Ancient Worlds, a four-minute preview.

Why it works

Ancient history is unusually good material for the end of a day. It is true, so it holds a little attention. It is finished, so nothing in it can go wrong now. The sample here is the opening of Aristotle, the Greatest Philosopher, playing over a low, drifting noise.

Every story in this group works the same way. The ending is given away in the first minute, the pace never rises, and the volume falls as the story goes on. A bathhouse closes for the night. An aqueduct is built one stone at a time. You are not expected to be awake for the conclusion.

What you are hearing

• Dark noise. Pink noise low-passed at 320 Hz, with a very slow rise and fall in level that never repeats. Soft, close and a little uneven, like air moving at night.
• The voice. The first four minutes of Aristotle, the Greatest Philosopher, a Lullable story, in a synthesised voice. It only plays if you bring it in.
• The ending. The preview lasts four minutes. Its last ten seconds are a straight fade to silence, so it never stops abruptly.

Ancient Worlds stories in the app

• The Painters of Lascaux by Lamplight, 51 minutes. Seventeen thousand years ago, people ground ochre by the fire and painted horses by the light of fat lamps. Spend one evening with them, from the river to the cave.
• A Village on the Rising Nile, 52 minutes. Every summer the Nile rose, left its black silt, and drew back again. Spend one evening in a village on the water, with warm bread, cloudy beer and a farmer's letters.
• The Night of Two Sleeps, 46 minutes. For centuries, a night held two sleeps and a calm, wakeful hour between them. Spend that old, unhurried night beside a covered fire.
• Uruk, the First City, 48 minutes. Five thousand years ago, the first writing was mostly receipts for barley. Spend one warm evening in Uruk, among reeds, canals and clay, as the city sleeps.
• A Roman Aqueduct, Stone by Stone, 50 minutes. A long, level walk beside moving water, from a cool spring in the hills to the fountains of a Roman town at nightfall.
• Leonardo's Notebooks by Candlelight, 47 minutes. A candle, a pot of walnut-brown ink, and a man drawing the way water curls around a stone. Nothing in this room is in a hurry, and nothing is asked of you.
• Raising the Stones of Stonehenge, 50 minutes. For nights when the mind wants something solid to rest on. Rope, timber, antler and chalk, and a ring of stone going up one patient winter at a time.
• Reading the Rosetta Stone, 49 minutes. Nothing here is solved quickly. A museum gallery at closing time, and a lamplit study where one sign at a time is gently worked out.

For a real recording that runs forty minutes, the Lullable iPhone app has rain, waves, a campfire and plain noise, with no voice and no music.