Oh What A Time... - #22 Big Projects

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

This week we're looking into some huge undertakings through history in a category we're calling: BIG PROJECTS. How did ancient Rome manage to feed a population of 1 million people? How did Alexander the Great feed his army as it marched some 3,000 miles? How were the pyramids constructed? And in a 4th part for OWAT: FULL TIMERS, how did electricity make its way to the rural areas of the UK? Big questions to which we're happy to provide some big answers. There's all the usual nonsense too. If you could use our time machine to revolutionise a sport or change the world completely, how would you do it? You can let us know by dropping us an email to: [e-mail] As we mention in the show, we've launched a subscription! By becoming a OWAT: Full Timer you'll get the 4th part of every episode, ad-free listening, get episodes a week ahead of everyone else and get a bonus episode every month! (We'll also make sure you get first dibs on tickets to any live shows) Subscriptions are available here: anotherslice.com/ohwhatatime And via the Apple podcast app (just go to our show page). We also have a Spotify subscription available. For the options you can also go to: ohwhatatime.com Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Oh and please follow us on Twitter at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod And thank you to Dr Daryl Leeworthy for his help with this week’s research. Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). And thank you for listening! We’ll see you next week! (Or get next week's episode now if you fancy subscribing!!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if the past was absolutely rubbish. I'm Ellis James. I'm Chris Sculp. And I'm Tom Crane. And each week on this show, we'll be looking at a new historical subject. And today, we're going to be discussing big projects. Big projects. Isn't this a, actually now we've peaked this title, isn't this a series on Discovery Channel, hosted by Robert Llewellyn? Massive things on Discovery Channel. Whenever I talk to someone, I don't know, say at a wedding, and I ask them what they do for a living,

if they say project manager, in my mind, I'm always thinking, I would be so bad at that. Yeah. I would be so rubbish at being a project manager. Say I was project manager of the building of the new Wembley, for instance. Guaranteed, day one. Can I just say very briefly, Ellis,

that would be a bold decision on the part of the owners and the FAA. I know you're into football, but I don't think that's enough. Yeah, no. Guaranteed, workforce will be arriving on site, day one, no no toilets i can absolutely promise you that we would go to the grand opening and walk into the stadium and say is this roof made from twigs

yeah yeah can everyone do it on the can everyone go to the toilet on the pitch for today and because it's like an eight-year project anyway, so we'll all have dried up and stuff by the time the players are... Is that OK, everyone? Can everyone do it on the pitch? Ellis, all 94,000 seats are facing the wrong way. They're facing to the back of the stadium wall. This is the one thing we didn't want to happen. The one thing. To be fair, you don't want all those seats facing the pitch

when it's just a pile of worker excrement steaming. That's no way to describe the England team. Awesome. I should say what we're going to talk about on this episode, which is how Rome was fed, communication in ancient Rome, the pyramids, and subscribers will get that fourth part, which is how rome was fed communication in ancient rome pyramids and subscribers will get that fourth part which is electricity to rural areas which is something i've genuinely always wondered about whenever i'm in the country it's the only thing i think about my memory because i

grew up on the edge of country is constant power cuts that is what my memory is of childhood like the house just plunging into darkness all the time. Yes, but living in an age where electricity was really, really crucial to fund stuff. Yes. So, I grew up in the countryside and in the 90s, yes, power cuts all the time. But obviously, when I was 15, what did I like? I liked the telly. I liked listening to music. I liked having the radio on.

I liked having the lights on. I like having the lights on. I like reading by electric light. All stuff that's really, really crucial to my life. You're a shadow puppet. All the things that electrical light provides. Yeah. So it wasn't getting on my nerves in a really fundamental way. Yeah.

It was just irritating. But yes. getting it on my nerves in a really fundamental way. Yeah. You know, it was just irritating, but yes. The research on that's really, really interesting. So looking forward to letting our subscribers know how it was done. Shall we talk about this subscription

deal? Skull, you're good at that sort of thing. Far away. If you subscribe to this show you get a fourth part in every episode you get a bonus episode every single month and you get episodes a week early plus access to any pre-sale tickets for future live shows if you want to sign up and become a oh what a time full timer you can go to oh what a time.com you can also sign up at another slice.com forward slash oh what a time and you can go on your apple podcast app if you're listening on apple and you can subscribe there and get all that extra stuff why not a mere 4.99 right we've had uh lots of emails

in this week and i'm going to start with this from david good day from aust from Australia and love the show, although I suspect that David might be Welsh. In my relentless pursuit of altruism, I can't help but lament the self-serving tendencies of one-day time machine users. On Moles 2's personal gain, my noble mission is to teleport back to 1965 and enlighten, say, Dave Bowen, the Welsh football manager at the time,

about revolutionary tactics like Gagan Press, total football, third man runs, the false nine amongst other modern tactics. The false nine actually already existed by that point because the Hungarians would be doing it in the 50s, but it really, really, really, really, really hadn't caught on

in British football. I should do football tactics on this podcast. But I'll research on myself. Daryl, stand down. You've got the week off. My vision. A decades long Welsh triumph benefiting millions.

