I would assume that it would be a bureaucratic nightmare to keep up to date about how died, whether killed or by some other cause, or simply went missing.

And since people are missing or deceased cannot talk and the numbers who were affected in a conflict often vary from one person to another, how did the militaries in the past identify who were killed or missing in battle and how many with accuracy?

EDIT: Thank you so much for the responses, everyone. I will be reading them

I've recently learned of the concept of syncretism through studying Irish history and culture. Most of my personal studies have focused on the history and culture of Scandinavia, but I haven't come across the same coexistence of Christianity and the Old Norse faith (also curious about syncretism in pagan Finland). If they did see this coexistence, what are some examples of syncretism in Medieval Scandinavia?

Greetings Historians,

I’m an aspiring history teacher looking for advice. Although I’ve always enjoyed learning about history, my undergraduate studies were focused on business and then I went to law school. After working in law and real estate with low satisfaction, I decided to pursue a career as an educator. I have many prior volunteer experiences working with young people and I’m convinced I’d make a fantastic teacher, but I want to be sure my substantive knowledge of history is up to par. I want to do right by proper historians.

I was an excellent history student in high school and I took several history-based electives in college. Over the past several years, I’ve read several biographies and other history books on topics like WW1 and the US Revolutionary War (in other words, topics that piqued my interest). But now, I want to go back and truly study some foundational sources whether they are on pedagogy or substantive knowledge of history.

What are the texts or other sources that a teacher of history in US high schools simply must know?

Thank you.

The reason I ask this question is because Venice was perhaps unique to history. It was the only Republic preceding the US and had only existed for a number of years after the end of the revolutionary war. During this small window, was there any mention by the revolutionaries of this Italian city-state, and if there was, what was their opinion?

Getting some pretty informal/uninformed answers from r/AskFoodHistorians, so crossposting here.

Shucking an oyster today is a challenge even with modern metal tools. How did people do it in pre-metallurgical societies? Instead, did they simply cook them open? Did they smash them, then clean the meat for consumption, losing all the liquor? Did they actually have tools capable of effectively shucking?

We are always given the impression that the soldiers in the First World War used napoleonic ear tactics of marching towards lines slowly and volley fire (lions led by donkeys ect) (that’s why such large populations where obliterated)

But how can this be, people in 1914 where not Morons the maxim gun had existed for 32 years and high explode artillery shells where used by the European powers to devastate natives in the colony’s Did nobody have any objections to these tactics and are they even true or exaggerated revisionist accounts?

I'm teaching a high school class and we are doing a research project about different warriors throughout the world. Does anyone know any know of any good resources, books, websites, etc. that have good information about different warriors, their communities, philosophy, etc? The project would be comparing knights to samurai to Mughal warriors, for example. Just looking for more types of warriors.

What translation and/or retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh do you recommend? Also, if you have any recommendations on history books about the Sumerians, they would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

From a few popular sources I get the impression that perhaps thousands of Europeans - like Genoan merchants and papal envoys - were in China during the 14 c. Pax Mongolica. The establishment of the Ming dynasty in 1368 seems to mark an end to the openness of China, falling out of contact with Western European powers until the Portuguese managed the oceanic route two centuries later.

Did the 12c. Europeans establish communities in places like Beijing (Khanbaliq)? Did these communities persist into the Ming dynasty, or were there cultural remnants of their presence that lingered (like families with Roman Catholic derived rituals)? If so, did the Portuguese explorers of the 16c. encounter and recognise the descendants of earlier Europeans in China?

Well, I have finally settled down a bit and I have started a long-term book project. I believe it will take me no shorter than 6 years to write. The book is something along the lines of "Rebuilding civilization in 10,000 pages". It's not so much a book I believe will sell(much)...but I want to see what kind of civilization with science, technology, architecture, and culture can be put into 10,000 pages. Consider it speedrunning building a civilization in 10,000 pages.

For this project, the goal is to maximize the general quality of life and build up civilization assuming some bizarre disaster happened and most buildings were flattened and all the science buildings exploded. It is a hypothetical project amongst hypotheticals projects...but I need something to keep me busy.

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For this, knowing the various technologies, their constriction, their difficulty of being built through different regions throughout history would be highly important. Discovering how the Byzantine culture used technology, the Achaemenid empire built their technology, the ancient Chinese and Greeks...seeing how much I can take from those cultures, how much I could take from modern-day pragmatic building and weapon construction, along with food distribution(analyzing how cultures distributed food without most preservatives or refrigeration is highly important and should not be lost knowledge)

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More or less the goal is to pick from a wide variety of civilizations and hodge-podge them in together to get a decent quality of life within 10,000 pages. Keep the best/most simple structures and foods. Add in as much medical knowledge as possible (as many surgeries which could be done without anesthesia..or perhaps how quickly could one make anesthesia from wild plants if at all possible)

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Do you have any series of books to recommend?

I ask because I heard a song about it the song was by sabaton and the song wasn’t very clear so I was wondering if i could get some information on this event in World War Two (honestly I only know about the planes from wwII :/ )

And to add are there other countries colonized by Spain that didn't completely change their national language to Spanish as well?

I'm looking for a good non-fiction book that does a good job describing the silk road. What was life like on either side? How crowded was it? Were there many traveller? etc.

Do any of you know of any good books that meet this criteria?

Hi. I have been looking all over for some information that could possibly help my family get some answers. My great grandfather was very secretive about his family's history. His father had a tattoo of a series of numbers on the bottom of one of his feet.

Does anybody have an idea as to why a man born in the mid 1800s would have such a tattoo? They wound up in West Virginia and settled there, but before that they were in Canada. We don't have any information prior to Canada, but it doesn't seem like they were originally from there.

This may not be the best place to ask this question, so feel free to remove!

Hello esteemed historians! I now have a youngster in the elementary school system and it occurs to me, even as just a (very) modest amateur student of history, that in the coming years I'm probably going to hear junky myths repeated to me by my schoolchild-- myths that will be taught to said young one by a well-meaning, kind teacher. (Maybe not! Maybe the state of American education has improved dramatica... well, okay, that's probably too much to ask.) Paul Revere's ride was an example that came to mind because it's a classic story, a myth that got repeated to me erroneously I-don't-know-how-often, but according to well sourced answers on this very subreddit, is... not really accurate. I can only imagine that for knowledgeable, professional historians, this phenomenon of encountering either erroneous or vastly oversimplified versions of history is even more common. And possibly vastly more frustrating.

So, historians: when you hear your kiddo come home from school and explain that teacher said that Columbus sailed off to prove that the world was round because everyone thought it was flat, or things along those lines, how have you dealt with it? On the one hand, I want my kid learning accurate information, presented with whatever level of complexity kiddo is developmentally capable of appreciating. On the other hand, I don't want to ever be "THAT parent" to a well-meaning teacher, or to suggest to my kid that school isn't worth being invested in because it's wrong/lies anyway.

I'm in a medieval history class currently, and it's frustrating to have class after class filled with men rulers, scholars, and figures with women as main figures interjecting once a week. I've looked at the recommended women's history books in the book list on this sub, but unless wondering of anyone else had other recommendations, specific to prehistoric to medieval women's history.