What's the point of learning History?

Here is what some famous or infamous people have said of History...

"History: gossip well told." ~ Elbert Hubbard

"The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter."
                                             ~ Hendrik Wilhelm van Loon, The Story of Mankind

"History never looks like history when you are living through it"
                                             ~ John W. Gardner

But why do we continue to study the subject? Why does it interest us? Facinate us?
I feel it is because we are curious about the people who came before us. The ones that made decisions that influenced the life we are living today. The world we see around us was created by the blood, sweat and tears of men and women we have never met.

Some have said, that History is the study of dead people. And to an extent that is true. But it is so much more. Not just the people but their thoughts, ideas and inventions that have had an impact on society.

So, we begin our adventure through High School history with a study of the Roots of Society.