Hi guys, I'm a little obsessed with bronze age near east, but I'm having trouble conceptualizing the layout of ancient cities. If you know of any good maps that show the organization of the city, or floorplans of buildings, I would really appreciate it.

If anyone is knowledgeable about the organization of bronze age Mesopotamian cities, I'd also love to hear about it!

Like conventional machine guns being field mounted for use as anti-air or tanks being kinda parked in place for extended periods for use as base defense or as a basic form of self-propelled artillery? This thought mainly came about when I was playing Battlefield 1942, (Not the best source by any means, just where I got the idea from) and saw tanks parking or, well staying relatively stationary using their machine guns (The ones above the hatch, not coaxial machine guns) to shoot at planes, mainly on maps like Kharkov where there was a complete lack of proper anti-aircraft and very few machine gun armed vehicles total, I believe the only things with machine guns where the APC's and tank's hatch/top mounted machine guns, and although I can't properly speak for the German side, mainly playing as the Soviets, I've seldom seen anything with a machine gun rolling out on Kharkov, mostly seeing Tigers and Kubelwagens. Another note is that while this is more rare I have seen more static-ly placed tanks being used for base defense, usually when all the areas a tank can normally go are being harassed by Tigers. I've also seen the hatch/top mounted machine guns of Shermans (presumably of the Firefly variety) being used in anti-aircraft roles on maps such as Gazala. Sorry if the semi-ramble about Battlefield 1942 is unhelpful....

Many years ago I read an article saying that rates of violence (both 'criminal' and state-sanctioned) had decreased steadily over time (since, I believe, the 1400s). I can't remember the name of the article, the author, or which societies he was examining, but it got me thinking.

[deleted]

[deleted]

I'm watching a documentary that says the SS began to imprison political enemies in Dachau in 1934. Is it known if any of the initial batch of prisoners survived until the end of the war?

More to the point, when did Frankish/French self-identity become widespread across France, ahead of regional identities/allegiances.

American breakfast foods: ie eggs, sausage, bacon, hashbrowns/potato variants, pancakes etc.

Different phrasing: did the Puritan era (roughly 1620-1750) leave any outstanding influence on the United States as it emerged (1750-1800)?

I know that it was fairly close after being put to a vote - I think younger people preferred Bonn and older people liked the nostalgia of Berlin, although it was a bit tainted by certain history. How did this process play out to what we have today (something like 50% of government staff in each city?).

Did the movie invent the idea of three wishes? Were people outside the Middle East familiar with the idea of genies before 1992?

I've been looking and have never been able to find it. Since it was largely pushed around by Moscow, how did it work? And did they draw a historical distinction at all between the East part of Germany during WWII and the West part during WWII? I know there was no separation during the war, but I figured they might have tried to portray West Germany in a bad light anyway.

I know that Columbus set sail on 1492 to the new world. Columbus led his three ships - the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. But I want to know what the discovery of America led to the Native Americans. What they went through, being pushed away from their land. Overall the affects of colonization of Native Americans. If someone could give me some few pointers or some outside sources in which I can research on, that would be nice. A timeline of important events happening to the Native Americans would be very helpful.

It seems that 476-1000 was a fairly bad time to be living in western Europe considering migrating barbarian tribes and the absolute collapse of half an empire occurred during this time why is referring to it as a "dark age" not acceptable

Thank you kindly for any responses. I looked in the FAQ but any recommendations were about languages.

Learning about history in the American education system, we learned about the history of American slavery as if it was a closed story. Slavery began when Europeans went to Africa (and other places) and decided that these natives would make great slaves, so they brought them back with them. Slavery existed way back in the day in places like Rome and Egypt, but then it didnt' really exist between then and the 15th century or so. There was a 400 year mistake made by the human race that eventually led to abolitiion (and of course, the continued problems of modern human trafficking, but that's not the point I'm talking about here).

My understanding of human nature and the arc of history suggests that couldn't be the case. I doubt that explorers who made it to Africa came up with the idea of slavery out of whole cloth when they got there. What is the history of European slavery from the fall of the old Empires through the Age of Exploration?

I was just mulling over; for all that America is relatively driven by it's founding father's mythology, I don't recall seeing any reputably sourced quotes from any of the founders re: the second amendment. This seems especially odd, given the number of gun control debates there have been.

So- what was the earliest restriction on private firearms ownership in America after the Constitution was the law of the land? How was it received, what were the consequences, was it challenged on Constitutional grounds, etc.

Thanks!

I understand that a sword or similarly shaped bladed weapon had many advantages when it came to personal defence, but I wonder if they were really used as ubiquitously on the battlefield as Hollywood would lead me to believe.

In my (admittedly limited) experience in mock-battles, I've found that an organised group will almost always be more effective with weapons that are specialised to their battlefield role such as pikes, bows, etc, than with swords, and I wonder if this is indicative of how wars were actually carried out, or if I'm missing something.

Understand, I'm not asking about skirmishes or groups with limited organisational support (in which I can absolutely see the value in having a decent all-rounder weapon like a sword - since you never really know what kind of a situation you're going to find yourself in), I'm asking specifically about organised/regimented armies.

We have many accounts of Conquistadors first seeing the cities of Mesoamerica and the Andes, and marveling at what they experienced. But are there any accounts of the reverse, of Native Americans first traveling to Europe and reacting to what they saw?

We know that that there quite a few natives went to Europe, such as Pocahontas and Garcilaso de la Vega, but I couldn't find any accounts on what they actually thought of what they saw. Were they amazed? Curious? Disappointed? Do any accounts survive of such first encounters?