The World's Oldest Letters

The World's Oldest Letters

Author: History Hit November 27, 2025 Duration: 55:10

What do the world’s first letters reveal about life in the Bronze Age?


Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Amanda Podany to uncover the remarkable written culture of ancient Mesopotamia, when clay tablets carried messages across vast distances and a proto-postal system linked cities like Ur and Babylon. From royal correspondence and diplomatic negotiations to worried family notes and furious consumer complaints -including the iconic rant against the merchant Ea-Nasir for terrible copper - these texts offer a vivid, relatable window into everyday life 4,000 years ago. Step into the earliest age of writing and discover how humanity first learned to communicate across time and space.


Translations in this episode taken from A. Leo Oppenheim, Letters from Mesopotamia (1967) & J. M. Sasson, From the Mari Archives (2015).


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.


Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. 


You can take part in our listener survey here:

https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on


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: 100

The Ancients
Podcast Episodes
The Other Humans: Why We Survived? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:16
For most of human history, we were not alone. Human evolution was shaped by multiple human species living side by side, from Neanderthals in Europe to Denisovans in Asia, before all but one disappeared.Tristan Hughes is…
What If Alexander Fought Rome? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:50
Rome vs Alexander. It's a counterfactual of suitably epic proportions, fit for movie theatres and sprawling strategy video games. What would've happen had the great Macedonian general not perished in Babylon and advanced…
The Real Armageddon [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:40
Armageddon is more than just a biblical prophecy hailing the end of days. It is a real place: Megiddo, an ancient city that for thousands of years stood at the crossroads of empires, trade routes and wars in the ancient…
Ancient China: The Warring States [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:45
How did ancient China plunge into 261 years of chaos, and how did that turmoil forge an empire?Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Andrew Seth Meyer to explore the Warring States period, from collapsing Zhou power and…
The Prehistoric Plague [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:53
The first ever outbreak of 'plague' - Yersinia Pestis, the most feared disease in human history - was long thought to be the Plague of Justinian in 541 AD. But new studies of ancient DNA have revealed traces of Yesinia P…
The Persian Gulf [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:41
Near the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most vital commercial chokepoints, lies an ancient trade route that powered civilisation 4,000 years ago: the Persian Gulf - where goods and ideas flowed between the great ci…
The Last Days of Pompeii [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:06:26
In 79 AD, life in Pompeii unfolded beneath the shadow of a tremoring Mount Vesuvius. Streets bustled, businesses thrived, and merchants built fortunes, unaware disaster was hours away. But what happened when that disaste…
The First Tools [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:00
What if the first technology was just a stone?Tristan Hughes and Dr. Emma Finestone, - Curator and the Robert J. and Linnet E. Fritz Endowed Chair of Humans Origins at Cleveland Museum of Natural History - travel back ov…
Athens vs Persia: The Legend of Themistocles [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:15
A legend of the great Greek city of Athens, Themistocles rose from obscurity to save ancient Greece and helped shape one of the greatest naval powers in history. Yet his story ends in exile, condemned as a traitor and se…
The Hittites [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:36
What made the Hittites one of the great Bronze Age powers, and how did their empire survive on war, diplomacy and faith? Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Elena Devecchi to uncover ancient royal intrigue, lavish fest…