The History of China - #121 - Tang 33: Tang of the Dead

Episode Date: April 16, 2017

Take the army, go to the capital, kill the imperial clan, exterminate the eunuchs, usurp the throne, have a nice cold pint and wait for all this to blow over. How’s that for a slice of fried gold? Time period covered: 888-907 CE Major Historical Figures: Emperor Zhaozong of Tang [r. 887-905] Prince Li Yu [d. 905] Prince Li Zuo (Emperor Ai) [r. 905-908] Han Jian, Governor of Hezhong Li “the One-Eyed Dragon” Keyong, Commander of the Shatuo Turks Li Maozhen, Governor of Fengxiang Wang Xingyu, Governor of Pinning Zhu Wen/Quanzhong/Huang, Governor of Hedong (Emperor Taizu of Later Liang) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous Reign of terror. You can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 121, Tong Tang of the Dead.

Last time, we'd left the Tang Dynasty in a state of suspended animation, on the border between life and death, with the untimely death of Emperor Xizong and the ascension of the dynasty's penultimate monarch, Emperor Zhaozong. I'd intoned at the conclusion of the episode that the 21-year-old Zhao Zong's reign would be a fight for mere survival, both personally and nationally. And, spoiler alert here, in both capacities, he's fighting a losing war.

The realm that Zhao Zong inherited from his brother in 888 was one held in a state of what Professor Summers puts as, quote, precarious equilibrium, end quote. For almost all intents and purposes, the Tang regime was already at its end. Beyond it, really. But was now given an extended period of undeath for the following two decades. Its already rotting corpse was animated still by the regional governors and power players of the realm, almost any one of whom could have overthrown the dynasty at will,

but were held in check with bated breath at what the consequences of such an action might be. The ultimate failure of Huang Chao and his brutal end had shown them all that, while taking the reins of power would have been simple, hanging on for the ride to come would be anything but. Nevertheless, by this point, as I've said, the Tang dynasty was dead in all but name. Thus, though he was personally intelligent and able, and resolved to do all he could to revive his ancient and once great regime, it's completely unsurprising that Emperor Zhaozong would prove completely powerless to effect his dynasty's ultimate fate. He was, after all, trying to

resuscitate what was already a corpse. We're going to, for the most part, ignore the ever-eventful court life of Zhao Zong and his travails fighting against his court eunuchs, because in the end, for all their scheming and plotting, sound and fury, they're going to matter rather little to the end result. This is not to say I'm going to ignore them completely today, but we do have other things to focus on. So instead, we're going to turn to the first great misstep Emperor Zhaozong took when he angered one of the power players external to Chang'an, namely the chieftain of the Xiatuo Turks and Tang Governor-General of Shanxi, Li Kayong. You remember him, right?

He featured prominently in our last episode as the general who'd swept down to drive Huang Chao out of the capital and toward his ultimate demise. He who had been given the nickname by his troops of the One-Eyed Dragon to many a chuckle. In listening back to the last episode, it actually struck me that I hadn't explained how he'd come by that nickname, and so now seems as good a time as any. It seems that Li Ke Yong either had one eye that was notably smaller than the other, or in fact he might have been outright blind in it. So that's where the one-eye comes from. It's just literal. Li Ke Yong and his father, as we said last time, had been instrumental allies of the Tang emperors for the last 20-odd years, during both the Pengshun and then Huangcha rebellions. In spite of the Turks' independent streak, they'd nevertheless

proven themselves time and again to be the dynasty's most powerful and stalwart ally when the going got tough, which, given the imperial clan's own ethnically Turkic root, isn't the most surprising thing in the world. But many of Zhao Zong's most influential courtiers, led by two of his chancellors, had developed by the late 880s an acute case of the what-have-you-done-for-me-latelys. To be fair, there was widespread fear of the Turks' position of preeminence in many parts of northern China, that they might at any moment turn on their Chinese allies and sweep down to conquer them all. Thus, the officials in favor of the plan believed that they might be able to seize the initiative

and push the Turks out of Shanxi altogether, and in doing so extend direct imperial control out of the capital region for the first time in more than ten years. The emperor, though rightfully wary of this strange line of reasoning, ultimately buckled to his court's pressure and approved the plan to mobilize a force of more than 100,000 soldiers against the Shatwa in the fourth month of 890. This massive force was joined the following month by an additional 50,000 men led by the Chief Minister of the court. Yet in spite of this overwhelming force,

