Originally published on May 20, 2024
Introduction
This is another in our series of conversations on intellectual humility and historical thinking.
Joseph Manning is the William K. and Marilyn Milton Simpson Professor of Classics and History, Professor in the Yale School of the Environment, and Senior Research Scholar in Law. His historical work specializes in Hellenistic history, with particular focus on the legal and economic history of Ptolemaic Egypt.
Over the last decade, his research has expanded to the history of climate change and its impact on premodern societies more broadly. He is the principal investigator of the U.S. National Science Foundation project Volcanism, Hydrology and Social Conflict: Lessons from Hellenistic and Roman-Era Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Manning serves on the editorial boards of Studia Hellenistica (Leuven) and Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies. He has coedited several volumes and authored numerous monographs, the most recent being The Open Sea: The Economic Life of the Ancient Mediterranean World from the Iron Age to the Rise of Rome (Princeton University Press, 2018), which he discussed on this podcast. He is now at work on a major new study of historic climate change and its impact since the last Ice Age.
For Further Investigation
Joseph Manning, The Open Sea: The Economic Life of the Ancient Mediterranean World from the Iron Age to the Rise of Rome (Princeton UP, 2018)
Related Episodes: all about the climate
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