Welcome to Ancient/Now

Authentic, authoritative, anti-patriarchal content about the ancient world for the ancient-history-curious

We began Ancient/Now with the idea of creating a reading companion to our podcast, Afterlives of Ancient Egypt, where we could share and continue the conversations we have on a myriad of contemporary topics from entertainment to politics and society and bring our—direct! anti-patriarchal!—ancient historical perspective to current history and archaeology related news. As human systems are increasingly perceived as overtly threatening and obviously unfair, we must look to the sources of those systems. Too long have we basked in our modern exceptionalism, as if we had pandemics and hunger beat. But our systems are a direct outgrowth of battle-weary and anxiety-ridden ancient humans. What is it like to have a life expectancy of under 50 years? What does it feel like to lose half your children before the age of 5? We suddenly need to know these things. Why? Because we feel we might be headed back to that place. And because for thousands of years, humans have tried to build walls against such vulnerabilities, only to create other unexpected problems. Many are recognizing that the past is very much alive now, that we are just people living in millennia-old, patriarchal systems. History isn’t repeating itself; history is now.

Meet our writers, Kara, Jordan, and Amber.

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