The First Sharks

The First Sharks

Author: History Hit July 17, 2025 Duration: 51:10

Long before the first dinosaurs, the first trees or even the formation of the rings of Saturn, our planet's oceans were ruled by prehistoric sharks.


Across two special episodes of The Ancients this week, Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor John Long to journey back 300 million years and dive into the deep history of sharks – from their humble origins to their golden age as apex predators. In today's episode John takes us on a whirlwind tour from the first sharks to a beast who had "Jaws and teeth that were giant wheels of death" - the Helicopron. Join us to unpack just how sharks evolved into one of the most successful lineages in Earth’s history - it’s an adventure through 400 million years of evolution, extinction, and dominance in the prehistoric seas.


Welcome to our week of Sharks!


MORE

Tyrannosaurus Rex

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3uxH3HHjSuEk0mHmjFU9k7

The First Dogs

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6fpF68aiJUIbMv6AzXxfC6


Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds

The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.


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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: 100

The Ancients
Podcast Episodes
How Greece Shaped Rome with Mary Beard [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:59
Professor Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins join Tristan in this episode all about Greece and Rome - the two greatest civilisations of classical antiquity.How did the Romans borrow, adapt, and sometimes rival Greek cultur…
The Sumerians [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:24
More than 5,000 years ago, in what is today southern Iraq, one of the world’s first civilisations emerged. A civilisation often credited with the invention of writing, the wheel and cities. The Sumerians. The Sumerians a…
The Sea Peoples [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:11:07
Tristan Hughes sits down with Professor Eric Cline to explore the enigmatic Sea Peoples, often blamed for the catastrophic Bronze Age collapse over 3,000 years ago.Together they explore surviving sources from ancient Egy…
Origins of Homo Sapiens [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:10
Where do we come from? The origins of modern humans stretch back hundreds of thousands of years, and new discoveries are reshaping how we understand our species’ story. In this episode, recorded on location at London’s N…
Ashurbanipal: The Last Great King of Assyria [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:11
Known as the 'King of the World' and the last great king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal bestrode the ancient Mesopotamian world as a warrior but also a scholar, ruling the great Assyrian empire at the height of its power.In th…
The White Huns [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:32
The Huns weren’t just Attila’s warriors in Europe — in Central Asia, the White Huns built the most powerful Hunnic empire, ruling for a century and dominating the ancient Silk Roads.While the European Huns fought Rome, t…
Roman Aqueducts [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:50
How did Roman aqueducts help build an empire? They’re some of the most iconic structures from the ancient world — feats of engineering that transformed cities. But how exactly did Roman aqueducts work, and why were they…
How to Survive in Carthage [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:10
From towering tenements to Punic porridge — step into the streets of ancient Carthage.In this immersive episode of The Ancients, Tristan travels back to 210 BC to explore daily life in the heart of one of the ancient wor…
The Olmec: Mother of Mesoamerican Civilisations [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:13
Iconic monumental stone heads, the intriguing Lord of Las Limas, the enigmatic 'were-jaguar' figures, so much survives from the ancient Olmec civilisation.Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. Jillian Mollenhauer to unravel th…
Livia: Empress of Rome [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:21
Powerful, cunning, uncompromising, even murderous (allegedly)... meet Rome’s first empress and one of ancient history’s ultimate power players.Livia Drusilla has long been cast as the bloodthirsty matriarch of the early…