I'm interested in the history of how a bit of rationality finally took hold after the witch trials - how did we get from burning 'witches' at the stake to a place where society doesn't believe they exist?

Considering the popularity of the format, and the opportunity to portray 'the other side' how you wish, were there novels about brave Soviet agents trying to get home across the Berlin wall, albeit in the opposite direction?

I am asking this question as a spin off to a thread about China's military weakness in the 19th and early 20th Century. Here in America, there was King Philip's War, between English settlers and Natives, breaking out in 1675. King Philip (Metacomet) commanded Native American warriors from a society that to some degree was producing, or at least repairing, guns. In order to counter him, the capture of the Native forges was a part of the English settler strategy.

Among more urbanized cultures, the Turks & Japanese made their own, and somewhere I have heard that firearms manufacture of "Khyber Pass copies" in the region of Pakistan goes back to the 19th Century.

I was wondering how the correct naming for the ancient civilization of the Maya would be in English language:

1. "the Mayan civilization, culture, ruins etc." or "the Maya civilization, culture, civilization"
2. "the civilization of the Maya" or "the civilization of the Mayas"

Thanks for your responses :-)

From what I've seen in this subreddit, feudalism is now thought to be a bad way of thinking about medieval European society.

But one common feature I've seen is that governmental control was decentralized to a great extent, and there were many levels of organization that made it possible to, for instance, be a vassal of two different kings at once who actually ignored both of them. The Church was also a parallel government authority to the secular state.

Was this "multilayered sovereignty" more present during the medieval period in Europe than before and after? Or is non-multilayered sovereignty just a feature of modern nation-states, and medieval Europe was just normal in this regard?

Hi,

I was going to follow up on a suggestion from a highschool history teacher and read "Rats, Lice and History." However, I saw in a recent ELI5 thread that a book called "Guns, Germs and Steel" seems to be very popular, albeit not very accurate. So it got me wondering how accurate the "Rats, Lice and History" book was.

Is "Rats, Lice and History" an accurate portrayal as to the effect of disease on war and civilization? Or is that also not an accurate book?

Which of these books would you recommend, or conversely, is there another book (or perhaps more than one) that would give a more accurate understanding?

Thank you!

There seems to be a tendency to put the German army and their equipment up on a pedestal (Thank you for introducing me to the term "Wehraboo", Reddit) so I was wondering if this sub could provide me with examples of things the Germans got wrong.

I'm not talking about Strategy failures (Not invading Malta, Stalingrad, etc.) or errors at the political level. Did the Germans have any consistent failings in tactics and doctrine - or anything that can't be blamed on "Hitler was nuts"?

Any examples for the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine would be OK too.

Starting from the Neolithic settlements, what do we know about how mobile the people were? Is it assumed that as the humans transformed from a hunter-gatherer to an agrarian society, mobility declined and people remained relatively isolated from each other in their cities, hence giving way to different languages etc.? But then again, did not people start having relations with foreign societies via trade, pilgrimage, marriage (as evident from Abrahamic texts)?

The modern study of linguistics supposedly started when the British noticed similarities between Sanskrit and Classical Greek.

But did anyone notice languages change before that? Did they notice patterns to it?

Edit: I'm particularly interested in specific mentions of word usage changing, or some part of language changing.

I'm already aware that Cato the Elder had mentioned that Archaic Latin sounds almost incomprehensible to him, but are there mentions of specific nature, such as "this word used to have such and such meaning", or "our past tense used to be expressed with a suffix instead of a preposition".

Hi, I've finished Daston and Galison’s Objectivity and it awoke my interest in scientific illustrations. In particular how those works of art influenced culture outside of science or what 'sort of relationships' between people and those illustrations existed in this period (~1750 to ~1850).

Has anyone a short reading list at hand, or could point me in the right direction? Ty in advance.

And did he realize that "Animal Farm" was about him?

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I am conflicted about the TV show 'Vikings'.

I didn't know Oden, Loki and Thor were Norse gods. I now have a cultural reference for watching the Thor movie Franchise (lol!). All humor aside, I am disturbed by Viking culture as portrayed on the TV. I have heard anecdotal stories of Viking stories. But the celebration of savagery, pillaging, raiding, rape? I feel these are celebrated on the TV show. Is there some understanding that this was probably a shameful part of Norse culture, as Americans are ashamed of their past slavery culture, Germans ashamed of the holocaust and Nigerians ashamed of internet scams?

Forgive my naivete. I am still on S01E04. I am not be all caught up on the storyline, but men!, is this story brutal and raw, nerve racking and with no remorseful undertone.

Are modern Scandinavians ashamed of this history?

What internal conflicts prevented Austria from uniting the Germanic people before Prussia developed into a significant military force? Was it merely lack of interest?

In one of my history classes, my teacher told us that saying that Peter Minuit and the Dutch bought Manhattan for $20 worth of trinkets was misleading, because Native Americans had no concept of land ownership. Is that true? Did the availability of land in the New World make it not a commodity to be bought and sold?

One of the first things that I was issued in boot camp (beyond clothes and toiletries) was a set of dog tags. I have seen some that date back to WWI but were they a "new thing" at that time?

I know he had no real power by then but still?l

Edit: please don't feel the need to point out to me that forest spirits are fictional

I read an article about tattoos in the ancient world. It said that barbarian would get tattooed but it was commonly thought Romans wouldn't get tattoos because it was considered barbaric, but more recently it's been discovered that Roman soldiers would get them. It said that soldiers would get marked with their legion numbers and symbols. Is there any truth to this? Did other Romans get tattoos? Any sources on the subject should be appreciated.