The Inca Empire is a popular History topic. In recent years archaeologists have begun to fill in some of the gaps in the story. Global warming has helped: melting ice in the Andes has recently brought to light teenaged sacrifical victims, a grim but very human link with another world.



In general, we are not good at linking with other worlds: we spend too much of our time trying to make sense of our own situations. Other civilizations are for 'leisure reading', akin to Science Fantasy. History, especially as taught in school, must, we are constantly told, be 'relevant'. So, History as taught in school today, certainly in schools in the United Kingdom, tends to be the History of our own country. The 'World' suddenly impinges on this in 1940 - but apparently only because the German panzers threaten to disrupt the national story.



'The day the war ended' by Martin Gilbert is a book about the end of that war, or a part of it, on May 8th 1945. For me this is an example of how any reading of History tends to be personal, as this happens to be the day of my birth. Alongside the record of the rejoicing that the war in Europe was over, the book presents a picture of a world where other armed struggles, often fuelled by hatreds much like those nurtured by the Nazis, were only just beginning. A group of German secondary school teachers once told me that English History teaching struck them as 'triumphalist'. I agreed with them, and still do.



The purpose of History seems to be the same as it must have been in prehistoric times: it was the history of the tribe, warnings from the past, and highly relevant because it was ultimately about survival. We need to wake up to the globalisation of the world and therefore of History. In the 21st Century we need, as a matter of survival, to draw from the stories of the whole tribe - the human race - not just on our own 'clan'.