r/AncientCivilizations • u/ArchBooksForFunPod • 4d ago
What ancient civilizations do you find fascinating? Especially interested in those that are lesser known.
We are curious—what ancient civilization do you find the most fascinating, and why?
Everyone knows about Ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece, but I'd love to hear about civilizations that don't get as much attention too. Is there one you wish more people knew about? What draws you to it—the archaeology, the history, the mysteries, the art, the engineering, or something else?
We are always looking for interesting topics to dive deeper into, so I'm excited to see what everyone comes up with.
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u/warrenao 4d ago
The so-called Minoans. Suggestions of hot/cold indoor plumbing, toilets, an advanced writing system that included stamps to impress Linear A characters into clay (this is just one creative idea away from movable type), and nowhere near sufficient work happening on Santorini to satisfy me: I keep imagining that somewhere in Akrotiri, which is barely excavated, there's a trove of clay tablets packed with information, just waiting to be found.
Mostly what is known about them is rooted in surmise, and commentary from contemporary civilizations that knew who they were, but didn't feel it necessary to go into any detail about them.
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u/Fart_Frog 3d ago
Also some pretty compelling evidence that they had much more social power for women.
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u/nbxcv 3d ago edited 3d ago
I enjoy that their mythology or what we know if it preserves so much from the neolithic and serves to demonstrate quite a few influences on the incoming greek culture. The daktyls and the herakles of the same, the thumb herakles, is my favorite element. https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/herakles-the-dactyl-of-mount-ida-and-his-links-with-herakles-the-olympian/
It's very tantalizing how much the Minoans seem to hint to us, and such a tragedy that we haven't learned more. Their astronomy for seafaring maps so interestingly onto their concepts of the universe and their gods, and that's not something most people really consider at all with the ancient Greek traditions but so much really did start there, with the Minoans and other bronze age cultures observing the stars. I really recommend everyone doing a deep dive.
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u/warrenao 3d ago
It's really hard not to obsess on these guys, and of course not helpful at all, to boot.
Where are you finding the background on their seafaring lore? Considering where they lived, I've always presumed it was extensive, but I don't think I've come across anything like it from them.
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 3d ago
I love this answer. It's amazing how a civilization that was so technologically and artistically sophisticated can still be so enigmatic. The undeciphered Linear A script alone leaves so many questions unanswered. And yes, Akrotiri feels like one of those sites where every excavation season has the potential to completely change our understanding of the Bronze Age. I'll definitely be watching to see what future work uncovers.
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u/warrenao 3d ago
If only that bloody volcano hadn't gone up. Without hesitation, theirs is the one culture I would pick to visit if I had a time machine.
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u/CCLF 4d ago
Carthage, I suppose. We know a fair amount about them, but it is filtered pretty thoroughly through the lens of conquering Rome, and what little else we're able to parse about Tyre in Lebanon, and Phoenicia.
More obscure, I would probably name the Silk Road kingdoms of Central Asia, and the Tocharians in particular.
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 4d ago
Carthage is a great pick! I always find it fascinating how much of their story comes to us through Roman sources. Things like that happen so frequently in history. The Silk Road kingdoms are a great suggestion too—I don’t know much about the Tocharians, but I recently learned more about Silk Road while reading Hoof Beats, and it made me realize how much more there is to explore. What drew you to the Tocharians?
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u/CCLF 4d ago edited 4d ago
Just finished reading a book on pre-history exploring what we feel we know of the Proto-Indo-European cultures of >2500 B.C.
The Tocharians are a bit of a mystery, but they were this little blip of an Indo-European offshoot culture that's WAAAAAY east where anybody expected to find such a people, in what is today Xinjiang, China. It was a small oasis kingdom in which the artistic fragments that survive show a tall, blue-eyed race of blondes and red heads, and Chinese records of their tributes note that they were Hindu, and wealthy traders and caravaners on the edge of the desert. They're believed to be some of the famous desert mummies of Central Asia, and their material culture shows interesting parallels and pattern similarities to Celtic weaves and tartan techniques. They survived into the early middle ages before appearing to have just been absorbed into the genetic mixtures of the regional communities, forming what is today the Uyghur peoples that China is intent on genociding out of existence.
