Hello my friends!

As an European who has never ever even touched upon the subject of American history in general, this question has been on my mind quite a lot recently. Can someone please explain what the reasons for the American Civil War were? Past events have shown that it is quite difficult to get this question answered without sparking huge controversy and hate..

I'm extremely interested in what you guys have to say and hope to get more elaborate answers than just 'slavery' or 'state rights' (not saying these two reasons aren't valid but please elaborate on the reasoning)!

Thank you guys very much in advance! Take care :)

I've been reading Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston, which details the process around the rediscovery of a now-defunct ancient city in the Mosquitia region of Honduras. It's fascinating - as someone who is passingly familiar with the much more famous Mayan culture to the north of this area, it was very interesting to learn about the vast numbers of unique cultures throughout Central and South America during the past 3,000+ years that I had never heard of.

One thing about the ruins produced by the culture from Mosquitia that they mention is that while there are a lot of platforms and altars, there are few full stone structures featuring things like roofs or walls - which the archaeologists ascribed to the use of organic materials like hardwoods and fabrics in construction, which degrade very quickly upon abandonment and leave little to no tangible trace. As one would imagine, this makes locating such ruins substantially more challenging than locating e.g. the massive stone pyramids associated with the Mayans to the north.

This got me thinking about my backyard (in the USA), and the fact that we have little stone construction here. In fact, while I'm by no means an expert in the topic, the only ancient city site I can name offhand in my country's borders is Cahokia, while I could rattle off a list of 10 Mayan sites without blinking. Is my lack of knowledge in this area a cultivated ignorance, as it were, in that there were large ancient cities here that I'm simply unaware of? Were there cities that, like the Mosquitian culture featured in LCotMG, used primarily organic materials that degraded over time and have left harder-to-find and/or less substantial sites? I'm aware that, particularly among western tribes in North America, there exists a more itinerant nature to the culture - does that play into this?

I'd love to explore closer to home the way tourists are able to in Central America at places like Coba, Chichen Itza, and Copan, so any guidance to opportunities to do that are greatly appreciated.

We know all about high fashion and the clothing of nobility, but what kind of clothes did the average French men and women where? Did peasants dress similarly to city workers? We know what sans-culottes looked like in 1789, but what about before that? What were the clothes made of?

I would like to know this especially in comparison with world war I

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Does it have anything to do with Operation Paperclip?

Assuming I'm a French civilian who wants to get out of France because of those pesky Germans. Whats the last date I could leave the country? I assume the Armistice du 22 juin 1940 makes it illegal but before then could I have gotten out legally? Were there passenger ships I could use or would I get passage on a private ship in Cherbourg or somewhere on the coast?

Thanks

I always hear about this famous assignation incident but no one has mentioned who did it. Did they even find the guy who assassinated JFK?

Are our popular conceptions of massive human sacrifice the product of Spanish propoganda, or was it really an ever present part of Aztec life?

As the title says did he explain how it might be done and did he explain the image which would replace the conceptualisation of private property? In the Communist Manifesto he states that "The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."

It is clearly important then, it is the essence of communist thought, but what exactly was envisaged in its place?

It always amazes me that the Great Duchy of Lithuania, covering eastern Europe from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea turned into such a "small" country, the same size as Estonia and Latvia. What happened ?

In 1409 the Council of Pisa was held to mend the shism in the west and depose the two reigning popes. Considering this, how did it end up electing a third pope?