I always wondered when did european women start piercing their ears for the use of earrings. Wasn't it a dangerous practice given that it could easily become infected?

How did the Ancient Egyptians work stone to the degree that they did with only bronze tools?

Ear piercing is one if the oldest forms of body modification. They were common in Minoan civilization, and even King Tut had his ears pierced. I'm not exactly sure about European women specifically, but I'd assume both genders had similar amounts of piercing.

Bronze tools weren't the only tools they used. You can also vary the strength of bronze in various ways. Much of the stone worked was softer than the bronze and where it was harder, they would use other methods including abrasion and stone tools.

While I am a fan of humans, nothing illustrates our folly like the centuries it took for us to figure out what to do with our waste. Why did it take so long to bring the toilet to every home? We built thousands of awesome weapons during those ages, but 100 years ago many people were still pooping in buckets. My theory is that the Church had something to do with it.

I read that prior to the beginning of WW2, Germany attempted to bring Poland into the anti-communist defense act along with Japan but Poland refused because it was attempting to keep friendly relations with both the USSR and Germany. Was it a realistic scenario at one point for Poland to join the Axis powers or was Hitler’s plan always to invade Poland and subjugate it due to Poland being controlled by the Slavic people who Germany saw as beneath them?

I wonder what it would have done to the Nazi war buildup if in 1938 Czechoslovakia decided to fight for the Sudetenland, despite being abandoned by France and Britain at the Munich conference. Instead of getting the entire Czech arsenal intact, much if not most of it would have been lost to combat or sabotage. Add to that the materiel and manpower losses on the German side, how long would it take for Hitler to be ready to invade Poland?

It's not completely inconceivable that Poland and Germany would have allied, during WWII Germany was allied with "Slavic" nations like Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Poland even partook in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938, annexing parts of it. I think a bigger stumbling block was that Hitler viewed the parts of Poland Germany lost after WWI as rightfully German territory, something that can't be said of e.g. Romania.

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How true is the below answer? (seen on Quora)

How did George III react to news of America declaring independence?

"The Colonies declaring independence was not a big deal, they weren't profitable anyway.

What angered him was the personal attack on him in the Declaration of Independence. Without it, the British wouldn’t have given a flying f***.

But insulting a King’s Honour was something that could not go unpunished."

thank you, I am curious to know if it has always been common practice in europe or if it spread from a certain time period, did the normans pierce their ears? the anglo-saxons? the scandinavians? I have no idea, but the thought that it was a non-gendered practice is very interesting from a modern perspective

I am not fully certain but I'll argue that the american colonies where profitable due to the taxes that the crown charged from them (the spark of the revolution was raised taxes after all), I would also think that any colony trying to be independent would be a serious issue, if for no other reason thay it could be an incentive for other (and more valuable) colonies to revolt if they were sucessful

I mean the answer is much more complex than I am capable of putting into words, but remember romans had very adequate waste management, and native people in the americas never had a human waste issue like the europeans.

The modern toilet is a fairly new invention, but so is the whole notion of privacy, medieval people in general did not expect nor wished for complete privacy, wealthy or not.

It is also worth mentioning that the notion of cleanliness varied greatly from our modern understanding, people were more concerned about odors and "humors" and bacteria and infectious diseases were not properlly understood.

I believe it all led to mismanadgement. I believe the catholic church did play a role with their concept that bathing was bad, and the whole exarcerbated villification of the human body in general.

I'm sorry I don't have a definitive answer but I hope I may have beem able to present a few points of consideration.

They had something like indoor plumbing in the Indus Valley as well, centuries ago, but it seems like someone somewhere would’ve done something. We hear stories that you could smell London from miles away, and that if you went to the Louvre you ran a risk of stepping in human poo. But people just kept crapping in buckets? Its madness.

