Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

Walter Scheidel, "What Is Ancient History?" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Aug 25, 2025
In this engaging discussion, Walter Scheidel, a renowned professor of Classics and History at Stanford, advocates for a revolutionary approach to ancient history. He argues that ancient societies laid the groundwork for modern civilization, highlighting innovations like farming, writing, and governance. Scheidel critiques the traditional focus on Greece and Rome, noting how it limits our understanding of global patterns. He emphasizes the importance of connecting diverse historical contexts and leveraging cross-cultural evidence to create a more inclusive narrative of our shared past.
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INSIGHT

Antiquity As Foundations Of The Present

  • Ancient history should be the study of the foundational phase that created our current institutions and material world.
  • Those bundled innovations (farming, cities, writing, states) originated at different times globally and then shaped everything after.
INSIGHT

Ancient Innovations Created Durable Trajectories

  • Foundational innovations bundled into durable packages that constrained future choices and created persistent trajectories.
  • We have been elaborating those ancient solutions ever since, which both empowers and traps us.
INSIGHT

Push Antiquity Earlier Than Writing

  • Prehistory and early village societies are meaningfully part of ancient history and predate writing-based periodizations.
  • Many everyday institutions existed long before writing, so starting ancient history at 3000 BC is misleading.
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