Let’s assume I’m in England. How far back would I be able to understand and be understood by other English speakers? At what point would the language become too different to understand?

I’ve always thought that humans knew fruits and vegetables were edible by observing animals eating it. Not much problem as you can it raw as it is (most fruits that is). But how about rice ? As we know the most common way of eating rice is by cooking it so how and when did humans start to eat rice ? Did they just ate it raw at first or did the first person that saw paddy just straight up cooked it somehow.

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Hello AskHistorians! A little bit of background, I'm taking a university class that looks at technology in world history and my assignment is to write a paper about either the historiography of technology or an instance of technology/technological system as it relates to one of the themes of the class. In particular, the theme I hope to tie into is that technological development is not uniform and some civilizations can be among the most powerful/advanced while still be lacking in one or more fields.

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What I would like to investigate is the Second Boer War and the British Army's cavalry, or more specifically just the horses and the system the British had in acquiring, transporting, and fielding them throughout the war while comparing them to other nation(s) in the same time period (probably just the United States). The British Army purchased a considerable amount of horses throughout the conflict however a sizable amount of these horses were wasted before ever reaching the front, either succumbing en route or being next to useless in the field. The overall horsemanship and management skills of the British seem to be extremely lacking when compared with those of the United States. I have yet to define a thesis idea for this topic, however my first goal is to ensure I can find enough resources to use for my arguments which are likely to be along the lines of "despite the British Empire being the world's superpower, their horsemanship and cavalry systems were woefully behind other modern powers like the United States."

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So far I've found a few interesting primary and secondary sources that I think could help my research:

• The Providing of Remounts for our Cavalry and Artillery, Colonel F. S. Russell, dated July 3, 1885.
• Procurement, Transportation, Conditioning, Casualties, and Acclimation of Animals by the British in the Boer War, Major Terril E. Price, dated 1930. Appears to be a cavalryman's assessment at Fort Leavenworth Kansas (Command and General Staff School).
• War Horse: A History of the Military Horse and Rider, Louis DiMarco, 2008.

What I'm hoping to be able to find and possibly acquire (digital) copies of are the following:

• US Army Cavalry manual for the 1890s-1900 or similar enough time frame to the Second Boer War
• US regulations and laws concerning the transport of equids via railroads during this time period
• US Army veterinary manual
• British Army Cavalry manual for the Second Boer War, anywhere from the 1890s to 1900.
• British Army Remount system budget and manuals/policies, in particular I'd like to know how many funds and personnel were involved in the remount system, from procurement to issuance to cavalry units
• British Army reports on the loss of horses and mules throughout the war
• British Army veterinary manuals
• A source on the composition of cavalry units, were they English, Australian, Indian? Were they aristocracy, middle class, poor?
• A good, preferably more recent, overview/summary of the Second Boer War
• A history of the British army remount service

Again, I haven't yet determined what exactly I intend to argue, but I'm hoping in all of your readings you may have come across some of these sources (or similar) that you might feel could help me investigate British horsemanship in the Second Boer War. This list is by no means inclusive as I'm sure there are sources out there that I don't know to look for. My university has access to a number of databases so I should be able to access suggestions that are on JSTOR or other similar sites.

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Any help, advice, or encouragement is appreciated! Thanks!

I've always been told that the only reason West Virginia left the wider state of Virginia was because the latter chose to join the Confederacy, but several counties seceded from Virginia so that they could rejoin the Union.

So, if that was the case, why wasn't Virginia reunified after the Union won the Civil War?

I'm interested in learning about the tumult of 1848 at a European level (as opposed to the revolutions in one country specifically), given how important that year seems to be in European history. Most of the books I've come across look like pop history books, so I thought I'd ask here. I would prefer books that study the insurrections from a political economic standpoint, if that is a tool historians have found useful for analyzing these many, separate uprisings.

Thanks in advance! And also apologies in advance if this violates subreddit rules.

In a university lecture today my lecturer claimed that if there had been a war between indigenous tribes and European forces the indigenous tribes would have stood a good chance.

He justified this claim by saying that North America had a bigger population, they had more developed agriculture, and that guns wouldn't have been a big advantage as they weren't actually deadlier, just easier to use.

These claims struck me as suspicious, but I'm always happy to learn more on the subject.

We all know the classic German helmet and it’s Great War predecessor, and while I’m sure it was fairly common, other times like in All quiet on the western front, you only see (movie version) men with the spiked helmet. Other times, they’re just wearing a cap. I’m sure all three were used, but what I want to know is what was the most common?

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They built an extremely expensive and complex railway (for the time) just to get the cotton from Liverpool to Manchester. Why not just open up the mills in Liverpool?

I got a financial statement today, and on the envelope it asked me to go paperless, as its simpler and safer. However I like to keep my paperwork in a filing cabinet because i never can tell if the servers 15 years from now are going to have my documents that I may need.

That got me thinking about how historians are going to deal with this issue? A lot of the primary records are financial documents, letters and other papers that groups and civilizations keep. But 200 years from now, how are historians going to reference our records if they are all stored on a hard drive somewhere?