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.
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What they believe
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Climatic disruption may act as an accelerant for existing social and political tensions rather than being a direct cause of state collapse.
Instead 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.
patrickwyman.substack.comSaid 1 Aug 2026This on korrents
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The transition from hunter-gatherer societies to civilization was not an orderly, logical process of progress.
But 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.
patrickwyman.substack.comSaid 5 May 2026This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 9 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Climatic disruption may act as an accelerant for existing social and political tensions rather than being a direct cause of state collapse.
Instead 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 Wyman Said 1 Aug 2026
The Bronze Age Collapse may have originated among the Mycenaean Greeks and spread through interconnected trade and communication networks.
To 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 Wyman Said 1 Aug 2026
Societal collapse characterized by falling populations and rising mortality is a disaster rather than a positive transition to decentralization.
If 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 Wyman Said 1 Aug 2026
Show 6 more
The transition from hunter-gatherer societies to civilization was not an orderly, logical process of progress.
But 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 Wyman Said 5 May 2026
The major driver of human history is contingency rather than inevitability.
The 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 Wyman Said 5 May 2026
The process of Romanization was not evenly distributed across the empire.
Decades 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 Wyman Said 28 Jan 2026
The desire to emulate one's parents is so deep that it is difficult to distinguish between their influence and one's own desires.
The 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 Wyman Said 25 Dec 2025
A good popular history book should prioritize narrative over academic minutiae.
It 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 Wyman Said 25 Dec 2025
History is composed of the millions of individual moments of ordinary people rather than just the actions of great individuals.
History 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 Wyman Said 3 Dec 2025
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Where they publish
Newsletter Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future Essays on archaeology, ancient and medieval history; some issues are for paid subscribers.
Open patrickwyman.substack.com
Link verified 24 Oct 2026.
x.com @Patrick_Wyman His X account.
Link verified 24 Oct 2026.
Podcast Tides of History His podcast on prehistory and the ancient, medieval and early modern worlds.
Link verified 24 Oct 2026.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.