Your top ten most interesting/important world history topics?

gaiscioch

What, in your view, are the top 10 most interesting and/or important topics in world history?

I'd like to create a history course that goes beyond 20th-century European and US history, and the military and political concerns of that century - both of which dominate historiography today. I'm partial to social, cultural, intellectual history rather than body counts and politics, but I enjoy Geoffrey Parker's studies on technological and tactical changes and how they've won wars.


In no particular order, and amid so many choices:

1. Human settlement: After reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel, I think the evolution of human settlement and its importance - more steady food supply & women not moving around as much both lead to ==> population increase==> standing armies==> conquest - would have to rank at the top of my 'important' list.

2. Matrilineal societies: The Minangkabau ethnic group in West Sumatra, Indonesia, as the world's largest matrilineal society sound very interesting and different.

3. Feudalism: Indeed so much of the Annales School's social history rather than military and constitutional emphasis would offer many people a new perspective on the world

4. Marie Curie: In terms of people, Marie Curie, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, is still absolutely extraordinary.

5. Anthropology & history: cultural, biological and linguistic anthropology and patterns in human evolution to give insight into change as part of history.

6. History of art: Overview of art from the Renaissance through to the development of landscape art and the Flemish school.

7. Mongol Empire and its influence in Asia and Europe/Russia

8. Romanov dynasty 1613-1918: with emphasis on the nation-building roles of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.

9. Japanese society before the Meiji Restoration, 1868

10. Han Dynasty & Confucianism

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I'm sure there are more interesting or important topics, big and small. Of all world history what are the contenders, in your view?

riffmongous

I wish I'd learned more on the Arabic and Islamic worlds, considering how much of modern politics revolves around these regions.

Eastern Europe also has a lot of fascinating history and nation building that sort of gets glossed over until things like Chechnya, Crimea, Abhkazia etc., pop up

Manach

One of the lessons that I've always found interesting in military history is that of connotative blind spots: ie people will continue to believe their mental models instead of what is happening in the field. One of the earliest examples was the destruction of Varius' 3 legions in 9. AD, who led his men into a trap in the German Wald in spite of being told directly ( by the guide's father in law) it was a trap.

More recent examples could be Montgomery dismissing aerial photos of an Armoured Panzer brigade at Armhein or General Pallus refusing to believe the Russia's were capable of large scale offensive at Stalingrad - inspite numerous evidence to the contrary.

b318isp

Here's one: the history of numbers.

It includes topics about race, counting and accounting, international trade and language. From notches on wood, to Microsoft Office, it's a thread consistently woven through our history:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Universal-History-Numbers-Georges-Ifrah/dp/186046324X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527077629&sr=8-1&keywords=georges+ifrah