Source.

Full quote:

"When, in the 10th century, the cultivation of legumes began to spread, it had a profound effect on Europe. Working people were able to eat more protein; as a result, they became more robust, lived longer, created more children and repopulated a continent."

So did bean use die off after the Roman period? Did it recovery in the 10th century? Did this have the impact Eco proposes?

Update: i created a post in r/history as advised by the mods so specific lines of potential questions can be brought up there! Thank you all so much for the assistance in this I believe some important information can be recorded

Update: Update: hello everyone! I have just finished up my first interview with my uncle a few minutes ago, we talked for about an hour and 20 minutes just about pretty much everything from before he was drafted and how that made him feel then onto his travels from the states to Vietnam, his initial experience in Vietnam such as what he was doing when he got there. From there we started to talk about Him being moved out to the “boondocks” with his unit and then becoming a tunnel rat.

We then talked about equipment,training and initial feelings of the job.

• what would be found in the tunnels
• booby traps (the different types)(how they go about finding them)
• time spent in tunnels and what would be a reason he wouldn’t continue -injuries

We talked about a lot! And I was sure to record everything. My plan from here is to take everything we talked about and get a more detailed list of what I want to get more information about. At the end of our talk today he said he would like to talk more and would tell me “whatever” I wanted to know so I think the plan is to try and do this once a week so I can get as much information about him as possible I would love to be able to share everything I find out with everyone! I just have to find out the best way to do that

I received some really great advice from this subreddit in resources that I can utilize one piece of advice I got that really helped this whole process a lot is, “when there is silence don’t speak and wait for the interviewee to continue” That piece of advice really helped get a lot more information than I thought was possible and is an area I need to improve in for next time because I can tell there was a lot more that my Uncle wanted to say before I sometimes asked the next question

This post gained much more attention Than I initially expected and I am truly thankful for everybody’s input and advice, I do not know what I am doing when it comes to interviewing but am learning so much! I want to be able to share the material that I learn and want to be sure I do that in the correct way!

Item One: Some of you will recall back at the beginning of the summer we announced that we were suspending the Example Seeking Rule, with the aim of testing a new approach to how we moderated those questions and a possible permanent change to the rules. Although the original scope was for a month, anyone paying attention likely noticed it went a bit longer, largely due to our desire to collect a few more datapoints, and also to make small changes in how to interpret and enforce the new rule.

We finally are at the point where we are ready to permanently enshrine the change! In doing so, there are two things worth noting for everyone. First is that slight modification to the wording of the section entitled "Scope & Depth" in the Rules. The initial wording from 6 months ago read:

While questions which have multiple answers are allowable, they should not require expertise across time and space; instead questions should seek examples of a phenomenon in a way that allows different contributors to provide detailed, comprehensive answers regarding the historical areas in which they have expertise.

This has been modified to now read:

While questions which have multiple answers are allowable, they should not require expertise across time and space; instead questions seeking multiple answers about a phenomenon across different eras and locations must do so in a way that clearly asks different contributors to provide detailed, comprehensive answers regarding the historical areas in which they have expertise.

This is intended to better encapsulate how we have been interpreting the rule for several months now; an interpretation which we are fairly happy with in striking a balance between what we were aiming for in removing the old rule while still placing certain restrictions on certain subsets of questions which continued to clash with moderation philosophy of the community.

Secondly then, what this means in practical terms is that what we will continue allowing from the formerly prohibited "Example Seeking" type of questions are ones which roughly conform to the structure of "In your area of expertise…". We aren't asking for questions to literally use that specific wording, but we will be continuing to remove questions for having too broad a scope if they are presented in a way which requires answering across a broad area or time frame, and in a way unlikely to be answerable by one expert, and continue allowing questions if a sufficient answer can be done by one expert writing in-depth about one example in one time and place.

Additional to this is that we will also be redirecting questions which are specifically presented in the style of "…what are examples of [THING]?" These questions which are asking for a list of examples will not be prohibited on the subreddit, but they will be treated as falling under the Basic Facts Rule, and as such, the removal reason will redirect them to be posted in the weekly "Short Answers to Simple Questions" thread. Questions which are asking for more than the literal example, but to understand the how or the why underpinning the phenomenon being inquired about, will be treated as allowable under the new rules. Approval or removal will generally come down to phrasing, and how we understand the intent of the user posting the question, and there will always be the opportunity to rephrase – something which moderators are always happy to help with – and resubmit.

Item Two: A couple of years back we announced changes to asking follow-up questions directly to questions. This is now being extended to recommendations for alternative subreddits for asking the question – for instance, directing OP to a more specialised sub like r/askphilosophy or r/AcademicBiblical.

