It's been seemingly a long time since I've studied history in an official format. I haven't been forced to learn knowledge of the past since late 2006. Even so, I still get the time here and again to delve into the lives that have long since ended. The world as we live in it today was formed by those people that lived oh so long ago. It is their actions and remnants that interest me so greatly.
While I wish I had been born in a time when the exploration and arguments of the past were so much more alive. A time when the ruins of long dead civilizations were known only to the local inhabitants. History wasn't as easily accesible to the common man, and one had to become an adventurer in order to discover even the most miniscule of fact. That would have been an incredible life to have led. Adventurer. Explorer. Ruins chaser. In these modern times everything can be attained through the internet, a library, or the minds of the multitude of others that have seen these places. After all, these relics of the past are little more than a comfortable flight away. And all the facts that were there to be learned have already been studied in depth by generations of scholars. The most important details have already been rediscovered.
Going to any of these monuments of ancient civilization is still possible, to be sure, but the capacity in which it is done has changed. Any of these places are now little more than tourist destinations. Khaki shorts wearing yahoos with cameras around their necks and some "authentic" locally produced goods in their satchels snap pictures in front of long dead sacred temples. Oh yes, this is truely a great age of which to be a part.
Sadly without a time machine it would be impossible to return to an era where exploring history meant so much more. And if I had a time machine, why the hell would I go to an era and explore ruins when I could just visit these ancient cultures?!
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