I was reading about Japan's warring states era, and the author noted that while Japan was decentralized during its warring states era, the presence of the emperor (despite, or perhaps because he was a figurehead) meant the country still had a sense of unity - in other words, of being "Japanese".

Did this exist in China's warring states era? Would I have associated myself with my particular little state? Or would I have a larger concept of being "Chinese"?

Barring really simple stuff like boiled eggs , are there any really old dishes or recipes that have been around in one form or another for a really long time?

It had one edge, straight backed, and German. It's name translated to something like "big knife" or "great knife".

hello, this has been troubling me for some time now. how did people set their clocks in 19th or 18th century? radio? or watch towers?

Any notable people whose child or children probably died of diabetes? (Or should I post this in AskScience?)

Judging from the small amount of Japanese cities I've seen, it seems that there are nearly no pre-WWII buildings left. Of course a lot of this is attributable to bombing during the war, but I would think there should still be more than there is.

Example: the Sanzu river from the Japanese myth, Hubur river from Egyptian myth, the river Styx and its rowman Charon, Vaitarna ruver in Hinduism.

I'm both a big fan of beer and a big fan of history, so I've been wondering about this lately. The brewery purported to be the oldest in the world is Weihenstephaner in Bavaria, and their most famous beer is their hefeweizen, a wheat beer. The brewery opened ~500 years before the law originated in Bavaria, banning wheat in the production of beer. I read that Bavaria even required the Reinheitsgebot to apply all over Germany as a condition to accept joining the unification. So it seems like it at least used to be a pretty big deal there.

But I also read that this law was recently changed to allow for bottom-fermenting beer to be made with different malts. But there are hundreds of different brands of hefeweizens, dunkelweizens, kristallweizens, weizenbocks, you name it, many of which are made by ancient breweries like Weihenstephaner. Were these beers being made all along, or did all of the Bavarian breweries just recreate the ancient style in the last twenty years?

I was born in Russia and lived there until seven. I never heard my elders, especially my grandfather, a colonel in the Soviet army, refer to anyone as comrade. It seemed like "tavarish" was the go to for a friendly acquaintance.

So a mentor of mine was telling me a story about how in the Roman Empire, if a Roman citizen were traveling down the road within the bounds of the Empire and passed by a non-Roman citizen, that the non-Roman was obligated to put down whatever it was that they were doing and carry or help transport the cargo of the Roman citizen for one mile if they were called to do so. Is there any truth to this story?

My brother and I have been debating for quite some time about how horses aren't indigenous to the Americas while going over some holes that we had seen in the book or mormon.

When I had brought it to his attention, he went well out of his way to find an article on the matter via google. After about half an hour, he had finally found an article stating that there were horses here before its discovery. His argument before the search was that, "there are too many wild horses in today's time for them all to have been brought" and other things concerning how they all got here and how many became so wild.

I would love some insight from people who make history their profession. Please help me explain this to my brother in the plainest way possible.

I read About Face by Col. David Hackworth and he mentions one of his friends going down to fight with Fidel Castro. I was just wondering how common a thing that was?

Were the fictional narratives (knights fighting dragons and saving sacrificial maidens) created during the era to glorify knighthood or after the Middle Ages to romanticize the era? In either case, were dragons not as popular in other cultures?

I was reading a biography of sultan Suleyman and got curious about how the cannons of the time (early-mid 16th century) functioned in battle. There was a description of some of the absurdly large cannons the Ottomans had, cannonballs with a circumference of 2,5 metres and such. So clearly they were very powerful, some of the most powerful in the world; but still sieges were slow and brutal affairs, taking at least weeks and often months. So I came to think what was it exactly that prevented these huge cannons from tearing down walls faster? I thought of a few things:

1. That (in this specific case) places like Belgrade, Rhodes and Vienna already had highly developed star forts that could withstand many solid cannonball shots

2. That the structure of the cities and star forts was such that the besiegers could not get close enough to hit the walls at an efficient rate, what with vast trenches, banks and defensive fire from inside the fortresses

3. That aiming with the cannons was simply a crapshoot, and with how labourous they were to load, you would be lucky if one or two cannonballs a day hit the walls, let alone a critical spot

I assume the real reason is a combination of these three (if they're true, which is really the "few questions" bit) and also additional factors, so I'm curious what else played into it. Cheers.

Right now, the U.S.'s main export is entertainment in one form or another, and a large portion of our sundry and household goods comes from China. Was there a country or culture in history that did something similar? Thanks in advance!

I was curious about the island hopping that occurred in the Pacific Theater of WWII. Mainly, was it just chance which island you were deployed to? I ask this because my grandpa fought on Iwo Jima, but did not fight again. Was this just luck? I can not imagine there was enough man power to let every soldier who fought in one large battle to not fight again. Thanks in advance.