What is the smallest estimate of the size of Xerxes' invasion force into Greece? How many of these would be soldiers?

I know a fair bit about the settling of the New World. Currently, I am reading a book called 1491 which has led me to this question.

Disease wiped out huge populations in the first 150 years or so as the New World was being colonized. There were also battles that turned into massacres. I understand that there were historically larger populations in Central and South America and that there has historically been a white ruling class in many Central and South American countries.

None of these factors seem to account for the huge discrepancy in the ethnicity of the bulk of the populations of these regions, however. The aboriginal population in Canada has been 3-4% and growing for the last couple of decades. Most of those people would be considered mestizo.

If we look at a country such as Peru, Europeans constitute about 15% of the population ( I am getting these stats from Wikipedia) with most of the remaining being Amerindian or mestizo.

So, what accounts for the huge discrepancy?

Are there any reliable numbers, esp. during Robbespierre's reign of terror?

This has been driving me insane lately. I remember that Dan Carlin mentioned in his "Logical Insanity" series that some journalist or author wrote about how a World War was impossible in the weeks after Franz Ferdinand's assassination. He wrote something along the lines of "the world is too globalized for such a massive conflict to take place. Nobody is willing to throw away such an intricate and profitable system for one war."

Google has been no help and re-listening to the podcast yielded no results. Can anyone help?

How did the senate/military/citizens react to the formation of both triumvirates?

Hello guys,

The highlight of my weekend was a spirited debate with my girlfriend after she insisted the Soviet Union was a Communist Country. We got onto this discussion after I mentioned I had been reading about the economy of the Soviet Union during my lunch break. Now as far as I was aware the Soviet union wasn't Communist seen as it wasn't "stateless" nor "classless" etc.

My girlfriend is a teacher, private tutor of subjects including history (which also is a hobby/interest of hers), studied history at Uni ya da ya da ya da.

She is, to all intents and purposes, much brighter and academic than me. But I feel I have her beat on this point.

What do you think /rAskHistorians?

I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question.

Lets give it a time period, Lets say during the Musket and Bayonet age-Napoleon age, around 18th +, That should give us some reliable records.

I'm reading Stephen Kotkin's Stalin biography and when describing Imperial Russia and the royal family he mentions that Alexander III originally wanted the tsesarevich, the future Nicholas II, to marry Princess Hélène d'Orléans, the daughter of Prince Philippe d'Orléans, Comte de Paris, the pretender to the French throne. The purpose of this match would supposedly have been to strengthen the bonds between Russia and the French Republic.

I find this slightly odd. Wouldn't the government of France have been provoked by a marriage between the heir to a foreign power and the daughter of a man who claimed that he was the legitimate ruler of France and, consequently, that the Republic was not legitimate?

I would be most grateful if anyone could shed some light on this, and perhaps also on the role of the French pretenders more generally in European diplomacy at the time.

Today in the West we bury our dead with suits; in the long middle ages the royalty buried the elites with gems and fancy clothes.

But what about earlier period Christians like in late antiquity and in apostolic ages? What about Christians in other societies, e.g. Syrian, African, Chinese? Do Christian burial practices significantly vary across time and space?

I've studied a fair amount of Communist-bloc history and have noticed the following trend:

Sovietologists seem to blame the split on the diplomatic failures of the Soviet government: that Khrushchev's eccentricity, pettiness, and rather poorly disguised racism, as well as some other qualities shared by those in his clique, pushed away the Chinese as an ally

Whilst Sinologists tend to do the same thing for Mao Zedong: that Mao's craziness, irrationality, and obsessiveness pushed away the Soviets as a valuable ally.

So, whose fault was it?

I'd argue that pre-industrial warfare was even more brutal than today because warriors literally hacked each other to pieces. But I've never read anything about these guys suffering PTSD.