Most conversations about the Middle East start with the last few decades. On Episode 81, Daniel Rosenberg and his longtime friend, the Georgetown-trained historian Ramon Rico, start roughly 5,000 years earlier.
Their story begins in Sumer and the Bronze Age, when the region's great powers depended on a fragile trade network for tin. Mycenaeans, Egyptians, Hittites and Akkadians all relied on it. When earthquakes, crop failures and the arrival of the Sea Peoples hit at once, that network collapsed.
From collapse to empire
Rico explains how the Philistines settled the Levantine coast, how the Phoenicians opened new routes and how iron changed warfare. The Assyrians turned war into a profession. Along the way the pair discuss El, Baal and the emergence of Yahweh, and how early Jewish identity formed through repeated conquest, exile and return.
Layers on layers
The conversation moves through the Second Temple period and the Islamic expansion and explains how the region became a place of layered peoples and powers. The geography that made it a crossroads also made it a prize.
The episode does not try to settle modern arguments. It gives listeners the long view, and asks whether that history changes how they read the headlines.
This brief summarizes reporting and analysis discussed on Two Taps and Friends. It is not legal advice.
