What past or present culture are you drawn to and why?

Ooh, there are oh so many choices! In the past ten to fifteen years, however, the main focus of my incomprehension has been a single one:

I love studying very ancient China, the time frame at about the point where ancient Chinese animistic and shamanistic beliefs coagulated into that central philosophical powerhouse that shaped the rest of Chinese history: 易经 (Yìjīng or "Book of Changes"). From the Yijing we have Confucianism (indeed Confucianism numbers the Yijing among its foundational works), Daoism, and Naturalism all directly copying Yin/Yang, correlative cosmology, and the flow of change into their own philosophical frameworks. Even Mohism and Legalism incorporates elements of the Yijing into their own thought frameworks, albeit sometimes as a critical reaction to or just an indirect cultural influence. It is very difficult to overstate the importance of the Yijing to Chinese thought. (It even influences how music is played!)

But here's the thing.

Most of the lore that coagulated into the Yijing is lost. It was the oral tradition of literally dozens to hundreds of cultures that became the Yijing, and much of that is lost. (Even the original way of consulting with the Yijing as an oracle is lost: the "ancient yarrow stalk" technique used by Yijing practitioners who want to go aulde skoole is newer than the coin method: it's an attempted recreation of the old method without any actual substantiation of it.) And yet you can see ghostly hints of the schools of thought that became the Yijing in the text, in its commentaries, and, here and there, in the discovered remnants of ancient cultures that occasionally pop up in archaeological digs or literary findings.

This is intellectual catnip for me.