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I've recently sank my teeth into the rich, red, tender meat that is Mesoamerican history, and I find it delectable; like Ancient Greece but with bigger cities and much more blood. I also have a strange fascination with having your friends for dinner, so when I learned of a potential crossover between the two my appetite was piqued. I was hoping someone with a more experienced palate for Mesoamerican history than myself could satiate my hunger. I've had my fill of these food metaphors and they're starting to go a little stale, so i'll stop. Now, onto the main course of my question;

In accounts written by men in the entourage of conquistadors, there are several mentions of cannibalism being practiced by the savage pagan Indians (mostly Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures), no doubt to give just cause to their 'pacification' of them. Some people (such as Marvin Harris) suggest that, due to a protein deficiency in the diet, cannibalism actually made up a significant (and particularly grim) portion of the Mesoamerican diet.

What are the veracity of these claims? To what degree were reports of cannibalism exaggerated by the Spanish conquerors? And, most importantly, what role did cannibalism play in Mesoamerican culture, particularly in their unique and fascinating pantheon?

I've never been into history, but I would love to learn more about the middle ages! Is there a good book about the middle ages that won't make me feel like I'm reading a textbook? I know it's probably a huge request, seeing as the middle ages span a long time...

Specifically, I'm reading a book for a historical research class where the author quotes Curtis Munson as saying in February 1942 that "we are drifting into a treatment of the Japanese corresponding to Hitler's treatment of the Jews."

My understanding was that we knew that Hitler was trying to expel the Jews, we had "maxed" out our immigration allowances of them and sent many back prior to the outbreak of war (The St. Louis was sent back in May of 1939), but we didn't necessarily know he was treating them as animals until the concentration camps were discovered.

Obviously I need to know more, but specifically, was Munson talking about just dumping them into camps, or did we know more? Was it rumors that Munson chose to believe, but no one else took as fact?

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Note: obligitary "I'm not questioning the Holocaust", I want to know more about what the United States and our allies knew of it after the fall of Paris and the closure of Fortress Europe.

In multiple forms of media, most notably the Assassin’s Creed game series I’ve seen an odd kind of sailing vessel; its main feature is that it uses its massive battering ram on the prow to attack. Did any such ships really exist, to be designed for slamming into enemy ships? If so, how did the ships minimize the damage to themselves?

I’ve always wanted to know how book keeping, ledgers, ownership of private proberty, tax records, etc. were organized and used and how accurate reports were during ancient Rome.

I’m reading, “The Storm Before the Storm” by Mike Duncan and he was briefly explaining the social hierarchy and the differences of rights between a full Roman citizen and that of the Latin citizens and their Latin Rights - to use his example - I finally wanted to ask the following questions that I always thought about.

What would prevent a Latin citizen from lying to gain full Roman citizenship? Was there some sort of indentification process?

What would prevent a land owner from saying he had already paid his taxes when in fact he hadn’t? Was there a ledger kept and if so how accurate were the records?

Owners of private property - were there documents that contained information of parceled land and who owned what?

Logisics during ancient times had always had me curious - how often was poor record keeping exploited, was ownership and the proof of private propery public information, etc. Surely they were organized, but I would love to learn more about how record keeping actually was during anicent Rome. Thank you

So probably not a very exciting question but something I had kinda wondered recently.

I have heard of eastern native peoples farming things like corn (among other things I would imagine) but others maintained hunter/gatherer societies. More specifically, you hear of plains Indians living off of hunting buffalo and following those herds, or the coastal Salish surviving off of fishing for salmon but don’t hear much about their farming practices. Is this an accurate representation? Or did these native tribes also farm? If they did not, why not? Wouldn’t they learn of those practices through trade with other tribes? Wouldn’t it make more sense to be able to support much larger populations through farming, as was possible for mesoamerican city-states?

Thank you in advance for your insight!

I'm toying with the idea of doing some historical videos for video editing practice and to indulge my history hobby. We've heard so much about the roman republic and empire but there's not much media wise about the kingdom that came before it that I've seen. Can anybody suggest some textbooks covering the beginnings of Rome?

I was curious about Roman spycraft, and found mention of the frumentarii, agents in rebus and Speculatores, but most of these seem to have been pariamrily focused on internal issues, domestic control or battlefield reconnaissance. Was there a dedicated Roman spy agency? How would Romans find out about political intrigue outside their frontiers?

If it helps narrow the question, I'm curious mostly about how Rome would have been aware of goings on within the various Germanic tribes around Trajans rule.

Because while it was absolutely awful that Hitler planned the death of a large country's worth of people, the Slavs had half of one continent(Eastern Europe) and the entirety of another(counting Russia).

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The first edition of Microsoft released in 1985, so it's outside of the 20-year barrier.

Hi r/askhistorians! I’m writing my senior thesis in history about the moral panic around D&D in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I was wondering if anyone here might have anymore secondary sources on this? I found one, that was Joseph Laycock’s Dangerous Games. I’ve been looking around for a year and it’s been kind of hard coming up with histories of the game written by professional historians. There’s a couple more written by amateur historians.

Also, I’m dying to get my hands on an archive with publications made by B.A.D.D. (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons). I went to the Dole Archive at my university which has files from Bob Dole’s time in Congress and they had a folder from his time on the cult sub-committee, but the D&D folder only had one paper and it was a newspaper clipping.

It may sound like a weird question, but I want to become better at reading historical texts and remembering the information in them. Do you read the book several times? Do you take notes? If you do, how do you take notes, especially for very long books? How long does it take you to read a book?

Thank you!

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Rome lasted a long, long, long time. Even within countries as young as the US names go in and out of fashion all the time. Names like Aggie or Gertrude that were relatively common just a century ago are kinda weird sounding today. No doubt Rome, in its long history, has had similar shifts in the popularity of names. What were some of those shifts? And, similarly, are there names that were just classics, which remained common throughout all the eras of Rome?

I just saw it in wikipedia that there was no military legacy for it. Is it true at all? (Sorry for my english)

Any literature reviews out there that examine this topic specifically? Looking for a study similar to the one that examines the consensus of man made climate change amongst climate scientists, for example. Thanks!