This certainly sparked my interest in the subject, I'll search for books about this, a documentary on the history of human waste management would not be pleasant to watch for me at least lol

Did any Native American tribes have a “special operations” type of warrior class? I’m familiar with the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers and the Brave Hearts of the Lakota Sioux but was wondering if there were more? Also, any recommended media that I could watch/read?

I have a memory of reading somewhere that a coup would have happened, before an invasion. Like General Beck and some other guys were all set to do the coup, until they heard Chamberlain was coming back to Munich. I think Munich was the third attempt to resolve with diplomacy, after another trip failed ( bad gotesburg?, sorry for spelling...I only listen to history audiobooks to help me sleep).

I believe some of the surviving generals testified that if Munich hadn't happened, Hitler wouldn't have backed down, and the plan to depose him would have gone forward. Of course, these men were also trying to live through Nuremberg, so their honesty and reliability is questionable.

Also, Sudetenland was like the mountainous defensive part of Czechoslovakia. Germany in 1938 may have taken some serious time to overcome, and with Britain and France on the other side of a 2 front war, Germany would have had it's hands full, and that's 1938 Germany, only 5 years into Hitler's reign that started in 1933.

Please keep me posted on what you learn! I wonder if, when the indoor toilet was finally presented, everyone said something like, “why would I buy that when I have a perfectly good bucket that my dad and grandad used!” 😂🤣

My understanding was that even though there were high taxes, most were not being paid or even enforced by Americans. I wish I could remember where I heard that (most likely YouTube)

"Do you have Prince Albert, in a can?" can't have been the first time a notable person and a product shared a name. Are there earlier notes in history of individuals/products subjected to similar puns?

The profit from the American colonies came mostly from the food that was exported to the more lucrative Caribbean islands, and the lumber industry, which was needed for the ships.

The English tax system itself had trouble taxing America, because Americans didn't have enough gold or silver to make that easy, and customs officials in America were practically on their own, which made them easy to threaten.

The only practical method of tax was thus forcing all goods to come in and out of Britian, which probably caused more problems than it solved.

Why has no one made a movie about Lettice Knollys? Not just as "side" character in Queen Elizabeth It's story but as her own unique story?

What was english royalty's favorite breed of dog?

Historically, have UK monarchy ever had to use their last name? I get that Diana Spencer did have a last name, but does A child born into monarchy have a last name? Did they ever need to use it? Meaning did they ever have to do something outside of their titles? In their full legal name?

Oh so much to unpack! So George III was a complex character in history and it's easy to paint a person as good vs bad, tyrant vs benevolent and so on. Now, there are a handful of people throughout history that are easily painted by their character and actions but Mad King George isn't one of them. George was firstly deeply saddened by the loss of the North American colonies and was in agreement that a reform in how they were ruled was needed but obviously disagreed that it the change had to be through a war. He wasn't a tyrant, far from it, he often had to make hard decisions in a time where there wasn't any fast form of communication so, he would send an order and by the time it got to North America was enforced and the people reacted good or bad and he recieved word of it, it was often far too late to change course or tweak it in a way that was meaningful or worked for the people in North America. As for taxes, the majority of people from the early 1600's up until the end of the Seven Years War (1756-1763) came to North America because they often were free from paying any tax at all, it was very hard to enforce taxation especially on the fringes of the colonies. When taxes were finally levied to pay off debts from the Seven Years War, which had begun in North America and plunged the entire world into what some historians have dubbed "World War 0" it was a common tax on the mostlt previously untaxed citizens which was 0.25% of what the same people paid in the United Kingdom proper, for example using modern US currency, if a citizen in England had to pay $1,000.00 annually then the same citizen in British North America paid $0.25. Now that's an extremely oversimplification however, they paid an extremely small fraction compared to their counterparts back in the main part of the Kingdom. What George III actually taxed that angered the "colonists" were imports, exports & luxury goods. This affected the wealthy land owners in coastal and near costal towns & merchants in major port cities, who did pay high taxes and because they were in a major port city the taxation was easily enforced. The tax on tea for example an item from Asia, that had to be specially packaged and shipped was huge but most British North Americans didn't drink it, instead they drank locally made beer and spirits or raw milk, tea was drink for the wealthy of the time. Sugar was taxed but most common people sweetened their food with honey, honey you could farm on your own, sugar had to be shipped from the Caribbean and processed. Postage was taxed but postage was mostly used by the wealthy and merchants when shipping items across the Atlantic or when sending letters concerning business. Most common people never traveled more than 12 miles outside their home town/city on average and had no purpose to send letters or use any postage. So the wealthy felt that they carried an uneven and unfair amount of the tax burden. The King also been having minor attacks of what some think was porphyria (it could've been another mental illness bipolar disorder is also a possibility) since 1765 and continued throughout the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War. He finally had a major attack which spanned 1788-1789 (1789 is when George Washington assumed the office of President) and another which began in 1811 and lasted until he died in 1820. George's mental health was such that in 1788 there was an attempt at establishing a Regency and again in 1811 it was under established under Prince George of Wales (future King George IV) who was a fat fop more interested in his Catholic mistress, food and his own hedonistic pursuits than governing. The US didn't "break free from a tyrant through a just war" as it was led by wealthy citizens and fought a British government in some level of disarray, in an era of poor intercontinental communications, led by a bunch of wealthy land owners and merchants who had an explicit goal of not paying taxes at all, So while it's easy to paint King George III as a tyrant and despot, he actually was a complex leader who was neither sinner nor saint and had the hard task of running a Kingdom that was restricted by the times and technology available.

