E657 - The Persian Gulf

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 cities of Mesopotamia, Arabia and beyond to the far flung cities of the Indus Valley and the Indian subcontinent.

In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Steffen Laursen and Dr Lloyd Weeks to uncover the story of this Bronze Age superhighway. How did this narrow sea connect such distant civilisations? What kinds of goods travelled it...