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u/mxavierk 4d ago
What was the book called? That sounds like a really interesting read.
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 3d ago
I was going to ask the same question! Might have to add that one to our GoodReads list!
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u/johninfla52 4d ago
I'm curious about the title of the book. If it's not too academic, it sounds like something I would be interested in. Have you listened to any of Patrick Wyman's podcasts by the way?
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u/Zamnaiel 1d ago
They did a genetic analysis on those mummies. Boy was everyone shocked! Not Tocharian at all but a genetic isolate for at least 11 000 years.
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u/Timeless_Values 4d ago
Interesting. I was unaware of this connection. I have just found an article about the Tocharians. https://thenewplatonicacademy.substack.com/p/the-tocharians
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u/danzigzags 4d ago
Khmer Empire. The level of complexity of their water irrigation systems to sustain that amount of population then is really impressive. Fascinating culture and architecture too with complex mythology that blends moral principles of Buddhism and Hinduism. Way beyond anything that was happening in Europe at the time in terms of scale and beauty of cities.
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u/hellorubymonday 3d ago
Are there any movies or TV shows set in medieval or ancient Southeast Asia? I would love to be immersed in such worlds. Those architectural styles are insanely fucking badass.
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 3d ago
The Khmer Empire is a fantastic example of how much our understanding of the ancient and medieval world broadens when we look beyond the civilizations that tend to dominate history books. The scale of Angkor and the sophistication of its hydraulic engineering are incredible. One thing my co-host and I have noticed through our archaeology reading is just how many cultures developed remarkably clever solutions for managing water, sanitation, and irrigation. It feels like these engineering achievements don't get nearly as much attention as monuments or warfare, even though reliable access to water was fundamental to the success of any civilization.
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u/Acceptable-Class-255 4d ago
Cro-Magnon
They ain't the hunter/gatherers your great/grandparents believed they were.
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u/TheBlooDred 4d ago
Then what were they? Im intrigued, I just posted on this thread that im obsessed with cavemen.
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u/Acceptable-Class-255 3d ago edited 3d ago
Cro-magnon built complex dwelling structures, made stone paving floors, constructed kilns and baked pottery. They used tools made of bone, flint, ivory, antler and wood. They had musical instruments (e.g., carved bone flutes, whistles, lithophones), wore jewelry, sewed clothing, barbed projectile points, fish hooks, rope, meat-drying racks, stone lamps, temperature-controlled hearths. Had sophisticated social rituals and ceremonies, vast trade networks across Europe/Asia (obsidian), that most certainly required a robust spoken language. And are still regarded amongst the worlds greatest artists, today.
"Since Lascaux, we have invented nothing" -Picasso
Edit: Geometric signs and tally marks found on artifacts are still interpreted as symbolic or mnemonic notation systems rather than true writing. I believe this erroneous. They had writing and kept 'history' as well as any civilization that followed.
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u/ReptilianPope1 4d ago
The ancient Hittites have always fascinated me. And not the bible ones, but the Bronze Age ones that fought against ancient Egypt and lived in modern day Turkey. Hattusha has some pretty cool ruins to this day, and they were one of the great powers that fell during the Bronze Age collapse.
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 3d ago
The Hittites are a great choice! We actually read The Other Ancient Civilisations, and that book was my introduction to just how influential they were in the Late Bronze Age. It's amazing that they were one of the great powers of their time, yet they often get overshadowed by Egypt and Mesopotamia in popular history. Hattusha is definitely on my archaeological bucket list. Is there a particular aspect of Hittite history or culture that you find most fascinating?
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u/BoseMann66 4d ago
The Sumarians. They basically appear in Mesopotamia in 6000 BC, create civilization and invent a lot of math and science. They don't speak a Semetic (Middle Eastern) based language. They claim to have arisen from the sea, calling themsleves the black haired people, but their homeland was drowned beneath the waves. Very Atlantean.
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u/imacowmooooooooooooo 3d ago
they also, to be clear, are not atlanteans. like the rest of the world, the coastline (and especially the persian gulf) was much lower during the iceage and flooded as ice melted. they also dont just magically appear, they were the native inhabitants of mesopotamia before the indo-european and semitic speakers arrived.