All of them do have last names available, but they are rarely used. For example, the current royal family would use Mountbatten-Windsor.

Indoor toilets require water on demand in every home, which is a VERY recent innovation around the world. You use the water both to flush waste but also as a barrier between the sewer pipes and the home, to prevent odors and flammable/explosive sewer gas from entering (a modern toilet is also a nontrivial industrial product--large, reliable metal and porcelain castings are relatively recent, too). Until you can use water to remove the waste, a bucket with a tight lid is the best option (aka a chamberpot) followed by an outside bucket with a door (aka an outhouse).

Also, seriously, how could the Church have possibly caused this? The majority of the world that's not Christian had and has the same waste removal strategies.

IIRC, they used very hard dolomite quite a bit. Might be a good place for OP to start researching further.

During the cold war how did countries test nuclear bombs safely? (Or at least as safe as possible)

1917 the British royal family took over the official family name Windsor, which was used by all family members, who are not a ‚His/Her Royal Highness‘. In 1960, the name was changed to Mountbatton–Windsor for the descendents of Queen Elisabeth and Prince Philip. For example, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Anne, Princess Royal, children of Queen Elizabeth II, used the surname Mountbatten-Windsor in official marriage registry entries in 1986 and 1973 respectively. The queen or king will not use the family name. The former queen signed as Elizabeth R, the current king signs as Charles R (R for Rex/Regina).

I don‘t know when exactly it became common practice in Europe, but it seems to be a very old tradition, as the user before stated, that earrings were common in the Minoan civilization already. In medeival time, it was common for both genders.

Interesting anecdote: Ever heard the German term ‚Schlitzohr‘? It translates to ‚rascal’, but the original meaning is ‚slit ear‘. It was tradition for master craftsmen and merchants to wear earrings as sign of their respectability. When they were caught cheating their customers, the earring was ripped off as a punishment. The slit ear showed that they are dishonest persons.

wow that's a pretty cool fact

That probably depends on the specific member of the royal family. But the Cavalier King Charles was bred specifically to be a lapdog for that particular kind. (Charles I, I believe.) Queen Elizabeth II preferred corgis.

They would drop them in isolated areas. Here's a map of all the sites. https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/test-sites/testing-map.html

Lots of them were in deserts, tundras, and a lot in isolated places in the middle of the ocean.

They also would conduct them underground to limit any radioactive fallout.

