I read a really fun post over at Gamesradar entitled, “The Top 7 Historical Figures Defamed by Video Games.” Most of the references were obscure or really bizzare. A lot were Asian warlords. Go ahead and check it out. It got me thinking about the time I wasted playing the game Caesar in Elementary School. I have a feeling this was a really key moment for me in starting to like Ancient History.
I was brought onto this game after I had mastered Sim City. I had created the ultimate city and was now ready for a new challenge. Let’s create a city in Ancient Rome. I had a blast. I wasted countless hours developing the ultimate city state. With a little help from some online gaming websites I had figured out the perfect formula.
Soon I branched out to other games like Sid Meier’s Civilization. I am currently working with Rob Cloutier, a 3d designer who worked on the game. Please visit his website www.3dhistory.com to see some of his work. He’s very talented. Civilization took the history angle to a new level. Now I was starting multiple cities and managing entire military campaigns. Beneath the framework of fun, a lot of educational building blocks came into place. You had to elevate from the stone age to the bronze age, by discovering certain aspects of science. You could only progress in your building by collecting more natural resources. Pretty tremendous all around.
Eventually you can find a way to reshape a lot of the historical landscape. I actually conquered the planet Earth with the United States. It was pretty awesome. USA! USA! USA!
Shawn Graham at Electric Archaeology has taken this to a new level. Many of these games allow for modification of your own campaigns. Shawn has added campaigns to Civilization IV and Caesar IV and began using them as teaching tools for his students. He believes that he can edit parameters of the game to help teach his students different aspects of Roman History.
“I want to use Caesar IV as a simulation to explore Roman economics. The idea is, I’ll get my students to play this scenario, and in playing it, it highlight/contrast game mechanics with the current understanding of how the Roman economy works (if you think modern economic thought is dry, you ain’t seen nuthin’ till you’ve read the ancient version… gaming economics ought to be way more fun for my students!)”
As great as it is to use Video Games to teach history, it is also fun to just ride around cause havoc. My friend Doyle just bought Red Dead Redemption. The game is Grand Theft Auto set in the Wild West. I played for about 10 minutes and was immediately hooked. Correlating with all 3d history, video games give us not only a chance to see the past, but to interact with it. Due to the lowering attention span of our youth and the increasing amount of technology in schools, I would not be surprised to see video games being used as a teaching tool 10 years from now. Educational games are already out there, let’s just bridge the gap.
All of this has gotten me wanting to play some games. I am going to dust off my copy of Age of Empires!
I have spent the past week deciding exactly what I wanted to say about the Association of Ancient Historians 2010 Conference. Ultimately I feel two different ways: impressed and disappointed.
The level of scholarship and minds in that lecture has was impressive. Professors from over 50 different Universities were represented and I meant some extremely interesting people. The topics of each session were broad, but the research papers were typically not. Many of the speakers got down to the detail on many issues I have been interested in for sometime. Garrett Fagan’s paper, “Watching the Fighters” tapped into the carnal reasons why the Romans loved watching Gladiators and how we are not so different today.
During the Warfare in the Ancient World session, William Murray and Philip de Souza both tackled new approaches to Ancient Mediterranean naval warfare. The accepted opinion for centuries has been that ancient ships were used for ship to ship combat. Both men proposed different ideas. Murray claimed that large ships were used for sieging harbors and defending trade route as set pieces. De Souza believes that the ships were mainly troop transports and supplied light infantry for raiding villages through the ship’s oarsmen.
Of course I gravitated towards many of the more palatable topics. Gladiators and Warfare are easy subjects. Although I did enjoy some of the more nuanced papers. “The Patronage of the Intellectuals in the Court of Diocletian” by Byron Nakamura explained how Diocletian, despite not being an educated emperor like Marcus Aurelius; actually employed intellectuals in his court to advise him and increase his favor in the Senate. The Session on Ancient Macedonia explained the differing opinions on comparing the Argead monarchy to either a tribal ruling power to a more traditional Dynastic lineage.
I was most impressed with everyone’s depth of knowledge and fluency in Ancient languages. I received numerous handouts in Ancient Greek and Latin. I only speak English. All the participants happily perused all of the literature and could follow along with the slides. I spent a lot of those portions checking NBA Playoff scores on my Ipod Touch. After a conversation with a Seth Bernard, a graduate student from UPenn, I found out that all true historians must know at least 2 Ancient Languages. As well, its apparently not that hard. Maybe for someone who goes to UPenn. I really came away wowed by the same people I was being taught by in College.