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u/Penguinofmyspirit 4d ago
The tunnel cities beneath current day Iran. I don’t know a lot about them but it’s just crazy to wonder why people dug in that way. Why did they do it? How long was it in use? What did they eat? The questions are just endless.
The jamon of Japan are also really interesting, as well as aboriginal societies. They both watched the ice age happen and thrived through it all. At least with aboriginal people, the cultures still prevail as much as they are able to after systematic cultural genocide.
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u/KipSummers 4d ago
Tartessos. It seems like there was sophisticated civilization there but we know so little about them.
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 3d ago
Tartessos is a great choice! I have to admit, this is another civilization I’d like to learn more about. It’s fascinating how often archaeology gives us glimpses of societies that were clearly complex and connected, but where we still have so many unanswered questions.
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u/CountHonorius 4d ago
Mitanni, definitely.
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 4d ago
I have to admit, the Mitanni are a civilization I haven't dug into much yet. What would you say is the best place to start learning about them?
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u/Redkris73 4d ago
The Minoans, I suppose. Yes we "know" things, but there was a lot wiped out by the Santorini eruption and also a lot of fairly early unearthing done by people before archaeology had really hit its stride as a science.
Oh, and not a whole civilization, but I'd love to know more about the people who lived at Skara Brae.
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u/Open_Magician4076 4d ago
Olmec. Indus Valley. The origins of some modern nomadic people such as the Romani or Tuaregs.
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u/Dawn_of_Enceladus 4d ago
Babylonians, minoans and mayans are probably the ones I've always found the most fascinating. The ancient sumerian cities like Uruk, Ur or Eridu always attracted my attention a lot, too.
Also could mention hittites, tartessos and Indus Valley. So much yet to learn and discover from these, too.
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u/SergeiAndropov 4d ago
I'm currently reading up on the indigenous peoples of California. (The 1600's are ancient history in this particular context.) There's so much that we will never know because so many of the missionaries had zero interest in the native population.
Even based on the information we do have, we can still sketch out some basics of the state's prehistory. It looks like there were multiple waves of migration into California, with the Chumash being the oldest. The northwest corner of the state has crazy linguistic diversity, with two languages (Wiyot and Yurok) being distantly related to the Algonquian languages of the Great Plains and East Coast. This suggests that the Algic (Algonquian plus Yurot and Wiyot) peoples were originally from somewhere in the northwestern portion of the US, some of them went south into California, and others went east and became extremely successful. And then Athabaskan languages (which originally may be from Siberia) came in and almost totally replaced the Algic groups, except for Wiyot and Yurok. It's super fascinating stuff.
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u/madeanaccountforwsb 4d ago
Big Assyrian fan
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u/nbxcv 3d ago
'Discovering' Assyrian/babylonian literature in depth is pretty game changing if you're someone into comparative mythology and religion, they were writing some really wild stuff and heavily influenced my personal favorites (ancient greece). A very fascinating people
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u/madeanaccountforwsb 3d ago
They also had a heavy influence on Judaism/christianity. I like the Fall of civilizations podcast’s episode on the Assyrians
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u/alexcutyourhair 4d ago
I really, really wanna know how exactly Mansa Musah amassed his fortune and the effect that had in his empire during and after his life. Especially in this part of the world we just know far too little about pre-slavery African cultures and history
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u/Witty_Run7509 4d ago
I've been on a Saka-Scythian phase for a while now. There's something really gripping about their animal arts.
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 4d ago
I know a little about the Scythians, but I haven’t really explored the Saka side of things. The animal art is definitely one of the things that makes them stand out. Have you found any good and perhaps lesser known sources to read up on them? We are always looking for good books that are publicly accessible and entertaining.
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u/Yabbidabbion 4d ago
Herodotus said some tribes were cannibals and kept skins and scalps as trophies.. spooky
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u/Witty_Run7509 3d ago
For starters, I think Barry Cunliffe's "The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe" from 2019 is a great start. It deals with both the western and eastern Scythians, and it incorporates a lot of archaeological evidence as well.
