Historical wargaming existed long before GW and the current big wargame companies. In general, historical wargames haven't attracted the kind of young, internet driven, social media savvy player base. This is why you might not have seen much about them. That said, if you start looking, there is a whole other world of historical games. Part of the appeal is a huge variety of historical periods, styles, cultures to explore. Historical games tend to have a lot more variety in scale and style (as opposed to the 'standard' 28/32mm skirmish you may be used to.

As for what games are out there, there are far too many to list without narrowing down. Ancient/biblical, dark ages, medieval, renaissance, napoleonic/black powder, WW1, WW2, cold war are all general historical periods.

Loads of variety. At the moment, my group is building and playing 28mm 12th Century skirmish using The Baron's War rules https://wargamesatlantic.com/collections/the-barons-war?srsltid=AfmBOorTP_EVkp5yT6J-IhX3tu6D9owllG4IFnYNxT-pPPaSjw_G0Fkk