Don't know if this metapost is allowed. But I think flair would be popular. It's so depressing to click on a great question with a lot of responses to see them all deleted and no answer.

Basically every surviving aboriginal / native / indigenous people (which word is even the correct generic one?!) I know of today is pretty much a badly mistreated minority. Japan, Canada, America, Australia etc

Have there been any "happily ever after" stories for the original inhabitants after colonists started settling on their lands?

I'm not a historian and I'm not exactly sure how to ask this question. I understand that during the Age of Discovery the typical process of a European power making a territorial claim in North America involved (1) sending an explorer across the ocean on a ship (2) planting a flag and claiming a parcel of land for a particular empire (3) defending the territory against rival claims particularly in war. For an island, this is relatively straight forward: land on Hispaniola, plant a Castillian flag, build fortifications and settlements, and defend the island from English or Portuguese attack. But on the land mass of the continent itself, it appears that history followed a different course. Here territorial claims often appear to be made by drainage zone. For example, French Louisiana was the the Missouri/Mississippi drainage area. Rupert's Land was the Hudson Bay drainage area. Possibly (I'm not sure) the St. Laurence and Hudson River Drainage played a role in territorial claims for New France and New Netherlands, respectively. Why were watersheds so important in defining territorial claims? How could England claim Rupert's land as far west as the Rocky Mountains before setting foot within 1000km of this western limit? Did these claims tend to be respected internationally? Why did the European powers not make bolder claims to the entire North American continent? Why did France not recognize the Vatican brokered Treaty of Tordesillas that would have granted much of North America to Spain?

I am aware that he founded the religion in India but he was born in Nepal so I am trying to ascertain his lineage. I ask because I have seen various sources claim both.

My wife was telling me about Sukkot, and how important actually using an etrog is to certain branches of Judaism. But the citrus is notoriously hard to grow outside certain regions. So we got to wondering if Jewish people used alternatives before the last century or so? Or if not, how did they get the right fruit for the ceremony?

Modern fantasy and fiction has Zombies, Vampires, ghosts, necromancers, etc, but how did the Romans think of the undead? Did they have these same or similar tropes and arch types? Did they tell horror or fantasy involving these things?

What do historians do in an average work day?

Sorry about the title! Posted prematurely and currently trying to delete the post, feel free to ignore.

I'm coming here only with the works of Sebastian Junger ("Tribe," mainly) and I've got a rough understanding of the writings of "Apo," which basically say that the development of capitalism is not really a "natural" thing that developed in anthropology, but instead developed, I suppose, at some point in recent history, mainly (I suppose?) from Europe to the "Middle East."

​

Meaning that, in short, in natural, "tribal" societies, people tend to do everything communally, right? At some point, some villager in France stopped needing to just do whatever he did to survive, support his family and donating to the Church or what have you, and began opening up a bank and charging interest, right? Or having a business based around not supporting the community, but just accumulating money.

​

So if that is at all correct, are there any writings in this rough direction from a scholar as to when "capitalism" (I appreciate that is a really ambiguous term and I'm using it pretty vaguely) began?

Seems odd that no ancient chinese fortification had any machicolations or murder holes. How did they deal with attackers that already reached the base of the walls?

This question popped in my head after seeing a clip of a colossal alligator on a golf course in Florida (you know the one). I realized I can't remember ever learning anything in school history classes about encounters between settlers and these animals. I'm particularly interested because back then the natural habitat of the alligators was basically untouched, meaning that extremely large specimens would probably have been more common, and I'm curious about how settlers reacted to the existence of these modern dinosaurs.

Mary Beard stated that the assassinations of Julius Caesar and Caligula reflected the shift in Roman Politics, explaining that when Caesar was killed none of the conspirators attempted to murder his remaining family, while in Caligula's circumstance the assassins murdered his whole family (except for Claudius). My question is why? Why didn't the assassins kill all of Caesar's family (his wife etc.) or why did the assassins kill Caligula's family (wife etc.)?

My father, raised on a farm in north Texas in the 1930's, had a neighbor who used the cheapest possible fuel in their tractor. This stuff had the blackest smoke, and the most horrible smell of anything he'd ever smelled. This stuff was called "distillate," and could apparently be used in farm equipment at that time. It wasn't some form of alcohol, and it didn't seem to be any reasonable form of petroleum product, but he never did really know.

I learned a lot about WWII history and it is known the carriers were not in port but WHERE were they?

How far away from Hawaii? How far away from the IJN fleet? Were they to the east, west, north or south of Hawaii? Did they almost run in the japanese by accident?

Bonus question: Were they just away on training or were they fully armed on patrol?

P.S. I hope military history questions are allowed .. didnt see in the rules that its not but who knows ..

I am not too familiar with the history of the colonization of Australia but it seems to have rough similarities with America’s. Was there ever a Wild West era or similar in Australia?

I have heard that many people are considering changing Columbus Day to Native People’s Day. What did he do wrong? Or do we just have a misunderstood view of what actually happened?

Did you just go to a barber and give instructions more or less the same as today? Based on statues and drawings, people clearly got haircuts, so how did it work? Were there North Korea style preset cuts?

I've been traveling with a friend of mine who has diabetes and uses an insulin pump. I've come to be very familiar with the numbers he should see on his machine, but he tells me this reading would be very different in America and that the pumps are even incompatible with one another. It led me to wonder what this conversation sounded like when America was first industrializing in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Were there political and/or business movements inside America to keep the Imperial system? Were there movements of people who found the imperial system ineffective or even stupid in comparison? Wouldn't business leaders have seen the huge potential in standardizing with the rest of the world, if for no other reason than to sell their widgets globally (or as globally as the market was back then)? And if so, did they try to push the Metric system (even if only for their own financial benefit) to deaf ears?

I've heard arguments today that switching [to metric] would be economically disastrous (though this may be incorrect in itself), but surely there existed a time when this wouldn't have been such a big deal. Finally, have there been any semi-successful efforts to switch over to Metric within America?