I see a lot of references to how the Inca Empire had a planned economy, but usually not much beyond that before falling off into clan autarky across the vertical archipelago and axe money, which don't really say planned economy to me. What do we know about central economic planning for the Incans?

How long was it between first hostilities and WWII being recognized/called "World War II"?

For example:

• 3 October 1935, Mussolini invades Ethiopia
• 7 March 1936, Germany Invades The Rhineland
• 12 March 1938, Hitler Seizes Austria
• 1 Oct 1938, Germany Occupied Sudetenland
• 1 September 1939, Hitler invades Poland (considered the beginning of WWII)

Where first hostilities 1935? Earlier?

Was the term WWII used on 1 September 1939? Later?

And did that conquistador experience in the America's in turn affect the knightly romance genre back in Europe?

We have been able to decode linear b, so why when ever I look into the bronze age do I never hear of the rulers of Mycenaean Greece, I've heard the names of the Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrian, Egyptian, and even the Mitanni even though we don't even know where their capital is and I've tried to look up names and all I can find is the ones from Greek Mythology.

Hey!

I've read a fair bit of history but I still haven't really found a good way to organize notes or really decide on what to note down. At some point I folded the pages where I found a good passage, but with some books that was almost every other page and it literally ruined the books, it also doesn't tell you what is where.

How do the historians of this subreddit go about it? Do you find an interesting/important piece of information and summarize it in your own words, do you write down the page number and paragraph and refer back to it? What has worked for you?

The Roman roads had been one of the most-used example of Roman engineering. However, most google searches I've found always say that they make foot-marches quicker and all that road-y stuff.

But, a quick-google search shows that Egypt had paved roads back in 2000BC. China and Persia also had their own roads. Due to these places not being in Europe (as the discussion of Roman roads could be a product of Eurocentrism), it seems that the Greeks also built roads.

So why were the Roman roads special?

From way I understand it, in order to preserve enough meat and vegetables over the winter, you need hundreds of kg of common table salt.

Hundreds of kg of salt sound very expensive to me.

How did, say, a Hungarian or Russian serf afford this before industrialization?

I've recently received a document of some family chronology stating a distant relative was "born circa 1836, in Kalvarija, Poland near the German border" and fled to America to avoid service in the Russian army. After looking though some historical maps, the only Kalvarija I can find is in modern-day Lithuania. This seems a bit far from the German border, but maybe not for the time.

I am curious about the future of this field as more and more of our existence can be evidenced using the internet. With figures like Trump using social media to define their public image, it is becoming increasingly more important to document virtual communities and interactions. What elements of our digital footprints are important to you, the historian?

Christianity seems to still be extremely prominent in the USA, but I feel increasingly like the odd one out as a Christian in the UK. Anyone got anything about this?

How do we know that written copies of the full epics more or less as we know them today were circulating in the eighth or seventh century BCE? As far as I understand the fixated version did not even become widely spread until the late sixth century BCE, and by then writing had been around a while in Greece, and the earliest manuscripts we have are in the CE. All in all, what do we know about the very earliest manuscripts of Iliad and Odyssey, and possibly of the rest of the Epic Cycle?

Overall it seems peculiar to me that the earliest example of writing (beyond short inscriptions on vases and similar) that we have of a civilization are very long and sophisticated epic poems written in hexameters, and not some administrative records or similar.

I am interested in writing a novel that has a nomadic society. I want to learn most I can about nomadic lifestyle. To be more specific, I mean nomadic life of turkic and mongolic people. The life on steppes.

I am not asking about pros and cons of it, I just want to learn daily life of it. How did they settle their tents? Who did what job? How advanced was culture, traditions, art? How did they decide to migrate?

And I would be glad if you recommend documentaires or books about the subject. Thanks :)

Today fantasy work is synonymous with the Middle Ages. I’m curious where that came from? That specific sort of interpretation of the Middle Ages as a time when magic existed, and blended with fantasy races like orcs and elves.

It seems like it could plausibly be set at any time period, but it is almost fused with the Middle Ages.

Why is that, and where did it come from?