Note: when I say 'water deposit' I mean a man-made cistern to keep rainwater.

I’m a big fan of the Crusader Kings games and the historical role-play is my favorite part of it. I find it easy to imagine myself on a visit to the christianized and feudalized cities, castles, and bishoprics of Western Europe. But, I have trouble imagining what it would be like to visit the settlements, both big and small, of Europe’s pagan tribal peoples, circa 867CE. I’m familiar with iron age oppidums, but I’m sure that different cultures from different regions, the better part of a millennium later would build the same thing.

Do we know what these settlements looked like? How big could they get? Was there a big difference in size between rural and “urban” areas? How were these settlements connected, with roads, trails, or would I have drag my donkey through kilometers of back country before reaching human settlement? Were the settlements of the west slavs and north germanic peoples similar?

I figured this would be a better place to ask than an engineering sub. Us nuclear energy enthusiasts are constantly battling the public misconception that those big steam-spewing cooling towers are integral parts a nuclear power plant. Many non-nuclear power plants (and some non-powerplant factories) have them and many nuclear power plants don't have them. How then did the incorrect association develop?

Ubiquitous in hipster bedrooms and warehouses across the EU alike, the Euro-pallet seems to be to be one of the most common, and undervalued, aspects of standardisation across the European Common Market. But as with every single thing EU, I imagine a lot of work was spent in actually making this thing come to pass. Is that true? Or did everyone agree that it would be useful and it happened without a lot of fuss?

I'm a teacher and am finishing up my unit on Ancient Greece I would love to get more in depth about various city-states, but the focus we have in class are the city-states broadly, and Athens and Sparta in particular. I talk about how Athens, Sparta, and other city-states allied to fight the Persians. But once the Persians were gone Athens used the Delian League to fill its treasury and acted like an empire. Sparta saw this as a threat, formed the Peloppnnesian League and, long story short, off to war they go. Over the course of 30 years Athens and its allies (Delian League) and Sparta and its allies (Peloponnesian League) killed each other. But towards the end of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta sought help from the Persians in order to beat Athens, which they did, but only in a Pyrrhic victory. It got me thinking:

The Greek city-states constantly fought each other, but when when threatened by non-Greeks, they put aside their differences to defend the cultural Greek homeland. The Persians were the biggest threat. Yet Sparta sought Persian help towards the end of the Peloponnesian War. Due to this did other Greeks see them as cultural, linguistic, or any other type of traitors?

My husband and I are planning a trip to Hagi. I am familiar with the history of Meiji Restoration and the role of Choshu in it. My husband knows little and I want to give him books that cover the period that led up to the restoration with a special emphasis on Choshu. I know good sources in Japanese, but he does not read Japanese.

Can you suggest some books available in English? We are scholars in other disciplines, so we have access to scholarly publications and happy to read journal articles, too. Thank you in advance.

I’m working on a project to explain certain differences in armor throughout the ages (I’m starting with knights and hopefully moving to Vikings afterwards), I’m trying to use images as reference to help highlight said differences, the thing is, when ever I try to find a good image or even article on this specific time stamp it seems to elude me, it may not be worth the time but I’m mainly trying to close a gap in the timeline, so far I’ve been using charts that show you different armor from different time stamps, but I can’t rely on those so I also use what I can find in different books and documentaries/YouTube videos (and the occasional art piece from that time) to even out some details, but it’s this one gap that bugs me because I’ve gotten to a point where the differences become more obvious and I’m hoping I can find that point where it started to break off into sub-categories (if that’s the right term to us in this case), and I know that there are plenty of other points where armor started to look different depending on who the person wearing it fought for or what the latest revolution in its design was (going from just straight chain mail to solid plate was surprisingly painful because of how many times I had to figure it if one was a concept or not), but this is a point in time before guns start to become a factor in the design process, and I don’t want to skip over anything, especially in a 49 year gap.

(Im not sure if this violates the rules but I’ll take this down if it does.)

It was a Washington post article I believe. I’m a little confused how that can even remotely been true as it wouldn’t even of been possible until 1867 two years after his death.