Of course, I wouldn't dream of using such a powerful device selfishly. Mind you, whilst I'm there, I might have a cheeky £10 wager on consecutive Welsh World Cup victories, merely to cover travel expenses and per diems. I also enclose a picture of the one-day time machine based on a Humber Super Snipe, somewhat based on Doc Brown's DeLorean from Back to the Future. I should point out that the window winders have been removed for safety reasons, as has the cigarette lighter. The window winders.

Are you putting the child locks on as well when you're in that? I've been threatened to keep them in the back seat. Imagine that. You teleport back to, I don't know, 1000 BC and you can't get out of the car because of the time machine because of child locks. Do you really think that tactical nous would result in that much, that greater achievement.

All right then, Chris. All right then, Chris. When Arsene Wenger told the Arsenal team that he took over to start eating broccoli, this is a direct quote from an interview I read with him. Martin Keown told his teammates that he felt superhuman. Now, if you can make athletes feel superhuman by telling them to eat broccoli instead of

chips, imagine if you could go back to the 60s with just that. Just say, listen boys, you don't have to have eight pints before every game. Just have a cup of tea. Do you know what? I'm going to say it.

I'd love to see this happen. If I had to sign off on a one-day time machine or like a five-season time machine, I would definitely agree to this. Not as catchy a title, that one, is it? Five-season time machine. So, okay, you can go back to any league or World Cup and you have five seasons in which to change the... This might be a good question for the listeners.

What other sports could you go back and change? Do you remember the Fosbury flop? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that came in and revolutionised the high jump. It did, yeah. I know quite a lot about the Fosbury flop because i did it on another on another podcast the people thought he was absolutely bonkers because wasn't it into a sand pit like was there was no crash mats like there are now i don't think i don't think so but people

were doing there was a kind of it was a kind of sort of scissor jump over the thing it was but it he wasn't smashing records but you could tell that it was it was going to be much more efficient but they people were trying different versions of the long jump as well there's i've seen one version of the long jump that was effect there was eventually banned where you're effectively doing a sort of forward somersault with your eyes closed and hoping for the best. I've got another game changer, which is the early use of doping in the Tour de France. That was quite a chalky shift, wasn't it?

Whoever brought that in first. Well, I reckon in the 60s, no one was testing footballers, so I could bring back a load of anabolic steroids and Gagin Press and broccoli and the false nine and EPO this is creating the most evil football team that ever lived I mean they'd all be dead by 1970 but they'd have won a World Cup what are five seasons my worry would be the broccoli and the anabolic steroids would cancel each other out I'm sure there's some kind of I don't I'm not a

mathematician but I'm sure there's something in that one thing i did like about this email is the fact that it starts it says so much about human behavior it starts with i'm going to do something completely selfless other people use it for their own ends i'm looking to improve you know make people's lives better etc etc and then he puts a bet on on two world cups of course he does because he's a human we've had it is it's the old if you had a time machine i suppose you should you know you should go back and and kill dictators etc yeah everyone who's emailed in so far it's been like oh i'd love to i'd love to go to a nightclub in the 60s and see... LAUGHTER..and meet Mick Jagger. No-one is offered...

David is the first person to offer to improve the world, and he is improving... He's basically improving my world for a bit. Well, should we make a request for that? Who here wants to make a seismic change in the world? Who out of our listeners is brave enough to tell us how they're going to really shake things up? It doesn't mean killing a dictator.

It could be anything, but we want a big change. Here's your challenge this week. Go back in time one day, change the world forever. How are you doing that? So, if you would like to change the world, get in touch with the show, Here's How. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show.

You can email us at hello at oh, what a time dot com. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh, what a time pod. Now clear off. Breaking news coming in from Bet365, where every nail-biting overtime win, breakaway, pick six, three-point shot, underdog win, buzzer beater, shootout, walk-off, and absolutely every play in between is amazing. From football to basketball and hockey to baseball, whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. Must be 19 or older. Ontario only. Please play

responsibly. If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca So this week in our Big Projects episode, thankfully, Big Projects that are nothing to do with me because as we've established, I would be rubbish at organising them. I'll be discussing things like feeding the Roman

Army, lines of communication in the Roman army and also in our bonus section for subscribers only bringing electricity to rural areas and I will be discussing the construction of the great pyramids of Giza, to cut a long story short it was quite hard work

do hold back some of the research just in conclusion tough job tough job and i'll be talking about how rome ancient rome was fed um it's actually interesting for this i think it's one of the greatest logistical challenges of the ancient world feeding rome's population of a million people or more at its height and keeping them fed and watered that's the equivalent to you know i know in the past the world was less densely populated but rome a million people is roughly the same size as glasgow yeah yeah it's ridiculous isn't it we had we had 12 people at our house for christ Christmas dinner last year. It was the most stressful thing I've ever done in my life.

