Ancient Mesopotamia, hands down. You’ve got the Sumerians, the Babylonian empire, the Akkadian empire. There’s creation myths, flood myths, myths about great battles between the elder gods. Gilgamesh, Sargon, Hammurabi. Such cool artwork and artifacts were left behind for us to find. Friggin ziggurats. And they figured out writing, which has proven useful. Also they had cultural overlap with other notable societies like the ancient Israelites/Canaanites and Egyptians, which allowed for borrowing and retelling of stories, myths, and legends among the people of the time. Pieces of the story of Moses are apparent in Sargon’s personal account of his history. You can see lots of the Noah story in Gilgamesh, and also in Atrahasis. An elder, primordial god named Tiamat is an embodiment of sea water and its associated chaotic nature that existed in the void before creation, and is probably cognate with the Hebrew word “tehom” meaning “the abyss”.

I’m a huge WW2 enthusiast. It’s one of the very few things I can confidently say I know a lot about. And even then, I still learn new things about it from time to time.

Random interesting fact: In 1974 a wargame was conducted to see what might have happened if the Germans had actually launched Operation Sealion (the planned invasion of Britain in 1940). They found that it would have been a catastrophic defeat for Germany.

Any and all city state cultures. Especially the Maya. Every one of them produces beautiful works of art and I believe that has a lot to do with the polity system.

I would say the neolithic, if that falls under the umbrella. That was when we first got serious about this Human stuff.

Years of Lead in Italy, i don’t know why maybe it’s because something’s still a mistery that needs to be understood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy)

For me its Mughal India and the Indus Valley Civilisation.

My favourite period it’s the Cold War and i’m very fascinated about the Eastern Bloc and USSR in particular :)

The Alans, from 1st-century Central Asia through late antiquity.

I really like the Holy Roman Empire with all its small territories across the European continent. I am especially interested in the modern era though, so let’s say 1618 - 1806. But I am also really interested in the European revolutions in general, from the French to all the little ones in the 1830s, 1848 etc.

My relationship to history is a bit weird in general. I am a person who needs to understand a period of time very well, before I can dig into a period earlier. So I am kind of building my historical concept from today, year by year and epoch and epoch into the past. I just don’t know enough to step into the middle ages yet.

Now that I am thinking about it, that’s true for a lot of other fields… I had many problems with electrical engineering in university, because I couldn’t fully grasp the concept of quantum physics before doing the experiments, and that really stressed me out lol

For some reason I’m really interested in Ancient Middle Eastern history and mythology, eg Mesopotamian, Canaanite pantheon, etc

I have had a fascination with ancient Egypt since I was a child, especially the Old Kingdom, when they went all megalithic.

Other than the members of the royal family, who on earth has the British Empire as their most beloved time period?!

Not empires specifically but how religion shaped / influenced them. Basically the history of collective thought and value systems and how they came about. Christianity’s take over of Rome, Islam’s rise in the Arabian peninsula, Buddhism’s rise and fall in India, the Vedas etc.

Here and now. Kinda because it is the only time that matters and we can have influence on.