Like are there examples of say Romans preserving artifacts, and history from Ancient Egypt, or perhaps Mesopotamia?

I'm trying to learn about the rise and fall of Rome and as far as I can understand, these two books combined do that fairly well. Do they not cover any time period that's important? And if they don't, what are some books that do?

Specifically Ashkenazi Jews, where are most of them indigenous to and what were they before Judaism?

In reading Sea Power there is an interesting aside where the authors state in regards to the policy of unconditional surrender as outlined at the Casablanca conference that "To adopt such an inflexible policy was bad enough; to announce it publicly was worse.".

Was demanding unconditional surrender a controversial position among the allies at the time, or is this a particular bias of these authors?

Reading Meditations, I find the following quote:

But look at how soon we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding hands. The people who praise us; how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region it takes place. The whole earth a point in space - and most of it uninhabited.

I found this remarkable, reminiscent of Carl Sagan's "pale blue dot" but far more surprising considering the ancient world had a geocentric conception of the universe and no clear idea about galaxies and the wider universe, but here Marcus Aurelius (Who I expect had a world class education for the time) clearly understands that the earth is a tiny speck in a vast cosmos.

Was this sort of knowledge representative of his time?

Some African animals can sound like myths and I know some Australian animals were considered made up in Europe.

Were animals from closer continents like India or Africa known to common people?

As in the "Good Samaritans". Why were they chosen to be the example in that particular proverb? Is there a story behind it?

I'm talking about how, for example, during Ptolemic Egypt, Greeks immigrants that lived in Egyptian cities like Alexandria and Krokodilopolis viewed Egyptians Gods. Did they saw them as equivalents of Greek Gods? (like: Athena=Thot or Amon=Zeus, Dionysus=Osiris or Hephaestus=Ptah) or did they see them as "false gods" as how monotheistic religions views pagans today? In that case how can we explain the existance of some Greco-Egyptian gods like Serapis that were "created" during that area, in Egypt, to accommodate the beliefs of both Greek and Egyptian culture in order to avoid potential conflics?

The Egyptians Gods vs the Greek Gods was just example, there were a lot of other examples clash of civilizations in other places like in Europe with the Gallic gods vs the Roman Gods, the Zoroastrian Gods vs the ancient Arab Gods, the Roman Gods vs the Greek Gods, etc. So How polytheists in ancient times, traditionally, viewed gods of the other pantheons?

I want to learn more about the middle east, specifically how each modern country has developed and their complicated relationships with each other. I understand this is a daunting task but I do have a degree in history and am very willing to put the work in, just looking for some solid sources to get my foot in the door. Any help would be appreciated!

Edit: Of course I forgot a word in the title. To WHAT extent did the ...

I was discussing the possibility of the fall of the American empire, which got me wondering, what was it like for the average person living through the fall of other empires? Are there any sources that deal with this topic, say for something like the Roman Empire? How did things change for people’s day to day lives? Did they even notice it happening except for hindsight?

Hey there,

I'm off for a viking themed LARP and I would like to add some authenticity to my gear, my question would be if the crow feather was something that the warriors used to wear or was it reserved to more spiritual role ? Thanks a lot !

My precursory research shows that the Roman Emperor at the time was Tiberius (14-37 AD). I have very little knowledge of the Roman Denarius - would previous emperor's versions still be in circulation? Would there be other silver coins in circulation besides the denarius?

Thanks in advance

Someone I talked to recently online who described themselves as First Nations alleged that there was no mistaking that historically, native Americans (both in North and the more southern parts of the continent) were much behind Europe in technological and societal progress.

Here are the points they mentioned:

There's quite a few technological and social metrics that you can measure a society by, and the First Nations of NA were behind Europe, Asia, and Africa by a wide margin.

This is best-noted by looking at similar technologies and methods of governance: with their otherwise inferior technology (no longbows or crossbows; which are around 5,000 years and 2500 years old, respectively), and their complete lack of smelting of metal (another tech that is thousands of years old), coupled with their tribal form of governance (considered older and socially behind nearly every other form of government).

One of the major contributors to this was their lack of horses, among other things.

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...(T)he Aztec Empire lasted slightly more than 200 years. In fact, as a direct comparison, the Aztecs were similar to the pre-Christ Egyptians, whose empire lasted for thousands of years, and whose country still exists today, which still puts them thousands of years behind Europe and the East.

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(I)n comparison to Europe and the East, they were practically luddites. They still governed with a tribal mentality, still warred and slaughtered other tribes, and were no where near the level of advancement as other civilizations that existed at the time.

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(T)he Incans only had other tribals to compete with in terms of peers. The moment the Spanish came, they were done. They were done in a year in-fact, because they lacked the technology and society to deal with them.

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(T)hat's a fact of history. By the time the Aztecs came about, Europeans were well on their way to circumnavigating the globe, and by every metric and technology the Aztecs had, the Europeans had the same or better, and for longer.

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The Aztecs existed from 1300 to 1521. The reason they stopped existing is because in 1520, they came into conflict with Europeans, and within a year their civilization fell.

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Having "a lot of people" does not make a civilization advanced; it makes them numerous - I shouldn't have to explain that to you. India for example, had an estimated population of between 75 and 96 million people in the 1300s, but it should be abundantly clear that they were not the most advanced among the eastern civilizations, and certainly not as advanced as a dozen or so European ones. The Europeans had contact with dozens of other civilizations, bringing home any and every bit of potential advancement, learning it, adopting it, improving upon it, and using it. This is how you become more advanced than your neighbours and other civilizations you come across.

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And finally, if your system of government is tribal, you're tribals. The Aztecs may have been an exception, but it's still undeniable that they were primitive in comparison to Europe and the East. As well, it's also a fact that most North American native tribes were tribal, even well into the 1800s.

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(I)f you believe that the various natives were so advanced, go ahead and tell me when the various tribes and civilizations of North America left the stone age and advanced to the bronze age or beyond in terms of technology.

I'll wait.

I've highlighted all the important points he raised.

So, I would like responses on these. How accurate were his statements? Are they representative of the historical record? Are they generalisations, or is there some truth to them?

Thanks.

A weird thought occurred to me recently - I started thinking about the British Empire, empires in general and wars of independence. And then I realized that it seems to me that most wars of independence seem to occur due to some ethnic-power tension, where the colonizer is clearly an Other that came in and took control of the power structure.

Eventually the natives turn on them and there's a war. We see this in India, Africa, etc.

However when I look at histories of colonies where the white power structure included large white populations - Algeria, Angola, Mozambique - you see that the white populations were NOT in favor of independence and in fact often resisted it to the last day.

Yet it seems like the British Empire managed to accomplish this twice - both in Ireland and the USA there were wars for independence. I can't think of similar wars for the Portuguese or the French empires.

On the topic of South America, outside of Brasil, my knowledge is really limited. So I'm wondering whether the revolutions led by Simon Bolivar were in fact also guided by the white power class. Still it's fascinating that something happened relatively rarely (I think).

So I guess my question is - is this something that seemed to happen more often with the British Empire? or is this just a question of my lack of knowledge about other colonies that followed similar paths?

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Thanks

I've heard that sometimes people had the name of the day they were born, for example 15 Water would have been born in the 15th day of the month called Water

But then why did some people have names based on the calendar and others didn't?

Today in Mexico there are many people with aztec names like Xochitl, Tonatihu, Atzin... but no one uses those calendar names