And that is way short of a million. Logistically, I couldn't get my head around what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to deal with this. When you think what it takes to keep a city like Glasgow fed and watered with modern logistics, it's pretty mind-boggling. But when you extrapolate that back to the ancient world and think, how do you keep an ancient city fed and watered with modern logistics it's pretty mind-boggling but when you extrapolate that back to the ancient world and think how do you keep an ancient city fed and watered a million people but all kinds of goods not just from tesco value ranges right through to the very richest foods

and drinks uh for those that could afford it also in a city of a million people, when things go wrong, it is horrendous. Absolutely. Like, you only need a shortage, as we saw in the pandemic, of toilet paper for a bit for people to start panicking. So in ancient Rome, 2,000 years ago,

a million people. It's insane, isn't it? It's incredible. Good thing in ancient Rome, if you run out of toilet paper, you do have your toga. So it's kind of... Only for a day. It's insane, isn't it? It's incredible. Good thing in ancient Rome, if you run out of toilet paper, you do have your toga. Only for a day.

Well, there's quite a lot of surface area, actually. If you put a side of the toga, that would see you through a month if you're working through it patch by patch. I would say, A, it's white, and B, socially. You know when you go to someone's house, they've recently moved in, and they're sort of testing different paint colours on the wall? It would be like that. Trying to work out which one's right. togas weren't always white as well because we we we uh read about this we're now doing our own correction corners live yeah

what what we've proven there by the way very briefly is that we are learning we are actually we're internalizing this information uh l you suggested there that obviously if things started to go wrong, you could have a city in full riot on your hands. And therefore, with that observation, you've proven that you would have the sensibility of an emperor because all the emperors clocked this and this thus led to a state-driven project to feed Rome that was known as the Cura Annona.

So basically, the state would acquire all the grain for the city the state-driven project was called cura anona which means the care of anona anona was the divine personification of the grain supply and was herself linked to the goddess Ceres the roman equivalent of the greek goddess Dement, who was responsible for agriculture and celebrated in a long springtime festival known as the Cerelia. And Ceres gives us the name for and concept of cereal crops. Cerelia Ceres. That's where we get the name cereal from. So Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes comes directly from ancient Rome.

Incidentally, bought some of them the other day and when I ate them, I was like a man possessed. Yeah. After the fourth bowl, I thought, this is lunacy. They're unbelievably good. Do you know what? Up until recently, I thought Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes was a health choice. And then I caught eye of that little nutritional value section down the bottom.

Well, this is almost entirely sugar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So tasty, though. So tasty. Honey, good. Health choice. Nuts, good. Healthy diet.

Cornflakes, what's wrong with that? Put them all together. Boy, was I wrong. It's like broccoli and anabolic steroids. It doesn't work Do not mix them Rome's food supply was almost entirely imported Typically via the ports at Ostia and Portus at the mouth of the Tiber

Ships arriving from Egypt, the so-called breadbasket of the ancient world From the North African coast, from Sicily and from further afield in the Empire One commentator, thereek orator aristides observed that so many ships arrive here conveying every kind of goods from every people every hour every day that arrivals and departures never stop so it's mad isn't it like feeding ancient rome it's all getting brought in from all over the empire wow it took a fleet of more than 1 000 possibly something even closer to 2 000 ships to bring in the sufficient grain supplies with various emperors providing financial incentives and even offers of citizenship to those merchants who operated the biggest and

therefore most useful vessels and they would that this would serve to maximize supplies given vessels typically completed only two round trips across the Mediterranean per season from May to September. But interestingly, with all this grain being brought in and this vast network of trade, they needed a place to store everything. So Aristides likened Rome to the greatest warehouse in the world because of the sheer number of storage facilities. That's not one for the tourist board, is it? The Amazon depot in Swansea would have blown his mind. Absolutely.

He'd be really pro it. Really pro the death of a high street. Absolutely loving it. This is how it should be. They called their storage facilities Horea. At the height of the network, Rome had over 300 Horea, in which the quantities of grain necessary to feed the population were stored. Every Roman city and garrison town had its equivalent, albeit on a smaller scale.

But this next thing blew my mind. With the storage came waste so for example olive oil contain olive oil uh there's an estimated 53 million olive oil containers chucked upon this heap which is known as monte testaccio and it's the largest spoil heap in the ancient world i'm going to send you a picture of this now yeah you know what you can't wrap your head around the scale of this thing 53 million was that 53 million olive oil containers each capable of holding approximately 70 liters of oil each would it kill them to go refillable genuinely would it kill them to go refillable we're doing it but just get one jar go to your source fill it i think the olive oil thing is like i just i've just popped a link on the chat okay have a click and have a look you just you cannot believe the size of this mountain um so everyone in the city of Rome was dumping their olive oil containers into this giant heap

in Rome 7.5 million litres of olive oil were imported every single year much of it from Spain and more than 100,000 containers were thus smashed and thrown onto the tip so we should explain what we're looking at we're essentially looking at a we'll put this on the Instagram.

