Rereading some of the material about the Ardennes offensive and Operation Barbarous, I noted that in Panzer Leader, Guderian barely mentions Manstein, even though presumably they were relatively close colleagues. If all you knew about those operations was from Panzer Leader, you'd hardly know that Manstein did anything at all. Was there some personal reason for this? Is Guderian just being a glory hound?

I've been watching the Outlander and there seems to be an awful lot of rape. I don't doubt that it was a part of reality for women, but what was life really like for them? Did they have any rights? Were they able to do things like own land, work, or have any say against the men around them? I don't really have a specific for class, though I realize that upper class women were treated better.

What language would medieval Scots speak? Would it be like middle English, or did they have their own language? If so how close was it to English and were they even in the same language family?

On Reddit, I've mostly seen Wahhabism described as "the Muslim extremist thing that ruined everything for everybody", which seems... simplistic.

Take the 20-year-rule into account, of course.

For example, aleph and bet both begin the Hebrew alphabet and are essentially equal to A and B; Kaf, lamed, mem, nun is remarkably similar to K, L, M, N. As far as I know, the languages are not related. Why is this placement almost the same? Is it just random?

Although my visual frame of reference is just the movie Saving Private Ryan, did the Omaha beach landing have landmines or other sorts of explosives? If so, what kind and what were the capabilities? If not, what was present from the Axis defense portion that I'm not aware of?

• Thank you to anyone taking the time to answer, I very much appreciate any insight for my own edification. :)

Hi, everyone!

So I just read "The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction" by Eric H. Cline and enjoyed it very much. But I'm still unclear on one thing: How do we know that Hisarlik is really Troy?

I understand that Greek references to (W)ilios and Hittite references to Wilusa are probably talking about the same place. But how do we know that Hisarlik is that place? If I understand correctly, the only piece of writing found at Hisarlik is a little seal with two names on it. There's certainly not a sign that says "Welcome to Ilios!" or anything.

So how do we know? Do we know? Or is it just a good educated guess?

I was thinking with the modern outrage of Zika, and a vague remembrance of discoveries of piles of "disabled" corpses, mainly children, that maybe there was a connection?

Why not the Palestinians, or the Lebanese, or the Dutch, or the Papua New Guineans? What place did Libya occupy in the popular American consciousness in the mid-1980s?

There was a comedian (George Carlin, I think) who mentioned that a bunch of cavemen were sitting around a fire and some guy stood up and said, "Alright, I'm in charge now." I'm sure that didn't happen, but it wouldn't exactly surprise me either.

What are the earliest texts referencing the authority of a king? Does written history "start" with this structure already in place?

She was the secretary for a guy that 'ran the bomber plant' and she'd transcribe his notes as he inspected the planes. One day she said some sort of police came in and arrested him and told her they were taking him to jail for espionage for the Nazis. I can't find anything online, does anybody have a good place to start looking for details?

So as many of us already know, the sort of mythical status of Erwin Rommel leads many to believe that Rommel was a sort of flawless honorable soldier. And while he was, by all accounts, an admirable general and person, in my experience many accounts exaggerate his 'goodness' (by implying he was never a Nazi, that he was 'just doing his job', etc).

After doing some cursory research (and also re-watching Letters from Iwo Jima), I'm curious as to why General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (commander of Japanese forces during the battle) doesn't get a similar treatment? By most accounts he was a rational, logical commander who routinely visited wounded enlisted men and forbade banzai attacks.

Is this just because he's less well known?

Like in terms of culturre and society, what was it like. Was there a form of discrimination like the caste system?

So I noticed that apparently in the Shahnameh, there are no references to the Achaemenids at all, instead they were replaced completely by the mythical Kayanids. For example, in the Shahnameh and Darab Nama, Kai Darab is presented as the last Iranian king before the conquests of Alexander the Great, instead of Darius III, and as far as I can tell the Kayanid kings list bears no real resemblance to the Achaemenids.

And if we accept that the Shahnameh and other medieval Persian histories/legends are based on a Sassanian original (Khwaday-Namag), then this version of Persian history that omits the Achaemenids dates to the Sassanian era. I do remember hearing of Sassanians misidentifying various Achaemenid ruins and structures as Kayanid, but I can't find any references to it right now.

So my question is: why have the medieval/Sassanian Persian histories/legends chosen to omit the Achaemenids and replace them with the Kayanids? Is it ignorance due to previous suppression of texts? Or was it a conscious decision to rewrite Persian history in this way? Was there some shame attached to the Achaemenids (I assume shame led to the Seleucids being excluded completely, and decreasing the importance of the Parthians)?

I know that supposedly by the second half of Parthian era the Kings started to claim Achaemenid inheritance, so I assume the Achaemenids were at least known at the onset of the Sassanian era. So did references to the Achaemenids disappear during the Sassanian and medieval eras? If so, when did Persian society start talking about them again? If not, how did they reconcile the Achaemenids with the legends of the Kayanids? Was there active effort to espouse the Kayanid version of Persian history over the Achaemenid?

I recall from memory a story about an ancient Greek military leader that saved Athens (either from the Spartans or Persia or some other rival... I can't recall which) through the course of a war or battle. Immediately after the war was over, he was hailed as a hero, but over time the Athenian people grew to hate him for some reason, he lost a gov't election and was possibly executed by the people.

Does this story ring a bell? Can you direct me to the Greek story that I might be close to describing? My google fu has failed to uncover what I am looking for.

Im very curious and i feel this is a very important topic to understand human nature and social evolution. Were there ''memes'' in roman times? Or any kind of social phenomenon that could be related to memes? I understand that the lack of internet can limit the viral part of the meme spread.

PS: Im not trolling.

I am aware that ryuku acted as a trading go between for china and japan, and later on of red seal ports and ships that could deal with westerners, but I was wondering if there were ever a Italian Style city state, with heavy civic patriotism, urban nobility, or a merchant oligarchy, signore dictatorship, other facets typical of that type of polity. I realize this is a very vague question due to how both japan and the Italian City State change overtime.

Thanks

It seems that for hundreds of years, colonialism was done almost exclusively by "western" countries, namely European countries, and later the US. The only exception I can think of is that Japan seemed to do a little of it in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Why is this? Why weren't there states in other parts of the world trying to colonize the planet?