“Every single person that we meet was both the endpoint of thousands of years that brought them there, and the midpoint of some other process, and was the beginning of something else entirely. Think of yourselves as the middle and the beginning, not just the end.” — Patrick Wyman

History, we are often told, is a simple story of progress — from caves and villages to cities; from forests and farms to factories; from chieftains and kings to democracies. But, for Patrick Wyman, host of the enormously popular Tides of History and Fall of Rome podcasts, that’s far too linear a narrative. In his new book, Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World, Wyman argues that rather than a teleological inevitability, civilization is a chaotic ten thousand year story of improvisation, experiment, failure, and unintended consequence. It is never ending. We are always in the middle of it.

Dramatic advances in archaeological technology triggered Wyman’s argument in Lost Worlds. Ancient DNA, isotope analysis, LiDAR, cutting-edge excavation are all opening up what Wyman calls “a golden age for popular historians.” We can now trace the lives of individuals in ways that were inconceivable just a generation ago. Wyman’s star is Ötzi the Iceman — a man murdered 5,300 years ago in the Alps, whose gut contents, DNA, last meal, and likely killers we now know. Rather than a symbol of prehistoric life, Ötzi the Iceman reveals why history keeps happening.

Five Takeaways

• The Prelapsarian Fallacy. Hunter-gatherers weren’t paradise. Early farmers were often less healthy — but farming supported far larger populations. Looking back and calling it paradise says more about the critique of the present than about actual past lives.

• Civilization Was Not Inevitable. Farming didn’t always replace foraging. Villages didn’t automatically spark agriculture. Cities didn’t necessitate hierarchies. For every society that moved forward, others collapsed, hybridised, or chose something else. The line of progress is a retrospective fiction.

• Ötzi the Iceman: A Man With a Story. Murdered 5,300 years ago in the Alps. From isotope analysis, we know where he grew up. From his gut, what he last ate. From his DNA, his ancestry. From the arrow in his back, how he died. Not a symbol — a person.

• The Fall of Rome Was Not a Tragedy. The remarkable thing about Rome is not that it fell. All empires fall. All societies hit the limits of their technologies and environments. The remarkable thing is that it lasted six hundred years. That’s the story.

• Think of Yourself as the Middle. Every person at every point believed they were living at the final chapter. Every one of them was both an endpoint and a beginning. Stop thinking in terms of next quarter. Start thinking of yourself as part of something much bigger — that will extend long after your name has been forgotten.

About the Guest

Patrick Wyman is the host of Tides of History, Fall of Rome, and Past Lives, and the author of Lost Worlds (Harper, May 5, 2026) and The Verge.

References

Lost Worlds by Patrick Wyman (Harper, May 5, 2026)
Tides of History podcast: currently covering the Iron Age

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: from the Ice Age to the Bronze Age in one book
00:01:45 Is this a book about the fall? The prelapsarian fallacy
00:03:17 Paths taken and not taken: challenging historical inevitability
00:04:38 From the end of the Ice Age to the Bronze Age: the ten-thousand-year frame
00:07:08 A golden age for popular historians: the new archaeology revolution
00:09:14 The ideological disputes: what are historians fighting about?
00:10:00 Ancient DNA and the revolution in prehistory
00:15:00 Ötzi the Iceman: a man with a story
00:20:00 The prelapsarian myth: were hunter-gatherers really better off?
00:25:00 Farming vs. foraging: the real tradeoffs
00:30:00 The rise and fall of complex societies
00:35:00 Did civilization require hierarchy? The evidence says no.
00:40:00 The new archaeology and what it means for our self-understanding
00:45:00 Ice Age cave art: sympathetic magic or religion?
00:49:03 The Fall of Rome: a tragedy or a natural rhythm?
00:51:23 America as the new Rome: the sensitivity question
00:52:01 AI and the end of history: Wyman’s counter-argument
00:53:13 Think of yourself as the middle, not the end