In the first /r/askhistorians podcast, it was mentioned that Caesar invaded Gaul mostly for his own personal profit and came back incredibly wealthy. But what was worth taking?

From my understanding, Gaul in the first century BC was organized into multiple tribal kingdoms centered around picket-walled villages and hill forts. What wealth could these settlements hold? Or did Caesar become rich by making use of the Gaulish soil?

By that I mean does he really look like those portraits and sculptures?

Did India and the middle east operate in the feudal way that CK2 depicts Europe as?

Never learned in school what North America was like before the 1400s or so. Very open-ended question so feel free to give as much or as little info as possible

Potomac River*

So, I was just messing whit a fun little page called geacron.com that allows you to just pick a year and see the political borders of that year as well as some important events. The thing is that between 1255 and 1295 two lines that aren't explained in any way go from Venice to Beijing and then from Venice to eastern China and around Indochina back to Venice, and I was wondering what it was.

Edit: The second trip was Marco Polo, but the first one I don't know.

I can't remember it for the life of me and no amount of googling has done me any good. I know it starts with a C and means generally the same thing as incest, but that's about it.

I dont know where else to ask this question so I hope I'm not breaking any rules!

Edit: I think that should actually be 'Dynastic Intra-marriage'.

Please tell me about this class of ships. My grandfather served on one (Nashville) and I'd like to learn more about his ship.

I am an aircraft performance engineer that has written the first technically correct book on the Wright brothers' work. I would like to recommend it to the query titled "The Technical Side of the Wright Brothers". How can this be done?

Read a position paper where this assumption is one of the foundations of the argument, and I'm interested to see if this a commonly held position or not. Below is a direct excerpt from the article I was reading.

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Thanks you for any input

G88s

*B. The Historical Data Regarding Wine

1. Unfermented wine

Because of refrigeration problems in ancient times, wine was often boiled until the liquid evaporated, leaving behind a thick, unintoxicating paste that stored well. It was somewhat similar to modern grape jelly. The people would spread it on bread like a jam, and some still do today in the Middle East.

a) Pliny the Elder--This Roman historian in his Natural Histories said such wine could last as long as ten years. He wrote of wine that had the consistency of honey.

b) Horace--This Latin poet wrote in his Odes of unintoxicating wine, that he recommended quaffing under the shade (I:18).

c) Plutarch--This Greek essayist wrote in his Moralia that filtered wine neither inflames the brain nor infects the mind and the passions, and is much more pleasant to drink. He liked the kind of wine with no alcoholic content.

d) Aristotle--This Greek philosopher spoke of wine that was so thick, it was necessary to scrape it from the skins it was stored in and to dissolve the scrapings in water."

e) Virgil--This Latin writer spoke of the necessity of boiling down wine.

f) Homer--The celebrated bard, in the ninth book of The Odyssey tells of Ulysses, who took with him in his visit to the Cyclops a goatskin of sweet, black wine that needed to be diluted with twenty parts of water before being consumed as a beverage.

g) Columella--This Latin agronomist, a contemporary of the apostles, wrote that it was common in Italy and Greece to boil wine. That would not have been done if they had wanted to preserve the alcoholic content.

h) Archbishop Potter--Archbishop Potter, born in 1674, wrote in his Grecian Antiquities wrote to boil down their wines and then drink them four years later (Edinburg, 1813, vol. 2, p. 360). He also refers to Democritus, a celebrated philosopher, and Palladius, a Greek physician, as making similar statements concerning wine at that time. These ancient authorities referred to the boiled juice of the grape as wine.*

The court knew about his involvement in the Self Strengthening Movement, but what about him travelling all over the globe, fighting for legalising Chinese immigration to the USA, commanding his own army, etc. I'm just wondering. Did he keep the court informed? I confess the defeat was pretty late in his career, but it seems like he had a lot of power while not being exactly trustworthy. Furthermore, is it accurate to call him the Bismarck of China (and Bismarck the Li Hongzhang of Germany, for that matter)? Thanks and all the best,

I heard on the radio several years ago that there was a plan (in the 50s if I remember correctly) to dam the Golden Gate and drain some of San Francisco bay. Was this actually true and how seriously was this contemplated?

I've got the impression that he got France out of Vietnam almost entirely on the strength of his personality and by using up every last bit of his considerable political capital. Yeah, probably exaggerated.

The more I read about the politics of decolonization (next stop Frantz Fanon), the stranger PMF looks. Is Fourth Republic France just weird? Did anything really change between Vietnam and Algeria, or was there just not the same connection/mixing as in the case of Algeria and continental France?

I've gone to JSTOR and read a few reviews of the big biographies, but so much is in French and I'm just an anglophone dabbler :( The subject of "mendesisme" comes up a bit as well, to the point where a goddamn conference was convened. Of course all I can read is a review of the proceedings.

Please send help!