I have been trying to study Mesopotamian history through books, but I am Brazilian and my English is very bad, and there are no good books in Portuguese that cover it in detail The history of Mesopotamia so I wanted to ask some questions and I hope someone can answer them all or at least some of them

1- Was any one responsible for rediscovering Mesopotamia, or was knowledge about this ancient civilization was never lost?

2- Is there any Sumerian king list other than Mythological? There is a list written by a Persian scribe that compiles all the ancient kings of Mesopotamia, but it includes mythological kings who Reigned for thousands of years and were obviously just a myth

3- What was the first city in Mesopotamia?

4- How was the fact that writing and the numbering system began in Mesopotamia discovered? I always read this around, but no one ever explains how they came to this conclusion and who discovered it

5- Where did the first inhabitants of Mesopotamia come from? How did they get there?

And if you can, tell me some books that delve in as much detail as possible into the history of Mesopotamia.

(please cite reliable sources)

I'm referring specifically to a letter he supposedly wrote to Kenneth Grahame in 1909 where, regarding The Wind in the Willows, Roosevelt stated he "read it and reread it, and have come to accept the characters as old friends."

I suppose this is multiple questions.

Wasn't he too busy with presidential duties to be rereading books for fun? If I've got my dates right, the book was originally published in October 1908 and Roosevelt's letter was written in January 1909. I understand this was as his presidency was nearing its end, but... surely there were still things to do in those months that would have been prioritized over befriending Mole and Badger, etc.

I though maybe he was reading it to his children, but the book was written from stories told to the author's four year old child and Roosevelt's children were older. I think the youngest would have been around 11 at the time.

How did he end up with a copy of it so early? Was it normal for the president to receive copies of new publications like this?

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Perhaps I misunderstand and he only read it twice? Perhaps I misunderstand what was normal to read at the time?

What type of methodology is used within historiography, what sort of things come to mind when discussing the latter. What exactly is meant by methodology in the field of historiography?

Both Guarani and Spanish are spoken by most of the population of Paraguay, whereas in most other American countries they were either completely wiped out or became relatively irrelevant - how did it come to be that this relatively small country maintained the native language in equal par with Spanish? Did this correlate with better treatment of the natives as a whole?

I'm reading a book about the crusades and it's very interesting so far. I have never really learned about the 7th century before, so all of this is new to me.

One section that stuck out was the fall of Egypt to the caliphate. The pretext is that the muslim armies have entered Egypt and are locked outside the walls of Alexandria. Their goal is to draw the Byzantines into battle outside the defenses of the city, but it's not working - so they attempt a siege.

Here is the passage from the book (highlighting is from me):

What followed ought to have been a hopeless siege, since Alexandria was a port and the Byzantine navy, which then had complete control of the seas, could easily supply and reinforce the city for as long as necessary. Being the second largest city in the whole Christian world, Alexandria “was surrounded by massive walls and towers, against which such missiles as the Arabs possessed were utterly ineffectual…Such a city could have held out for years.” But, for reasons that will never be known, in 641, a month after he had arrived by sea to become the new governor of Egypt, Cyrus went out to meet the Muslim commander and surrendered Alexandria and all of Egypt.

This made me very curious and I tried to google why this event happened, but to no avail. Does anyone have any expertise here on theories for why Cyrus did it? Or maybe if you know of a good youtube or article about this event?

If I understand correctly, one could hold that Hitler and Einstein and Genghis Khan etc. were special individuals who happened to arise and significantly bend history. Or, one could hold that the course of history is mostly shaped by deeper currents based on changes in technology, social structures, climate, and what have you, and that if (say) Lenin or Luther etc etc had not been born things would still have proceeded roughly as they did, long term. (Or of course some more nuanced synthesis of these theories.)

Is there a general consensus among historians either way, two opposing camps, or what? Or am I maybe understanding the question wrongly?

I read that uranium was used to colour glass as far back as 79 AD, meaning that early civilizations had access to it, so is it possible that it or other radioactive materials were used for weapons in the pre-atomic era?

I'm well aware of the great civilizations of Central America, however I have learned very little about North America in the Pre-Columbian times. I've always wondered what was going on in the Medieval Period or Roman Era in North America. Doing my own research however brought a few interesting things to my attention.

