" . . . periods of history that range from the Prehistoric (dinosaurs Etc) to modern day."
I enjoy rummaging through deep time. For life on earth, the only constant is change, and it has either been an arms race against predators and parasites/diseases, or change just to keep up with competing species. Of course there was the time algae pumped a toxin into the atmosphere, oxygen, and killed off most of the other life on earth, and ushered in massive global cooling and a snowball earth.
One learns that flood basalts means extinction events. I have seen a part of the Central Atlantic Magmatic province near Marrakech. Triassic flood basalts that unbalanced the earth to allow dinosaurs to be dominant. Plus, at the end Cretaceous, the Deccan Traps erupted which was threatening dinosaur survival without having to invoke a meteor strike to kill them off.
I always enjoy reading about your experiences and your knowledge Gerald about this interesting period! I only know enough about different types of dinosaurs and Paleolithic onwards. it’s interesting that the Deccan Traps were enough to threaten the dinosaur survival without the meteor strike. I’ve read a lot of theories about how the meteor strike may not have immediately killed off the dinosaurs and other issues were triggered by it, such as the rise of disease, end of foliage, rise of mammals. I currently am reading a book about the rise and fall of the dinosaurs (admittedly I have not gotten far) but it is quite interesting. Near where I live, Aathal has a huge dinosaur museum that has the excavation team who helped uncover the Big Al 1 and also Big Al 2. They only have replica fossils but it is very cool — and allosaurus are my favorite dinosaurs so I may be biased.
https://sauriermuseum.ch/
I know lots of useless facts about post WW2 European cars, I could identify some of them that I've never seen in person... I could talk for hours on that subject but no one cares
If you want to mention them, you may feel free to do so in this thread. History isn’t just about facts or dates, it is objects from any past perioD — otherwise pottery would be obsolete.=D
A small piece of Swedish history: A few hundred years ago Sweden came to a point where they actually ran out of kings. That's very unfortunate for a Kingdom, it's embarrassing. So they started to look around for someone who could be the new king of Sweden. And they ended up picking a french guy named Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. He was one of Napoleon's officers, a commander during the Napoleonic Wars. His name was changed to Karl XIV Johan and he ruled as king of Sweden and Norway from 1818 to his death in 1844.
Because of this, the Swedish royal family is still called “the Bernadottes“.
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That’s really interesting. I did not realize that the monarchy in Sweden was broken to need to have some other line to continue it. Why did the line end?
You: "I see. Don't you worry, it's only a matter of time before we arrive, conquer your country and bring civilization to you"
Did you include calling them barbarians? Since the Romans viewed everyone who wasn’t from Rome as barbarians who needed to have civilization brought to them. I remember when I went to Rome, and the guy doing the tour (I guess he was good at his job but I knew all what he was saying) and he pulled out the gladius with “and this is the gladius”….I felt that was the only form of character he was in. Also saw Caesar smoke a cigarette.=D.
Speaking about the Romans, because I am very obsessed with this time period….i really like going to here:
https://www.augustaraurica.ch/
They used to have a festival in August that they’d put on performances, you can also be a Roman for the day. It was lots of fun.
Right now I'm reading a book I received on Christmas about how Celtic culture influenced Iceland. Based on genetic analysis, it seems like most of our male forefathers were Nordic (as is taught in history books) while most of the females were Irish "ambáttir" or slaves/thralls. A lot of our words and place names apparently have their roots in Celtic languages and we have both written and archeological evidence of Irish monks arriving here before Viking settlers in the 9th century.
That’s really interesting — I always thought Iceland was just made up with Nordic ancestry but having irish slaves brought over is quite interesting — where they only slaves still or did they get granted freedom once in Iceland?
I always liked reading about the Orkney Islands that had a mix of nordic and Briton settlers.=D
Always find genetic mixes to be really interesting.
And why did the Dutch bother to defend Australia? Because they had many major investments in the north of Australia, including the Argyle Diamond Mine, another remnant of the East India Tea Company. There’s an old saying in Australia – “Never shake hands with a Dutchman.”. That is also a legacy of the East India Tea Company.
Colonialism is one of those really gray areas isn’t it? Although I did not know that the Dutch defended Australia!=D
I was reading about returning of aboriginal art to Australia — do you have an opinion about returning objects back to their native environment?
Anyone else read up on French and Indian war?
Only a little bit — feel free to discuss it here however.=D
any history of western Canada,
I really dont know much about the history of Canada — if you’d like to share, I’d love to learn.=D
It may sound odd, may be odd, but I can read the same book (if it is eyewitnesses) 10, 15 or even 20 times or more and still get new info/insight or theory out of it. It is so difficult to make sense of all the conflicting or confusing accounts. I might read something dozens of times and not get it, but then finally it comes to me what the person means. A lot of it is putting together pieces that do not really fit together as is. You have to go over as much evidence as possible and keep searching for the one bit that is the key for things to fall into place.
I think that’s the whole point with source analysis — or at least it is for me — that no matter how familiar you are with the material, you can always pick up new things.=)
One of my special interests has always been infectious diseases so I love to read about them and the effects they've had on history as a whole.
I love the Black Death period. Did you know that the Mongols used the plague as a tactic of infectious war fare?=D