Maybe a better question for AskAnthropology, I'm not sure. But Wikipedia says there is evidence for human occupation going back 5000 years, but that citation points to a $30 book, so I can't read it.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what people were doing in the Italian peninsula before written records. Obviously that's an extremely difficult inquiry to answer.

Also was wondering about tribes outside the peninsula, say "barbarians" from the north. When they sacked rome in ~390BCE, those people must have come from settled societies I figure, otherwise how would they have the equipment and organization? So do we know how long parts of the Western Europe mainland have been settled? Say in the modern France and German areas.

Thank you!

I was reading a biography of Nero by Richard Holland and in it he states that Nero, at an early point in his reign, gifted 300 sesterces to his citizens. That was a huge sum back in the day, and correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's enough for a small family to support themselves for a year or two.

I then remembered that Augustus did something similar after Caesar's death, and he gave out the same amount. However, I've only found sources supporting Augustus's gift, but only Holland talks about any such kindness from Nero.

At any rate, my question isn't whether Nero did it or not, but what effect such a gift had when Augustus and maybe Nero gave it. I can only speculate on what every citizen would do with two year's pay (which, added to the free grain they got from Rome, would have meant they had a lot of extra money on their hands).

How did the economy take this gift? Obviously the common people took it very well, but did it destabilize the market, or have a beneficial effect?

I've been reading Darkness at Noon and have become interested in learning about the history of the Soviet Union, particularly the revolutions and Stalinism.

I am sure there are hundreds of books that cover this, but I have trouble sticking to most dry history. What are some books that cover this period in a particularly engaging way? Maybe something that approaches the history through examining the individuals in power (Trotsky, Lenin , Stalin , ect)?

Many Thanks.

Since a unified writing system apparently contributes greatly to the unification and cohesion of nations and peoples, how much did the introduction of the Chinese writing system influence the formation and strengthening of Japanese society? Are there any marked differences before and after the introduction of Chinese writing? How did it affect the administration of Japan?

I was just reading about how Robert Byrd was famously a KKK leader in the 40's before eventually supporting civil rights by the time he died in 2010. Considering that he was born 52 years after the end of the Civil War, is there any record of him personally meeting someone who had fought in that war?

Looking at history, there are few groups of people that really enjoy being ruled over by different people. Yet some empires managed to last hundreds of years even with dozens of different peoples with different cultures living within their borders. How did they accomplish this?

Ancient China, Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Mesoamerica etc. Especially in more moderate areas where seasonal shifts aren't as noticeable.

My primary example would be a painter like Jackson Pollock, who is wildly famous and paintings are absurdly highly valued. These fact persist despite him not really painting any "thing".

Portraits, landscapes, still life, etc. from the greats like Rembrandt, Monet, Van Gogh, and all fell out of style.The fall of the "image" and the rise of the "abstract" happened.

In novels and film from the 60s through the 80s, I've seen and read characters make cavalier reference to their "analyst" or psychotherapist. This nonchalant discussion of their mental health was initially surprising to me considering today's stigma surrounding these types of services and issues.

So, my question is, when did mental health services or psychotherapy become stigmatized?

I was reading that King George never visited the colonies and I got curious who was the next highest in his government who visited the colonies before the Revolutionary War.

I really enjoyed reading the perspective of the soliders who served in the front, not necessarily ww2. I've also read A French Soldier's War Diary, 1914-1918 - Henri Desagneau and The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer

Was wondering if anyone had suggestions of other great reads in the same genre.

How did I become a member? What's a day like in my life? How much of my time is devoted to prayer, training, studying, etc. ? What sort of responsibilities do I have, and how are they different from those of the average monk?

After hearing about Dresden/Tokyo, etc. on Reddit for so long, I decided to form my own opinion and do my own research. I was familiar with the Blitz, and the concept of total war (i.e. "gloves are off on all sides" warfare), but I was unaware of the Coventry Blitz. Similarly, I did not know about the Rotterdam Blitz, when, on May 14, 1940, Nazi warplanes razed Rotterdam to the ground while the city was surrendering.

With atrocities like the Blitzes and Pearl Harbor fresh in the Allies' minds, I think it would have been logical if a small number of people had seen the firebombings in places like Dresden, Kobe, Hamburg and Tokyo as excessive and disproportionate. Especially in the era of total war.

