Monday, August 06, 2007

History again

I've been rather quiet here the past couple of weeks. For one thing, I've been working steadily on the knowledge base.

There are a quite a few areas of history I would like to look at more closely. One of them is prehistory. There is a lot of detail that is skipped over in various accounts of how mankind originated and peopled the earth, but I need better tools to investigate this. This leads into a more specific area, the ancient middle east, especially the development of religion, and various tantalizing hints that keep coming from scholarship. This leads further into the classical world, where I am interested in both Greek philosophy and Roman government, and origins of Christianity. I am nearly as interested in the development of Islam as of Medieval Christianity. I had a hard time tracking who was who in the Medieval era in the course I took in Western civilization. In modern history, I have something of an interest in Latin America as well as the United States and Europe, and the progress of civilization during all these time periods. This eventually has the potential to lead into current events, but in this area, my reach has exceeded my grasp.

But therein order to discuss any of these periods, I need more detail on the specific peoples involved. which is where I have been spending a fair amount of effort lately. More on that, later.

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