It's a hill. It's a full hill. It's a hill. You'd walk up on a Sunday afternoon and complain it was too steep. Is that full of olive oil bottles? It's full. When you zoom in,

when you zoom in, you have a look at these pictures. It looks like a massive hill. It is entirely composed of these smashed olive oil containers wow it is massive it's been described as the largest spoil heap it found anywhere in the ancient world it covers two hectares that's 4.9 acres at its base uh contains yeah there remains of 53 million olive oil containers

a sort of a bottle of olive oil from 2000 years ago you would think would be treated with more reference but actually

no it's just it's just there so the shops you could get in ancient Rome ranged from the elementary the butcher

and the baker to the more esoteric the cushion retailer the kitchenware supplier the merch stand to support your favourite gladiator as we've touched on and also you could go uh get your fast food retailer snack bar the roman equivalent of this was the thermopolym where you might get a bowl of soup or a stew or a meat skewer not quite a kebab but near enough to the modern imagination so it's basically like i don't know if you've ever been to like lakeside or blue water the big essex shopping centers it basically feels like that

chris you can't compare my ancient markets blue water in esse, you complete beast. Come on, man. It's the same. It says that. If you drive in, it says twinned with ancient Rome, doesn't it?

It's the blue water in Essex. But I genuinely feel, I feel jealous of that. That's shopping in small, local-owned businesses in the sun with incredible produce. That's like, I'm actually feeling,

when we discuss medieval Britain, what it happens to be, I immediately think that is the last place I'd want to be. But you describe this to me now. Compared to the high street that you have now, chains, concrete, it's, you know, Britain, bad weather. The idea of being there like you know beautiful architecture wonderful weather all this incredible food cooked on the side oh what a life i'm gonna make a complaint though about the the shopping centers of the ancient world okay and this is drawn from

personal experience no phones for you when you go to lakeside and blue water yeah everything's got a price tag you know when you go to those kind of Middle Eastern souks, or you're on holiday abroad, and you go in there and come down to the market, you've got a haggle for everything. It's busy, it's noisy, the ceilings are low, you can't really see where one shop ends and another one begins. Everything's a bit of a haggle. This is what I imagine the ancient world's like, isn't it?

Those markets are basically going to be the same do you think you'd be someone who'd accept you go well i'm just the guy who pays double that's just who i am yeah yeah i'll never be able to sort of negotiate my way around that or do you think you'd actually fancy your chances yeah i'm not i don't i don't love the thrill of the negotiation too much guilt going on as well i think yeah yeah yeah If I start to feel I'm going too low and this person's coming out at a loss. Actually gives me a stomachache and if I do it for more than about five minutes it gives me eczema.

Are we just going to let it fly that Tom implied basically he's such a good negotiator that the guy he's negotiating with goes too low and starts having a breakdown. I'm such a good negotiator. You could send me to a vegetable store in ancient Rome

and by the end of the negotiation, I would own the store. Why, you'd like this cucumber, eh? Oh, just take it. Just take it, you're too good. Well, if feeding ancient Rome was a logistical challenge because of its sheer size, then think about this. You had to feed a marching army thousands of miles away. So that demanded incredible logisticians and clever people because the romans as we know

from various ancient sources including the vinterlander tablets from hadrian's wall solved the question of how to feed the troops by having them cultivate land and graze animals by using the resources of the conquered provinces by hunting the local landscape by shopping and by shipping whatever else was necessary to maintain the garrison. So they were shipping in olive oil, fish sauce, and I love this, and wine from stores abroad, because your army needs wine. So the Vindolanda mentions food and drink, and it gives some sense of the kind of diet that was possible in a

stable community so this is the kind of thing maybe a roman army might be eating venison pigs trotter ham chicken eggs oysters plums garlic olive oil, beer, wine, honey, blackberries, cherries, apricots and milk tray. So they were bringing all of this stuff in. Wow. Not the milk tray, obviously. But, uh... Yeah. Yeah.

But think about that. That's such a varied, impressive diet. I'm on board with all of them apart from pig's trotters. That's the only one that I'm not going with. Yeah, I don't know if there was much scope to be fussy if you're in the Royal Army. Once I went to Berlin and I went to an authentic German restaurant and I ordered something that I didn't really understand. And when when it came out it was a pig's trotter it was like a pork i think it might be called pork knuckle it was like you could see it was a pig's foot and soup and it was presented

to me together i was like whatever i've ordered obviously this pig trotter's got to go in the soup isn't it that's why they brought it out together so i started mess it putting the pig trotter into the soup and was eating it it was absolutely vile even about five minutes later the waiter came over and went i'm so sorry i've given you someone else's order and you looked in the corner and there was a three-legged pig there waving at you and i said and i was like well i don't want it and the way it was like what do you eat you've started now and he charged me for it that's not all right yeah 100 that's what happened he charged me for it that feels like a tourist scam that this is how they get rid of their pig stroppers so why do you order i I don't know. I can't. It was like the recommended thing.

