It seems odd to me that such ancient people are shown to have developed plate mail, something that doesn't reappear in the west for several centuries later.

Is this a real thing that happened, or just apparent? Does this have anything to do with the professional army profession?

just wondering because I know so little about Chinese history.

I've heard the opinion repeated many times that if the Library hadn't been destroyed, we'd probably all be colonizing Alpha Centauri by now. While the idea has a certain tragic romanticism, it also strikes me as absurd on ground of Eurocentrism alone- after all, it's not like the Greeks were the only ones who knew anything. I also know that a lot of the works survived in other places, especially in Baghdad.

On the other hand, I recently read a couple journal articles attempting to piece together a partial inventory of the works we know to have been destroyed or lost, and I found it deeply compelling (I know it's insanely stupid, but it nearly brought me to tears). Histories, ethnologies and maps of parts of the world/world history we know very little about, to my knowledge; mathematical, astronomical, and mechanical treatises that were at least centuries ahead of their time (unless I'm wildly off base, a decently predictive heliocentric model of the solar system wasn't re-introduced until 1543); even poetry and literature that, while not directly applying to the colonizing-Mars-thesis, had to contain information about the cultures it came from.

I know this is a pretty open-ended question, but I think what I'm really trying to get at is whether the meme of a tragic and dramatic blow to the stockpile of accumulated human knowledge is really accurate, whether it's accurate in a limited context (i.e. it sucked for Greece but didn't matter much in the long run), or whether it's a total myth and really nothing too critical or unique was lost due to duplication/transportation/etc.

My current gut instinct is that in terms of scientific/mathematical knowledge the loss was likely minimal due to duplication in other parts of the world, but that the historic/anthropological/literary loss was immense, perhaps uniquely (or at least very exceptionally) so.

This came up specifically in the context of a long-winded and mostly uninteresting conspiracy theory that references, among other things, the Antikythera mechanism, the Bermuda Triangle, and Jewish lizard people (because of course). I did a cursory database search expecting to find either a debunking or useful context, but was surprised to find a total lack of agreement (on basically anything aside from carbon dating) in the academic papers I pulled up.

So, naturally, now I'm interested. Is this a genuine unsolved mystery, and either way is there any sort of consensus (on any points, really)?

Hello Historians! this question has been in my mind for a while and i haven't found anything in this subreddit or in Internet to help me clear my mind and i thought this was a good place to ask for help, sorry if this was already posted somewhere else.

I know that between Roman times and Medieval times it's a lot of time difference but it's kinda applies to my question: Where are they? Did mostly got lost? Are they buried or in an ancient armory? I mean events like the third punic war or the Hundred Year's War had a lot of mens and each one had his own weapons and if we apply to all the battles in both periods makes me wonder where are they now, hope you guys can help me figure where are all the Swords/Lances/Crossbow/Bows/Shields/Gladius/etc.

Can we plausibly reconstruct a consistent pattern of Caesar’s political aims, or one that was reactive or evolved over time?

I am curious about the history of how Russia became the second largest oil producer in the world. Did its oil industry begin in the Czarist times or the Soviet era? How much did oil effect Soviet history? when did they start exporting?

What was the importance behind a thousand years? Did it have a religious meaning? Or did they just randomly come up with that number?

I've been looking up historical populations in Europe for a world that I'm building and I noticed that France had an enormous population in comparison to other states of similar size. Something like double Poland-Lithuania's population and 3/2 Spain's. Why is this?

As usual, Reddit's search has failed me. Most sources I've seen refer to them as volunteers, but given that they were provided with modern military equipment including tanks, fighters, and bombers, it seems more than plausible that membership was somewhat less than voluntary. Did the Nazis throw together a unit and order them to Spain, while referring to them as "volunteers"? Did they ask for volunteers from the ranks and send them to Spain? Or was it actually organized from the ground up by motivated volunteers?

I know there's some analogy to be drawn to Olympic competition, but my understanding is that was largely celebratory religious ritual and festival. How common was it for grievers to engage in physical competition as a form of mourning? Was everybody included as part of an accessible grieving method, or was it men only? If so, did women and children have analogs? When did it fall out of favor?

I know the Holocaust was the catalyst for the creation of Israel, but what caused the growing desire for it before the Holocaust?

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