Thank you! So Interesting. So Rex Regina is from???

Rex is Latin for King, Regina is Latin for Queen.

IIRC, there was a plan for a coup against Hitler if there had been any resistance to the re/occupation of Alsace and Lorraine. But the French backed down; so the Germans didn't launch their coup.

They were dropped in places with not many people, such as deserts and small atolls in the middle of the Pacific.

Along the lines of financial value of the American colonies to the British Empire, the simple fact that Great Britain enjoyed a monopoly on colonial goods was huge. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the fear was that the colonies if independent would seek favored nation status with British rivals like the Bourbons (France and Spain) along with the United Provinces. In reality, the Revolution changed very little in terms of dealing with the Brits. The French Revolution soured relations with the U.S. remarkably rapidly.

But the reasons for the American Revolution had almost nothing to do with taxes. As pointed out previously, the taxes assessed to American colonists were chump change compared with what the British citizens were paying (and most Brits were also subject to "taxation without representation" as only about 3% of them had suffrage rights (had to be a land-owner in Great Britain in order to vote)). The true reasons for the American Revolution were two-fold: 1) the ongoing quartering of British soldiers in the northern colonies, with the ongoing threat of violence in the streets (along the lines of the Boston massacre), and 2) the threat of abolition of human chattel slavery in the wake of Sommersett v. Steuart at the Court of King's Bench in 1772, which potential absolutely enraged the southern American colonies, and led in turn to the Dunmore Declaration and subsequent escalation of hostilities in the American south.

It was only in the wake of the successful Revolution that leaders like the Adams cousins, Franklin, and Jefferson realized that the story of the Revolution would not sit well with subsequent generations of Americans, and concocted the "taxation without representation" chestnut that filled the history books of the next 50 years. In the last years of Adams and Jefferson, when they had more or less "reconciled," Adams begged Jefferson to come clean and tell the truth of why the southern colonies had joined Massachusetts in revolt. Jefferson politely but firmly refused, as he had spent the last 20 years of his life building a false legacy that endured until the last 25 years or so.

Body piercing is as old as civilization, and was practiced in almost all cultures, including the Vikings (which would of course include the Normans) as well as the Anglo-Saxons. It was a straightforward means of carrying personal wealth on one's person, and quickly came to signify status (like walking around with a wad of $100 bills thumbtacked on one's forehead). In the case of human chattel slaves, a noble, monarch, or other person of means could use enslaved persons to carry their enslaver's wealth for convenience.

Well thank you!! I did not know that! I absolutely love learning new things! much appreciated.

Why did they need to use atolls? Why wouldn’t they just put the bomb on a boat and detonate it where there is no land at all

They did do this every once in a while but you could only get limited data from such a test. Look up online some of the thermonuclear test sites; they were large buildings wired up with bulky sensors and support structures. Can’t fit that on a boat.

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In east Asia, when the ruler is an empress regnant would she have concubines?

Edit: Also would the harem even be a thing if there was an empress regnant on the throne?

Were there Jews among Hansa traders?

What is the maximum distance a bola weapon (balls connected by cord) could be thrown regardless of accuracy?

Not officially, you had to be of German descent on both sides to be a member and Jews weren't allowed to be Germans through most areas.

What are some of your favourite books about ancient Egypt?

Preferably about the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom.

Wu Zetian did, no?

Different bolas were likely different lengths, and it also depends on the user. There is no definite answer for this question.

Say there are two bolas, one that's the most optimized for long range throwing, and one that is about average in every bola metric. What are the loose approximations for their maximum throwing ranges?

I mean she did have male lovers but in her case there weren’t that many compared to the usual female harems and they weren’t considered proper concubines (like concubine ranks and stuff)

To add about Queen Elizabeth II's love for corgis — "preferred" is an understatement. On her 18th birthday Elizabeth was gifted one of her own, Susan, after a lifetime of admiration for corgis. By the time of her death she had owned over 30 corgis, many of which were descended from Susan.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_corgis

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62823074.amp

In this Mike Wallace interview with Jiang Zemin he makes reference to Zemin being a protestor himself as a student in Shanghai. Does anyone know what specific protests he’s referring to? I couldn’t find any information online.

