This thread is to discuss what parts of history that you may be interested in.Besides natural history,I enjoy doing a lot of reading about Military history,mainly around the battles,soldiers and equipment of WW1,WW2 and the modern conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
My specialist area is medieval history, particularly the Byzantine Empire - in point of fact my dissertation was on the sacking of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade.
Nice to know there are people with a love of history here! I wouldn't say I specialise in any particular area but I do love my aincent history and modern history the later mostly being political history I do enjoy that. If anyone else loves the total war games that's what helped my passion for history as well as the first night at the museum.
I have always liked the Roman period. As well as visiting Chester zoo, I enjoy a walk around the city. When the dig was on at the Chester ampitheatre I made several visits. One of the students told me that after the summer season the dig would be filled in. I asked if there was no money to proceed. She replied that so much stuff had been uncovered that it would be 25-30 years before it was all catalogued. So there was no point in unearthing any more. I was amazed.
From the history-section zoo-history is of course my main-intrest but also many other sections of history can be very intresting and I am the opinion that a lot can ( and should ! ) be learned about failures made in the past - althrough many ( most ? ) politicians seem to think otherwise .....
I'm quite partial to AlternateHistoryHub on Youtube. It's all debatable obviously but it's interesting to ponder on the possibilities of situations such as "what if gunpowder didn't exist" or "what if the Black Plague never happened" or "what if David Attenborough was evil". I may have made that last one up.
Chinese history is a must here for secondary school students. I personally don't think history interesting but I have watch a few crash course world history.
Ancient history for me. The Incan Empire is my favorite, but Native American stuff in general is pretty sweet. (mostly I'm into pre-colonial but the post-colonial stuff is interesting too) I'm starting to get more into Polynesian culture and archaeology, along with African archaeology, but it's a little harder to find information on those subjects. (with exception of Ancient Egypt and Rapa Nui, I guess)
My personal favourite is ancient Egyptian history. I like reading about all the different gods and the myths surrounding them. My local natural history museum (the ROM) has a good collection of mummies which I think are also cool if a little bit gross!
Alternate history has become the upstart third sibling of SciFi and Fantasy in my reading life. There's a lot of great stuff out there, although the quality drop-off is pretty steep if you push a little deeper into the genre.
Another Youtube channel I recently came across and liked a lot was History Buffs, which discusses the historical accuracy of movies.
I like alt timelines, but tbh answers to questions such as "what if the Chinese discovered America?" usually ignore the historical contingencies leading to the rise of the West in colonialism, capitalism or whatever. Therefore internalising ideas of inevitability, and therefore defying the point of an alternative timeline imo.
I like the Strange History blog, full of history and source material as regards zoological folklore and cryptids, among other Fortean things. http://www.strangehistory.net/
