For many its the Roman empire or the Greeks. Similarly ancient Egypt. Or the British empire. Maybe the Japanese, Chinese and Norse as the next 3.
I have deliberately not mentioned time periods there.
These are the most commonly beloved. What are your favourites and why?
The Alans, from 1st-century Central Asia through late antiquity.
Oh very good call. I’m not particularly knowledgable on them.
I personally love reading about ancient Mesopotamia and China in The Warring States Period.
For me its Mughal India and the Indus Valley Civilisation.
- Late Antiquity Roman Empire aka 300s-600s
- Ancient Egypt, pre-dynastic to new kingdom
- Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, pre-indo-european and early Indo-Europan
Another fascinating period for me is precolumbian South America, even though I don’t know as much about it. But I can’t really visit any physical remains or museums easily. It really matters to me if I can just see, or even better touch something from that ancient civilization.
I’m in the same camp as you when it comes to pre-colombian south America. Sounds fascinating but I know nothing of it.
Here and now. Kinda because it is the only time that matters and we can have influence on.
Ever heard of the “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” thing?
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
How does that matter here? Not obsessing over the past doesn’t mean that you don’t know and don’t study it.
Not really sure if obsessing is the right word from OP but maybe more most interested in?
No, “not obsessing” doesn’t mean that, true. But “here and now is the only thing that matters” kinda strongly implies it.
The American west from just before the US civil war to the turn of the century.
WW2. It really was the greatest generation full of amazing and terrible people. Winston Churchill story alone is breathtaking let alone all the smaller stories and experience of all people who played a roll large or small.
Right here, right now.
I have had a fascination with ancient Egypt since I was a child, especially the Old Kingdom, when they went all megalithic.
I’m a huge WW2 enthusiast. It’s one of the very few things I can confidently say I know a lot about. And even then, I still learn new things about it from time to time.
Random interesting fact: In 1974 a wargame was conducted to see what might have happened if the Germans had actually launched Operation Sealion (the planned invasion of Britain in 1940). They found that it would have been a catastrophic defeat for Germany.
Rome, but not the empire part. I love aqueducts and construction/mechanical engineering. The things they did without electricity is amazing to me.
This is great. I love the niche.
My favourite period it’s the Cold War and i’m very fascinated about the Eastern Bloc and USSR in particular :)
Ancient Mesopotamia, hands down. You’ve got the Sumerians, the Babylonian empire, the Akkadian empire. There’s creation myths, flood myths, myths about great battles between the elder gods. Gilgamesh, Sargon, Hammurabi. Such cool artwork and artifacts were left behind for us to find. Friggin ziggurats. And they figured out writing, which has proven useful. Also they had cultural overlap with other notable societies like the ancient Israelites/Canaanites and Egyptians, which allowed for borrowing and retelling of stories, myths, and legends among the people of the time. Pieces of the story of Moses are apparent in Sargon’s personal account of his history. You can see lots of the Noah story in Gilgamesh, and also in Atrahasis. An elder, primordial god named Tiamat is an embodiment of sea water and its associated chaotic nature that existed in the void before creation, and is probably cognate with the Hebrew word “tehom” meaning “the abyss”.
Really interesting section, thanks for sharing. Would be cool to see some videos made on the matter with references to texts. Like explaining that Tiamat part with paragraphs from their texts talking about it.
Nice! Look for content about the Enuma Elish (which is basically like the Babylonian creation story) to hear all about Tiamat and their counterpart, Apsu (embodiment of fresh waters amongst the void) and their relationship followed by an eventual battle that ensues between descendants of Apsu and Tiamat, leading to a god named Marduk becoming the head of their pantheon (and also the god that raised Babylon from sand into a great city). From there, check out the wiki for tehom and if you’re looking for videos, peruse the online video warehouse of your pleasure for links between Babylonian Tiamat and Hebrew tehom and you will not be disappointed. I’m pretty sure Richard Elliot Friedman covers it in one of his lectures about the Hebrew Bible/OT, although I can’t recall exactly which one offhand.
Man if not for the damn abrahamic religions I wonder what the culture of the world would be like now with the old gods.
Say we keep Judaism and remove Christianity plus Islam, I think the world would be more interesting.
With what’s happening at Gaza I wouldn’t miss Judaism too.
I wouldn’t paint with such broad strokes. Jews aren’t the ones to blame for that, the state of Israel is. Just because their state sanctioned religion is Judaism doesn’t mean their philosophy is inherently genocidal.
That being said, if all the monotheistic abrahamic derivatives fell off the face of the earth, I think we’d be set on a better course as a species.
Deuteronomy 20 part of Jewish torah and Christian Old testament would disagree with the point you try to make.
Just because their state sanctioned religion is Judaism doesn’t mean their philosophy is inherently genocidal.
Call me crazy, but maybe I’m uncomfortable associating an entire ethnic group with words written in a book over two millenia ago. Times change, and society changes along with it.
I don’t know a single person who follows the bible/torah/quran as an absolutist. Everyone from every religion and every sect likes to pick and choose what they like to follow.
If someone is committing an act of genocide against another people, I can guarantee they were going to do it regardless of what their silly book says about it.
Me too I only reserve that dishonour to those who do it to others.
I wonder, too. But, the flavors of nature are ever changing, and also I think the ancient Israelites kind of inadvertently set their religion up in such a way that eventual division was kind of inevitable. Prophets can be born or inspired to deliver a message at any time at all, and a concept of the destruction and renewal of the world was noteworthy at least as far back as the Book of Daniel at ~200BCE. Check out Jewish Apocalypticism for a little more about that. But the transition from pantheon to monotheism that took place in the ancient Near East is a really interesting time period not only because of the really cool diversity of myths it produced but also because it took place at a time where history was just starting to be recorded, so there’s just so much cool interactions going on between cultures, a rapidly evolving and diversifying larger civilization, lots of languages with overlapping and phonetically-similar words but varying means of recording their language, religious leaders and their students often being among the very few who could read anything being documented (imagine the power imbalance that created).
For some reason I’m really interested in Ancient Middle Eastern history and mythology, eg Mesopotamian, Canaanite pantheon, etc
My neighborhood museum had a special exhibit about this a few years back. It was fascinating. Have you read about this? https://news.artnet.com/art-world/enheduanna-first-author-mesopotamian-women-morgan-library-2208775
There’s some good work being done on the pre Islamic Arabian gods which is very fascinating.
That’s interesting, I didn’t know it was a pantheon. I was under the impression that Zoroastrianism, with its one creator god Ahura Mazda dominated in the region before Islam.
I would say the neolithic, if that falls under the umbrella. That was when we first got serious about this Human stuff.