Toby Wilkinson, "Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt"

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Where is the best museum in the world?

You still haven't narrowed down the range of the question in the slightest.

"Bolas" is a very broad term. What kind of style of bolas are you thinking of? Portugeuse types, Inuit types, or some other sort? How many weights does the bolas have? What kind of materials is it made out of? Nobody can even begin to describe the "average bolas" or a "long-ranged optimized bolas" for you, when such terms drastically change in meaning without specific parameters. The "average bolas" made with modern day materials and technology would significantly differ from the "average bolas" made by a Portugeuse gaucho in the 1800s.

What context is there for the throwing? Would the throw be considered from a person standing level to the ground, or would it be considered from a person riding horseback (which is/was a common context for bolas throwing)?

This is a history subreddit. If none of these considerations matter to you (or if you only care about the modern context), that makes this question unsuitable for this subreddit.

The term "best museum" is extremely subjective and highly debatable. It's not a question for which any sort of definitive answer can be provided.

They term “best” is obviously subjective and would depend what you’re interested in - art, historical artifacts from specific periods, etc. So not necessarily the “best” but the British Museum currently is the largest in the world with over 8 million pieces of art, history and cultural artifacts. If you take the Smithsonian Institution as a whole which has multiple museums in DC, then they would be the largest at around 155 million pieces. So if you think about which museums would likely have something for everybody then these two would likely be top of the list simply from sheer size and range of the collections.

My personal favorite museum is the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, but I have yet to visit the British Museum myself.

>Was it a realistic scenario at one point for Poland to join the Axis powers or was Hitler’s plan always to invade Poland and subjugate it due to Poland being controlled by the Slavic people who Germany saw as beneath them?

Short answer, possibly, with some major reservations.

Germany wanted Danzig back. Historically, Prussia/Germany controlled the northern Polish coast up through the Baltic states. It lost the Danzig corridor in WW1 and had this German exclave that it wanted to connect again.

Could Poland have been a full Axis member despite being Slavic? Probably. Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania all got to join in and none of them were Aryan.

In an alternative history, could Poland have joined the anti-commiterm pact with Germany? Sure. But that was 1936. By 1939 when Hitler wanted to expand - this is post the Anschluss of Austria and the Sudetenland - he wanted Danzig. So, perhaps Poland could have given up the Danzig corridor and appeased Hitler and avoided the need for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the USSR and Germany to divvy up Poland.

But what that would end up looking like for Poland is being stuck between two very hostile neighbors. If Poland was aligning with Germany, then like other European Axis minors, there's a lot of deference being given to Germany. More than likely, they still end up being the front line of the German-Soviet conflict.

Long term it's harder to guess at, but you'd likely see Poland become a puppet of Nazi Germany, similar to Viche France.

I suspect German blitz tactics that overwhelmed France and Poland would have similarly prevailed against the Czech. Czechoslovakia is a lot smaller than Poland and it's landlocked so there's no reinforcements coming in. Sure it's mountainous, but it's small - heck it made short work of Yugoslavia which was all mountains and much bigger.

You don't really have Britain and France on the other side - not without a naval invasion or violating Dutch sovereignty. Otherwise you've just got the Maginot crossing. And frankly, given how non-aggressive France was when Germany invaded Poland, I doubt they would have been more aggressive with the Czechs. Though a more aggressive push by the French would have been a lot more interesting. German military leaders feared a French invasion when the forces were split in Poland.

We heard about potential military coups when he marched into the Rhineland and when he threatened Czechoslovakia. Both were due to fears of France. It's possible that basically any time before the Fall of Paris if the war started the go poorly, that would've been it. But victories kept Hitler in power and the military appeased.

