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Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. If you lived a hundred years ago, who would

you have been? What about a thousand years ago, or 10,000? Well, I can promise you this. You, yes, you, personally, wouldn't have

been someone you've ever heard of. Our stories of the past revolve around towering figures

like Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Cleopatra. When we learn about history and school,

we're mostly taught through the lens of these great people.

We memorize important names and the dates of battles, coronations, and imperial foundations associated with them.

Now, don't get me wrong, these people matter.

We can learn a lot about the past from what they did.

But they're not you.

Maybe you're rich, famous, and powerful, but you're probably not. There's

nothing wrong with that. Most of us aren't. But we, people like us, like you and me, are the raw

material of history, and we always have been. Our forebears may have included a king or queen or two,

but the vast majority of our ancestors were the common clay of humanity.

At best, they were advisors for those famous kings, or military officers, or members of the court.

Maybe they were merchants or priestesses or administrators. More of them weren't even that

elevated. They were farmers clinging to the edge of survival. They were shepherds,

tending their flocks and herds, worrying about wolves and sudden freezes. They were farmers clinging to the edge of survival. They were shepherds tending their flocks and herds, worrying about wolves and sudden freezes.

They were craftspeople breathing in the smoke from a forge or digging wood splinters out of their fingers.

Most of those people, our ancestors, left only the barest trace in the historical record, if they left any at all.

A single clay tablet recording the sale of

a pair of enslaved war captives in Assyria, an epitaph for a well-off Roman merchant, an entry in a

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