There are some people who like history as an interest or read it for a hobby, maybe go to reenactments and museums and such. Interested they may be in it, for those people history is still an external thing, dead and gone, merely entertaining or knowledge giving. For others, we experience the history and it becomes a part of who we are, the flavor of what we learn imprints itself somehow. For us, there is no such thing as an attic full of "stuff". There are attics full of stories, of connections between ourselves and what brought us here. The stories and pasts of others, are also reflections of our own.