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This may come off as a stupid question, but in places like Ancient Egypt or other civilizations of the past; where did all the houses go? In Egypt, you have the pyramids and the sphinx but where did they live? Especially in the dry and arid desert civilizations you have the tombs and such but no antiquated houses or headquarters can someone please explain?

Watching movies such as The Patriot and reading about military campaigns such as the Peninsular War, if a standard infantry unit that normally fights in an organized line is engaged with irregulars or a militia that is using cover and spaced out, what were the official tactics when responding?

I know this sub has a great deal of respect for Glantz and House for helping clear up long-held misconceptions about the eastern front and generally mixed to negative views about Ambrose but what are its opinions of other authors like Antony Beevor, Rick Atkinson, and max hastings as well as other very popular authors for casual history readers?

I get the impression that a lot of pseudo-history portrays the Picts as being physically and culturally distinct from the other people of Northern Europe. For example, in Robert E. Howard's stories, they are descended from pre-Celtic groups with a lot of Neanderthal admixture (I think this was before it was generally accepted that most people have a bit of Neanderthal ancestry). More recently, I believe that some people have connected them with the Cro-Magnons (or Western European Hunter Gatherers, European Early Modern Humans, whatever they are called now... the dark-skinned, pre-Agricultural guys). There seems to have been a lot of talk about their language being a pre-Indo-European isolate or something too. Basically, they seem to be considered exceptional by a lot of people.

Where does this general trend come from? As far as I can tell, nobody at the time thought they were any more exotic than other barbarians. They seem to have basically just been another group of Britons. It's not entirely clear to me that anything distinguishes them from their neighbours except that the Romans called some of them 'Picts' and some of them other names. But by the early twentieth century it was apparently quite a popular idea and even today there is a vague air of weirdness about them.

Do we know when people started to get funny ideas about the Picts? Is it basically all REH's fault or did he draw on earlier sources? Are there any theories about the Picts which stand out as especially weird? Were they ever taken seriously by historians?

Also, while I'm asking about them, is there anything at all to indicate that the Picts engaged in body decoration any more than other Britons? Do we even know anything about their body painting? I believe that the idea they were tattooed is basically discredited now and they probably didn't make fancy patterns like we see in films, possibly didn't even use woad and were as likely to be green or turquoise as blue. Is there even good evidence that Britons actually painted themselves at all? It seems to all be based on a couple of vague mentions in some Roman accounts, mostly by people who never even went near the channel (although I think Julius Caesar does mention them being coloured and he would probably know).

One point about the US Civil War that stuck out to me was that there were many "brothers fighting brothers", which highlights the intense acrimony of that conflict. Was there anything similar in the US Revolutionary War or even the War of 1812, both of which were against England?

I have been reading a lot of older books about specific aspects of WWII, and have found multiple trends where Hitler appeared to avoid/invoke militarism depending on the racial stance.

An example of this is Dunkirk. More than 300,000 of Hitler's opposition were condensed in a small area, yet he allocated a minimal number of the Luftwaffe bombers to neutralize the forces. Fundamentally, Hitler was a politician, and believed in Aryan supremacy more than anything, so annihilating 250,000+ healthy, Aryan men must have been a moral dilemma for him; ultimately leading to him making the incorrect military decision.

So based on what you know, how big of an effect did Hitler's racism have in terms his ability to act militarily? Also, do you agree with what I said, or is it wrong?

*I would like to add that I know he was driven by extreme drugs, and that as a whole, his view of the world was utterly insane so making the right decision was not one of his attributes.

This is a pretty big claim, and I can only find newspaper articles from the 80s that back it up. It just seems too... simple. How could everybody, including most academics, fall for this lie that Curtis says the Reagan Administration told?

I know that there were houses that doubled as something called taverna, and houses which doubled as brothels. What were these like, are there any other forms of bar or tavern? Is this where they would hold symposia, like those we see depicted on greek pottery?

I know Marius granted citizenship to the Italians who fought against the Cimbri. But in the 10 years following, were there many non-citizens who were enrolled into the Roman army? When the Social War broke out, did these generally stay loyal to Rome as the source of their 'paychecks'? Or did a significant number of them take up arms in the name of gaining full citizenship?

I was recently listening to a podcast which briefly mentioned how before the Norman Invasion, Ireland didn't have the same kind of economy that you might expect from the period. Instead, there were a lot of "fortified homesteads", and that things were generally very isolated.

They didn't expand beyond that really, and so I was hoping that someone here could talk briefly on what Ireland might have been like before the Norman Invasion in the 12th Century.

Was their goal to overrun and annihilate Israel (which I'm sure is what the Israelis assumed), or were they simply trying to gain back the territories lost in the 1967 war? If it was the former, was this in any way feasible?

I was just talking to my brother about his trip to Paris, and he commented on how there were many great restaurants (of course). He said that these restaurants not only featured French food, but also represented regions France had colonized in its history (North African, Vietnamese, etc.).

I jokingly asked him if there were any good Native American restaurants, but then I wondered if and how Native American cooking traditions made their way to other cultures and cuisines during the age of colonialism. Are there any food traditions that we see today around the world in countries that occupied North America and interacted with Native Americans?