So this question has been bugging me for a while, and I'm getting quite frustrated.

How did people back in the ancient time make sure their buildings/ temples/ roads so they were accurate? That means level foundations, right angle walls, etc. Sure, I've heard of all the tools: The Groma, the libella, the chorobates, the plumb-bob, the A-frame level etc. But to create all these tools you'd still need a right angle or a straight line to make them work as intended. So how did they make these tools without having precision tools in the first place? If I try to cut a board of wood to use in the construction of one of the mentioned tools, it's not going to be perfectly straight/ even. (Human error) And that would mean that my tool also won't give me a straight line/ even plane. Now, I've heard of the string method, that if you stretch a cord/ string it creates a perfect line between two points, but how would you make sure these two points are even/ on the same level? Wouldn't you just get a straight, yet uneven line? You can't use that to check if a surface is level, only if it's straight or not.

It's a similar thing with the right angle. Of course, you can create a perfect right angle by making a perpendicular bisector. But that would still only work well if the surface your doing it on is even. There seems to be a missing link, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

If I described things bad or in a confusing way, then please let me know. If you have an idea about a different subreddit, where I might get a definitve answer then please let me know.

Still, thank you very much for taking the time.

That's about it. I'm just looking for other historical sources. I'm getting bored of the same websites.

So I know about glasnost and perestroika (obviously!), but what I'm wondering is whether there was any serious move or vision to turn the Soviet Union into a fully democratic federal state of somekind, or was all the rebellion against it nationalist?

Putin famously called the collapse of the Soviet Union a Geopolitical catatrophe, and I'm just wandering if there was any serious moves to try and hold it together in a non-communist way.

mny thks

I’ve been told that according to the Luxor hieroglyphics Horus is depicted with 12 disciples and that Thoth announces the virgin birth of Horus. I’m no Egyptologist but I’m very skeptical about this claim. Does anyone here know what those hieroglyphics actually say?

How come they couldn’t lie, did they not want to, or was there a state register of all the jews, or were snitches just so common it wasn’t possible to lie? Or were they able to hide they were jewish, and if so, how?

Is there a record of when and where this decision was made? I am intensely curious as to who suggested what and where they discussed it and when these decisions were implemented.

Its taken for granted that it was hitler's idea. But i want to know if we have records of when he came up with that idea and who else contributed to the plan.

Further, were they considered Japanese? Did any serve in the military and if so, were they integrated with the Japanese Americans or did they have their own unit?

Maybe not appropriate for this post specifically, but were Koreans considered Japanese around the world after the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910?

I know there are several thousand runestones from the viking age, but I'm curious if he's heard about something I haven't when researching his series

I've seen a lot of talk about how hyperinflation was bad in Weimar Germany, and prices were doubling every day. Most places just talk about what caused it (printing money), but not how average people survived.

My question is, how did people survive this?

In a scenario like this, I'd assume that everyone would quit their jobs (because the money wouldn't buy anything), people would steal stuff (since they couldn't afford it), and since people are stealing and nobody is working, shops would shut down.

What actually happened?

If you were a citizen in Weimar Germany, how would you survive? What's the game plan? (obviously having massive stockpiles of food and stuff would be sweet, but most people don't do that. They just have a few months of food at most.) How did average people survive?

did he get banned from jersualem? or did he still have some influence in the kingdom

Did they think time had a beginning and an end? Or did all of time repeat itself like a big time circle? And when they wrote history, did they write it in the order of events happening, or just write in a stream of conciseness style with what they remembered

Honestly all this time all I ever heard was that Edison was a their and cruel businessman who destroyed Teslas career as an inventor for profit and stole inventions form many and claimed them as their own. Is this all true and was he really this evil person most people see him as.

Up until 1971, the Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan, was generally recognized as the "real" China. They were a member of the United Nations and were even a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Then in 1971 they were expelled from the UN and their chair in the Security Council was given to the PRC.

Just how did the world go about to expel a permanent member of the Security Council? And what caused it to happen in 1971, even though US-PRC relations didn't begin to thaw until the following year when Nixon went to meet Mao Zedong?

Alcohol production was one of the earliest things humanity learned to do and seeing as how flammable it is I doubt alcohol fires were uncommon. So I think it would be pretty reasonable to expect somebody to put two and two together to produce a Molotov cocktail, but I've never read about them. So what gives? Did people just not think about it. Were vases/bottles/jars too pricey? Or did somebody do it just to discover that it was kinda worthless at the time?

... (Like a letter or decree) where she expresses this (or where a pope or someone discusses it)?

Talking about how she thought the issue over when some natives arrived in Spain, and ended up sending them back home, opposing slavery.

But looking for the original sources for our understanding of this.

This is sort of like two questions in one.

(1) We usually talk about the discovery of the American continents as a European event, which is fair enough. But did the seafaring countries of northeast Asia have any interesting ideas, or express any curiosity about what lay to their east in the Pacific? I know Zheng He was a famous 15th century Chinese explorer, but he had more to do with the Indian Ocean. Did Asian societies express an interest in what was east of Japan?

(2) A big question I have is whether any Asian explorers expressed an interest in northeast Asia. If they had navigated the Sea of Okhotsk, eventually they would have found the Bering Sea, and then Alaska, and from there the rest of the Americas. Sort of like how the Portugese rounded Africa — gradually. Of course, the Portugese had an economic interest in rounding Africa, and what I'm describing is mostly Arctic exploration, which is less interesting. So did Asian societies express an curiosity about the coast of northern Asia?

I know they were part of the Kievan Rus, yet they are not Russians, they were also part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, yet they are not Polish nor Lithuanian. When did the idea of Ukraine as a people emerge, and how was it different from nearby states like Russia?