My interest in History

One of the things I do enjoy and have a good memory for is dates in history. I cannot study just one area of history as I like to know about everything I can. I do have a stronger knowledge base and interest in some aspects of European History, American and Australian. When I repeated my Senior Certificate in 1993, I studied both Ancient and Modern History and obtained high marks in History assignments but found Ancient History more difficult. Ancient History relies heavily on primary sources and people like Tacitus, Plivy and Thucydides who wrote accounts of this early time. What we need to remember is that the further back you go, the more need for primary rather than secondary sources for information. There are very few accounts or information we can easily access at the time on say Pisistratus. Very few people would know who Pisistratus was and his contribution to history. When you think of his name you think perhaps of someone from the Latin period, perhaps he was some radical Roman or he existed in Greece. When researching someone like him there are very few accounts and secondary sources written around his time. If it weren't for Plutarch or other ancient scholars, we would know very little. One culture of interest is the Egyptians. They are to me very primitive or perhaps more I say mysterious in some of their customs and ways. When you see early statues and figurines, they show images of people with big wide 'spiritual' looking eyes and you wonder why their eyes were portrayed like this. Why did they build pyramids and furthermore have images of human figures with dog's heads or animal heads? There is so much we don't know but we can rely on primary sources of information to shed a light on the past. I look on youtube to find out about history and sometimes you get frustrated when you may pull up a link on Socrates and you hear some rock band music in the background or some other sound, when you want to hear information about the person. I would like to attend lectures or presentations where people are thinking about the subjects being discussed but to enrol as a non assessed student at UQ it is $400. Why pay such an amount when at the time of Plato and Aristotle people could attend the Academia to hear free presentations. When I focus on a specific topic of history, I like to know the finer detail. For instance if it relates to Slavs in Russia, I want to know how they got there, what their involvement was in relation to Russian history. If I visit an historical sight for which there were many in Europe. You get the Tourist presentation but what about the actual deep down fact? For instance a tourist goes to the Vatican, sees St Peter's Square but what about the statues that surround it and the historical significance of the square? Why did Michelangelo get so obsessed with painting Muriel and ceilings etc? I guess I think and analyse things too much but there is nothing wrong with wanting to find out and get your information wrong so long as you can further your knowledge.