I understand that later in its development, it had borrowed vocabulary from other languages.

However, I have had conflicting explanations stating either it was purely Bantu and has existed before the arrival of the Arabian traders on the east coast of Africa or it was developed through the interactions of West and East Africans as early as the 1st century.

I had once seen a map that showed Native American trade routes before European Contact. I was wondering, how extensive were they? Could goods say from the Mississippi area arrive in the New England area? Thanks historians!

Hello, everyone. I had an idea I was mulling over, and wanted to get others' opinions on it.

Lots of pseudohistory is superficially convincing, and it takes experience and knowledge to figure out why most historians don't accept a given theory. (Some theories, of course, are more obviously strange than others -- JFK conspiracies or the theories presented in "1434" are still more plausible than ancient aliens, for example.)

I wondered whether it might be a useful exercise, as part of a historical methods / historiography class, to invite a speaker. The other speaker (a colleague / fellow professor -- not some random conspiracy theorist off the street) would play "devil's advocate", arguing for a fair summary of the pseudohistorical theory in a formal debate. This would be followed by a quick debriefing outlining the major problems with the theory in summary form.

The next class or two can be spent analyzing in greater depth where the errors are, why they were made, and how easy it is to go wrong unless you're careful.

I thought it might be useful to arrange something like this. Debates can be engaging, and they're one of the preferred venues for proponents of pseudohistorical theories to present their ideas. So it would be a good demonstration for why a theory can be a good 20-minute elevator pitch, but can't stand up to the more rigorous scrutiny of peer review.

Anyway, I'd appreciate any thoughts.

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I'm not trying to ask if this stuff happened (I think I read somewhere it is some kind of collage of historical events mixed with fiction), but if the kind of things that happen are plausible, how accurately is the culture portrayed, the buildings, weapons, social relations...

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I've read conflicting arguments over whether Chaucer was a Lollard or not and whether he presented his Parish Priest as one.

That seems like an awfully big number, Unless there wasn't that many to begin with. Which brings another question to mind. How many Native Americans were around when European contact happened?

I read something about trade routes between the different tribes contributing to Pre-Columbian depopulation but nothing concrete and I wasn't sure where to look if that was actually a case.

Mostly looking for books that discuss whether or not the Austro-Hungarian empire was collapsing, how it handled growing nationalism and any books about Serbian Nationalism in the long 19th century

Since they lived around the same era, did the first american president had anything to say about Napoleon and France under the revolution?

I regularly shock my everyday friends with basic facts on general history. I wonder if it was a lack of an awarness of historical understandings of modern events.

Are historians able to in a serious and research based way have a disucussion on current events? Should a r/Askhistoriansoncurrent events be attempted?

My boss and myself were discussing humor and how it's changed over the years, specifically in our lifetimes, but it left me wondering if a book on the history of comedy and joke telling were a book what would be the oldest joke in the book. So here I am asking the largest breadth of people I can in one stroke.

Obviously, Matins (first light) and Prime (sunrise) are easy if it's not overcast, and a sundial would cover the rest. But if the weather was being a bit too British, that wouldn't work. And Compline occured after sunset in any case. Most mechanical systems hadn't been invented, and would have to be re-calibrated often, since the length of the hours varied with the season.

I started thinking about the mistakes the Spanish Republicans made during their civil war, and then I couldn't think of any examples of monarchist/fascist takeovers being reversed.

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Sometimes when I take a shirt off in the dark I can actually see the sparks. Is there something about modern clothing or HVAC that is more conducive to generating static charges?