>I believe some of the surviving generals testified that if Munich hadn't happened, Hitler wouldn't have backed down, and the plan to depose him would have gone forward. Of course, these men were also trying to live through Nuremberg, so their honesty and reliability is questionable.

And they had similar ideas when remilitarizing the Rhineland.

I don't think their reliability is questionable. The military was a major arm of pre-Nazi German politics. And they were tentative of losing another war so soon after World War 1.

The issue was that France kept backing down. Even when Germany invaded Poland and France declared war, France didn't actually do anything. German generals were fearful of the French pushing through the western border while they were in Poland, and basically got lucky that didn't happen.

Then when they blitzed through Netherlands, Belgium, and France, the military leaders calmed down a lot since basically it all worked out.

But at any point pre-1940 if things went south and it looked like WW1 all over again, the military very likely would have couped Hitler.

I think I read somewhere that much of the heavy equipment used to take Poland and France was in Czech hands at the beginning of 1938. The Skoda works was a huge munitions plant that also changed hands without a shot being fired.

As I recall, the book argument went like so: capturing that equipment through war would have cost both German and Czech losses, whereas just turning materiel over to Germany strengthened then with no attritional loss of equipment, Czech or Nazi. Hitler increased his armament something like 25%, and picked up the factories producing heavy artillery, some 2 years before he invades France. The gain in knowledge, existing equipment, and factory capacity was an advantage that builds over the years, with the diplomatic resolution to Munich. If he had taken, say 15% material losses, in destroying half the Czech forces and only captures sabotaged factories, his army is not 125% or 150% in 1940, but 85% of it's 1938 strength. Do Poland and France fare better against that ? Does Poland soften it's diplomatic stance, after seeing Czechoslovakia get run over? Does it push the larger war back 12 to 18 months to where Stalin wakes up and starts prepping?

You're right about Hitler accumulating victories, in 1940. But 1938 was a different world. Hitler's only foreign victory before 1938 was the Rhineland annexation of 1936. Anschluss preceded Munich in 1938 spring.. Both areas were German speaking, and arguably more German than any Czech or Polish province. Czechoslovakia and Munich were the first conquests of a not-so completely German speaking area, and that Hitler getting away with it, basically scot-free, began that pile of foreign policy victories that accumulated until 1941. But prior to Munich no one knew all that was coming. France had alliances with the Little Entente countries (Balkans, Romania, Czechoslovakia) so technically it was more obligated to fight for the Czechs in 38 than the Poles in39. I mean that's why French pressured the Czechs into Munich. It wasn't worth a war, but their treaties had already committed them to one, if the Czechs fought. Better to talk the Czechs down.

I know why historians hate counterfactuals,lol.

I do like the inter war period. It is so full of the little " if only .." situations that make you think about t the carry on effects.

Also, the land itself was often a point of interest for the nukes. Evidently, if nukes were to be practically used, they would certainly be used against land areas. They tested nukes on different types of terrain (desert, hard rock, etc.) to see terrain interactions, or built fake buildings/towns to test bomb effects on residential areas.

I don’t think they are looking for a specific answer for this question. I think they are looking for any answer. If you wanted to specify the max distance of a Portuguese style bola, from a specific time period, I’m sure they would be happy with the answer.

Our long history of respect and dignity twords indigenous lands...

Since this is a history forum I'll suggest my recommendation for historical artifacts, The British Museum in London. They might have stolen half the exhibits through their colonial period but it is amazing.

Only half?

Great point - half is always a good place to start when estimating something you have no real knowledge of, but in this case I think you are very correct the real percentage is probably a LOT higher.

From a guy whose only been researching this for like 20 minutes since you asked, I’d assume it was a precursor to the Shanghai Campaign(the nationalist vs communist), as I would assume there would have been protests leading up to a ideological event like that. The actual fight was in 1949, May

Hello! On clock faces featuring roman numbers, the number 4 is written as IIII instead of IV. It is oftend told that King Louis XIV. made the watchmakers to write it as IIII deliberately for aesthetic reasons.

