I know the modern idea of romantic relationships really took off for the common people more in the 19th century but would people very long ago have had anything resembling gf/bf type relationships? I’m not talking like noblemen or anything, I mean like commoners and peasants. I’m sure flings and stuff happened but did people look at them the same way?

Or were marriages basically mostly arranged and economic/practical in purpose, with most people not having more than one partner in their life? Also were peasant weddings officiated by priests and honored by law in the same way they are today?

I'm aware that the Emperors required several palaces and vassals to be stocked and ready for when the Court passed through but I can never find more details.

How large of a group would be traveling with the Emperor? 10? Hundreds? Would the Emperor and his pals always stay in monasteries or Inns until they reached an imperial palaces for the next few months?

Or were the massive tent pavilions set up every night on the road?

Did the chancellors who write the charters and other important works travel in wagon-archives or were stuff stored in the palaces, scattering everything around the Empire?

Would the Emperor travel in armor on horseback or did he ride in wagons in more comfortable clothing?

So according to descriptions of the Roman maniple system, each individual maniple of hastati would be separated from the other by an empty space roughly the same size of the maniple itself. The principes maniples would position themselves behind that empty space, and the same with the triarii. Thus creating a checkerboard formation.

But how did the enemies react to the many empty spaces between each maniple? I guess a phalanx would not attempt to exploit them as it would mean breaking formation, but what about the Gauls or samnites which, to my understanding, weren't deployed as phalanxes.

Obviously many of our oldest and most enduring stories and myths come from oral traditions. It can be difficult however to imagine what that actually entailed. Assuming then I'm one of the first people to hear Homer tell the Iliad, what do I experience? Do I have any idea of what I'm about to hear? Was it more akin to a well-attended performance or an intimate fireside story?

Since the word "Hinduism" is a word coined by the British to bring all the various cultures, castes and practices of the Indian subcontinent into one umbrella, what did pre-colonial Indians refer to their religion as ? It cannot be "Sanatana Dharma" as championed by Hindu Nationalists of today, so what was it ? Did they just go by their respective castes ? Or did they use "Brahmanism" ?

And if possible, I'd like to know when the terms "Vaishnavism" and "Shaivism" arose to denote the worship of Vishnu and Shiva. Thank you.

I've not studied history, so I was wondering, if you are looking to learn about something a very specific event such as a journey a king made, where on earth and how on earth would you begin to look? Is it just a case of reading lots and hoping you randomly find what your after? I've been searching for something specific and find bits of random info that I'm after in the most unusual places here there and everywhere, but hardly anything when I specifically search for it, whats the trick to finding out what happened in a specific time in history? like finding sources first hand? I can only ever find small bits of first hand sources and lots of second hand sources which briefly touch on what I'm after but don't give the full story and leave no references.

Dear historians, I'd like to ask you if some or any prostitutes lived in brothels in 1700s London or Paris.

I know some prostitutes were married and were as likely to be thieves as sex workers but I can't find any information on this topic. Is it possible that an orphaned girl would be taken/sold to the owner and actually live there?

I am an author and I'm doing some research for a new series. Just throwing it out there to avoid any eyebrow raises :)

Supermarkets existed before barcodes, but how did the checkout function? They are so ubiquitous now that I have a hard time visualizing how a busy supermarket checkout could calculate prices at a reasonable speed. Even if the price was directly on the product, how were price changes handled? I assume supermarkets had pretty advanced cash registers with useful functions before barcodes, but with the amount of products available in one store, was memorization crucial to the job? Was a supermarket cashier considered a professional job at some point in history?

I just watched a man demonstrate how to load and fire a civil war matchlock musket. And it's complex.

Would it maybe have made sense to have musketeer be a 2 man job? 2 men, 2 muskets, while man 1 is aiming and shooting musket 1, man 2 is reloading musket 2, hands musket 2 to man 1 and starts reloading musket 1. One Shooter, one loader. Can this in any way be more efficient than doing it the normal way?

Did ancient civilizations know things about their history that we no longer know? If so, how was that information lost?

I know the answer to the first question is probably yes, but I want to know why we know it's yes.

By what I’ve read, this feud was extremely bloody and almost personal, with the pope wishing to destroy the Hohenstaufen bloodline. How did others perceive this (in hindsight) obvious perversion of the crusade ideals? Were they worried about papal overreach? Does this feud in any way tie into the end of the crusader era?

It seems as though the appearance of Viking raids was rather sudden and dramatic shift from the status quo. Was there some event (climactic, political etc.) that encouraged the beginning of seaborne raids? Simply: why did it start happening, and why in 793?

Rudolf Hess is probably most famous for being the last prisoner in Spandau, but I hear surprisingly little about his famous flight and its repercussions.

My understanding is that Mr Hess had the intention of meeting with a member of the royal family (Duke of Hamilton) he was on good terms with, and convincing him that peace should be made with Germany. I suppose after this, the Duke would somehow influence Britain to leave the war, and Hess would return to Germany celebrated as a man of peace.

This sounds like a horrible, ridiculous idea that had no chance of success. Hess nor the Duke had the authority to end the war, just the authority to ask their bosses nicely.

Furthermore, of all the ways to engage in diplomacy, the way he went about it seems unprecedented and absurd. It’s like if Kamala Harris snuck out in the middle of the night and flew a solo flight to Siberia because she knows someone related to Putin who can convince him to end the war.

I feel this goes beyond bad judgement seems more like a mental breakdown or drug-induced craziness. I don’t know much about Hess other than he seemed to have a much lower profile than other high-ranking Nazis and seemingly never exhibited behaviour like this prior to the flight. What happened?

So there are a number of quotes of various attribution that say things like “war is chaos and Americans live in chaos” and things like that. But the more I’ve studied American military history, it seems that their logistical skill and organization is really what lead them to many of their victories. Where did this reputation for chaos come from?