Judith, For me school was the escape from an abusive childhood. I loved history and exotic cultures up until they got modernized and unified. (A Japanese businessman in an Armani suit does nothing for me... I'd rather watch a potter or swordsmith concentrate on turning dross into art.) My knowledge of history is decent up to about 1400-1500, when individuals didn't matter so much and wars were fought with mechanized weapons and exploration became less a matter of curiosity and more a matter of exploitation. Finding an artifact or burial ground or temple is great and some of these items are truly beautiful. To me the more important part is who built it and why. (This explains why I abhor pot-hunters and looters... they disassociate the artifact from its social history.) Finding a person in the past (like resurrecting Hatshepsut after her son tried to erase all mention and memory of her) and understanding how that person influenced her society is vital... and makes even the numbers palatable. There was a time when the individual mattered more than the committees and the councilors and the sponsors. Someone made the casket, built the bridge, erected the temple and wanted to be sure of being remembered long after death. More than a thousand years ago a woman erected a runestone to her daughter "... Astrid, the most skillful girl in all Haguland", a piquant testimony to the pride in making things. When I walk down to the Public Market and pass a couple of old buildings with the name of the owner and date in roman numerals I smile at the legacy. I own a Phoenician coin sowing the goddess of luck on one side and the goddess of victory on the other. When I need to flip a coin that one is it. Between luck and victory, how can I lose? 2500 years ago a sea trader with a hold full of purple dyestuffs may have thought the same thing. :) Carolly