the campaign started off on a bad note indeed when one of the Tang commanders was captured by the Turkic forces and then killed after he refused to defect to Li Kayong's side. The One-Eyed Dragon would go on to prove to the imperial expedition exactly why he'd become known across the empire for his martial prowess, defeating within a month another army to his north and then turning around and driving the majority of the imperial force to rout, while a remnant hunkered down in the city of Qinzhou under a Turkic siege. This siege would ultimately be lifted, though not by any Tang force riding to the rescue, but rather the Xiaotou commander simply voluntarily abandoning it and retreating

back to his home region in Shanxi. It would prove to be a truly embarrassing defeat for the imperial forces, and in fact, the royal court's last military foray outside of the central capital region altogether. From 890 onward, their full energies would be on the defensive, pitted against the increasingly aggressive and hostile governor-generals of the provinces surrounding Chang'an, and with their best former ally, Li Kayong himself, now ambivalent at best to their fate. It was actually at least in part this failure against the Turks that would stoke the contempt of the imperial court's next great foe, to whom we turn now. Li Maozhen had been named the governor-general of Fengxiang, due west of the capital in 887, and had rapidly extended his power over the region as a whole.

But the embarrassment of 890, coupled with the imperial court's continued subservience, as he saw it, to the eunuch officials, caused Governor Li to quickly lose faith in the dynasty. In mid-893, for instance, he sent a scathing letter to the emperor, taunting him about his inability to even protect his own seat in the event of yet another military uprising, and sarcastically closing out with the question of where the emperor would run and hide the next time his capital was captured. This insult was beyond the pale for the imperial ego, and Zhao Zong furiously organized a force of his own to punish Li Maozhen's arrogance. This would prove to be yet another egregious military mistake for the emperor, though,

since Governor Li's battle-hardened professional troops were easily able to crush the army of raw recruits mustered by the emperor. In the wake of this defeat, Governor Li twisted the knife by demanding that the emperor put to death three of his senior court eunuchs as well as one of his chancellors, all of whom the governor personally blamed for the decision to wage war against the Fengxiang garrison. Zhao Zong could do nothing but accept this demand and order that all four commit suicide, and then was forced to confirm Li Maozhen as the governor-general of the West Shannan Circuit, placing a total of more than 15 prefectures under Li's direct administration. Professor Summers writes, quote,

By 894, the Tang dynasty was clearly living on borrowed time. Zhao Zong continued to carry out his formal duties as emperor, but his appointments of new chief ministers were no longer to be taken seriously. The military governor Li Maozhen and Wang Xinyu, the military governor of Pinin, constantly sought to destroy the last vestiges of imperial independence, abetted by one of the chief ministers, who reported all the affairs of the court to them, end quote. And let me just be clear here. So far, I've been mostly sticking to the terminology of the dynasty itself, that these powerful regional commanders are jiedushi, governor-generals. But make no mistake, though they still officially carry the titles and positions of the Tang, they are in no way

subservient or beholden to it in any way other than name. For all intents and purposes, by this point they are de facto independent warlords, even as they retain de jure dynastic positions for appearance's sake. So don't get confused if I start calling them warlords, because that is exactly what they are. Things would come to a near-fatal head for Emperor Zhao Zong in 895, when the most powerful governors surrounding the capital, namely Li Maozhen, Wang Xinyu, and Han Jian, banded together to depose him once and for all. It was with no small amount of irony, then,

that Zhao Zong's savior would prove to be none other than the man he'd tried, and failed, to attack half a decade prior. That's right, the one-eyed dragon, Li Kayong. But hang on, let's not get too overly sentimental about the Turks riding into the rescue here. The Xiatuo came to the dynasty's aid in 895 not out of any lingering attachment or sense of loyalty to the Tang, but surely out of a need to prevent any strong, unified force from seizing control of the capital for themselves. Again, from Summers, quote, Turkish troops fought their way into Guangzhou

as Li Maozhen and Wang Xinyu argued over which of them would take control of the emperor. To intensify the crisis, fighting broke out among the remaining imperial forces, during which Zhao Zong was nearly killed, end quote. In the wake of the near-on goal by the imperial army, the emperor got together as bodyguard and that's right, ran away into the mountainside, first hiding out in a Buddhist monastery and later within a small garrison town. Li Maozhen's sarcastic taunt had proven itself all too true.