One thing that struck me seeing the Queens funeral on TV was that so many of the British dress uniforms belong in the late 19th century or earlier, similar with other commonwealth countries. a quick look at ceremonial soliders in a number of European and South American countries also shows Victorian era Prussian style uniforms, what happened to freeze ceremonial dress uniforms in this era while combat fashion changed so much to suit the needs of a modern army otherwise? Is it just a matter of these being the last 'colourful' uniforms before ww1 made everyone grey and khaki?

I know the Revolution itself is not that realistic but looking past that, what kind of weapons and armor would be used by Peasants and other low-class Workers and Serfs that would be able to successfully fight back against the armies of Kings and Lords? What would best be used to counter regular soldiers/footmen, as well as Nobles/Knights with heavier, more protective armor?

Additionally, what would be the most 'realistic' way they would engage in ranged combat, such as against archers? Would peasant and working-class people be able to be trained to use bows effectively enough to fight against an organized army or would something like a Crossbow be more effective for mass mobilization against their overlords?

Thanks in advance for the answers!

By early modern, I'm thinking circa 1500 to 1800; right after Columbus, but (mostly) before the Industrial Revolution started to kick in and Napoleon did his thing.

You hear a lot about European (mostly Iberian, British and French) intrusions and entradas into the Americas, and you have a whole host of conquest literature, travel journals, and other such sources to draw upon in knowing how early-modern Europeans formulated their understanding and cultural perception of the Americas. The fascination with El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, mountains of silver and gold, etc, take your pick.

I'm not so much aware of how non-European polities and regions' viewed the Americas (or for that matter the parts of Europe that weren't so involved in New World ventures; Germany, Italy, etc, along most of Eastern and Central Europe) - my general assumption is they presumably had some knowledge that there were massive continents out west, given the early modern era was precisely an age of globalization; lots of trade of cartographic and geographic knowledge and so on.

I'm aware for example that some Japanese Catholics in the 17th or so century traveled to Spain's dominions in the Americas as part of a diplomatic/religious mission, and presumably there are probably other analogous examples for other regions of the world - I'm wondering whether any sources exist for what the Japanese _themselves_ might have thought of the world out there, once the diplomats presumably returned home and disseminated stories of their voyages? What did they think, call of Mexico? And what about any other examples in the rest of the world. Etc.

The Emerald Buddha became the paramount symbol of modern Thailand, but if this was the case, why didn't the rulers of Ayutthaya, a pre-modern Thai state, go on military expeditions to capture the Emerald Buddha like King Taksin and the Chakri kings did? Was it because the previous paramount Buddha images in Ayutthaya were taken to Burma following its sack of Ayutthaya in 1767 and had the post-Ayutthaya rulers had to find another sacred Buddhist image to replace the ones lost in the sack? How is it connected to Cambodia's Emerald Buddha temple, a country that never enshrined the Emerald Buddha in its entire history?

Hi I just had a question that google couldn’t answer for me, when slavery was happening what happened to the light skinned people, the people who are considered white passing were people racist to them too?

Obviously the reformist theologians of 16th century Germany had a bone to pick with the Catholic Church to a greater or lesser extent. But do any of them comment on Orthodox christianity, whether Greek or Russian? How aware were they of their practices, beliefs, and traditions, and did they see them in the same light as the Catholic Church, in a favourable light, or somewhere in between?

When I was reading about the Portuguese first attempts to contact with the Ming Dynasty relationships between the two states eventually deteriorate due to rumors of the Portuguese capturing children as slaves. This led to a period of conflict between the two realms. Just a few decades later they began to partake in the enslavement of Japanese people as well, leading to their eventual expulsion from the Tokugawa Shogunate. Were the Portuguese just stupid and unable to understand how enslaving Chinese and Japanese people might ruin their prosperous Asian trade?

I remember that sleeves were a lot more restrictive in the past, but it’s been hard to find information about this online, especially information about specific time periods! (Btw, by resting angle, I mean, when you fully relax your arms, what angle would the sleeves hold them at instead of letting them drop all the way to your sides)