I've extensively studied European History but no clues on American History, so sorry for sounding dumb. I need to define the setting of a "Western" screenplay I'm co-writing. The idea is to have a character travel by train as far as possible, and then travel by horse (cue the usual Western setting). This would mean the railroads aren't completed yet, there's actually cities where he comes from and still (semi)wild lands where he's travelling to. I've tried to do some research but there's limited sources in my city that cover that period. My understanding is that this could happen in the 19th Century but before the Civil War? What sort of year could that be? Is it plausible? And what cities or geographical areas should I look into?

How did Norse colonies in Greenland manage mercantilist export and a society centered on land ownership without currency? How did people advance in society, and what were their ambitions? How did they store value long term?

Here's what I think I know (but would love expert POV on!):

• Norse settlement of Greenland was established primarily to ship walrus ivory and falcons back to Iceland, from which back to Europe. This trade happened once a year, when Iceland Norse traders came and wintered with the Greenland Norse.
• The Norse settlements in Greenland were cattle and sheep ranches, owned by a single family but supported by slave and "hired" labor. Land ownership was where it was at, especially if you could rent some of your land to a church.
• The Norse had no currency to speak of. Silver by weight, including "hack silver" from ruined jewelry, was sometimes used as a medium of trade, but especially local trade was barter-based.

Am I correct as far as I go?

How much upward mobility was there? How did it work? If you were hired labor, how did you build wealth? Did you end up owning a few of your boss's sheep?

Why did people spend centuries building "permanent" holdings in Greenland rather than taking their wealth back to Iceland or even Scandinavia, where they could use it in a bit more comfort?

I have follow-on questions, as I'm running a roleplaying game set in Totally Not Norse Greenland, but this seems like a good chunk to tackle first.

Basically I'm wondering why there were no real urban/'developed' civilizations in North America (by which I mean mainly the modern USA/Canada - let's exclude mesoamerica)? I understand that there is considerable evidence that there was substantial urbanization prior to European arrival - sites like Cahokia and whatnot - and of course you have the Ancestral Puebloans and what have you, but all of those civilizations and cultures are, to my knowledge, from around 1000-1600 CE. While down south you have stuff like the Olmec and whatnot and there seems to have been what we would recognize as established civilizations from BCE right up until the arrival of the Conquistadors.

Why is it that urbanization/'civilization' came to North America so much later than Mesoamerica and South America, and why was it apparently so much more fragile, having died out on its own without the need for conquest unlike the its southern counterparts?

You are able to move your armies through the land of neutral lords to get to land of your enemy. Was this historical or was it viewed as aggression?

Like for example religious figures. What separates fact and fiction.

Aside from the European side, a bit Indian context would be appreciated.

I was arguing with my dad and he considers Ramayana and Mahabharata and the Vedas to be history. I can't quite digest that. He doesn't offer and explanation for that. I consider them mythology since we have no evidence that they existed and that we had flying vehicles and magical weapons.

I would like to know further about these things. And from my limited experience, history gets a lot more confusing when you go further back. There's too much information that you dunno if they are valuable or just noise or there is too little information to back up a claim and then the lines between fact and fiction gets blurry or as in the case of India, prey much disappears.

I remember reading in one place something about when a couple got married at balls and such that they were invited to they don’t dance, only single people dance. If a man danced with his wife it was very rare and would be very noticeable or seen as a bit bold. I always think back to this sometimes is that true? I know historical films aren’t always best for reference but even in earlier eras like for pride and prejudice you never see Elizabeth Bennett’s parents or older people dancing. In Victorian films it’s usually they can dance on their wedding day. I kinda think that that’s no fun that you can’t dance after you’re married. What if you married young? Anyways if someone could clear this up for me that would be great.

I asked this question on the Short answers to simple questions thread, so I will just copy my whole question from there.

I recently read Tony Judt's book Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945 and I have a question regarding the economic transition of former socialist countries.