It was only a question of where, not if, the powerless emperor would run next. And the emperor fleeing can only mean one thing for the poor, poor capital city. You guessed it, sacking and burning yet again. Summers writes, quote, After narrowly escaping capture by local troops, the emperor was once again saved by Li Ke Yong,

who provided an escort back to the capital. The palaces of Chang'an were by this time so badly damaged that the emperor had to stay in the Department of State Affairs, attended by only a few remaining officials, end quote. For his rescue of the emperor, Li Kejong was bestowed what little Zhao Zong had left to offer, which was the most beautiful girl in the imperial harem, as well as titles of nobility for himself, his descendants, and his allies. Li Kejong would require a bit more encouragement from the emperor to be persuaded to return to his home district, however, in the form of some three million strings of cash to be distributed among the Turkic troops. After all, it sure would be a shame if some of his troops didn't feel

fairly compensated after all, now wouldn't it? Nevertheless, in spite of this totally not a bribe, to get him out of Chang'an. From the sounds of it, Li Ke Yong was itching to leave the capital behind and return to his homeland on account of the aggressive expansionism of his rival warlord, Zhu Wen. In fact, less than a month after his departure from Chang'an, Li and Zhu would be embroiled in a bitter fight of their own over control of the Hedong province in the northeast. As for the other governor-generals who had so recently been driven off by Li Ke'iong's intervention, they went right back to expanding their own spheres of influence as soon as the one-eyed dragon's back was turned.

Li Maojun, for instance, took the opportunity to annex three more prefectures in the Gansu region in the last month of 895, and then took the unprecedented step of naming his own military governor of the region an overt usurpation of the imperial prerogative. The fact that the emperor was now nothing more than a ceremonial pawn to be pushed around by the warlords surrounding him on every side became all the clearer in the post-895 world. For instance, when Zhu Wen sought to have an ally of his appointed as the imperial chancellor the following year, none other than Li Ke Yong, who you remember had just saved the emperor and the capital from conquest, bluntly threatened to turn right back around and attack Chang'an himself if the appointment was carried out. The scheme, as it were, was quickly dropped.

When shortly thereafter, the warlord Li Maozhen once again moved his armies dangerously close to the capital, Emperor Zhao Zong again decided that his only course of action would be to flee ahead of his capture. This time he decided not to wait for a rescue by his Turkic savior, but to seek him out directly and place himself in the One-Eyed Dragon's personal protection. But things took an unexpected turn as the small imperial retinue exited the capital. From Summers, quote, and warned him that if he went into the border region of Hadong and surrendered himself to the Turks, he would never again return to the capital. If he remained in Guangzhou,

there was still hope of dynastic recovery. The threat behind Han Jian's advice to the emperor was unmistakable, and Zhao Zong arrived in Huazhou on the 17th day of the 7th month of 896. End quote. The so-called protection offered by Han Jian to the emperor had the world's biggest air quotes around it, and no one, not Zhao Zong nor his retinue of officials, missed that fact. While within his power, all took great care to consult with and receive the go-ahead from the

warlord Han Jian before carrying out any courtly business. Han himself sought to capitalize on his imperial charge by ordering a proclamation written on the emperor's behalf, commanding the officials of the neighboring provinces to begin sending provisions and supplies to his capital at Huazhou rather than Chang'an. All for the emperor, of course. The provincial officials were no fools, however, and saw exactly what Han Jian was pulling, and openly mocked and criticized Han for his crude manipulation of the emperor. Early the following year, Han Jian ordered the imperial princes to return to Chang'an while advising the emperor that he should move once again, further east, and of course, deeper into Han Jian's own territory of Haizong. His stated reason was

