In "No Woman No Cry," Bob Marley sings about sitting in the government yard in Trenchtown, lighting a fire, and making cornmeal porridge. What sort of place was that?

Thanks to /u/sunagainstgold for suggesting this weeks topic.

At least as far back as Oregon Trail, video games have been used to teach aspects of history in a fun and engaging way.

At other times, games are placed in a historical era, but are designed for entertainment and not explicitly for education. The Assassin's Creed franchise has spurred countless questions in this subreddit about the Crusades, the Assassins of Alamut, Pirates, or the Medicis.

What is the value of Video Games in terms of promoting layman interest in history?

Are game developers getting better at "historical accuracy" in games? Similarly, is Historical Consultant for games a burgeoning field for history students?

Are there specific games that do a very good job of historical accuracy?

Are historical first-person games limited by the need to make the player-characters have a great deal of choice and agency?

Are (some) video games guilty of perpetuating myths about history?

When there is a discussion about such issues, people always speak about the inquisition or the wars of religion in europe or discrimination against emigrant minorities in the 19th and 20th century, but they don't seem to acknowledge that a fifth of the US population is decended from people forcefully converted to christianity? The african american community speaks often about the economic and civil rights aspects of their history but I think they ignore the loss of culture, religion, music, identity...

Is this the case? Has the forced conversion happened? Is it talked about enough and I'm not exposed to it? If not then why is this not known?

During WWII there was a British song called "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball." Was this due to common knowledge, or just playful mockery that happened to be true?

Apologies if this is a stupid question.

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Where did the women come from? Were they chosen for their beauty? What were the standards of beauty? What was a typical day like for a concubine in the harem? Is there any record of homosexual activities in the harem? How many people would live in a harem?

Additionally for the nobility of the armies, how involved in the fighting would they be? I am asking since fiction suggests the knights being both better trained as well as being very active during battles.

For example, in the Soviet Union the names of the average person were still most likely the name of some saint or apostle. Konstantin, Ivan, Andrei Nikolai etc etc etc. Even in modern Cuba you still see Juan, Mario, Nicolas, Jesús...doesn't this go against state atheism policy?

Shouldn't we see names like transliterations of communist figures or at least secular names, especially after decades upon decades of communism rising and falling in the world?

Hi, everyone. I'm an Americanist PhD student about to embark on my first serious research trip. I wanted to ask a question that may be silly, but that I hope I get some sense of: how long, on average, do you spend at each archive? I understand that it depends, but as a rule of thumb, how long do you spend in each repository? I'm trying to get a ball-park figure for financial planning purposes. Thanks!

I could be wrong about the size of Colonial families...

Ive read about how Pakistani provinces at the time had voted against a separate state

What evidence did the revisionist school of thought use to assert that Muslim separatists never wanted to create a new nation-state?

During the time of the conquistadors I have heard of small communities existing around catholic churches. What were these villages like in a daily sense? Also curious about towns in the American south west and central American during the same time period.

Were there other heights besides the Cuban Missile Crisis?

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It's been argued that the meticulous expense account that George Washington submitted to Congress after the war shows profligate personal spending on his part. Is this the case?

Lets skip the obvious "Alexander should have brought back elephants" but and talk more about Rome. Between the Punic wars and wars with Persia, they certainly knew they existed. Even after Roman collapse, medieval Europeans loved the image of Eleazer Avaran pulling a Leroy Jenkins on the Persian emperor's war elephant.

Why didn't the Europeans ever acquire a breeding population of elephants to use as labor and mounts? Every civilization that was known to the Romans used elephants, yet they did not.

Also, side question: lions seem absolutely inescapable in European heraldry despite being from Africa. Why were elephants not as popular.

Side question 2: did the Egyptians use elephants, and if not, why not? They're the closest to where to find them (out of the bronze age indo-mediterranean belt of civilizations), and they probably would have appreciated their size for building purposes. Besides, I've never seen an elephant represented in Egyptian art.

I was always taught that if you had to cross a river while hunting or hiking, you should ether find a safe, dry place to cross, or remove your shoes and socks when its time to cross, otherwise you have to build a fire and dry off your footwear.

It seemed like in the movie, even during non life or death situations, such as the intro, they would often trudge around in rivers or pools of water with their shoes still on.

All Google is giving me is "how many humans have ever existed" and the answers all vary wildly. I figured since year 0 we may have a more accurate number.