Israel uses an Aramaic script. Jesus allegedly spoke Aramaic natively. Arameans words are found within the Assyrian communities of Iraq. They seem fairly central and important. But why? Where did they come from, and where did they go?

Apart from main streets in towns, and separate from railroads used for long-distance travel, what would the experience be like traveling from, as an example, St. Louis to Kansas City with horseback riding and covered wagons being the main modes of transportation?

Were there designated roads, or just large areas of land for travelers to cross?

Were there service stations or any equivalent to modern-day gas stations?

Would it have been common to pass other travelers or have other interactions common on modern-day highways?

Any or all of them. Did they hope they could prevent the invasion or just try to delay it? How has the threat of invasion shaped their military doctrine? Have their plans changed in modern times?

Thank you!

They seemed fine annexing Ukraine, the Baltic Republics, Belarus, and Moldova, why did they let Poland and others remain independent?

I am curious as to why the U.S. did not use the atom bomb to conquer Germany. It was used on Japan but not in continental Europe. I know the Germans had their own nuclear program but I don't know how far they got and it's probably a secret as to what the Allies gained from Germany's unconditional surrender. Could the short time between the German surrender and the dropping of the bombs in Japan be influenced by Allies gaining nuclear research / weapons from Germany which they then used on Japan?

Follow-up:

Is it really logical that the mutually assured destruction deterrent during the Cold War was enough to prevent the US and Russia from using nuclear weapons on each other in light of the mass wars they were fighting (ie. Vietnam, etc.) or are there alternate explanations for why nuclear weapons have never been used on another nation since?

The question of whether colonialism had "good" or "bad" effects is a fraught one, but let's talk about comparisons. Was the legacy of British colonial rule better relative to the French, Dutch, and other major European colonial powers?

(Let's also leave aside the issue of motives, in the sense that the British could have created better institutions for purely cynical reasons.)

In other words, could anybody have done what Alexander did? Or did he have innate talent?

I know that questions like this are often difficult to answer when considering the past 200 years, let alone 2000+ years.

So, as someone whose background is more in the arts, I find that the works of history I tend to gravitate toward are works that are well-written. Gibbon's work is, of course, the most famous work of "history that's just damned good writing", but there have been others that have taken up his banner. Will Durant's "Story of Civilization" is a deeply engrossing read, for example, and his ability to distill historical persons and events down to a few concise, musical, funny, and memorable lines or paragraphs is nonpareil. Winston Churchill exhibited "sturm und drang" like few other writers of history before or since. Daniel Boorstin was probably the best of the lot, his two famous trilogies - the "Knowledge Trilogy", and the "Americans" trilogy - being well-organized and -crafted works whose depiction of historical figures are colorful, well-rounded, and give them with a greater measure of depth and realism than most other writers of history.

However, at the same time, I'm not blind to these writers' deficiencies. Gibbon's ahistorical excesses are broadly acknowledged, Durant was working in a field that wasn't really "his", Churchill played loose with facts and had an obvious ideological and personal agenda he wished to get across in his histories. Only Boorstin seems, to me, to have been a pretty well-respected historian, and even then, I'm sure he has his detractors.

Conversely, from what I have seen, many of what are considered to be the "best" works of history on particular eras seem, well, rather dull - interesting facts conveyed with all the vivacity and fun of a lecture on tax law. Either that, or you get writing that tries to be interesting, but ends up being melodramatic and silly, a la Shelby Foote.

It seems to me, then, that there is a niche in the middle - for works that are more rigorous in terms of their history, while still being well-written in terms of their prose and well-crafted in terms of the historical narratives they weave. I have read at least one work that I think is a good example of this - Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", which is a truly excellent book, in terms of the way it weaves copiously-researched accounts of the factual events it covers with very dimensional, nuanced characterizations that grounds the actors in the political, philosophical, scientific, and spiritual zeitgeist of the era being written about - but what are some others that are similarly meritorious?