The Mounds are well known crafts by Native Americans, but there's also strongly engrained cultural traditions and clearly defined/easily categorized language groups which I understand would normally require some kind of larger central habitation area or organized language through writing. Also evidence of large scale, organized metal working has apparently been found as far back as the bronze age. This has me wondering if there was some great civilization in North America and Columbus discovered the New World in the middle of what was, to the natives, a dark age, and what the Europeans encountered were fractured tribes and barbarian groups that broke away from this main culture. This pet theory of mine was more of a joke until I brought it up with a few friends who said there was some merit there, and a few native Americans even told me there may be evidence that many tribes fractured from some larger group, however I personally am not informed on that topic.

What do the experts think? Was there some kind of larger civilization that's just not taught about normally? Is there just a theory of some American Kingdom in the Pre-Columbian times? Or is this just a series of coincidences?

Dneiper and Eastern Ukraine was so culturally different from Eastern Galicia. Villages in Central and Eastern Ukraine was usually founded by Cossacks How would these two people think they are the same "ukrainians"?

It occurred to me that some races are sort of like what elves are described as - the cultures and the looks.

In the distant past when the world wasn't as connected, I guess people would be taken aback when they saw people who looked and behaved so different from them when they traveled far across the lands?

I see documentaries and movies about this war a lot and never have I seen these swords actually be used for what they are intended. Sometimes people wave them around on horses, but never do they strike anyone.

Are these depictions inaccurate? What was the point of carrying one? Was it just part of the uniform and nothing else? More ceremonial?

The Ukrainian sovereignty referendum was conducted on March 17, 1991, as part of the first and only Soviet Union referendum. 25,224,687 (82% of votes) people voted for staying, later Ukraine held its own referendum on December 1, in which 28,804,071 (92% of votes) people voted for independence. Can anyone explain this extreme switch to the opposite in such short time?

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell tweeted:

“For the 1st 127 years when only white Christian men were allowed to be Supreme Court Justices, there were zero confirmation hearings. Confirmation hearing was invented for the 1st Jewish nominee.”

Is this accurate?

It's my understanding that to be the president you have to meet three requirements.

• You have to be a Natural Born Citizen
• You have to have to be at least 35
• You have to have lived in the US for at least 14 years

Mrs. Albright fulfills the second two but not the citizen requirement.

Was this not planned for when she was appointed?

What would've happened if Clinton was in a NATO country (destroyed) during a nuclear strike and Gore and Congress were annihilated in a decapitation strike while she was on a humanitarian mission somewhere?

Would she become president without meeting the citizenship requirement?

Or does the line of succession not care about country of origin?

Today most of Europe is inhabited by Indoeuropean people, with a few exceptions

Four of them are Turkey, Hungary, Estonia and Finland. These four nations have populations and languages that come from Central Asia

In the case of the Hungarians and the Turks we understand fairly well the history of the migrations and wars that brought them there, but what about Estonia and Finland?

Even more, were Estonia and Finland settled during the same migration?. They have similar languages after all

I've tried researching this on my own but most of the information I find starts around the Middle Ages with both countries already settled by people speaking Uralic languages

Information about the Iron and Bronze ages is extremely limited, but presumably that's when this migration happened

In tabletop wargames, the armies of Achaemenid Persia pretty much divide, regardless of the exact game, into two periods: Early and Late.

Early Persian armies, which encompass the period of Marathon and Plataea, can select a potentially large number of infantry ranging from very good to merely decent; they largely fight from behind large shields called spara and shoot arrows. A lot of arrows. Depending on the exact game mechanics, forming a line of spara infantry and shooting your enemies to death is a perfectly valid strategy.

Later Persian armies, which encompass the period of the Ten Thousand and Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire, get none of that. All the sparabara are gone, and cavalry have become the core of the army. The infantry that remain are a) more melee focussed, and b) mostly pretty rubbish, with Greek mercenaries being the exception to the rule.

How accurate is this change in the composition of Persian armies and the effectiveness of their infantry and why did it happen? Why did they abandon the spara and allow their infantry to decline in usefulness.