But I didn't really understand it reading it on the menu. When it came out, it was like a pork trotter and a soup. Foot of the day. Yeah. But you know, they take the menus off you,

so I couldn't cross-reference what I took. I was like, this must be it. Well, when I was in Alicante, they'd obviously, the people who run the restaurant we used to go to that was near the hotels

we went there every night because it was really nice but obviously there was no one there with very good English so they'd Google translated the menu so each night I would order either dumbfounded sky bacon or fragmentation hand grenade, which was a kind of

pudding with pineapple What was dumbfounded sky bacon? grenade, which was a kind of pudding with pineapple. What was that? Dumbfounded sky bacon. What was sky bacon? I can't remember what the meals actually were. I just remember the English translations. And one night ordering a dumbfounded sky bacon and actually it was

alright. What an incredible name for a starter. Talking of trotters and feet, Ellis knows this. I once ordered a pizza, I won't say the place, and when it arrived, it had a footprint baked into it. Unbelievable. It was one of the major chains as well,

so I'm not going to say which one it was. I was in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Festival. I was feeling really stressed and low. I was living with John Robbins at the time, actually. That's not why you feeling really stressed and low. I was living with John Robbins at the time, actually. That's not why you were feeling stressed and low. Quite the opposite. But yeah, I had a footprint baked into it, is the one. That's the one I baked into.

So that must have happened pre-cooking. Well, if you'd been in the Roman army, you could have been eating venison, pig's trotter, ham, chicken, eggs, oysters, plums, garlic, olives, beer, wine, honey, blackberries, cherries, napricots, and hubba bubba, which is such an amazing diet. In the later Roman Empire, this mechanism of military food supply would become a kind of tax, the annona militaris, which was imposed on citizens to maintain the army. So that principle would transfer from the Roman Empire into its successor, the Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople at its core. But a military force such as that commanded by Alexander the Great, one that travelled more than 3,000 miles to the east of its homeland in Macedonia, needed far more mobile supplies and malleable supply chains. So to put things into perspective,

Alexander the Great Army, daily water consumption ran to almost 100,000 gallons, about 450,000 litres, if you're modern, and food rations were three pounds of grain per soldier per day, or about 1.5 kilograms. But this was the same as the Roman legionaries' ration in later centuries. So more food and water were needed for the cavalry horses obviously in the pack animals as well to say nothing of a civilian retinue that followed in the baggage train so you had these vast quantities of essentials that all had to be supplied in or from terrain that was often not well suited to such demands

or in short and easily overwhelmed growing seasons i'm genuinely finding this stressful the idea of overseeing that i can't even begin to think how you're doing also those distances are enormous yeah for a modern army vast that is mind-blowingly difficult and famously armies even in the 20th century run into logistical problems over far shorter distances. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So running Alexander's empire, all 2 million square miles of it from Greece to the Indus Valley, was perhaps the ultimate big project of the ancient world. So this is how he managed it.

In part, by utilising existing supply routes and road networks, particularly those of the Persian Empire, over which he triumphed. So he's using networks and systems that are already in place. Clever. That's what I'd do, by the way. Yeah, me too. This looks quite good, actually. I think we'll just copy them.

Yeah. I think to be naive and ain't broke, don't fix it, is what I... Do you agree with that, Alexander? You do? Yeah, I run them. Use their networks. It's quite a good road.

In part by the forging of alliances and maintaining loyalty by taking prisoners and leaving behind garrisons and governors to ensure an orderly delivery, which is what Julius Caesar did during the conquest of gaul again good idea yep uh again if alexander the great suggested that i'd be like yeah i was gonna say that and in part by forward planning and uh this is where i would really struggle and by projecting power ahead of him so supply chains would be secured wherever possible before the main body of the army would be moved so he'd send forward like a squad i imagine ahead of the large body to sort it all out yeah i get very i get very anxious if i think i'm going

to be hungry yeah so if they've if they've sent you know if they've if they've sent A part of the army forward already I'd be like so there is going to be food When we're fighting Great okay that's fine Maybe go and hold a big table At Pizza Express or something like that Exactly that Have you got a table

For 4,000 people and then there's just one guy Sat at the end Put his coat on another chair so he's filling a bit of space one guy in 4,000 coats and he's freezing

but when it went very wrong though as it did on Alexander's march back to Babylon through the desert west of what is now modern day Karachi

famine starvation disease and then death stalked the army so as their food ran out the soldiers turned first to the fish the local coastal population ate then to the roots of palm trees then to eating their pack animals camels and horses and then they ran out of water so you know you'd be you'd be thirsty you'd stink you'd be absolutely starving hungry.