that he had uncovered a plot against his own life, fomented by one or more of the princes in Zhao Zong's retinue. But though that may well have been the case—assassination plots were, after all, a dime a dozen these days—Han Jian's actions betrayed his real objectives. For one, before they were booted back to the capital, Han ordered that the troops under the prince's commands be reassigned to his personal command, and then forbade, yes, forbade, the emperor from having any future contact with his suspect family members, lest he become confused. By the middle of 897, it was clear to pretty much everyone that Emperor Zhaozong was little more than a prisoner of Hanjian, who planned to pull the imperial puppet strings for his own gain

as long as he possibly could. Though Li Ke Yong tried to rally together an alliance with his fellow generals and governors to mount a rescue operation, he found little support among the other warlords, who were one and all far too busy shoring up their own personal fiefdoms to do anything as silly as waste time, energy, or manpower freeing an all but useless monarch. Two months later, Han Jian was able to orchestrate the murder of 11 of the imperial princes within the palace at Chang'an, thus eliminating them as potential rallying points for other warlords to use, and ensuring that his imperial puppet remained the only one on the game board. From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg. From the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse.

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The following year, however, would see the situation change dramatically. To the east of Hanjian's Haizhong province, the warlord Zhuwen had made tremendous and deeply worrisome gains to his own power and territory, so much so that Han Jian, Li Ke Yong, and Li Maozhen were all compelled to put their own differences on hold and temporarily band together to face this emergent eastern threat. When Zhu Wen seized control of the secondary capital, Luoyang, and invited Emperor Zhaozong to take up residence there under his protection, Han Jin decided enough was enough and immediately returned with the emperor to Chang'an, rather than risk him falling into Jews' hands.

Upon his return to the capital, Zhaozong, very optimistically, celebrated his apparent freedom by declaring a new reign era, that of Guanghua, or Radiant Transformation. He was half, right? The empire was indeed in the process of a transformation, but it was anything but radiant. November of the year 900 would see Zhao Zong temporarily overthrown by none other than the court eunuch officials, who confined him to his quarters under strict guard and installed their own puppet on the throne in the person of Zhao Zong's eldest son, Prince Li Yu. Though they were able to carry out a bloody purge of their political rivals over the next two

months, their usurpation gained little support outside of the palace walls. By February of 901, the eunuchs in charge of the plot found knives in their own backs, and Zhao Zong was restored to the throne where he, in a bit of ceremonial revenge, proceeded to posthumously pardon the officials who half a century earlier had tried and failed to exterminate the eunuchs altogether in the Sweet Dew Plot, which you may remember was the focus of episode 114. As for his son, Zhao Zong seems to have implicitly understood that the prince had had little say or choice in the matter, and, much like his father, had simply been an unwitting pawn in the tidal forces that were now tearing the realm apart.

Rather than punish the prince for technically being a usurper, he just forgave the boy, an act Ju-1 strongly protested and never forgave the emperor for. Between 901 and 903, the imperial court itself became a kind of microcosm of the larger conflict that was raging across the empire as a whole. The remaining eunuchs tended to side with the Warlord Alliance consisting of Li Kayong, Han Jian, and Li Maozhen, while Chancellor Cui Yin and his cronies backed the rising star of Zhu Wen. Summers writes of the situation within the palace,

quote, Hatred and intrigue grew to grotesque proportions between the ministers within the palace, quote, Between 902 and 903, though, the writing was increasingly on the wall. Du Wen had been steadily expanding his dominion westward from Luoyang, and that year was able to take physical control of the capital and the imperial palace. Once again, though, the emperor was just slightly ahead of capture and was whisked away at the last moment to the nearby city of Fengxiang to the west, under the protection of its governor, Li Maozhen. Zhu himself proceeded onward to Fengxiang at the head of his army and proceeded to lay siege to the city. By the new year of 903, Zhu had managed

to capture virtually all of Li Maozhen's outer holdings apart from Fengxiang itself, and had forced the rival commander to the negotiating table. Li at last surrendered and gave control of Emperor Zhao Zong to Zhu Wen, personally delivering the Imperial Assembly to his victorious rival. Zhu Wen charged one of his nephews with guarding the emperor and left some 20,000 troops to make sure he stayed guarded. And then, at the urging of his lackey chancellor, Sui Yin, though apparently it was his own first impulse as well, Juwen herded several hundred remaining eunuchs into the courtyard of the Department of the Inner Palace, where he had them systematically and brutally executed.