It is often said on Reddit (and mocked by /r/badhistory), that the firebombing of Dresden on February 13-15, 1945 was a war crime since the Allies deliberately targeted civilians for no reason, and the city served no military purpose whatsoever. I was skeptical, so I did some digging. Sure enough, true to the principles of total war, Dresden was a key manufacturing, logistics and railway hub for the Eastern Front. It just also happened to be a city with an immense amount of arts and culture. However, to say that Dresden was purely a civilian city doesn't jive with how the Nazis pursued total war.

I like to watch old clips of news broadcasts from Operation Desert Shield/Storm on Youtube. It was clear from hearing Gen. Schwartzkopf, Gen. Kelly, BGen. Neal, etc. speak that the commanders took pains to avoid indiscriminate bombing or targeting civilians, to avoid the kind of bad publicity that B-52 saturation bombing in Vietnam generated. Such pains were magnified by the bombing of the baby milk factory and the Amiriyah shelter bombing.

U.S. commanders were keen to point out that Hussein weaved his war machine within the civilian infrastructure, such as the communications bunker in the basement of the al-Rashid Hotel. It turned out that the Finnish manufacturer of the Amiriyah shelter admitted (in an interview with a newspaper in Finland) that the Iraqi Army used the bottom floor of the shelter as a command post, and secretly placed civilians in the top floor at night, unbeknownst to the Coalition.

And yet, the Coalition backed off striking places like the baby formula factory or the Amiriyah shelter more often than not, to avoid bad press in the west as well as in the Arab World. If Desert Storm had been fought by WWII total war standards, Baghdad would have been razed to the ground and hundreds of thousands of civilians would have died.

Perhaps after WWII and the advent of nuclear weapons, it was finally decided that human beings are worth more alive than dead (as globalization spread). Or, maybe nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ICBMs became far, far more efficient than total war could ever be. In any case, I don't think there have been any large-scale wars that utilize the principle of total war, since WWII. Maybe the Korean War.

At any rate, the reason why I went on this tangent is because we are of a generation that has not seen the horrors of total war like our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. We weren't there, we don't know what it was like to survive the Blitz in Tube stations, or see half your city wiped off the face of the earth by B-29 firebombing runs. So that tints our perception of history. Maybe Dresden/Hamburg/Tokyo/etc. wasn't seen as excessive or as a war crime back then. I want to know when it started to be considered as such.

I've been reading a little about French history and a few things really interested me. Specifically: the life and death of Joan of Arc, the period of the French Revolution (or the enlightenment in general), and the French resistance under German occupation in WWII.

I looked through the commonly asked questions and the wiki on history by region but didn't find anything on the time periods I'm interested in. I am really hoping for higher level info on these periods in France, so I would rather avoid dramatizations and history channel specials, which is why I came here.

If you guys yourselves know a bit about these times feel free to comment with what you have! Ideally though, I'm hoping for some secondary or primary sources that will go in depth, and preferably in English since I can't read or speak even conversational French. If that's not really possible I'll come to terms and just surf Wikipedia or something.

When a person reaches celebrity status people tend to mimic their style. However, I do not recall a single member of the upper echelon of Nazi Germany sporting a Hitler mustache.

Do we have any kind of historical record of people counseling Hitler on his mustache? Was the style common in pre-Nazi Germany or in Europe? Did any foreign leaders / magazines / comedians comment on his stache? Did Charlie Chaplin's mustache derive any inspiration from Hitler's or vice versa?

Thank you all.

Was there ever any sexual tension between John Adams/Thomas Jefferson/ Abigail Adams?

Specifically, my understanding is that warfare during the world wars killed officers at a far higher rate than enlisted soldiers. However, in the various belligerent militaries (Britain, Germany, US, Japan, USSR, China...), how were replacements for officers selected/recruited/trained vs enlisted replacements? I assume they couldn't/didn't just pull promising soldiers out of the enlisted recruitment pool, but it seems to me that replacement would be far more difficult since service academies have both long training times + limited numbers of officers they can plausibly train. Somewhat relatedly, did the quality of officers during the war decline over time as a result of attrition?