How did people living in cities in hotter regions of the world (such as parts of modern-day Iraq or Saudi Arabia) stay cool during hot summers in the time before air conditioning or even mechanical fans? Did they have more problems with heat stroke and similar conditions than modern days?

When I say history of Rome, it doesn't matter when really but let's pick Sulla's Civil Wars so we are all talking about the same thing.

The idea behind my question is that the people who experienced the Civil Wars probably knew more about them than we did. So did the people ten years later.

In my layman's vision though, it seems that after some time the knowledge faded away. As the years passed, people knew less and less about the events.

Now, with modern archaeology and anthropology, it seems that as the years pass we learn more and more about the past and that we know more than people in an intermediate time period.

I know this question doesn't really have a nice clean answer, but it is something I have though about and I wonder what some experts might have to say about it.

Does humanity's knowledge of events graph out like a U shape? Decreasing as we move away from the event and then increasing once technology improves?

Title says it all really. I (think) I know enough to say "The stone is THE (and only) reason we understand Egyptian hieroglyphics."

But is this true, or was it just the first thing we found? Have other sources been found and/or could we have eventually deciphered the writing without the use of the stone ? Or, if it hadn't been found, would we still be in the dark?

I've been reading some things about the Civil War lately, and there's a lot of discussion about whether or not Grant was a brilliant strategist or just the first Union general determined enough to fight the ugly war of attrition that the Union could win. The majority opinion, though, seems to be that Grant was a great military leader. Could you walk me through some of his strategic decisions and explain their brilliance?

Everytime we watch movies or read books about the medieval age the world is portratited in a way that shows a lot of murders and crimes. It feels like the chances of being murdered during those times was a lot higher than today. It almost feels like you could be murdered for anything.

So, was the risk of being murder higher during the medieval age?

I am currently in the old city of Dubrovnik, which might be better known to students of European history as Ragusa. Public monuments and documents are in an Italian dialect up until the time of the city being part of Austria. But to what extent was the city writing and speaking in Italian or Serbian/Croatian in the time of the Republic of Ragusa? Was there a change and when/why?

Want to gain an insight for a book I am writing about a family based on these times but it must be historically accurate alongside a compelling story. What did they do, where did they live? Was there stigma, racism much like today?

I find this stereotype of an "equality before the mast" more prevalent in discussion and studies of the social histories of sailing vessel crews in the 17th-19th Centuries, to the point where a wide range of purposed vessels from Caribbean privateers to Pacific whalers are claimed to have practiced some blanket form of near equality for their crews that could not be sought ashore.

I wanted to open this up to our Age of Sail historians here, but also to other interested or relatable naval/maritime enthusiasts and scholars. I'm curious as to how often this idea gets brought up, and how accurate do you consider it to be in your studies?

I sometimes glance over the statistics from historical engagements ranging from antiquity through to the medieval period and I was wondering why in some cases large numbers of combatants are present on the field yet the day is won with the loser having seemingly lost only a small fraction of their alleged deployed forces?

I'm specifically looking for brief histories that take into account the experience of historical events by working people. Not just histories of labor, but also investigation of minority population experiences and government economic policies through history.

I am a high-school student doing a historical investigation to determine whether Herodotus should be attributed as "father of history" or "father of lies". while I can find Cicero as the first to title him as the "father of history", I can not find anything sourcing the first, or any, historian giving him the opposite title. Did anyone of note label Herodotus as a "father of lies", if so, who?