Is HISTORY really just a boring collection of dates and names and deeds? Is it really just a pile of tasteless photos of ancient ruins and broken pieces of pottery? The blandness of the way the subject is portrayed and taught in schools can often be disappointing. It is little wonder why the subject is so underrated and undervalued. “Why study it at all? They’re all dead anyway!” is the common complaint of many young students who engage with the social science. It is not an acquired “taste”. It is a field of study with an underwhelming presentation in media. The more we study world history anthropology, and other social sciences, the more we can understand our neighbors, work towards peace, and prevent great calamity. They can help us to better understand the world.
HISTORY can be a fantastic and engaging scholarly pursuit. It is a tale of "sword-and-sorcery", conquest and subjugation, and the rise and fall of empires. It is the drama to which the modern world looks back, full of political intrigue, struggle and strife, profound philosophical insights, and some great victories for our peoples too. It is a timeline of valleys that peak from tremendous invention and expansion down to a
rapid plummet of disease and death. It is the explanation of the present world, revealing why we speak what we speak and act the way we act… and why our nations have borders. It reveals the secrets to success, the causes of failure, and deep observations about human nature. History can show us the worst of the worst so that we can learn to never do some things ever again.
Long before modernity, society had changed very little for thousands and thousands of years. Imagine for just a moment, living in that time, when stories of great men and women became legends. One king would simply replace another. One war begat another war. Tales of their lives would have been told around camp fires and around the tables of nobles and peasants alike… and then those stories would be immortalized in great tomes. Armies marched across vast expanses, their spears as numerous as the grass of the grasslands… and the land beyond your own borders was full of mystery, peril, wonder, and magic. THAT, to me, is history---our story.