Holiday time is fast approaching, and with it, the inevitable holiday parties where you find yourself next to people you don’t know very well, groping for something interesting to talk about. In one regard I admire men’s ability to fall back on that sure-fire topic, sports. Some women can do it, too. My friends Michaela and Eliza can talk baseball more effortlessly than anyone I know. Well this year, when conversation at holiday parties languishes, I have hit on a topic guaranteed to fascinate people and keep the conversation sparkling: ancient history. No, really.

Consider the Assyrians, for example.

The Assyrians are among history’s least appealing people. Their reign of terror began around 1200 BC. Fearless, savagely cruel to their enemies, and awful to their women, Assyrians often flayed their enemies, then entombed them alive. Women who committed adultery were impaled. They terrorized most of western Asia until the Babylonians finally conquered Ninevah, the Assyrian capital, in 612 BC.

On the fashion front, the Assyrians seem to be the first civilization to require respectable women to wear a veil in public. Assyrian men cared deeply about personal grooming. Soldiers rode into battle perfumed, rouged and powdered, with their hair and beards meticulously curled and coiffed.

To be fair, the Assyrians were also pretty scholarly, artistic, and innovative. They invented locks and keys, magnifying glasses, libraries, postal systems, and the seven-day week.

Now, wouldn’t you want to be sitting next to me at your next dinner party?

Never mind. It was a rhetorical question.