The Ancient identity system was more about language. Romans saw Celts as barbarians, for example, even though they were both European and had the same phenotype. I know the modern terms and understanding of race comes from the Colonial era, but why did it shift? And what caused this? Any works written on this subject would be much appreciated!

And have we ever thought about switching?

Let's assume I have a valid casus belli, how do I exactly declare war? Do I just start marching my troops into his land and let him figure it out? Or do I send an envoy to tell him? And if I do, how long should I wait after the envoy left?

Long story short, I've noticed a distressing number of individuals in the local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism, including the head of the local chapter where I live, have been telling me an increasing number of things I am quite sure aren't entirely true.

I know for a fact that "Medieval swords were absolutely never sharp, they were used as clubs because armor existed!" is pretty blatantly untrue. But now they're enforcing leather armor as a rule instead of gambeson. The leader of the local chapter believes that gambeson was actually a myth. I'm incredibly frustrated and figured I'd ask an actual historian for validation at this point.

Well, I guess long story short is a lie at this point. I apologize if the phrasing of my question is confusing, I'm a wannabe fantasy writer myself, but I at least strive for accuracy in weapons and armor.

To follow up, when a famine occurs in a population, is it due to an actual scarcity of calorie-containing food in a geographic area?

To what extent do cultural norms affect the ratio of available calories that the biosphere of an area can provide to the amount of calories actually used for consumption by a population?

Why couldn’t (or don’t) starving people convert to a diet of calorie rich insect protein for example? There are plenty of stories about people eating leather and cats during famines - why not grubs and ant eggs?

This question as a whole may be leaning more science-ily than history-ily - but do we have examples of people (individually or as groups) choosing to starve due to cultural preferences regarding diet when plentiful culturally discouraged options abound?

What defines/delimits a “famine food”? Are there recognizable patterns for the stages of reintegration of a former famine food into the standard diet of a population (lobsters in new england for example)?

Basically just that. It seems pretty clear from the dialogues that Plato didn't put any stock behind the Pantheon as an actual thing, but he does refer often to "God." So what did he mean by "God?" How did this apparent monotheistic concept grow out of the Greek pantheistic religion? Who was "God" to the ancient Greek philosophers?

Recently, someone that I know made the claim that the only people who had to wear the pink triangle were Jews and Romani people. Is it true that no one who was considered otherwise Aryan had to wear the pink truamgle and that the only gay victims of the Holocaust were in fact Jews and Romani?

I am subscribed to the following youtube "historians":

Kings and Generals

Simple History

The Great War

Invicta

ITS HISTORY

Feature History

Historia Civilis

Military History Visualized

Military History for Adults

Baz Battles

Epic History TV

Ten Minute History

Potential History

To what extent is it okay to use the information provided in their videos as a source?

Now I am not talking about this in an academic sense.

I am asking this question because while I did start reading history books, I still have most of my "knowledge" from the afromentioned channels. And because I am so interested in history I often have historical discussions about various topics in places like Discord with my friends and fellow gamers.

Hence I am asking to what extent it is okay to use the "knowledge" gained in those videos to engage in such amateurish historical debates where nobody really has a degree in history or other kinds of such qualifications. Obviously if someone were to suddenly start using a book as a source, that one would handily win against anything I could throw against it from my youtube videos. Though the question is if it is still a discussion between amateurs then if one uses actual citiations from books then.

I am very interested to see what actual historians or atleast people with a vast knowledge of history think about this.

I hope I got my point across. Reading what I wrote again it seems pretty weird to me lol and I fear people will misunderstand me or not understand what I am asking at all. English is not my main tongue so thats an issue.

I'm making flashcards on World War 1 and got to the Female Red Guards of the Finnish Civil War, I continued to read upon the Finnish Civil War and noticed that it talks about the transition of Finland from the Russian Empire to an independent state, a sovereign state, others sometime refer to Finland as a nation or a country but i'm not sure what is correct.

I'm looking at some videos about city population and it seems that Rome just falls of the map, from a million people to under 200,000. Why did this happen and why was it so seemingly permanent as compared to cities like Constantinople? What was the the reaction to this from those ruling the city?

Complete legal and material dispossession, and marginalization of the imprisoned groups seems like a explosive combination when paired with the psychology of abuse and large numbers of people. You would think group/widescale criminality, violent reprisals, or endemic mental illnesses might be almost a certainty in those circumstances.

Related: Was there any effort to manage the discharge of liberated camp survivors to provide some kind of re-intergration into society after their release?