Juwen now controlled the capital, but far more importantly, he controlled the emperor. And let's face it, Chang'an wasn't exactly looking good. The phrase, burnt-out deathscape, seems fitting, and Zhu Wen appears to have agreed. He'd spent the last several years renovating and sprucing up Luoyang, and he was quite anxious to leave the smoldering husk of Chang'an in his rear view. So in the first month of 904, he got on his horse, commanded Zhao Zong to get into his litter, and together they made their way back to Luoyang.

Oh yeah, and on the way, Zhu Wen had all of Zhao Zong's remaining personal retainers slaughtered, so the emperor probably wasn't including this trip on his best vacations ever list. Having arrived at the secondary capital though, Zhu became increasingly concerned with the reports that he was receiving from across the empire. that apparently the warlords not already in submission to him were issuing calls to rise against what they were calling his illegal seizure of the emperor and for a restoration of imperial authority. Moreover, Zhao Zong, who was by now 37 years old, was not likely to cooperate with the warlord who had taken him captive. After all, not more than a couple of years ago, he'd deliberately ignored Zhu's urging to execute the prince who had usurped his throne,

never mind that it was his own son who had been a child at the time. The point was, Zhao Zong clearly couldn't be trusted, and this wouldn't do. No, it wouldn't do at all. It would be much easier, much better, if the emperor were a child, someone Zhu could properly control. I mean, guide and instruct. Thus, that autumn, Zhu Wen secretly ordered two of his lieutenants to lead troops into the residence of Zhao Zong and assassinate him.

And then, in what must have been absolutely farcical, even at the time, Zhu Wen then turned right around, acted shocked, shocked, that his subordinates had dared to touch a hair on the divine emperor's head and ordered the two assassins to commit suicide. But the imperial bloodbath wasn't over, not by a long shot. After placing Zhao Zong's ninth son, the 11-year-old Prince Li Zuo, on the throne, known as Emperor Ai the Piteous, Zhu Wen then proceeded to exterminate every other living member of the imperial family,

with the exception, of course, of his puppet and the new emperor's mother, the Empress Dowager He. Zhu then commenced a much broader slaughter of the senior Tang officials and their families across his region of control, most famously forcing more than 30 officials to commit suicide at Baima and then hurling their bodies into the Yellow River to be carried away. Later that year, Zhu's wife died, which was a very difficult blow for him personally, but also signaled the beginning of an even darker period for those under his control. Lady Zhang, you see, was said to have been one of the wisest counselors and a strong moderating influence on the warlord's more violent tendencies. Yeah, that's right, the guy who just slaughtered an entire extended royal family was Ju Wen the Moderate. But from 905 onward, without his wife's balancing influence,

his violent and hedonistic tendencies would be borne out in full. It was by that year that it seems that Zhu Wen had decided at last that he was going to take over the throne and create a new dynasty to supplant the now all but extinct Tang. To that end, the child emperor Ai had one final purpose to serve before his usefulness would be expended. And so began the process of ceremonially bumping Jew up the ladder one step at a time, in a process that will sound very familiar indeed. First, he was declared the Generalissimo of all military circuits, and then named as the Imperial Prince of Wei, and granted the infamous Nine Bestowments, the penultimate step to usurpation. As an expression of his ultimate power, in late 905, along with several others of his political enemies, he ordered the

execution of the Empress Dowager, and then forced the young emperor to issue an edict stating that she had dishonorably committed suicide and posthumously demoted her to a commoner. In late 906 and early 907, Zhu received a missive from Emperor Ai, apparently stating that he was preparing to abdicate and offering the throne to the warlord. After the customary display of gosh-golly-little-old-me, Zhu, of course, jumped at the chance. He ceremonially changed his name to Zhu Huang, and then, on the 1st of June 907, in spite of predictions from his brother that such an action would ultimately lead to the destruction of the Zhu clan, officially dissolved the Tang regime and declared the formation of the Hou Liang, or later Liang

dynasty, as its founding emperor, Taizu. Emperor Ai, now 15 years old, was thereafter declared the Prince of Jiyin and moved from the palace at Luoyang under heavy guard to a prison, I mean mansion, in Cao Prefecture, complete with all the usual trappings of such a facility, including armed guard, fence around the property, and ringed by thorn bushes. Yeah, definitely not a prison cell. A little less than a year later, Emperor Taizu decided that enough time had passed for the former Emperor Ai to have been sufficiently forgotten. Not wanting to leave any loose strings, or a living scion of the Li clan for potential rebels to rally around,

