[throwaway894345]

My American education touched on the Greeks and the Romans, and we did read the Odyssey; however, as I recall, we quickly jumped to late-Medieval (post-Norman-conquest) England. I always wondered what was in England before these medieval kings and queens. I began learning about the Norman conquest, the Viking invasion, the Anglo-Saxons, the Roman invasion and Romanization of England, the native Celts and so on. Then I began to inquire about those people; what were their homelands like, how did they arrive in their homelands, how were their languages interrelated, and so on. The etymology in particular fascinates me (and I highly recommend the podcast "The History of English"), notably how one language family spread throughout most of Eurasia (from Britain in the North-West to India and Western China in the East). I also highly recommend Jean Manco's books (https://www.amazon.com/Jean-Manco/e/B0034P5S3C?ref=sr_ntt_sr...) as her histories incorporate the latest information from many fields including history, archaeology, and the rapidly evolving field of ancient genetics. I haven't read many ancient texts yet, but I really want to if only to get a sense for how ancient people saw themselves and their world. Some day...