The section of the rules titled 'Follow-up Questions' previously read:

If you have a question inspired by the original post, we ask that you please wait and see if it is covered by the resulting answer, or else submit it as its own standalone question in the subreddit. All top-level follow-up questions are removed in the first 12 hours of a thread or until an answer is present, and may still be removed by the mod team if we judge the question to either be too far afield, or only in essence a restatement of the original question.

Top-level follow-up comments which request a source for or challenge the premise of part of the question must be done in good faith, and in a way that constructively engages with the question. If asking for a source, you should explain why you find the claim suspect and how clarification can help you personally answer the question. A full answer about why a premise is incorrect should otherwise comply with the rules and expectations we have for answers in this subreddit.

It has been expanded to:

If you have either a follow-up question inspired by the original post or want to suggest an alternative venue to ask the question, we ask that you wait either until an answer is present or until 12 hours after the thread was first posted. This is in order to provide an opportunity for an answer to be given that either addresses your question or makes your recommendation redundant. Follow-up questions or recommendations made before this point will be removed.

Follow-up questions may also be removed by the mod team if we judge them to either be too far afield, or only in essence a restatement of the original question. Top-level follow-up comments which request a source for or challenge the premise of part of the question must be done in good faith, and in a way that constructively engages with the question. If asking for a source, you should explain why you find the claim suspect and how clarification can help you personally answer the question. A full answer about why a premise is incorrect should otherwise comply with the rules and expectations we have for answers in this subreddit.

Similarly, the mod team may also remove recommendations that the question be posted in other subreddits or websites if we judge them to be inappropriate or unhelpful. We will also remove repeat recommendations within the same thread. Recommendations that are part of a substantive answer - such as, for instance, when a different discipline might offer a useful alternative perspective to your historical answer - are always allowed. If you feel that a question is completely wrong for AskHistorians and shouldn't have been posted here in the first place, please use modmail or the report function to bring this to the attention of the mod team.

Note of course that even after the 12-hour limit, we will still be vetting subreddit recommendations to ensure that they are of suitable quality.

Item Three: All questions are now subject to the 'Reverse Jeopardy Rule', that is to say that all questions must be phrased in the form of a question. No more 'A question about X.' as the title with the actual question buried in the post text; no more 'I've been thinking about Y.' as the title with the actual question buried in the post text; in short, no more burying the actual question in the post text. Going forward, all new questions will need to have, at the very least, a question mark in the post title.

The section of the rules labelled 'Scope', which currently reads:

Submissions to /r/AskHistorians must be either:

• A question about the human past. Please see this Rules Roundtable for more on Scope.
• A meta post about the state of the subreddit. Anyone may start a meta post, but please check with the moderators if you aren't sure you're using the label correctly. Short questions (e.g. clarification of moderation policy) that don't require discussion are better sent to the mods directly.

Will be amended to read:

Submissions to /r/AskHistorians must be either:

• A question about the human past. For such submissions, the title of the post must be worded as a question; the optional text box below the title can be used to provide further context and detail where appropriate. Please see this Rules Roundtable for more on Scope.
• A META post about the state of the subreddit. Anyone may start a META post, but please check with the moderators if you aren't sure you're using the label correctly (it does not mean a question about history as a discipline). While we generally allow META submissions both positive and negative, they must include "[META]" in the title, or they will be automatically removed regardless of their content. Please be sure to consult our Rules Roundtable series before posting, as your question may be addressed there. In addition, short questions (e.g. clarification of moderation policy) that don't require discussion are often better sent to the mods directly.

In short, it's a bit annoying both from the perspective of moderating new questions, and from the perspective of looking to answer them, to not be able to tell at a glance whether a question is interesting or not, and presumably that is also the case for readers. On top of that, requiring the question to be stated in the title should help with having more interesting questions get asked by making it so that you need to be able to phrase your query succinctly. Obviously, we aren't disabling post text and you can still add any additional information or sub-questions there, but just to state again, the core of the question will need to be front-and-centre in the title text.

Item Four: And there was something else that had been done wrong; this too we put right. May the Automoderator protect this sub from harm. This we ask of the Automoderator. This may the Automoderator give to us.

Previous weeks!

Thursday Reading and Recommendations is intended as bookish free-for-all, for the discussion and recommendation of all books historical, or tangentially so. Suggested topics include, but are by no means limited to:

• Asking for book recommendations on specific topics or periods of history
• Newly published books and articles you're dying to read
• Recent book releases, old book reviews, reading recommendations, or just talking about what you're reading now
• Historiographical discussions, debates, and disputes
• ...And so on!

Regular participants in the Thursday threads should just keep doing what they've been doing; newcomers should take notice that this thread is meant for open discussion of history and books, not just anything you like -- we'll have a thread on Friday for that, as usual.

I purchased one of those stands that positions the cell phone above the documents. It came with a shutter remote (that does not work with the TurboScan app. However, I still need to stand to operate the cell phone to make sure the document being photographed is lined up properly.

What is an efficient way to capture documents while in the archives?

Thank you!