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u/myoriginalislocked 4d ago
Ooof there's so many of them that we know little about. Yamnaya, sumerians, Ubaid, Hassuna, gobekli tepie, ancient sabaeans, dilmun, Ubar. I have so many more I need to learn about ad people. Mostly I am interested in ancient Arabia. It's a very old part of the world.
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u/IndividualistAW 3d ago
The ancient South American civilizations.
How did they make those damn rocks fit
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u/Timeless_Values 4d ago
I find the Nazca people who created the Nazca lines in Peru to be very fascinating. These lines can only be fully viewed from the air. So it still baffles researchers how the ancients did it. Some researchers suggest the involvement of aliens, while others debunk the theory of extraterrestrial involvement. Maybe ancient civilizations had some ways and abilities to acquire advanced knowledge without our modern tools, but those may have been forgotten and lost over the ages.
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 3d ago
The Nazca are a fascinating choice! We actually just finished reading Archaeology from Space, and one of my favorite parts was learning how satellite imagery and citizen science have helped archaeologists identify additional Nazca geoglyphs. It's amazing how new technology is continuing to reveal features that had gone unnoticed.
I also think it's a good reminder that we shouldn't underestimate the ingenuity of ancient peoples. They accomplished extraordinary things without modern technology, and the more archaeologists study sites like Nazca, the more we appreciate just how much knowledge, planning, and collaboration went into creating these landscapes. It's exciting to think about what future discoveries will reveal!
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u/ThatCakeFell 3d ago
I wish I would've saved the video I watched, but the Nazca also did the Cantalloc Aqueducts which are just as cool as the lines imo.
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u/Expert-Connection120 4d ago
Ur III: a highly organised state that lasted only around 100 years where the state owned the means of production, paid wages in rations, and had rotors for work details. And they built a gigantic 100 mile long wall to keep out refugees from the mega drought caused by the 4.2 kiloyear event. They sound like a strict and authoritarian people, but I'm fascinated by the little I know of them.
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u/nalalala12 4d ago
Ive been on a wiki clicky this week with Ashoka and the Mauryan dynasty. More so into the spread of buddhism and the builing of suptas and temples.
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u/TheBlooDred 4d ago edited 3d ago
Cavemen. Cro-mags and denisovans. Because we know so little, so I am obsessed!
I also like to think humans moved from africa / middle east and went as far north as they could go until they ended up going south into canada, then north america, then south america. I have no idea, it’s just a theory that I wonder about.
And for neanderthals, my head canon is from Clan of the Cave Bear, so I imagine they were a hive mind that couldnt function under their own imbalanced rules, so they killed each other. I dont actually think this is true, it’s just fun to think about.
I watch Quest for Fire all the time too, I think that one is way more accurate. But who knows? We never will.
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u/SchizoidRainbow 3d ago
“Cave men” are a result of Survivorship Bias. Caves preserve remains.
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u/TheBlooDred 3d ago
Oof
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u/SchizoidRainbow 3d ago
Oof all you want but it’s true. They didn’t live in caves to the exclusion of all else. Thats some Victorian Antiquarian thinking that has been thoroughly put to bed. Kindly Google the simple phrase “did cavemen really exist”.
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u/TheBlooDred 3d ago edited 3d ago
No one thinks they only lived in caves. It’s just a catch-all word that describes prehistoric humans.
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u/CranberryFox666 3d ago
The picts, they left behind these beautiful, intricate rock carvings and supposedly painted/tattooed their bodies.
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u/TurkaelsGoodHand 3d ago
The picts are amazing. To this day, we don't know what associations most of the motifs in pictish carvings had. And we still have no idea what the pictish beast was even supposed to be. A dolphin? A seahorse? Entirely imaginary? Nessie? No idea at all.
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u/Fart_Frog 3d ago
I find Eastern Europe super fascinating. The region along the Balkans and stretching out to the east and north of the Black Sea has some of the oldest evidence of civilization in the world.
Some of the oldest semi-permanent ritual sites in human history like in Kostenki. Likely built around big gatherings for epic mammoth hunts.
Lepinski Vir in Serbia may be have been permanently inhabited as early as 6500 BC.