Now my question: Has anyone a source for that? Unfortunately I can't find anything... I want to show it to my students. Thanks in advance!

No its bullshit. Romans used both IIII and IV and clocks did too centuries before Louis.

Do Viking weapons get passed down along Nordic families?

I guess this question can extend to other cultures as well but is it at all common for weapons made during the Viking age to be passed down to Nordic families today? Would also be curious to learn if Samurai swords are passed down within the same family to modern times.

A good sword could be passed down from father to son, or gifted to someone in exchange for favours, or buried with a notable warrior. Many Viking weapons did double duty as humble farm implements, sailing tack etc and thus were recycled rather than inherited. The Vikings did not have particularly high-tech/super-efficient weaponry that would have represented a major investment and frequently lost, abandoned, or cannibalised their own kit. They failed abysmally as archers for example, though they tried it.

Is there a YouTube channel that explains the history and usage of different firearms? As well as showing some of the conflicts where they were used and why. I am mainly interested in the history behind the weapons,so I don't mind if the videos don't have a demonstration by the YouTuber.

Does anyone else think the subjugation of Messenia by Sparta and all the evil bullshit they had to deal with as their slaves would make for a good horror movie?

For WWI-era weapons, there's the YouTube channel C&Rsenal, they go on really deep dives through the history and development.

Forgotten Weapons is another good firearms YouTube channel, it goes through the history and function of various firearms, primarily obscure ones.

Posts like this make me despair. How about the history of any people who have been brutally exploited, is that all grist to the mill for a “horror movie”?

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But no, i was thinking specifically sparta and messenia

She’s disappeared off the radar. Knollys was the subject of various historical romances which were at one time quite widely read, eg “The Rose of Raby” , but these went down the memory hole after WW2. They weren’t particularly well written, but that is not necessarily a draw back. If a movie producer had picked it up and cast someone like Vivien Leigh, it could all have been different. Who gave a toss about Thomas Cromwell before Hilary Mantel made him the subject of the “Wolf Hall” trilogy, two of which won the Booker Prize?

So I’ve seen a lot of this Graham Hancock guy on different platforms lately, he says some pretty polarizing theories. So my question is anything he’s saying backed by new ideas or tech or do people dismiss his statements?

His whole premise is flawed, and he makes up evidence whenever he doesn't have any, and whenever there's any evidence that dismisses his points he just says that that evidence is made up by academics trying to cover things up.

It's the laziest hypothesis in the world, anything inconvenient to it is dismissed. There's not a single serious academic that thinks he knows what he's talking about, he's been a laughing stock for decades now but has gotten famous again due to the ease of spreading misinformation online, and him having a son working at Netflix who can give him a show.

Take him as seriously as you would the P.E. Teacher from Ancient Aliens.

Are there any points of his argument that you actually find plausible, or do you 100% write him off?

100% write him off, at least any time he diverges into his alt-history.

People like Hancock rely on people not knowing anything and trusting that he must know what he's talking about because look at how confidently he says stuff. But anyone who actually studies history, archaeology, and is even vaguely familiar with the evidence he uses can see right through it. He knows this, and that's why he targets amateurs and why he pretends there's some grand conspiracy against him from academia, that way when people call him out he can go "see, I told you, the academics are just out to get me!" it's very convenient for him.

https://theconversation.com/with-netflixs-ancient-apocalypse-graham-hancock-has-declared-war-on-archaeologists-194881

This bit in particular highlights the problems with him well

>From my perspective as an archaeologist, the show is surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) lacking in evidence to support Hancock’s theory of an advanced, global ice age civilisation. The only site Hancock visits that actually dates to near the end of the ice age is Göbekli Tepe in modern Turkey.

