Get it on Google Play

Scotland's First Warriors

Scotland's First Warriors

Author: History Hit August 6, 2026 Duration: 56:19
The Ancients
History

Three thousand years ago, prehistoric Scotland was a landscape of rival communities, raids and warfare. Bands of warriors fought for power and territory leaving behind extraordinary weapons that reveal a more violent side to Scotland’s ancient past.


In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Matthew Knight, Senior Curator of Prehistory at the National Museum of Scotland, to explore Scotland’s first warriors. Who were these Bronze Age fighters? What did their weapons reveal about their status and identity? And how did warfare shape life in prehistoric Scotland?


MORE


The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch here: @TheAncientsPodcast


Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. Video Editor is Matthew Wilson. Produced by Joseph Knight and McKenna Fernandez. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds

The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.


Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, plus early access, ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


Hosted by Tristan Hughes, The Ancients digs into the distant past, one specific theme at a time. This isn't a sweeping lecture but a series of focused conversations. Each episode brings you directly into dialogue with leading historians and archaeologists, who share the latest research and perspectives on the ancient world. The scope is vast, moving from the mysteries of Neolithic Britain all the way through to the complex events surrounding the Fall of Rome. You might find yourself immersed in the details of a single archaeological discovery one week and exploring the broader political currents of an empire the next. Produced by History Hit, this podcast benefits from the same depth and quality that defines their other award-winning series. With new episodes arriving every Sunday and Thursday, there's always a fresh journey into antiquity waiting. For anyone with a curiosity about where we came from, this podcast serves as a reliable and engaging guide, making the remote past feel immediate and vividly real.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Official website RSS
instagramtiktok
The Ancients
Podcast Episodes
Egypt's Book of the Dead [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:39
For over a thousand years, the Book of the Dead guided ancient Egyptians through the afterlife. Filled with powerful spells these remarkable texts were designed to help the dead overcome the dangers of the underworld and…
The Trojan War [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:13
The story of Achilles, Odysseus and the siege of Troy has captivated audiences for millennia, but behind the legends lies a deeper mystery. Was this epic war a myth, a memory of a real Bronze Age conflict, or something i…
The Flood Myth [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:24
Thousands of years before the story of Noah and the Ark, people in ancient Mesopotamia were already telling tales of a devastating divine flood. Written into the Epic of Atrahasis, this ancient story describes a man chos…
Delphi: Centre of the Ancient World [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:13
For more than a thousand years, Delphi was considered a cultural centre of the ancient world. Every year a throng of pilgrims climbed the slopes of Mount Parnassus to seek the words of Apollo through the famous Oracle of…
Stonehenge with Ken Follett [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:23
What if the secrets of Stonehenge lie not just in the stones, but in the people who hauled them there?Tristan Hughes sits down with best-selling novelist Ken Follett to uncover and imagine the lives of the Stone Age buil…
The Library of Alexandria [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:30
The Library of Alexandria was one of the most important and most celebrated buildings of the ancient Mediterranean. It was a great hub of learning and literature and made Alexandria one of the ancient world’s foremost ce…
Boudica and the Iceni [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:32
In 60 AD Roman Britain was very nearly brought to the brink. Cities burned, authority crumbled, and for a brief moment one woman challenged the might of the Roman Empire. Her name was Boudica.Today, Tristan Hughes is joi…
The Cambrian Explosion: When Life Began? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:40
538 million years ago, life on Earth changed forever. In an evolutionary burst known as the Cambrian Explosion, complex animals rapidly appeared in the oceans, laying the foundations for almost every major animal group a…
The Pharisees [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:10
The Pharisees are one of the most familiar names in the ancient world, but are they also one of the most misunderstood?Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Helen Bond to step back into first-century Judea, where the Pharisees…
The Rosetta Stone [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 44:35
In July 1799, French soldiers unearthed a stone that would transform our understanding of the ancient world. Discovered in a fort at Rashid, the Rosetta Stone became the key to deciphering Egypt’s long-lost hieroglyphs.…

«12345»