So this is an extract from Curtius describing another close encounter with death by starvation in Bakhtia, which is sort of modern northern Afghanistan. Grain shortages brought the troops to the verge of starvation. The men rubbed their bodies with juice and pressed sesame in lieu of oil. As for wheat, there was none. They survived on freshwater fish and herbs. So sort of, I don't know, kind of a modern Atkins diet. Now, Alexander was not the only commander brought down a peg or two by the elements. So it happened to numerous Romans and to Napoleon as well, who twice forgot his own maxim that an army marches on its stomach because he left troops to die in the deserts of Egypt

and the snores of Russia. That is the one thing, as you're looking out your window, as an army approaches your village, saying to your loved ones, not to worry, but they look hangry. I thought it was bad. It's even worse. They look hangry.

Have we got anything in the cupboards? We don't. This is going to be horrendous. Good protein bars. You knock off some porridge. Unsurprisingly, it seems that both Alexander and the later sources, including Arrian and his Roman counterpart Curtius, paid close attention to the landscape.

So the rivers, no matter how large, they seemed to dry up in the summer months and so they presented a danger to settlement or to garrisons or a moving army. Then you had snowy summits that provided defenders and inhabitants with an unlimited supply of water, so that was obviously vital, and then you had frozen terrain where there was nothing to hunt and no vines to harvest. So usually Alexander got it right, he was very good at logistics and he followed sensible courses of action. So he'd march from heavily populated and well-supplied places to others.

He would settle during the winter months in places where harvests were plentiful. And he'd ensure as far as possible that supplies would be brought in by sea. And you could establish new cities. So in modern Afghanistan, at Kandahar and near Herat, which were all at vital points of rivers, oases or existing trade routes, and then you could ensure the security of supplies. So if, as often happened in Central Asia, Alexander was forced to winter in areas that could be supplied, that couldn't be supplied externally, then he broke his army into smaller parts. So it would place less of a strain on what was available. smaller parts so it would place less of a strain on what was available and he was sort of entrusting the logistical skills of his lieutenants and then they could be sent out to forage as well as to sort of do reconnaissance missions so interesting and and he made practical changes to how his army

functioned which made it more easily adaptable to local circumstances so as it moved east the force largely swapped pack animals for camels which was an idea he borrowed from the persians i was going to suggest camels can i shock you i like camels that's so interesting so so i imagine some of these smaller groups would have been placed near towns as well existing settlements where there would have been some kind of i would like to assume i don't know or i think it's just easier to feed a small group, isn't it? So like his dad, Philip, Alexander restricted the use of wooden carts

because they were slow and in treeless areas. Sorry, like his dad, Philip. That's too normal a name, isn't it, to suddenly come up. We've just had... What was the name? I thought they were Jason. Alexander's great dad was called Philip. I mean, I'm not sure if he ever referred to him as

dad. How are you imagining Philip? Alexander's got olive leaves in his hair, a tunic made of gold. Philip, I'm imagining, with a button-up shirt, glasses with some sellotape in the middle. So, Philip had restricted use of wooden carts because they were slow

and then in treeless areas of Central Asia couldn't be replaced or fixed very easily. So soldiers and the civilian retinue had to carry as much as they could. So, to be honest, even though Alexander's army, Alexander the Great's army, it led to all these incredible mythical feats and all these legendary achievements. Basically, he did the basics right. He realised that an army needed food and it needed water, and without that, they're ruined.

That is absolutely fascinating. One thing I want to mention, which I saw about six months ago, there's this guy, if you look it up on YouTube, who buys old army rations oh my god i love this i've i love this youtube channel from like world war one that have been stored in tins and then he eats them and then half the time he'll be really really sick and other times he'll go yeah it tastes a bit like chicken it's all right it'll be fine but that's basically what he does so into this guy i can't believe you've seen this crane have

i told you about it no i found it on youtube i mean some of the stuff he's eaten there's one i watch where i'm sure he eats a world war one ration and like bully beef or something the thing is like it's dust it's more or less dust but occasionally he will draw the line and go i can't eat this like particularly the meat product but he's often just like sat just in in his living room like it's just like not he doesn't put it in any setting there's no effort to kind of deck the walls in world war ii memorabilia it's just literally just sat in his house the tin, there's a puff of dust, he has a bite, he tries not to be sick,

and then he thinks, I can't wait to go again. He gets back on the internet. My favourite thing that he eats is he gets World War I and Korean War biscuits, and they are sawdust. They are the driest thing you've ever seen, and he will attempt to eat them. It is vile. Right,

please send me a link to this guy because I've got quite a quiet afternoon actually and now I know what I'm going to be doing. I was going to go for a bike ride but now I'm going to be watching an absolute maniac eating biscuits with a cream

ball. an absolute maniac eating biscuits at the green wall. I'm going to talk to you today about the pyramids of Giza and more specifically, their construction. of Giza and more specifically their construction now there are plenty of theories about how the pyramids were built um I'll take you through some of the more unusual ones um famed psychic Edgar Case believed that they were built by a consortium of ancients who use their extraordinary mental powers to lift the blocks into into. Yeah, that's what I think. Good. Chris, you seconding that? No.

