I've seen a lot of paintings / depictions of Cristopher Columbus interacting with the native inhabitants of the "New World", and in most of the them the natives are nude, or mostly nude, especially the women. The men usually have a loin cloth or something, but were these depictions accurate? Or are they simply a result of artistic embellishment?

Also this may be a silly question but were breasts sexualized, by the native populations (or even by the European settlers) in a way that is comparable to how they are sexualized nowadays?

I was reading one of Stefan Zweig's books, and he mentions Spanish expeditions in which the people involved all died, disappeared into the rainforest forever, and even went native.

Is this true? I know Cortez and co were very successful, but i'm more interested in expeditions which were great failures. Any resources on this?

Love you guys as always.

The Turkish television series Diriliş: Ertuğrul portrays a wagon in the year 1225 near Konya as using cross sections of tree trunks for wheels; smaller sections in the front and larger behind. Does this form of wheel have historical precedence? Would it have been limited to this area, or was it more universal?

I recognize that this is a weird question, it just jumped out at me and I can't seem to find any answers on the web aside from one that was just commenting on their inclusion in the show.

If anyone needs the visual it is at about 12:35 in the first episode, the show is available on Netflix.

I'm reading Thomas Asbridge and he doesn't really adress this (don't blame him for that, the book is thourough enough as it is). I get that they must have been paid for transport but he does note that Italian fleets were crucial for the naval defense of tyre, which must've cost them a lot of losses.

Did they do it out of the same devotion most crusaders cite as their motivation or were their motives more financial?

American children are often told the story of the Pilgrims coming to the New World in pursuit of religious freedom.

What was so different/radical about their beliefs that they felt the need to go into the unknown in order to live?

Second part: Could this be why we have such a fundamentalist attitude amongst Politicians and Christians in the modern day?

This seems like it should be a very simple question but for some reason absolutely no source I have been able to find addresses this... if Leif Erikson discovered America before Columbus, then why does nobody in Europe seem to know about America until Columbus set foot on the Caribbean? Why didn't Leif Erikson tell anyone, and, since he did seem to keep it a secret, how did we even find out that he discovered it first?

70% Of Belarussians speak Russia at home and the country has only been independent for a very short time under German occupation in WW1 before. The country has been under MANY different invaders, and unlike other USSR Republics it speaks mostly the same language as Russia and the culture is kinda the same.

So I’m not sure if this is even the correct place to ask this question but I’ve been listening to some sea shanties lately and while listening to tow rope girls I realised I

1. Have no idea what a tow rope is.

2. Don’t understand what’s meant to be portrayed by the girls having hold of their tow rope today

Is this something the wives of sailors did before the men set sail?

Is it also true that as they have a lot of gold and silver deposit they often import weapon and armor from China in exchange of the gold/silver?

When reading pre-modern sources I’ve seen a lot of authors defining “otherness” in terms of religion, clothing, warfare, social customs, sexual customs and even hair grooming (those long haired spartans), but I don’t remember reading “they are different from us because they use these weird scales/instruments/patterns etc”. In the XIX Century certain music made by white people went from being considered a functional tool to being considered “expressive art", and it is this Nationalist context that created the concept of “folk music”, but that’s not my point; clothing is purely functional and still a tool of cultural identity and difference- tunic vs pants for instance.

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So, are there any examples of people using musical characteristics to conceptualize differences in identity before European nationalism?

You always hear about the Berlin Wall and the attempts to cross it, but what about the larger border between East and West Germany as a hole?

Was it policed well? Were there also notable escape attempts/smuggling? Were there also walls (or fences, barbed wire, landmines generally just barriers)?

I’m also curious what the origins of poetry are and how it has evolved over the ages. Would you say the poetry of the 1800’s is comparable to the poems of Ancient Greece. Does poetry even exist anymore or is it a dead medium aside from the the music industry - or is that the same thing? insights on any of this would be greatly appreciated.

Before hitler was even in power, they got 92% of people to vote for them. How did they archieve that. Were people actually convinced to that degree of him, or did they somehow rig the votes? What is the consensus on this topic?

But it's not reallly about him, I'm just curious what a regular soldier from a place like Dusseldorf would face, in what I imagine were pretty turbulent times in Europe.

Random facts, which may or may not factor into an answer: He gets married in 1815 in the Dutch city of Groningen, to a Dutch woman. He is 30 at this time, which seems pretty late to get married, but maybe that was normal for military men. Judging from his job descriptions and frequent address changes on the subsequent birth certificates for his children, he's getting by with odd labor jobs and eventually works as a garbage sweep. But sometimes he is still listed as "retired soldier". If he recieved an actual pension it would've been not enough to live from, I reckon.

From my limited understanding, the Continental Army had some hard days where victory was far from assured. Was there any talk of surrender or trying to cut a deal with the British in those times?

I can not seem to find any logical means as to how Napoleon invaded Egypt with a 19th Century European style army before Khaki and other heat friendly uniforms came in to play during the late 1800s. From the paintings I have seen that Napoleon's army kept their iconic blue uniforms with long sleeves and trousers with tunics depending on the unit. This doesn't exactly scream "airflow" so I wonder if they adapted their uniform to the climate or did the Napoleonic French keep their European style uniforms on and suffer throught the heat.

TLDR: What uniforms did the French wear in Egypt?