I asked the following as an off-topic follow up question on another thread, and u/bernardito encouraged me to post it as it’s own question for wider discussion:

Is there a non-academic route that is generally accepted for becoming a professional historian?

I have autism, and traditional academia has not been a workable path for me for a variety of reasons. However, I’m a highly skilled and motivated autodidact. I’ve made a series of successful careers with this ability, but my main loves are more typically academic pursuits (history, archaeology) and I’ve not yet been able to identify a successful way to enter that type of field without going through academia to get there. I’ve seen these pursuits as essentially closed to me for that reason.

As the cost of higher education becomes more and more prohibitive and the academic jobs available seem to dwindle, I suspect I am not alone in searching for a way to bypass the gatekeeping of academia. The problem seems to me to be that there isn’t a viable alternative method to prove to others that I have obtained competency in a field of study. There’s no “test out” option for a degree.

Am I wrong about that? Are there alternative pathways?

Besides recent attempts by groups like ISIS, do we have documented cases where erasing cultural heritage was something intentionally done by other empires or nations? I've heard about Napoleon shooting off noses of statues but I'm not sure if that was true or not

Or would they have called it Scots?

I'm not talking about Scottish Gaelic, or the modern-day Scots language. I'm talking about what we now call Scottish English; would people back then have even made a distinction between Scots and Scottish English?

hey guys new girl to this sub, first post so excuse me if i ask incorrectly. I was discussing with a friend the tacitus Pax romana and the calgacus speech and he was arguing that its actually a secondary source because tacitus wasnt there and its a fictious speech? and that he wasnt even alive when the campaign occured? is my friend correct? i thought it was a primary source because he was from that era. but i may be wrong and the curosity is really getting to me. sorry again if this is a newbie question

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Come share the cool stuff you love about the past!

We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Museums & Libraries! Let's look into museums and libraries. How did people in the period you study preserve artifacts of the past, or the written word? Did they have some alternate institutions serving a similar purpose? Or an oral tradition that could be thought as a library itself? Come share stories from the past, or of today if you have some interesting anecdote from a museum or library of your preference!

How were the Germanic tribes able to topple the Roman Empire after centuries of genocide and defeat? I always felt like they would be as worse off as a destabilized and corrupt Rome or even worse with even more problems .

Ordinarily, slaves were forcibly converted to Christianity as their masters believed it was necessary to "uplift them from savagery" or whatever. However, some (though obviously not a majority as some antisemitic black nationalists would claim) slaveowners were Jewish, and Judaism doesn't engage in proselytization. Were these slaves allowed to continue to practice traditional West African religions, or were they taught Christianity anyway even though their owners weren't Christian because it was just "the done thing", or what?

You'll see sometimes on the internet groups claiming to be witches and pagans from an unbroken line of ancient magic users, which is of course ridiculous. But I would like a better understanding of the modern movements' origins.

My understanding is that it all starts in the 19th century during the medieval romanticism period (which produced some primo art and architecture) but much of that movement's neo pagan appreciation was some what antisemitic in nature as it wanted to remove "foreign" influence in "pure" European spirituality. Since Christianity is completely rooted in Jewish tradition.

Then of course the 1930s and 40s happen and the Nazis arrive to radicalize that neo pagan movement even further with core nazi leaders like Himmler planning on developing some kind of neo pagan cult for the SS complete with rituals and a central castle-temple.

After the war, neo paganism goes mostly dormant until the 1960s hippies where the environmental aspects get picked up or are more heavily emphasized. Dips a little in the 1980s-90s and then picks up more during the Internet age.

That's my understanding of it but I don't know if it's accurate, who the leaders were or how interconnected they all were over the decades.

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I know many people claim that the Civil War qualifies as such , which may very well be the case , however I'm looking for other examples since the very subject of whether it qualifies or not seems to be greatly debated by many ...

Also while I'm aware that the Whiskey and Green Corn Rebellions qualify as being directed at the federal government/being " grassroots " in terms of being rebellions originating from the discontent of average people in a bottom up way as opposed to being fomented by elite actors , however ( AFAIK ) neither of them resulted in many casualties and the Green Corn Rebellion was put down by a local posse as opposed to federal agents and/or American soldiers ...

Anyways I hope that my question makes enough sense and thanks ahead of time for any answers !

My understanding is that it was more diverse in religious support in the 19th century, but turned into a proxy for Catholic vs Protestant conflict.

I am writing some dnd and I was wondering how in the medievil times people might prove their good favour with a person of authority. For instance would they be given badges or sigils to prove they had good standing with a particular organisation? I suppose they would have used paper documents to prove qualifications with embossing/ wax seals and those kind of things? How would you know a letter or emissary from a king person of repute was trustworthy? Also did they have passports or could you go wherever you liked? How did people prove their identity or did they not need to? How would they track down criminals (was it just peoples visual memory of what they looked like?)

Sorry if thats too many questions.

As it is clear to see today, almost all European countries, with the exception of some Balkan countries, Ukraine, and Russia use the Latin alphabet. Obviously it is popular there because it developed there, but how come many of the alphabets that came from Asia and other regions of the world did not become more popular in Europe than they are today? You see that these languages that exist in Europe are most popular among immigrants, but how come earlier in history Latin was able to dominate so much over these other languages?

City workers in 1978 were surprised when they unearthed the Coyolxauhqui Stone. Was there no suspicion of ruins in Mexico City at all? How was it such a surprise!? Was the entire civilization forgotten until 1978? Was exact the location of the ancient city speculative before then? Was it assumed everything was just completely gone?

It seems to me that if you dig in a gold mine, it wouldn’t be a shock to find gold.