the idea of an urban civilization without bows just seems bizarre to me, like finding out human in alternate reality industrialized before they invented guns.

How did Europeans communicate with Native American when they first met and how did they teach each other their respective languages?

I used the examples of Euros and Americans but this question is really much more about how two groups of people who don't share a common language or culture learn to communicate with each other initially.

We all know that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914 in Sarajevo which in part led to the First World War. You may also know that Franz Joseph's son and heir Prince Rudolf committed suicide with his lover in 1889, also that Karl Ludwig (Franz Joseph's brother and Franz Ferdinand's father) died of typhoid fever in 1896, and finally that in 1906 Franz Ferdinand's brother Otto died of syphilis. So relating to my question. With Franz Joseph's son, brother, and two nephews dead upon his death in 1916, why did the throne pass to his younger nephew's son, Otto's son Charles, and not Franz Ferdinand's eldest son Maximilian?

Were succession laws different in the Austro-Hungarian Empire than they were in the United Kingdom (with which I am the most familiar)? Did age play a role in their decision to crown Charles as he was much older than Maximilian who was just a child?

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Everyone's heard the stuff about wrestling a bear, delivering a speech after being shot, etc., but there seems to be very little discussion about what he actually did for the country. Was he as revered back then as he is now? Did he bring the country forward? Who was he, really?

Why is China always united by several dynasties throughout its history when no one in Europe was able to recreate the former Western and Eastern Roman Empires at their height?

Archery as a sport was a later creation I believe?

Curious if there has ever been a country that had legal use of what we would consider harder drugs (not alcohol, tobacco, marijuana) and the society itself was able to handle it ok? The only historical thing that comes to mind regarding this was the opium trade in China, but I'm not sure if it was technically legal and from what I remember reading the Chinese were ravaged by opium dens and the addiction that came along with it.

Has there ever been an example of opium use or anything of that nature where it was legal and the country in question didn't face an addiction problem? Examples 20+ years ago of course, not recent examples.

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What was the ratio of a medieval army? Roughly. Or for that matter crusader armies. I am writing a novel and am interested in the amout of field infantry as in regular people drafted in to fight, plus cavelry and archers, compared to offical Knights, sworn to an particular order, like say the Templar or Hospitlar.

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Why did some counties within Confederate Appalachian states (Parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia, etc) oppose secession despite their location inside the CSA? Did it have anything to do with historic political differences between the mountaineers and their agriculturally-powered state governments?

So I'm trying to get a handle on the variety and construction of boats and ships of all sizes (especially large ones) in the pre-Columbian Americas.

On a high level, I know about Arctic peoples' kayaks made using skins and wooden or bone frames; I know about canoes dugout or carved from large trees you hear about in Canada; and I know about the balsa reed boats built in parts of South America, like on Lake Titicaca. Beyond that, what did the pre-Columbian naval landscape look like?

I'm particularly interested in what kinds of larger craft were used for military, trade, or travel purposes on a larger scale than the individual or the family.

Cheers!

Here is my question in the title above. I'm sorry if I didn't write my question as the rules tell but, I would love to get a question.

So this question is kind of tough to phrase, but basically I'm wondering how we got from thinking the earth was made by a spiritual power to our current understanding of the earth's place in the universe.

Obviously people still believe the earth was made by God to this day, but I'm assuming over the past few millennia certain groups have gotten different things more right than others.

So, for example, who were the first people to understand the earth as a planet, who was the first to accurately imagine the universe, etc.