Is aliens on your list? Well, we'll get to that. Former Minnesota congressman, Ignatius Donnelly. He believed that the people of the lost city of Atlantis were responsible, so much so that he published a book covering this in 1882. So this is the Minnesota congressman, Ignatius he felt it was how do you write that book i know like because if you're not doing research you have to accept that's just a piece of fiction it's a hunch so you're sitting down there you got your pen out And a pad What are you doing up there?

I'm writing a book actually About the pyramids How come? Entirely from the product of my own imagination We know you live in Minnesota as well Yeah What is this base of research? It's incredible

So that's Ignatius Donnelly God it was easy to get a publishing deal in the 1880s wasn't it? Well you know Joseph Smith Saw the whole Mormon religion from inside a hat. He dictated it all while sticking his head in a hat. Really? That's a fact. You can look that up. Like the sorting hat in Harry Potter, like a big hat. Is that what you mean? Like his eyes were covered? I think it's a big top hat.

He dictated the whole Book ofon from staring inside of a hat there you go well we all work in different ways don't we i like to use a whiteboard so and still to this day as chris points out a lot of people more people than you would imagine uh still believe that aliens built the pyramids and they're there put there to observe us so yeah it's something in that. Let's start with the question. If you've got to bet your life on one of those three, which are you going for?

Literally, one of them is going to be right and that's going to save your life. Which are you going for? Aliens. Yeah, aliens. Aliens all day long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's clearly bloody aliens. I can't.

I mean, when you see the pictures of the pyramids now and the Great sphinx it looks unbelievable i can only imagine you know napoleon's army napoleon himself stumbled upon the pyramids and saw them and how could you think anything other than aliens must have put them here yeah i don't think you would be able to for even a hundred years ago that there was a great civilization that built them i can understand why people can't jump to that conclusion i can I don't think you would be able to even a hundred years ago that there was a great civilisation that built them. I can understand why people

jump to that conclusion. I can imagine myself turning up looking at them and thinking they were constructed using a series of ramps, pulleys and ropes. Which is correct actually. Which is actually correct. So let's talk about that process.

Because that is the more traditional theory. The first pharaoh to be buried in a pyramid was Pharaoh Djoser. Now, the construction of this first pyramid-shaped tomb in the 27th century BC did away with the mud and straw bricks that had been used on smaller flat-roof tombs previously. It was the first pyramid to use limestone. And this important step, which changed the shape and size of pyramids going forward was led by joss's royal architect who was called imhotep and for a point why did imhotep become

famous in 1999 or was there an up company or something named after him have you watched the blockbuster movie the mummy oh i thought you recognized that name that is who it's based on that character is imhotep who is the architect um for joss's um pyramid i don't think there's architects are rarely used as the the baddies are they in movies it's quite nice to find unusual yes that's true they've gone with it and it worked now to shift the blocks into place architects and engineers use assistant as i say of ramps and wooden rollers to move the limestone up to upper levels and this technology was tweaked and then perfected until at last in 2550 bc the great pyramid of giza could be built as a tomb for pharaoh kufu now this is the one i really want to talk about the great pyramid is the largest egyptian pyramid it is also the oldest of the seven wonders of the

ancient world it's the only one of the seven wonders has remained largely intact and it remained the tallest structure in the world for 3 800 Wow. Isn't that incredible? For 3,800 years, that was never bettered in terms of height. Just absolutely incredible. And as with all pyramids, it was built while the pharaoh was still alive in preparation for their death, which I've been thinking about this. It feels a bit weird.

The idea of seeing that going up opposite your home, I'd feel a bit bleak. Not sure about that, actually. What would you do if you went round my house in the garden with my own ornate gravestone that I was carving really intricately? I tell you one thing, though. It would stop you from wasting time. Yeah. Wouldn't it?

Actually, I'm not going to have a lie-in. I've just realised that my life on Earth is finite because I've got a massive tomb being built in my back garden. So, yeah, I... And as it's going up, you're right, it's a reminder that time is finite. Each of those layers is an example of yet more time ticking away and eventually you're going to be in there.

I will meet you for a pint, actually. I'll get a babysitter. If it was out front, front it was opposite my house i'd probably use the back garden more i think i'd probably i wouldn't want to i wouldn't want to look at it all the time i think it might bleak me out a bit um let's discuss some stats from this great pyramid it took around 27 years to build that's not bad no that not bad, actually. I would imagine that it would take... Looking at the size of it, you'd think it would take much longer. Yeah, I was going to say 100 years.

That's very specific as well. 20, so we know that then. We know exactly how long it took to build. The estimate was 12 years, but the builder, they always get it wrong, don't they? Imagine dying before it was finished. On your deathbed, you'd be like, oh, nice one. I should have chucked money at this.

