Scott here with another episode of the History Unplugged Podcast.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are the Greatest Hits album

of structures built in Antiquity, or the Mount Rushmore or whatever analogy you want to use,

starting with the Great Pyramid of Kiza, built around 2,500 BC, and ending with the Lighthouse of Alexandria, built over 2,000 years later.

Some of the structures are religious, like the temple of Artemis,

or the statue of Zeus, others honor the dead like the mausoleum of Holokarnassus,

until others may have never even existed,

including the hanging gardens of Babylon, which are believed

to have built in 600 BC, but they may have been an invention in literary sources, or they

may have been located in Nineveh, not Babylon.

Whatever the historicity, the idea of these massive structures

built before there were steel, or modern materials to make it easy to construct something hundreds

of feet high easily captures the imagination. We're going to explore each of these seven wonders, we're going to explore each of these seven wonders,

why they were built, what they meant to the people who built them,

and what's so impressive about them.

We're driven by Bettany Hughes, author of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

She's traveled to each of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

She's traveled to each of the sites, and has also looked into recent archaeological findings,

which show after all these thousands of years, the sites are still telling us new things

about the past, and the distinct cultures that brought them to life.

Hope you enjoy this discussion with Bettany Hughes.

And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for word from

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