Major rivers have typically led to larger populations, empire, etc. Look at the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus or Yalu rivers. And yet the most well known New World empires were all south of the Rio Grande.

North America has the Mississippi system. Even factoring in smallpox, I don't see how there were so relatively few Natives.

Is it as simple as "developed nations don't do archeology within their own borders"? Or "we probably destroyed lots of evidence back when we were developing, the price of progress"?

Or is there an actual answer I haven't been able to find?

My AP US history teacher told us that India offered the colonies war elephants during their fight for independence, but I have not been able to confirm this. Did this happen?

After china's civil war the losing side fled to Taiwan. The People's Republic of China was getting ready to take over Taiwan and capture The remaining soldiers. But the United States said if they did that they would drop a nuclear bomb on Beijing.

Hey. So I'm a person who loves to study history. And since I am around 20-25% Indigenous. One of the things that I've studied the most about was the treatment of Native Americans. Since well, I have ancestors lol.

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One of the things that I always kinda got stuck at was the fact that the US Government wanted to remove the Natives. But they also had boarding schools for the children. This sounds like a stupid question but what I'm wondering is why did they set up boarding schools if their intention was to remove Natives seemingly entirely?

I ask because it occurs to me that my country, the USA, prides itself on having a rich historical tapestry filled with many intermingling peoples. It sounds like Ukraine might have a historical story along these lines as well. I don't know the details of it and I'm not sure if this question is too general, I hope not.

Typically, as a French, English seems much more rational and easier to learn than French with its large collection of grammatical rules, tenses, and exceptions to the rules as numerous as the rules themselves.

So I wonder if it is scholars in one language or the other that willingly pushed the language to one side (and to what end?) rather than just the natural evolution of the language.

I can understand trimming a beard being relatively easy and necessary, but actually getting a close shave is really annoying, not to mention dangerous back in the days of a straight razor. Why would any group of people just decide to start doing so? Answers for both facial shaving and body shaving would be great. Thank you.

I copied this question from another sub because I am really interested in a answer from this sub.

Additionally It would be interesting how long prohibition "worked" before it fell apart.

For example, did the names of abandoned urban centers remain in use e.g. perhaps the Yucatec Maya or other post-classic groups using them as geographic markers? Were any Classical kings of abandoned cities remembered in Maya legend or oral tradition?

Just curious. I've always heard of floods in ancient history in middle East mythologies. It made me wonder if there have been any notable droughts or floods in Europe since we began recording history? I mentioned "AD" era but I'm interested in anything that would have written accounts. Thank you!

I've tried searching online many times but I've never been able to find any mention of this kind of thing taking place, but my grandfather insists it happened to him.

He claims that when they were bringing him and the rest of the troops back from Germany by train, to be redeployed in the Pacific, that they "took away our ammunition" just before they arrived at a station in France.

He says they never took away their ammunition at any other time during the war, (and that this was one reason why he remembers it so distinctly), but that in this case they did so because they "were afraid the soldiers might shoot at the civilians".

The reason they were worried about this, apparently, was because when they arrived at the station, my grandfather says the French civilians were screaming and cursing at the soldiers and throwing rotten vegetables at the train etc.

Strangely, my grandfather has no explanation for why they would have been upset with the Americans, and it runs contrary to my own impression that the French were likely thankful for being liberated and so on.

My personal theory is perhaps the train was still in Germany (perhaps in or near Alsace-Lorraine?) and my grandfather was confused as to their exact location. But he swears it was France and that the crowd was swearing in French etc.

So my question is, did this really happen? And if so, why were the French civilians angry at the Americans? AND, if it wasn't French civilians, then who was it? And why were they throwing rotten vegetables at a train full of American soldiers?

This is a common argument I’ve heard - that disease epidemics often swept across the continent well in advance of direct contact between settlers and Native people. However in recent years there has also been a lot of pushback against these claims. I happened to be reading a chapter in the Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas by archeologist Matthew Liebmann and he summarizes a number of studies challenging this view:

“Across the lands known today as the United States and Canada, archaeologists have found no evidence to support the notion that pandemic disease events swept across the continent prior to direct, face-to-face contacts with Europeans. In fact, Dean Snow has documented increasing population among the Mohawk Iroquois in upstate New York during the mid-1500s. His studies (e.g. 1995) suggest that significant depopulation did not occur among the Haudenosaunee prior to direct and sustained encounters with non-Indigenous peoples.”

And further:

“Eric Jones (2014) has used spatial analysis to model the relationships between the timing and location of epidemic disease events across North America. His results found no evidence of diseases spreading widely over short periods of time in the sixteenth century. Individual disease events afflicted local populations during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries but did not spread over long distances until the 1690s. This finding corresponds with regional studies of the Upper Mississippi Valley (Betts 2006), the Northeast Haudenosaunee (Snow 1995; Snow and Lanphear 1988) and the Great Lakes Wendat-Tionontate (Warrick 2003), which all document highly localized disease and depopulation events that did not occur simultaneously.”

That said, are there accounts of disease spreading faster than settlers in some regions and time periods? Does he overstate the case a bit?

In case of victory, did they intent the US and Canada to become a colony of Germany and on taking cities like New York and Boston under Nazi rule.

This happens in the man in the high castle, but we’re these the intentions of Hitler during WWII? Had they won, did they have the resources to enforce their rule thousands of miles apart thru the Atlantic? Or did they just want Europe and colonies in Africa? Did they actually want to colonize the US? Or just keep it independent and have some sort of cold “Cold War” between the US and Nazi Germany?

I've been researching heraldry in the Holy Roman Empire and I wonder if there are any coats of arms or even symbols for duchies and/or families in the 9th, 10th or 11th century? For example the duchy of Bavaria or King Otto I.?

The Pacific Northwest is a hole in my knowledge base, but I know whales feature prominently in indigenous art and stories.

What was the importance of whales to the nations of the Pacific Northwest? How did they hunt whales? Were whales a large portion of the diet, or was taking a whale a relatively rare occurrence? Were hunters free to take whales, or were hunts organized by leaders, or portions of the kill subject to tax by secular or ceremonial elites?

Thanks in advance!

The Europeans won because of vastly superior weaponry, but was the difference really THOUSANDS of years? Was it really like taking guns to the Stone Age?

In countries such as Greece, Spain, Italy or Portugal there are many villages with low populations 0-300, a lot of these villages are possibly 1000s of years old with lots of history but it feels almost impossible to find records of history in those villages without travelling there yourself. So how do historians find records? Do they contact the government or what?

Was it power grab by Yeltsin or Not ?

I am researching an anti-submarine tactic that was employed by escorts during World War 2. The name of the tactic is "Step-Aside". It was developed in September 1943 and communicated to ships via radio. It was designed to counter the German acoustic torpedo. I want to read an original description of this tactic, out of a manual or something. Where should I look?