisbe is mentioned by Homer. Gracing the pages of that most vaunted of works The Iliad as providing a contingent of soldiers alongside the likes of Thebes and Orchomenos to head to war at distant Troy. Today, unlike those larger more prominent centres; just one of many hundreds of citadels across Greece, Thisbe’s secrets remain hidden.

If you want to learn more you can tune in to my new documentary in just under a weeks time. It’s over 6 hours long and covers no less than the entire history of the Mycenaean Greek World (C. 1600-1100 BC). We will visit near enough every single Mycenaean settlement across Greece. the Aegean Sea and even Anatolia and Greece beyond, discussing near enough everything that scholars have learned over the last two hundred years of study. See you then!

22/04/2024

Sparta is far from the only ancient site worth visiting in the south eastern Peloponnese. In that incredibly atmospheric region, ever in the shadow of the snow-capped Taygetus mountains, near innumerable ancient citadels and tombs are to be found.

Mostly forgotten today, coated in trees and little visited, a whole plethora of once mighty settlements lie silent. Just as they have been for thousands of years. Some date to the classical era, but more often than not they are far older. Like Amyclae, Paleopyrgi and Vaphio pictured here, dating all the way back to the Bronze Age. That mythical era of chariot lords and bardic storytelling tradition. Of glittering gold and cyclopean masonry.

This summer I’ll be telling the entire story of Mycenaean Greece, focusing not just on the history you may have heard before but on a huge range of lesser known archaeological sites you may never have heard of but are just as fascinating as the big ones like Mycenae and Tiryns. I’ve gone full Dan Carlin on it, been working on it for years, and it may be around 5 hours+ long. In the mean time I hope you’re enjoying my recent film on Karahan Tepe. It’s available to watch now over on YouTube. Have a great day and let me know what you think!

All the best,
Pete

📷 credit to my beautiful wife.

17/04/2024

Hi all. Only a few days now until the next archaeological adventure! Delighted to say it’s on Gobekli Tepe’s sister site Karahan Tepe! Should be out within the week. Details to follow!
Have a great day
Pete

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