I was thinking about the question of rulers visiting other countries during pre-modern times - something that occasionally happens in fiction - but I can't seem to recall a single instance of it ever happening. No king or queen of England had ever travelled outside their country while they were on the throne, it seems. No king of France ever did so either - nor pope, nor emperor of China or shogun of Japan. Yes, I'm aware that travel was difficult and perilous, and yes, rebellions could happen, so if rulers ever travelled outside of one's own country, it must have been either rare or there must have been a very good reason to do so. However, to not travel at all? Seems that this was the case.

In fact, I think the only exception to this seeming lack of travel would be if the ruler considered wherever they were travelling to as already part of their country, or if they were on military campaign and had brought troops with them. Aside from these exceptions, did rulers travel outside of their country?

Hello all you wonderful historians, and thank you for the Trojan work you do in enhancing our understanding of the past. I asked this question in r/askarchaeology but it is a very small community (124 members) and I have not got a response thus far so thought to shoot my shot here also.

I am just starting out my training as a secondary school history teacher and have to teach about the methods of historians and Ancient Rome to my students. In the chapter in the textbook on Rome (To be clear, I don't like to rely on it too much, and always offer more information to students than what is in the textbook, as reading from a book is not really teaching), the author mentions the use of 3D modelling and photography in excavations of Pompeii and in archaeology more generally.

However, no further information is given on how these methods work, and I haven't been able to find much online either - I have read articles on the Lund University website talking about what they have discovered using 3D modelling and photography, mentioning a drone flying over Pompeii to scan the ruins, but nothing about how these methods actually work. How do these methods of technology work? Is it like projecting from a stump of concrete in the ground how the building above it may have looked based on projections? Scanning for concrete in the ground for where a house might have stood? The Lund website article mentioned being able to 'reconstruct an entire block of houses' using 3D modelling, but how could this have worked? I welcome any and all insight you can offer me. You're such troopers finding out about the past for all of us!

From an enthusiastic history teacher

I'm rewritten this question multiple times and I'm still not quite happy with how I've formulated it. But the gist is I'm really curious Chinese culture/identity has changed in the thousands of years since the mythical Xia.

Obviously, it's impossible to do such an extensive overview in a Reddit post, but I'm curious what cultural touchpoints were especially pivotal towards coalescing our modern understanding of the Chinese identity (ex. Confucianism) and how each successive era of history adds to the fabric of what we see today as "Chinese".

Conversely, is there a point in the past where our conception of "Chinese" completely breaks down and becomes unrecognizable?

Also, why is the cultural term "Han" Chinese even though the Han Dynasty ended over 1,800 years ago? What cultural distinctives did Han society contribute to our modern understanding? Likewise, what competing cultural distinctives did Han society outcompete/cannibalize/assimilate as their culture grew in prominence?

Somehow I did not realize how old this movie was, it seems like there must have been some sort of outrage against an LGBT type movie all the way back in the 70s

Hello!

I am reading Gates of Europe by Serhii Polokhy, and on page 60 he asserts that the Grand Duchy because heavily influenced by the Rus' lands it occupied, converting to Eastern Orthodoxy and retaining former Rus' legal codes and institutions, making it effectively the Rus' but without dynastic continuity. How accurate is this assertion?

I just found out about a custom dating at least as far back as 19th century in europe (I'm unsure if this took place elsewhere), I'm told, wherein the bees, flowers etc. of a household's garden's would be informed of these events (for example of a death or birth). How far back does this practice go? To me (admittedly a lay person) it sounds like echoes of older folk beliefs.

Liberalism as the concept we know it today didn’t exist back then however since the values in the Cyrus cylinder align with liberalism, would it be accurate for him and his document to be classified as such?

Hi everyone!

I just started my masters degree in history. In our second year we have to write an extended thesis and the topic for that has been bugging me. I started off doing Early Medieval but the potential supervisor was rude and I am more interested in the High/Late Middle Ages which she did not agree to supervise. I then decided to switch to 19th century history hoping to write about medievalism in 19th century art. The supervisor for that is nice but not inspiring but tbh I can't complain here.

The problem is that I am still very much interested in the High/Late Middle Ages and really want to write on it. But on the other hand, I also love Victorian British art and history. There is a supervisor in the English department that does H/L Middle Ages but no one in history.

Do any historians here have advice as to how I should approach this dilemma? Is there any way I could combine both and study them both for my thesis? I don't want to ruin my professional relationships but I also feel like the direction of my thesis currently is not what I want exactly.

Thanks in advance for the responses!

To put it another way, is it exaggerated in popular memes on Ancient Egypt?

Hello fellow collegues. I'm currently writing about Freya and Freyr, main deities in whose name nordic pagans celebrated love, sex, new offsprings as well as sowing and reaping of souls and plants. I want to know more about it as similar processes were present in old Mesopotamia where they celebrated Cibela as mother nature. If you know more about how did they celebrate, when were main celebration days, what were their myths and rituals alike and other interesting facts. Feel free to share some of the literature because data about this part of nordic pantheon and belief is quite scarce.

I read this in the introduction of a book before.

Specifically it says

An open admission to researching military history on the conference circuit is usually the cue for furtive sideways glances, polite smiles, and rapid changing of the subject

Throughout international academia, there have been suspicions that those who study war in some ways seek to condone or glorify it

Hello,

I’ve been wondering how did ladies keep their hair up without hairspray. ladies specifically with heavy thick hair.

I’ve tried traditionally for fun putting mine up but I’m thick haired so it won’t stay, so this got me curious how the ladies with thick hair managed to keep theirs up high.

Or are there none, and the saying is 100% true?

Hi, embarrassed to ask this but here it goes. What did Mexico stand to gain by the border being the Nueces River instead of the Rio Grande? I know that they would loose a huge amount of land. I for the most part get the reasons behind the war but what we’re some of the reasons they wanted the Nueces River to be the border?

From what I understand, duels were pretty ritualistic and structured, but that each culture would have had its own traditions and processes to make a legitimate duel.

But what happens when you have participants and settings of different and potentially conflicting systems?

For example, an English man insults a French man. What happens next? Does it matter whether it happened in a French or English context? What if insult was given in the Ottoman court, where duelling was frowned upon?

Outside of cities (ex sieges etc) seem obvious enough. But as far as two armies clashing in the countryside... Did this even happen? Did Peter Jackson deceive me? Did the generals write each other to decide on a time and place? How exactly did armies come to meet?