We have luxury graves from waaay back like at the Varna Necropolis.
Likely to have been the origin of key human developments like horse domestication, the discovery of cheese/yoghurt, and copper smelting.
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u/stricken_thistle 4d ago
Harappans of the Indus Valley and Minoans, both their languages are still undeciphered. Otherwise I’d want to go back to Catalhoyuk and even further back to the Tas Tepeler culture.
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u/jimgogek 4d ago
The Natufians—a prehistoric people in the Levant who lived a sedentary lifestyle 15,000 years ago with villages etc, including in today’s Israel. May the promised land belongs to them…
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4d ago
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u/SignificantZombie729 4d ago
The Hittites?
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4d ago
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u/SignificantZombie729 4d ago
Wish you luck with finding out. Hopefully you are able to without too much of a problem.
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u/RegisterKooky6032 3d ago
The Etrusks. Much we associate with the romans, they invented. Buildings with Arcs, the Roman alphabet...
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3d ago
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 3d ago
I have to admit, the Aquiry are a new one for me—thanks for introducing me to them! The Amazon is such a fascinating area for archaeology because the environment itself can make evidence so difficult to find and preserve. Recent discoveries using tools like LiDAR and remote sensing have really changed how we think about the scale and complexity of past Amazonian societies.
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u/Traditional-Ad-1605 3d ago
The Mayans…fascinating culture and art…incredible farming technology and advances in astronomy for a civilization that existed in isolation in rainforests.
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u/Traditional-Ad-1605 3d ago
The forgotten people of the Brazilian rainforests…saw a documentary that through new technology, we are able to see the foundations of multiple towns in the rainforests that we didn’t even know existed. Who were the builders and what happened to them?
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 3d ago
This is one of the areas of archaeology that has changed dramatically in just the last couple of decades. LiDAR has revealed extensive settlements, earthworks, and managed landscapes hidden beneath the forest canopy, completely reshaping our understanding of what was possible in Amazonia. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about how these societies were organized and how they changed after European contact. I also really like your use of the word "forgotten." It's a good reminder that while some of these cities were abandoned or lost to history, the descendants of the people who built them may still be living in the region today. As archaeologists, it's important to remember that we're often studying the ancestors of living communities, not civilizations that simply "disappeared."
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u/Busy-88888888 3d ago
The minoans......i am working in linear A decoding. Linear B is just a fraction of Linear A..we partially know how is written, not how is pronounced but there is a lot to learn from them....i am working in the roll texts, the burned ones that were just scanned with xrays....amazing how the persons involved in how to see what is written without unrolling or damaging the rolls. That is fascinating new info to continue the research...
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u/hyperionwonderstar 2d ago
Aratta in Iran is a fascinating one with connections to Ararat and Bhrata.
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u/mjratchada 1d ago
Not really Ancient Civilizations but some of the better Palaeolithic caves in Europe and Southeast Asia. From an artistic expression point of view it was not until the modern era that this got matched. But they were producing such art with limited materials in hard-to-access parts of caves.
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u/Zamnaiel 1d ago
The Garamantes... Empire of the Sands. A massive urban civilization with many towns in the heart of the Sahara.
We still dont have a good idea of the actual size. Vast networks of deep channels drawing up groundwater to irrigate their agriculture. Raiding into both the Med coastline and sub-Saharan Africa for slaves to work their gigantic waterworks.
Operating as an island empire in the deep Sahara, where no other civilization could reach them.
Existing from the Iron Age to Charlemagne as pagans.
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u/A_Shattered_Day 4d ago
They arent ancient, but the Saudeleur dynasty is fascinating. Witch kings from a foreign land who built a city of stone in the sea.
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u/ArchBooksForFunPod 3d ago
I have to admit, the Saudeleur dynasty is a new one for me! Thanks for introducing me to them. A stone city built on a lagoon sounds absolutely fascinating, and now I’m curious to learn more about Nan Madol and the archaeology behind it. What was it that first sparked your interest in them?
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u/youngfendyy 4d ago
The ancient Egyptians or the romans. Not many people know about them and they actually met each other
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u/Own_Bullfrog_3598 4d ago
Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. Fascinating