Probably a bit more complex than that. Has a LOT to do with settling and farming v. nomadic types.
Anyone else nerd out on history?
- Thread starter RDY4WAR
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The war of the Three Kingdoms is insane to learn about. It's estimated that 20-30 million people died. I like to watch the Oversimplified videos on Youtube as they smash history and comedy together. I highly recommend anyone watch this if you've never seen it. The way he narrates it is just epic.
The problem is that it is just too daunting. Even trying to teach recent history to someone younger takes a long, long time to really tell how it happened. It's almost impossible to cover everything.
History is mind boggling and difficult to take in for me. I.E., the Roman Empire lasted about 1,000 years, while we struggle to assimilate our modern U.S. history of just a few hundred years. For me, studying history helps put current day events in perspective (gets your head out of the sand).
We are long time members of the The Henry Ford - Museum and Greenfield Village. It's fascinating walking among the past.
I would like to believe this cliche also, but man, we sure don't seem to heed it.
We are long time members of the The Henry Ford - Museum and Greenfield Village. It's fascinating walking among the past.
We definitely don't. Unfortunately, there's groups pushing to erase history that they don't like. The dark eras of human history. I say that's the history we need to remember and learn from the most. A big part of progress is knowing where you started.
I'm fascinated with history, always have been. particularly ancient civilizations of the Egyptians & Sumerians. I'm also interested in the period from around the mid 1800's through 1930. my grandfather was 15 in 1930 & my great grandparents lived in the late 1800's. I don't know much about them, so I've been doing a lot of genealogy research which has sparked my deep interest in that particular time. I find it also fascinating that we go for on for thousands of years with little to no understanding of the universe or our own planet, and then we have a sudden knowledge explosion that in the span of less than 75 years we went from horse and buggy to space. when you look at it like that it is quite remarkable.
agreed.
I have always been a Civil War nut. Been to about 6 civil war battlefields also. World War III also am learning more about.
Let me know the outcome.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Another big issue, at present, is measuring things that happened in the past by modern standards, then getting incensed/outraged.
I love WWII history, maritime history, and a bit of aviation history (love the SR-71). Also power generation history and industrial history.
Something I read the other day resonated:
In evolution, there has never been a time in history where man has ever gone from one source of energy to another that was less dense. The industrial revolution was driven by our mastery of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) that enabled a dramatic expanse that rapidly increased quality of life, and this was the foundation for modern society. We went from mostly low energy agroagarian pockets dependent on sunshine and breezes (no industrial farming, wind mills, sailing ships...etc) to one that could run 'round the clock no matter the weather.
It was logical then, that, the age of the atom would be the next step. Subs that could stay underwater as long as the wanted, carriers that could circle the globe for decades without refuelling, a source of power that was 20,000x more dense than what came before it.
So it's interesting to see this bizarre flirtation with malthusianism and degrowth, attempting to take us back to the days before modern medicine; to before the industrial age and that there are people that are wholesale invested in this fantasy and ignore the massive extractive nature of trying to bring this spectacle to life.
We all know the outcome
Expound this please. Are you simply saying that our efforts towards sustainability are misguided and floundering?
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
No, I'm saying there's a massive blindspot to the highly extractive nature of the practices to produce diffuse sources of energy, that then require massive bunker burning ships to transport halfway around the world. This isn't the panacea many claim it to be, and when that gets pointed out, a certain crowd then starts talking about forcing population reduction and "living with less", which is a nothing burger, because the places with the most rapidly expanding populations (China/India) and with the largest number of people struggling to attain a first world standard of living aren't under the influence of these people's control.
However, pushing that ideology domestically is damaging at best because it doesn't want a solution that provides abundant, reliable low resource use power, it wants to force people into a degrowth mindset where we "make do" with less, and that's never going to succeed because people won't tolerate it. So then we go on a detour and don't make any real progress, or, backlash is strong and we actually end up worse off, when clearly, trying to satisfy the needs of a sustainable approach to maintaining our present standard of living through more dense forms of energy and better utilization of it, should be a key plank in any framework that actually aims to be successful here.
I highly recommend Jill Lapore's book, "These Truths". US History told in the most honest way I've ever read and it's mostly not very pretty.
Thinned out my Ballantine collection just a few weeks ago - but had to keep a few favourites.
There are certain immutable facts.
But there are detailed numbers we will never know even relatively recent events. The various (ALL) communist regimes have killed millions, many millions - but exactly how many people have died? We will never know, and that is pretty much modern history. Some places kept good records - some areas during the later plagues absolutely knew how many died, and frankly how abundant food was after the recovery - not enough people to harvest crops in some areas.
I wonder what would have happened if Hitler had been accepted to the art academy. While his art was considered “not good enough”, it looks as good, or better, than a lot of so called art. Something as simple as that altered course in history could have made a vast difference in the lives lost to a madman.
I’ve had a lifelong intense fascination with history. So many questions still left to answer. Who were the sea peoples? What settlements were there in Doggerland before it went under? How and when were the Americas populated? Anything historical interests me. I’ve done a lot of volunteer archaeological digs and when you unearth something nobody has seen in hundreds or even thousands of years it’s a pretty incredible feeling. Now that I’m partially retired I’m thinking about going back to school for an archaeology or history degree. Might as well put my thousands upon thousands of hours of research to good use.
