Author: Trevor Culley

I'm Trevor Culley. My personal experience with both Persian history and podcasts began with a college extra credit assignment to listen to the first Hardcore History history episode on the Achaemenids. I was instantly enthralled with the stories of the Kings of Kings and coming a little late to the party, started listening to podcasts. On one hand, I started heading down the road toward PhD that will let me study ancient Persia for a living. On the other, as I binged my way through both the History of Rome and early episodes of the History of Byzantium I was always excited for the episodes dealing with the Parthians and Sassanids. I'm sure some of you shared my surprise and disappointment to discover that there was not a similarly dedicated podcast dealing with the great empires east of Rome. So that brings us here. I've decided to personally create that dedicated podcast.

Episode 2: Indo-Iranians

On By Trevor CulleyIn History of Persia4 Comments

Map of Indo-European Migrations. Pink represents the original range. The darker areas represent earlier migrations. The lighter areas represent later migrations. Original image by Joshua Jonathan via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. Text labels by Trevor Culley, 2019.

Last time, we got up to speed on what was going on in the Near East in the centuries before the Persians showed up. What we didn’t cover, was who exactly are these “Persians,” and what were they doing while their future empire was being taken over by the Assyrians. This time, we figure that out as we follow some steppe nomads called the Proto-Indo-Europeans on their 3000-ish year journey to becoming the Persians. 
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Episode 1: Assyria and Setting the Stage

On By Trevor CulleyIn History of Persia3 Comments

My homemade map of the Near East between the Bronze Age Collapse and the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Pre-Collapse Map on the “Maps” page.

Here we go, episode 1! Now, as much as I want to get to Persian history, we should probably know at least a little bit about the world before the Persians got there, so this is you lightspeed tour of the Near East, from about 1200 BCE to 616 BCE. Maps for everything are available on the website.
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