From what I know about javelins, they're able to render a shield useless, and that's without even hitting the guy holding it.

Was there any tactic in place to defend against this, or was the shield-bearing frontline of an army faced with javelineers always screwed?

So I found out the pyramids are over 5000 years old, and it got me thinking, how did societies 2500 years old study these things from a scholarly standpoint?

and How did most countries view USA?

Did 10th century people in Wessex view themselves as a subset of Saxons or a subset of the greater Anglo-Saxon culture?

I'm not looking for generic terms like mass murderer or conqueror. Is there a genocidal equivalent to murderer?

They appear to share superficial similarities. What Ive heard about ancient warfare seems to place emphasis on morale and shock, with missile exchanges and short clashes mutually broken off, rather than a charge and constant melee combat as per hollywood.

For much of ancient history people always seemed to assume that 10 years, 100 years, and 500 years from when they lived would be more or less the same because technology was advancing too slowly for anyone to really notice. Many cultures even had the idea that times were getting worse as they moved further from a fictional "golden age."

So when did people start realizing that the future would be more "advanced" than their own time?

I've been a big fan of the Flashmanesque French Hussar General for a long while, but I've always found it hard to find sources about his pretty outlandish sounding adventures and his conversations with Napoleon.

Is this because they basically don't exist? In which case, where did the stories come from, did Lasalle use them to big up his character, or are most of the events around him real and just poorly sourced in English?

I think answers pertaining to any part of Europe between 1000-1500 are fine with me.

I'm currently writing a paper on sugar and wanted to tie in other commodities that helped develop capitalism along the same scale as sugar. So far I have written on the history of sugar from its origin to how the English and French developed plantations throughout the Caribbeans for a cheap investment. Are there any other commodities that are similar to sugar and its relationship with capitalism?

Similar to collecting baseball cards, Pokemon, or comic books. Does this happen a lot throughout history or is this a more recent trend? If so what types of toys were collected by kids?

after hitlers suicide....

were the people informed and if so how did they react ? how did the generals react and how was the replacement determined ? was there any struggle at all or a claim against dönitz ?

any reports on how dönitz reacted when he was told he was now the boss of what used to be the reich ?

how did the peace talks start ? which diplomatic channels if any at all were used ? how was the circumstances of the peace treaty signing decided and communicated ?

I'm currently read Panzer Leader after /u/saelyre's recommendation. Guderian makes the following statement:

"I have never regretted my insistence at that time on our tanks being equipped with first- class visual and command facilities. So far as the latter is concerned, we were at all times superior to our enemies and this was to compensate for many other subsequent inferiorities that necessarily arose."

What were visual and command facilities? Were they in fact superior to those of their enemies? Did they allow then to "compensate for other subsequent inferiorities"?

Wondering if anyone has any recommendations for books coving the Central American crises from 1960 to 1996 in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, in addition to their origins and aftermath. More or less, I'm curious about the nature of the conflicts and American involvement in them, particularly the exploits of the CIA as they intensified during the Reagan years.

I hope this isn't too specific, but I'm having trouble finding anything that fits these parameters and I'd appreciate any ideas or direction!

Thanks!

Sure, you can go full Rossetta and decypher some ancients scripts, but how do you speculate on how they were pronounced?

I'm aware that Norse gods are similar with the Scandinavian countries but even from a Fennoscandia perspective the gods are fairly similar. At least they seem identical. Tor is Ukko and so on.

But as the Nordic countries were fairly lately converted to Christianity from a European perspective, I wonder how long it took. I still find it interesting how much of Norse names of gods and other mythological entities is visible on a day to day basis. Example in Sweden you have places called Frölunda and Torslanda in Gothenburg, in Finland there are companies around today with names such as Sampo, Tapiola etc. which are all derived from old mythology.

There are still kids that get very old names such as Björn, Ragnar, Tor, Sampo, Tapio, Olavi in the Nordics even though we've been christian for ages.

Suggesting for me that in the Nordics the old beliefs and stories lived on so strongly that they are still around today in the names or places and things etc. Am I right in assuming that in the Nordics the transformation from old pagan beliefs to Christianity took much longer than in the rest of Europe?

Al though modern historians believe that Nero had no role in the Great Fire of Rome, I was wondering why he was accused in the first place, and who the first person was to accuse him.