On page 690 of the book there is the following paragraph:

Instead, foreign investment resembled not the sustained post-World War Two effort that helped reconstruct Western Europe but rather the piecemeal privatesector involvement that had followed the Versailles settlement: invested in good times and withdrawn when the going got tough.15 As in the past, therefore, eastern Europeans have had to compete with the West on a markedly uneven playing field, lacking local capital and foreign markets and able to export only low-margin foods and raw materials or else industrial and consumer goods kept cheap thanks to low wages and public subsidy.

And this is the footnote 15 at the bottom of the page:

15 A notable exception to this story is Estonia, which has benefitted hugely from its virtual adoption by its Scandinavian neighbours. In 1992, when it left the ruble zone, 92 percent of Estonia's trade was with the former Soviet Union. Five years later over three quarters of that trade was with the West, much of it across the Baltic.

My question is are there any books that someone could recommend me that look into the question of economic transition of different European countries? Or perhaps just a book about economic transition of Estonia and how it differed compared to other countries?

We mostly hear about Germanic people such as the Goths or Vandals when they're moving into the Roman Empire. But I imagine not all Germanic people who lived between the Baltic and the Black Sea successfully moved to the west and south.

Did these people come under the rule of the Huns? And what did this entail? Did they continue to live in their villages and just had to pay taxes? Were there intermarriages between Hun rulers and Germanic elites? Did they become slaves? Or did the Huns kill massive amounts of Germanic people, so there wouldn't be a large population of them to govern anyway?

I know there was a huge variation in how the political systems in these city-states were structured. The oligarchy in Sparta, the Republic in Rome and the democracy in Athens were very different. I find it fascinating, however, that all of the mentioned, as well as other Mediterranean city-states, were ruled by a collective rather than one person. How did this happen and did it happen other places than in the Mediterranean area?

To my understanding archipelago countries are incredibly difficult to manage even today. How did people in the 1300-1500s govern an island empire that large?

When Napoleon came back from Elba, how did he regain control over France and it’s army? Didn’t they already put a new monarch in power?

So, I'm an amateur who is currently reading Herodotus as my first step in my burgeoning classical history hobby, and I'm curious to understand if modern historians have a different understanding of how the line of Cyrus came to an end and how Darius ended up taking power. I know that there'd necessarily be a lot of conjecture to this, but I'd be interested in hearing what anybody has to offer as an alternative to the horse-vulva tale.

I have plans to read Briant as a more contemporary resource to the history of Achaemenid Persia in the near future, but I'm an impatient such-and-such...

As an aside, Darius actually strikes me as being a lot like Augustus, personality-wise: both of them seem to be simultaneously the most utterly shameless, ruthless cynics whose version of events are still commonly believed because they happened to be best propagandists of their age... and also the most genuinely fervent, pious restorers of their old-time national values and honor as they saw it, restorers of sorts. Dunno if that's a stupid comment, but there you go.

Looking for a good read on history? Any suggestions? Thank you.

My boyfriend and I are watching Forged in Fire and both finalist blades broke during the testing, leading us to a debate. And this question: how often did blades break in battle?

Edited to add: blades during the roman era.

Edit: to give a fictional character his due, he's a Welsh monk who lives in England, not an English monk.

I've seen this concept ~ of the gods defeating another power and imprisoning them ~ in Greek myths and tales, but I'm curious to know if it's found in other ancient religions. So far, my research has been frustrated (perhaps I'm using the wrong resources or search terms). Does anyone know if this is a recurring theme, a modern story element or isolated to just a few belief systems?

Can anybody get me a reputable source of Pepsi being the 6th largest military in the world? friend of mine is claiming about Pepsi trading its soda for vodka cause soviet money was worthless, and when out of booze, they gave them a bunch of scrapable warships, making them the 6th largest military force for a brief period of time.

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Is this true, or is he wrong? Or a better question, how much reputable truth is to this larger then life claim?

I’ve read about Manteo and Wanchese going to London. But I feel like there’s a lot more to know.

Are there any historians that wrote in the way like Plutarch? Historically or literarily? especially those who wrote in the form of biographies.

Any language is fine. I know that the Chinese historian Sima Qian also wrote biographies of Chinese historical figures, and he divided them into categories like emperors, generals, intellectuals, merchants, etc.