I've been reading about how people assumed for years and years that Troy was a mythical place, but behold! It's ruins were discovered relatively recently. I know legends of Troy predate Plato, and from what I understand Plato never stated that he was creating a fictional nation when he wrote about Atlantis (correct me if I'm wrong."

I understand skepticism, but there have been cataclysms that buried cities in oceans before. I'm just wondering why most historians today seem very sure that Atlantis is pure fiction, when from where I'm sitting it seems like it could be a plausible reality that was greatly exaggerated by time.

My grandfather served on the Seawise Giant (the largest ship in the world). Unfortunately, the ship was scrapped years ago and all that's left are old video footage. Recently, he's been wanting me to save videos of the ship so he doesn't forget his old job. I've looked all over Youtube for videos and found a couple of good ones which he watches repeatedly. I know this will probably get lost in new and that this is too specific, but I was wondering if anyone has footage of the ship or has any stories about it.

I’m trying to get a sense for how the ruins transitioned from glorious palaces to the ruins we see today, and how locals thought of them through the ages. I know that in some cases (e.g., the Pantheon) they got repurposed, and in many cases folks stole stones from them, but I’m curious if more is known about what day-to-day life in Rome was during the Middle Ages (or any other period) with huge looming ruins and palaces. Were they cordoned off? Did people visit them like they do today? Repurposed somehow? Did the average person who saw the ruins know about the ancient Romans?

One example I’m curious about in particular is Hadrian’s Villa. It’s massive and monumental and I’m wondering if later emperors continued using it or if some non-emperor moved in later. Presumably it didn’t just fall into ruin immediately after Hadrian died, and I remember seeing some graffiti from hundreds of years ago there, but the timelines are unclear to me. Did folks try to keep it maintained for a while, visit it, maybe write first-hand accounts of seeing parts of it collapse as it fell into disrepair?

I was looking at some Piranesi prints recently showing various Roman ruins in the 17th century that looked fairly overgrown. Is that likely how they looked during that period, or was he embellishing them?

I realize it’s a very broad question that covers a wide range of time periods but I’m mostly just looking for an idea for local attitudes towards the ruins over time.

I thought of this while watching the movie 1917, and after the big push scene, we later see troops dragging their buddies over the parapet and it occurred to me I had never even thought of this.

Medieval republican city-states are more generally associated with Mediterranean Europe (especially, if not exclusively, Northern Italy) and might as an oddity for a lay person.

How did it came into being? Was it issued from a tradition of assemblies in East Slavic polities? If it's the case, how did it changed (or not) from its origins?

I know getting a degree is a large part of it and I admire it. I just don't have the money to and would like to work in this field doing what I can.

First of, let me clarify that I am absolutely uneducated in this subject, so my explanation will probably have many errors, I will try to be as clear as possible on this.

If I am trying to recreate/discuss historical art styles, I could say, for example, "Mayan style", or "like drawings on roman vases", or "medieval paintings", or "ancient egyptian style", and most people will understand which kind of drawing style, use (or lack of) of perspective, and general look am I talking about. And (again, this is a completely uneducated idea) most of the things we have from these periods have roughly the same style. It doesn't seem to really matter who were the artists, the style is always similar and specific to the culture.

However, when we get to more recent times, even before globalization, art styles span very short time periods (Like "Pop art from the 60s") and we can differentiate immensely between the styles of two artists from the same culture and time. Even if I go digging on art from the 60 from one single place, I will find lots and lots of different styles, with only some common ground between most of them.

While it is much more difficult to record the exact dates of ancient paintings, which I guess is the obvious reason for not being able to pinpoint very decade-specific styles, I am very surprised that all/most I have seen from specific cultures look exactly the same. Why was art so uniform in ancient cultures? Thanks!

I need your advice on how to study history better as an amateur. What are the sources that I should follow to improve my skills on the metalevel? What skills would you recommend that I focus on in the first place? My intention is to become a better amateur historian, by which I mean to improve my general ability to learn history or to learn it in a less amateur way. I currently believe that it's possible without formal academic training, but I wouldn't mind a solid curriculum to follow on my own.

I have a degree in Philosophy, so the study of history is not wholly unfamiliar to me. I read scholarly books and articles, but when doing so, I often feel like I could get more out it — if only I knew the methods and tricks that some of you are familiar with as less amateur than myself.

I've heard people talk about anarchists and syndicalists in Spain a lot, like Noam Chomsky, but was it really a successfully organized society or just a brief moment of the war?

Not even sure this is the right sub for this question but I don't know what the right one would be. I figure since it is less theological and more practical that there'd be something to suss out from a historian's perspective but totally ready to be 100% wrong, hah.