he ordered the teenaged prince poisoned. And thus it was, after 289 years, 22 emperors, one empress, 36 episodes, approximately 30 and a half hours, and more rebellions than you can shake a stick at, the Tang dynasty was really, truly, finally, dead. So where does that leave us? It leaves us at the official inauguration of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, a rapid-fire shuffling of the aristocratic deck official inauguration of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, a rapid-fire shuffling of the aristocratic deck over the course of the next half-century or so that would see the rise and fall of, in the grand Chinese tradition of not really caring how numerically accurate their period names are, six-ish dynasties in the north and somewhere between 11 and 22 short-lived kingdoms in the south. Because, let's face it, the six-ish dynasties

and couple-of-dozen kingdoms period doesn't have quite the same ring. We'll finish out today with a look at China as a whole in the year 907, and of our latest would-be emperor of the fractured and bitterly divided Rome. Zhu Wen, aka Zhu Huang, aka Emperor Taizu, had proven victorious thanks in no small part to his martial prowess and unyielding determination to advance his position and glory. He'd started life as the son of a common salt peddler, for crying out loud, yet here he now sat as the lord of the whole realm, at least in name. Summers says, though, quote, as Li Kejong discovered after barely escaping an assassination at his hands. Even his would-be allies found Zhu extraordinarily ruthless and devious. Willing to use any tactic and in control of a powerful army,

Zhu could not be challenged by any Chinese governor, though some were able to avoid his domination. End quote. Chief among those who would resist and punch back at the ascendancy of Taizu and later Liang, as we'll see going forward, will be the one-eyed dragon Li Kayong and his powerful band of Xiatou Turks in the north. Li had just two years prior cemented an alliance with the chieftain of the Khitan people of Manchuria,

far to the northeast, named Abaoji, the Great Khan, or Khagan. This alliance would prove instrumental to both peoples and persist over the entire course of the era, resulting in both being able to found the first of China's true conquest dynasties, ruled by non-Han people. Li Ke-yong's son would go on to found the short-lived would-be successor state to the Tang, called, appropriately enough, Later Tang, while A-Bao-ji would become the founder of the Liao dynasty, which will coexist, though not at all peacefully,

with the eventual victor of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, the Song. But we'll cross those bridges when we get there. Rather, it's south of the Yangtze River that officials, artists, and poets would flee from the chaos gripping the Yellow River Valley. And it's there in the south that the core of Tang, and Chinese more broadly, tradition, culture, and civilization would endure. Thus, the fate of China would become increasingly tied to its southern half. What had once been considered more than a wildland and distant, unimportant backwater would become the beating heart of the eventual recovery of the

empire as a whole. Summers writes, quote, Though none of these states had any chance of establishing a centralizing dynasty, all played an important part in the process of political consolidation completed by the Song. Between 885 and 907, some 50 provincial regimes have been consolidated into a dozen regional states. The importance of the Ten Kingdoms goes beyond matters of political consolidation, however. Much of the distinctive character of Song China, the accelerating economic progress of the Yangtze Delta, the rich sea-going trade along the South China coast, the new class of literati

so heavily concentrated in the Southeast, derived from the half-century of peace and stability achieved by the rulers of the Ten Kingdoms, end quote. So, we've got all that to look forward to, which is nice. But all that will have to wait for two episodes down the line, because next time, it's finally come! It's time to celebrate the tragic end of the Tang by having our End of Dynasty Celebration, look back, and Q&A. You guys have been sending in great questions and comments, and I'm looking forward to answering as many of them as I can. If there's time, we'll also be doing one of our periodic zoom-outs to 30,000 feet and pressing fast-forward so we can see the grand sweep of the dynasty play

out all at once, since many of you did seem to appreciate that last time. I know, it's very easy to get lost in these woods when we spend so much time analyzing the individual tree bark. For now, though, I'll simply sign off by saying that it has been and continues to be my great pleasure and privilege to bring you this story, and I'd never have made it this far without you all. Thanks so very much for listening. Hi, everyone. This is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.