At times though I was truly disappointed. Multiple times I heard a presenter refer to themselves as a “Luddite.” A Luddite is defined as “One who opposes technical or technological change.” Said presenter would continue to put their head down for the next 30 minutes and read directly from their research paper. Meanwhile, the 9′x12′ screen above them remained blank and I was left staring at a dark stage and a semi-interesting lecturer. It might be easy for a scholar of Ancient History to deny the great tools that can add to an already impressive piece of research. I on the other think that it is a major waste. If I knew I was to have the paper monotonely read to me, I would have preferred to have read it myself. The most captivating presentations for me, were the ones that actually utilized Images and slides to help strengthen their paper. Provide visual aids to make the topic feel more alive. Someone had a presentation about deciphering one stone slab from a Sanctuary. Ultimately the topic was boring and sort of pointless. The catch was, I got to see the stone slab and take a stab at deciphering it myself. I did not have to take her word for it. Which is what a lot of these presenters would have liked me to have done. Powerpoint is not hard to learn, and a picture is worth a 1,000 words.
I was also disappointed that the History building I studied in was not nearly as nice as the Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building at the University of Utah. I spent 4 years studying in The Francis Scott Key Building at the University of Maryland. We had one small lecture hall and a few different classrooms that were less impressive than those at my high school. My senior year the second floor got a flatscreen TV that welcomed us to the building. Francis Scott Key was the head building for the whole Arts and Humanities School. Whenever I would visit the Business Building at Maryland I was envious of all the bell’s and whistles. The Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building had two wonderful Auditoriums along with a deli/snack bar, TVs, lounge areas, and beautiful classrooms. I loved my professors in Ancient History at University of Maryland (Dr. Holum and Dr. Eckstein), but our facilities were not the best.
Ultimately this conference was a major success. I met some really interesting people and got to talk a little about my blog. Everyone seemed interested and I think there really is an audience for use of 3d in History. Even if someone is a Luddite, they still think recreating destroyed monuments and recreating cities is still pretty cool. A lot of people suggested I go back to Grad School. I do not know if I could ever have the time, intelligence, or bank account to move forward. I am not ruling it out! I still think I have a future assisting historical scholarship.
I really respect what the Association of Ancient Historians is doing. I was glad to be a part of their conference and I hope to attend again next year.
Check out that picture. That is from the Sistine Chapel Virtual Tour. I found this while reading the The History Blog and might I say this is spectacular. Created by a team from the University of Villanova, they had 2 years and unprecedented access. From tons of pictures and painstaking effort an amazing 3d recreation of the Sistine Chapel is in front us of
Honestly I have never seen the inside of the chapel. I have never been to Europe and really all I have seen is the picture God reaching out, ya know the famous part at the top of the building. I try to prop up 3d History in the realm of recreation. This is what is so amazing about sites like this. This is history that is still available for us to see today. If somehow war was to hit Italy and this building would be destroyed, that would be an ungodly tragedy.
Being Catholic myself, some people try to say that you shouldn’t need huge buildings and fancy churches to worship God. Oddly enough though, stepping foot in buildings like this you really can sense the presence. The high ceilings and the beautiful artwork puts your mind in a different place. I am set to be married this summer at the Basilica in Baltimore. The Basilica has some beautiful domes that were actually designed by Latrobe. Not being a Gothic style cathedral it really is going to add something spectacular to the ceremony.
Buildings like this should be able to be preserved forever. Thanks to projects like this by the team from Villanova this is one more piece of history we can hopefully save.
This is certainly one of the places everyone needs to see, but for now the 3d tour can make due.
GV5YQ3NMWUPP
100 Years ago to the day the National Museum of Natural History opened to the public. March 17, 1910 marked a great day in our nations History.
This museum is with out a doubt one of my favorite in the country. Housing some great exhibits, such as the dinosaurs, ocean, and gemstone exhibits, you can waste hours wandering around here.
I actually visited this museum for the first time on an assignment for Geology 104: Dinosaurs A Natural History. Which was an excellent non-lab science class I took to fulfill college requirements.
The original budget for building the Natural History Museum was $3.5 million. I couldn’t imagine what the Rotunda alone would cost today.
Commemorating the opening of the museum a new exhibit is opening. “Human Origins” delves into where our species originated. The tag line is that in this exhibit you can “Meet your ancestors.”
It just makes me think of the Geico Cavemen and this awesome History Channel Ad
Excellent post over at Associate Degree. I stumbled onto this post randomly looking around the interwebs. For those who are really interested in finding some online resources look no further than this post. It breaks down about 5-7 sites for each of the main Ancient civilizations. Some of my favorites are the Encyclopedia of Roman Emperors, the Theban Mapping Project, and an Interactive site on the MesoAmerican Ballegame.
Very soon in the resource section of this website there are going to be links to a bunch of sites similar to this. I hope to have it more 3d-centric, but it never hurts to have your information correct.
This evening I had a meeting for the Pre-Columbian Society of Washington DC. It was a subcommittee meeting to discuss some possible revamping of the society’s website. It was held a member’s home who just happened to be an Archaeologist. The first time I came here I was floored when I saw this room. Keep in mind this is only part of the room. I always talk about how I would love to have a study with all kinds of books. He actually has this! It was really inspiring. I have been talking about it for over a month so this time I brought my camera with me. Mine will be similar to this years from now but will be filled with more leather bound books and smell of rich mohogany
