I’ve recently noticed that a lot of towns dotting Southern Illinois have incredibly foreign names compared to the surrounding town. Thebes, Cairo, Karnak, etc., are all Egyptian cities that share names with these Illinois towns. Is there any particular reason for this beyond these towns being at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers similar to the Nile Delta? Or is there is there another reason since towns like Goshen and Dongola aren’t Egyptian cities but rather regions that have heavy biblical associations with them?

Countless games in medieval fantasy settings feature bandits and looters as the most common enemy in the early game. Some examples of this are Skyrim and Mount and Blade, in both of which it is basically impossible to travel any distance without being attacked. I have also been reading about the journeys of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, who seem to have been attacked with quite some frequency. This naturally leads me to ask, how common were they in real life? If they were as common as these games suggest, how did traders avoid or protect themselves from being attacked?

I can not find much information on this subject. I know Russia joined the war against Japan after Germany’s surrender but that’s about all I know. Did they send their Navy? Did they invade Japanese held land in China?

Are there any links between Ancient China & Ancient Egyptian burial practices?

A few years ago I visited the Terracotta Warrior exhibition in Liverpool. I was intrigued by the (approx) 2nd century BC practice in China of great warlords being buried with representations of armies, servants, animals, households etc to serve them in the afterlife. The best example being the Terracotta Army.

This is very close indeed to the much older Egyptian practice of the upper classes being buried with similar types of thing.

Could it be possible that the practice migrated from Egypt to China? Or did these practices probably grow up independently?

How did korean got so influenced by dravidian languages? Dravidian languages are spoken in south indian and brahui in pakistan. If you look at the map korea and south india are so far apart but why is korean similar to dravidian languages?

I saw in a documentary that, allegedly, castles were only built with round towers after the advent of cannon. The basis for this statement was that cannonballs, etc would more easily glance off a round wall rather than a square corner. This makes sense, and from what I’ve been able to find from basic cursory searches, most sources say round castle towers were a much better defense against siege weaponry in general. And the older castles that still stand today seem to mainly feature rectangular or polygonal towers.

That said, when do the first castles with round towers appear? Of course there are not many surviving castles today from before the 14th century (that haven’t been heavily modified since then). But is there any archaeological evidence or otherwise that shows any castles with round towers before that point? If purely mechanical siege weapons were already a threat long before gunpowder, wouldn’t it make sense for round towers to precede cannon? Lastly, did brochs or Irish round towers ever have any influence on castle architecture?

Thanks in advance!

For some context I'm 23 and always had a passion for history. Ive had many jobs and only last year decided to go to uni to study history. I would like to focus on modern history but really enjoy the Roman Empire as well.

Sidenote: I also have autism and have had discrimination in the workplace in past jobs, will this limit or restrict my ability to work as a historian in any way?

Mount and Blade finally launched this month and it got me thinking about why most pre-modern era games maintain this idea where heavy infantry beats spearmen, spearmen beat cavalry, cavalry beat archers etc. It raised in me a few questions like:

1. In pre-modern warfare (before widespread usage of gunpowder) were there really "counters" to unit "types"? Cause I know whenever the Romans ventured too far to the east their heavy infantry was "countered" by horse archers.But were unit "counters" as rigid as video games show them (i.e: spearmen most of the times win against cavalry) or was "countering" more circumstantial?
2. How conscious were military commanders of ideas of "countering", if at all? For example, would a noble in the classical era think of investing in archery ranges since archers are a good counter to the widely used phalanx units?
3. Were it possible that commanders might refrain from adopting a certain fighting style due to non-warfare related reasons? For example I read once (don't know where) that ranged troops were disfavored in the classical period cause "fighting from a distance lacked honor" or something.

As an infantryman on the other side of the Iron Curtain I've always wondered how our Eastern Bloc counterparts compared to our standard western infantry. It seems like every time this question gets brought up, someone "quotes" Stalin with "Quantity has a quality of it's own" implying that Soviet Infantry was just glorified cannon fodder.