First let me say that as a long-time reader (and even occasional contributor) I have the utmost respect for the mods and broadly agree with the rules and requirements of this sub. This is more "how can we as question-askers approach this" than "can we change the rules". That said:

I asked a question last night about the trope of "unerring storytellers" - aka a storyteller who was expected to know their tales perfectly, under pain of death. It's something that I've seen in a couple of fantasy-type stories, and I was curious as to whether it had any basis in fact. The question was removed for 'example-seeking' - fair enough. If this is a topic that I want to know about, though - is there any way to get at this information? I can think of a few ways, none of them great:

• Ask specifically about groups that I know (or believe) had a strong oral tradition. "How well did the Vikings fit this trope?" "How well did the Bedouins fit this trope?". The problems are that (a) this would get pretty repetitive and (b) there are likely places that I've never heard of - maybe some civilization in South America had a strong oral tradition, but I would never know.

• Ask in less-moderated subs like /r/history or /r/AskHistory and come here to confirm or deny. Given some previous experiences with those subs, I have a feeling I would come out of there more confused than I am now.

• Do my own research. Possible, but a daunting task. I'm not a professional historian (barely even an amateur one, really), and it again runs into the problem of not knowing what I'm looking for.

Does anyone, mod or user, have any suggestions or perspective on how to approach this kind of issue?

During my modern Chinese history course, my professor mentioned a major reason that the British and French forces won the Second Opium War was because the Qing government was tackling other rebellions simultaneously and could not bring their full numbers to bear on the Western forces.

In essence, I am curious if this is true and if such numbers would have been enough to overcome Western technology at the time, as said prof also stated the British Army was often well trained and equipped, but poorly led?

To preface, I live in the US.

I was talking with my friends about day drinking today. I started thinking about how it’s very common in many areas of Europe to have a drink with lunch but it’s not as common in the US. It’s socially acceptable to have a drink when you go out for dinner but having a pint or glass of wine with lunch seems to be considered socially unacceptable or questionable, at the very least. I would assume that since America was colonized by European nations, this was not always the case but I know I could be wrong on this.

Did this shift in American culture occur due to Prohibition or any other event of its nature? Or was this just a gradual change over time that distinguishes us from our European neighbors?

Hello! I was just reading a bunch or Russian classic literature and the depictions of extreme poverty made me wonder why people who were so poor that they could not afford food or shelter didn’t decide to join a convent?

Now I don’t know how the Orthodox Church works in that regard but I thought that at least in catholic countries it must’ve been an option to join a convent if you literally had nowhere else to go and no quality in life.

So why wasn’t it a big thing? Was it an educational problem or where there restrictions as to who could join etc.?

Maybe someone has some answers or context for me ! Thanks!

Lincoln famously suspended the writ at the start of the Civil War The writ can be suspended, but this power ultimately falls to the Legislative Branch, not the Executive Branch, seeing as it is in Article 1, Section 9. Did he actually have the power to do this, or were there simply no objections to it? What was the public's reaction to this, or was this something that the general public was unaware of? Did this have any unforeseen consequences?

They were being invaded, but it's a very small territory population wise, and is located far from the home islands. Would it be fair to say that in a way it was a last gasp of maintaining the British Empire?

I always asked myself why Hitler hated jews and I thought there has to be some kind of personal hatred towards them and thats it. He just hated them. But then what shocked me was when I heard that Bobby Fischer hated jews too even though his mother is jewish. He even says in an interview that the jews controlled the chess match between Karpov and Kasparov and that the jews are evil. The thing I ask now is just: why? Why would you say this? What the did the jews do? Why and how would the jews control the world? The only thing I really know is that Fischer read the book ,,The protocols of the elders of zion" and that is an anti-semitic book. What is in the book that got him to hate jews.

So far the only answer i can find is “a typical ottoman fleet had 46 ships (40 galleys, 6 maonas)” but this implies that there were more than one fleet, and they had 280 ships at lepanto meaning they definitely had a lot more than 46 ships. And I know that 280 ships was definitely a huge part of the ottoman navy and was a crushing defeat, but they still had a good navy even after their defeat. So how many ships did the ottomans have under the reign of Suleiman the magnificent pre-lepanto?

Friend of mine asked this on Facebook and I was like, "I know just the folk to ask!"

Her original question:

"Just curious about a history or a pop culture question. When did it start to be more socially acceptable for women to be single and have roommates? I don't think it was during the time of boarding houses. But maybe I'm wrong...📷 Was it around the 60s and women's liberation? Did shows like Laverne and Shirley help to make it more common? I was just curious about it."

Thanks!

I'm a historian and found a document in the National Archives that says that in World War II, a zoologist named "Dr. Arper" defected from Russia and relayed the following information, as summarized by the American scientific intelligence Alsos Mission: "Trials were alleged to have been carried out by B.W. aircraft sprays on nomad tribes, as a result of which the whole tribe was infected with 100% positive success. After the trial the survivors were annihilated by air action. 50-60 of such trials had been carried out."

In another section, the document says that the Russians planned to drop caged, flea-infested rats bred for strength and aggression into enemy territory.

Do any other historians know anything else about this? Are there any other sources that make similar allegations?