This is the History of the World Podcast with me Chris Hasler

And you're listening to volume three the classical world

episode one

the Aquamanid Empire, part 1. Oh, Persia, the country that we now call Iran. Historically, is the area of the world that

separates Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

The name Iran has been mentioned before when speaking of the Indo-Iranians, which is a linguistic branch of the Indo-European languages.

Indo-Iranians are synonymous with the term Arian's.

Iranian and Arian sound similar, but this is because they are likely to be cognate words,

which refer to a similar thing. The word Persian is in fact the foreign word,

possibly first coined by people of Greek lands. We do, however, need to look at the geography and history of these

lands before the arrival of Indo-European language speakers so we can make reference back to the stories of

volume two of this podcast for our clues. Firstly let us acknowledge the importance of Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers,

the Euphrates and the Tigris.

Mesopotamia would extend from the banks of the Persian Gulf, going northwest, following the lines of the rivers up to the tourist mountain range.

During the Bronze Age to the west of Mesopotamia were the dry lands occupied by nomadic cultures.

To the east, the Zagross Mountains and the Iranian Plateau.

These lands were a place of trade links across

to the Indus Valley civilization

to the east of the Iranian Plateau.

So it would be sensible to find out who was occupying these lands in ancient times

so that we can track its history and lead ourselves into the period which is historically referred to as the first Persian Empire.

We can look for clues within the podcast episodes of volume two. So let's travel back in time to the

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