Can I just ask a fundamental thing that I've always thought about with a pyramid? He's building this big tomb, essentially. The pyramid is a big tomb to him. And I've seen what it looks like inside the pyramid. And the tomb is basically halfway up the pyramid, isn't it? And there's an angular little tunnel into the pyramid. And the tomb is basically like halfway up the pyramid, isn't it? And you go, like there's an angular little tunnel into the tomb. Surely, if you're building a big pyramid that's to act as a tomb, you build the tomb right underneath the base of it

and then put the pyramid on top so no one can get in it. No? What is your question? Your question is? My question is, Imhotep's got this bang wrong. If you're building... Don't put the tomb in the middle of the pyramid because it's going to be relatively easy to get into it, no?

Put the tomb right underground and then build this huge pyramid on top. But probably the shape of it... The shape of the pyramid has been shown to be religiously important to the ancient Egyptians. So I think maybe to be at the core of this significant shape was quite important to them, I suppose, more than the idea of tomb raiders possibly there was that idea that there wouldn't be tomb raiders we're a pharaoh we'll be protected all this sort of stuff that's

something that happened in time possibly they didn't have that fear at that point when are you going to get out of imatep's ass um some more stats it was built by quarrying. This is incredible. An estimated 2.3 million large blocks. 2.3 million. Which is, if you're running that quarry, is a large order. Coming back to your partner saying, how was your day? I'm afraid I'm going to have to work late a lot going forward. I signed off on it today.

So many zeros. Imagine that day you're in the quarry and the order comes in. Oh, yeah, you're having a Chinese that night. You've been struggling for months. You don't know how you're going to keep the business afoot. And then you get a 2.3 million block order. It's fine. We're going to be fine for about the next 27 years actually each block weighed between two and a half and 15 tons to give you an idea an elephant weighs

between two and seven tons so some of these blocks were twice the size of an elephant and an elephant's easy to get up a slope because it has legs as well remember it's kind of the stone is and they're quite obedient exactly yeah and these blocks all came from the limestone quarries at Tura which was situated on the east bank of the Nile between modern day Cairo and Helwan and were transported by boat to a specially constructed dock at Giza and then transported from there to the building site where they were set in place and incredibly this knowledge all comes from a remarkable papyrus source which was discovered in 2013 and dubbed the diary of maria and essentially it offered a journal detailing the shipping of stone undertaken by maria and his team so it's

basically a work journal a guy was writing down what they did with the day how it worked and this journal has been found which tells you about um the logistics of doing it and that's amazing that combined with other archaeological finds and this is a crucial one and the discovery of a workers village at giza in 1988 and a workers cemetery two years later have helped create the picture of a gigantic and highly organized building site with logistical and demographic arms stretching across egypt now the workers village was incredible it contained all the necessities for life which is based around the pyramid as did the neighboring community constructed house temporary workers and a third community which was more up market for administration officials people like foreman who were tasked with

overseeing the construction you talk about stressful job and the idea of not being able to see things, Ellis. The idea of overseeing the building of a pyramid just stresses me so much. Oh, yeah. A nightmare. Because my worry would be I wouldn't want to go do a bad job and then get killed

and also wouldn't want to do so good a job that he decided he didn't want to be buried with him. Which seemed to be the sort of thing that happened back then. It's like you're seen as some kind of deified god Or whatever it happens to be They bury their cats They buried all the things that mattered to them with them

And that has happened They were buried with their slaves Their servants and these sort of things You don't want to do so well that that happens What a tightrope Yeah Just good enough to not lose your job Just bad enough To not get buried with your boss

human bones have been found at these sites and been illuminating they display signs of hard physical labor but also this is interesting healed fractures which shows the medical care that was on offer there we also know that these people ate well there's ancient rubbish tips chris talks about the olive oil. And these rubbish tips have been excavated to reveal the bones of fish, birds, cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. Can I ask a question about a misconception I've obviously got then? Yeah.

Which is that the pyramids were built by slaves. I thought they were just... This is more recently considered to be a misconception. Actually, they were paid workers. You know, obviously it was very hard work that's not to say that you you probably didn't get pension and all this sort of stuff but you it was it yeah they were they were and often it was farmers who were unable to work the land during flooding seasons and stuff like this so yeah it's recently been felt that actually the idea that they were slaves is a falsity.

And finally, and I think it's really interesting, graffiti and work schedule papyrus. I love that there's all this just work schedule stuff just lying around. Just basically people clocking in and clocking off and how this works. Found at the site even reveals something of the personality of these labour gangs, these groups of people into which the workforce was organised, with the names that they gave themselves. Here's some of the names they had the friends of kufu the green ones laborers of menkar and the purifiers of horus and this one this one makes me laugh just simply the perfectionists how are you imagining the perfectionists like like the eggheads.

Yeah. You're right, it sounds like a pub quiz team, doesn't it? Yeah. Oh, thank you so much, Tom. That was great. And thank you to you for listening. If you'd like a fourth part on big projects, you can always subscribe and then you'll get the fourth part, which this week is bringing electricity to rural areas. Daryl looked at and I will be looking at the research that Daryl did and adding my own unique spin that is academically rigorous

so if you'd like to subscribe the details are on owatertime.com see you next week, goodbye! Thank you.