I know that the subject of Infantry is simple and each country equips their infantry with a basic understanding of how to survive on the battlefield, but I refuse to accept the common belief that the Soviets put little training into their men and relied on "human wave" tactics to take and hold ground.

I guess I'd like to have a little insight on the readiness, morale, training, employment and general condition of the Soviet Infantry.

Thanks guys.

As someone from a “first-world” country, the older I get, the more uncomfortable I am with those phrases. Are they just racist generalisations based on many countries’ post-colonial hardships? Or is there a point to categorising countries? (infrastructural and economic factors etc.)

what operations could he have been in? He died without saying anything about his jump(s). The only clue i know is his words of "the most fear I ever felt was jumping into active anti-air and MG tracer fire, knowing I could not steer the parachute to avoid it." Obviously the Italians were not known for their prowess in WWII and made few airborne assaults. It was not late in the war enough to be under the auspices of the Germans because he deserted and was arrested by them when Italy did the ol' switchario. So where could he have been dropped and fought?

I recently saw a documentary about the exalted princes of the ancient celts, and the thesis that was argued was that these princes resigned over a few large kingdoms which possibly predated the Phoenicians due to the presence of an vast over-land trade network. The thesis argued that the evidence presented by the archeological findings suggest that a vast trade network existed which was overcome by the much more vast Phoenician network, and that it is possible that the Celtic culture was much more peaceful in its much earlier days than what was described by both Julius Caesar and pre-Julian Roman sources. Is there any more information that we know about this ancient civilization, and how far back can we go before our guesses outnumber our assurances?

I know Caesar liked to lead from the front and get in the action, but my understanding is that mostly meant riding around on his horse yelling encouragements to his men. As far as I know he did not suffer any significant combat injuries in his career. Did he ever kill a foe individually? If yes, how many? Did he kill personally in his younger years as an officer?

So people always talk about the 13 colonies but there were clearly more because Canada. So did the 13 just exclude the Canadian colonies when discussing independence, or were those colonies just always separate? So I guess what I'm asking is, was it 13 out of say 20 colonies that decided to band together, or were the American and Canadian colonies always separate (ex. American colonies interact with each other, Canadian colonies interact with each other, but less interaction between the groups)?

The most prominent examples would be:

St.Petersburg -> Petrograd -> Leningrad -> St.Petersburg

Tsaritsyn -> Stalingrad -> Volgograd

Yekaterinburg -> Sverdlovsk -> Yekaterinburg

Can simple regime change in Russia explain this? But why didn't such name changes happened to Germany or other contemporary European countries as frequently?

It just seems like an incredibly strategic location, particularly for early settlers who relied on rivers for trade and transportation.

A nearby example would be St. Louis, a fairly large city built where the Missouri enters into the Mississippi River.

And if this did happen was it a different kind of PTSD? Like how today shell shock is an issue.

Before the Meiji Restoration Japan was a very isolated and tribal nation, how did from this they could abruptly come in contact with one Western military general and suddenly rapidity industrialize and adopt Western proudction methods and ideas and then prosper massively?

I just got through Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe, and near the end he describes how Aboriginal Australians traded with and visited China. However, in another book I read (Silent Invasion by Clive Hamilton) he says that the aforementioned rumour is false and never happened. So which one is correct? Is there any evidence beyond stories/anecdotes of it occurring?

I am a history major a few years out of college. I went to a good school and had a program that gave me an excellent take on various realms of history and historiography. To be honest though, at the time, I really bungled my senior thesis. It was lame, and I didn't give it enough effort.

I'm at a point of my life where I have rediscovered writing and my passion for history. I would LOVE to give historical writing and research another try, but where to begin? Have I missed my chance?

Most specifically, how do historians determine what to research? How do they know what we don't know, and what we can still learn more about?