History of the World podcast

700 - 400 BCE - From the time when the Assyrians were the greatest power on the planet, a sudden surge of culture and learning from east to west would bring the world forward from a relative dark age to an age of modern thinking.

250 - 900 - Before the canoe building Mayans that Europeans encountered, Mayan ancestors dominated the Guatemala highlands hidden in the dense rainforest and building great temples and palaces to honour their traditions and rituals.

600 BCE - 750 CE - The greatest multi-pyramid site of the Americas and a very mysterious home to some of the most comfortable regular citizens of the entire ancient world.

500 BCE - 750 CE - Ethnic Zapotecs make up part of the modern Mexican population today, but they were once the dominant civilisation of Mesoamerica.  The Classical Age Zapotec Empire ruled from the stratified city of Monte Albán.

A look back at some of the e-mails and reviews of the week including an interesting listener question relating to negative reactions to the History of the World podcast.

100 BCE - 800 CE - The Nazca and the Moche were the two main cultures to emerge in the remnant of the Chavín.  We will explore the incredible large geoglyphs that were created on the desert landscape and take a closer look at what the temple sites can tell us about the lifestyle of these people.

30 - 230 - The episode required to tie together all of the previous seventy episodes of this volume.  East meets west as Han China negotiates the Kushan Empire and the Parthian Empire to develop a trade relationship with the Roman Empire, with the same intention occurring in the reverse direction.

220 - 581 - The incredibly complex period of Chinese history which was distinguished by the pushing of centralised power to the south and the establishment of competing kingdoms of various ethnicities in the north.  This is the story of how China eventually reunified after the fall of the Han.

208 - This is the legendary story of the Three Kingdoms of China and how the warlords Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Sun Quan could not overcome one another, meaning that China would have to be split into three separate kingdoms, Cao Wei, Shu Han and Eastern Wu.

108 BCE - 208 CE - While trade and subjugation brings wealth, corruption and warfare brings expense, and The Han Dynasty's later years tells the story of this precarious balancing act and its consequences.