Patrick Wyman
American historian with a PhD from the University of Southern California; host of the Tides of History podcast. Author of The Verge (2021) and Lost Worlds (2026). Writes Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future, a newsletter on archaeology and ancient and medieval history.
Patrick Wyman did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
Filter All topics · Newest first
-
Their wordsInstead of a direct cause, we should think of climatic disruption as an accelerant for existing social and political tensions: not as destiny, but as a major factor that can easily exacerbate an already tense, unstable situation.
↗Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future, by Patrick Wymanpatrickwyman.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsTo the extent that we can date the sequence of events around 1200 BC, this collapse seems to have struck first in the Aegean, then spread east and south to Syria, the Levant, and Egypt. If this is correct, it means that the process we call the Bronze Age Collapse actually began among the Mycenaean Greeks.
↗Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future, by Patrick Wymanpatrickwyman.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsIf populations are falling, mortality is rising or fertility is dropping, usually both, and neither of those options says much good about that society. If palaces are burning and populations are dropping, that doesn't seem like a gentle transformation into a more decentralized and less hierarchical society; it feels like a disaster, and we should be comfortable calling it one.
↗Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future, by Patrick Wymanpatrickwyman.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
-
Their wordsBut the orderly story no longer holds. We've learned too much about the distant past, thanks largely to extraordinary new archaeological methods that give us access to aspects of the ancient world we could only imagine, for us to see any sort of clear, neat global march of progress.
↗Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future, by Patrick Wymanpatrickwyman.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
-
Their wordsThe major driver in this story is not inevitability, but contingency: how people made choices that made sense to them in the context of their own world.
↗Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future, by Patrick Wymanpatrickwyman.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
-
Their wordsDecades of recent research has made it clear that even after centuries of Roman rule, there was no evenly distributed process of "Romanization."
↗Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future, by Patrick Wymanpatrickwyman.substack.com
- 5 weeks earlier
-
Their wordsThe desire to make ourselves into a person our parents can be proud of gets wired in so deeply that pinpointing where their influence stops and our desires and needs begin isn't really possible.
↗Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future, by Patrick Wymanpatrickwyman.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
-
Their wordsIt couldn't go too hard into the academic aspects of a topic; that was the author's job, to do the underlying work and communicate it without overwhelming a non-specialist with minutiae that detracted from the narrative.
↗Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future, by Patrick Wymanpatrickwyman.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
-
Their wordsHistory is made of the millions upon millions of individual moments that ordinary people do every day, not just the actions of Great Men.
↗Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future, by Patrick Wymanpatrickwyman.substack.com