>Instead, Hancock visits several North American mound sites, pyramids in Mexico, and sites stretching from Malta to Indonesia, which Hancock is convinced all help prove his theory. However, all of these sites have been published on in detail by archaeologists, and a plethora of evidence indicates they date thousands of years after the ice age.

Most people won't know when those sites date to, academics studying them do, but most people listening to Netflix won't, so when Graham uses them all to try and prove his point only those educated will go "hey, wait a second, that dating doesn't even match up with what you're arguing"

Upon which Hancock just pulls out the trustworthy "archaeologists don't know what they're talking about, but you can trust ME" Nothing you can really do about those types of people, they refuse to actually engage in debate or prove their points.

Graham Hancock is an historian or archaeologist in the same sense that Margaret Mitchell is a renowned expert on the US Civil War.

In feudal Japan and European times, how, many Samurais do you think would be able to defeat one knight, both sides in full local armor and weapons?

Any archer with a hauberk (cross-bow) was more than capable of bringing down a knight in full armour, and they did. Once on the ground, halberdiers could cut his throat with a simple knife, much less a pike or broadsword. The age of armoured cavalry was a short one in Europe. I expect Samurai, should they have found themselves on a medieval European battlefield, might have found that a bit tricky too. Maybe try a different video game?

So you're saying one samurai with a bow kills a knight?

With a cross-bow? Where did you get that from? Which video-game?

I'm just asking if a samurai or how many Samurais could defeat a knight

OK, your question is completely implausible. Samurai and Medieval knights never encountered each other. Except in fantasy video games. European Medieval knights went into battle, fully armoured, which did them no good, because their chainmail was easily penetrated by the arrows of cross-now archers. These were not Robin Hood willow branch bows, but projectile trigger action cross-bows (think of them as an early rifle). I don’t think the Samurai had anything like this, so they would have been destroyed if they had faced a European Medieval army. Heavier iron armour did those knights no good, because it was so heavy that once knocked off their horse, they couldn’t get up again. From the C17 onwards, no one relied on the cavalry (Knights) in Europe except as “shock and awe” to terrify civilians. Wars were won with fire-power - artillery. There is a basic reason why Europeans went like fire and flood through so many nations, to their great disgrace, because they really had better technology for making war.

So I understand they never met each other, I just wanted to get a hypothetical. But didn't japanese have crossbows too? Also what about Ghengis Khan's cavalry archers? They didn't use crossbows and they defeated the knights in Ukraine

As stated, your idea of Samurai facing Medieval European knights is pure video-game. Neither went one on one with each other, or even their own cohorts, so I will leave it the great fantasy in the sky. This is the history forum, after all.

And the Mongolians? They were/are real

was doing some jumping around wikipedia and stumbled upon rfk jr and his massive conspiracy theory beliefs, anti vax being the most prominent thing i saw. from all i know about the kennedys (which isn’t a whole lot) this seems very against the grain?

basically, what happened with this guy? does his family support him, would RFK?

Yes, arrows work on knights. At Agincourt the English did not decimate the French with crossbows but longbows. Japan had those too.

Without trying to be dismissive this question isn't really answerable because it's based on a false premise. That you can compare Knights and Samurai. Knights and Samurais are not npcs with stats in a rpg. They were not a monolith. They were professional warriors who knew how to adapt to how war was fought. Yes the French knights were decimated by longbows... that's why the next time they showed up with a lot of crossbowmen (they still lost but they tried to adapt). When the gun was introduced to Japan the warriors immediately adopted it, just like the knight did in Europe. You can't compare them because faced with a new situation, they will change and adapt. They don't follow a script.

There is no one knight you can compare to one samurai. There was a wide range of different techniques to use in different situations. Due to Hollywood we tend to forget that this, for example did you know that European knights often used axes? In close quarter is easier to use than a sword. We rarely see that.

In the end those are two warriors who can adapt, they are two professional men who fight broadly with the same technology... so depending on the situation it's basically 1 vs 1. Because it's one man without firearm and with a full armor against one man without firearm and with a full armor.