Was it that unlike the East Indies it had no luxury resources such as Spices or did they just not have the resources to establish a colony like the British did?

I'm curious as to what the general consensus for this is.

The legions of the Late Roman Empire would evolve over time into the scutatoi heavy infantry of the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine cataphract heavy cavalry got all the glory, but their main battle line still consisted of heavy foot who did most of the grunt work.

What drove this adaption appears to be improved heavy cavalry (with stirrups) leading to equipping at least part of the Byzantine foot with kontarion lances to protect against cavalry charges, abandonment of the heavy throwing spear (pilum) for a quiver of weighted throwing darts (plumbata) held in the hollow of the shield, and the replacement of the gladius short sword with the longer spatha sword. Organization also changed with the Byzantine units being 1,000 man chilliarchs instead of 6,000 man legions.

How else did the two types of heavy foot differ? Battle field formations? Coordination with light foot? Operational tactics? Could the scutatoi (being more technically and tactically advanced) be considered to be superior to the classic legion?

I'm aware that the town itself is fictional, but how true is Follet's depiction of social organization and the role of the church in English society?

Specifically:

How much authority could the Prior of a Parish actually yield? Were they actually considered the "owners" of a town?

Is the depiction of village life (the village of Wigleigh in "World Without End") accurate?

Thank you in advance!

I'm reading Livy's history of the war and he does mention that Hannibal caught a lot of flak for not immediately marching on Rome after his victory at Cannae, but what I'm not clear on is after realizing that the Romans weren't going to surrender while the city was still standing and since he could move around Italy seemingly at will, why he didn't immediately put the city to an extended siege for as long as it took for them to fall? Was Fabius' guerrilla strategy really damaging enough to his supply lines to prevent that?

I realize this may be a weird question and very hard to answer but it's something I am interested.

Okay, so the Moors were pretty active colonists. They ruled Iberia for seven hundred years (792-1492), longest colonial empire in history. They also had several semi successful conquests in southern France and Sicily.

My point is, we are in a society where people constantly say how European colonization led to white standards of beauty being pushed upon the colonized countries. The aftereffects of this are still felt to this day.

If they could do all that from 1500's up till now which has only been about 600 years, wouldn't the Moors have done something similar in their 700+ years?

Before the Age of Discovery, was maritime route from Polynesia, traced from Asia - Indonesia / Phillipenes - Papua / Australia / Solomon Islands - Fiji / Samoa / New Zealand / Kiribati to South American continent conceivable? If so, what would be the constituents, and their purpose, and the age? Would it be principal? Or would it be too difficult / far to be principal route?

Also, how much the possibility could Hawaiian Island be integrated into this route? Or is it too far away north?

Back in 4 - 6 Centuries these technicians, expected as Korean peninsula / Chinese continent origin settled in Japan had taught Kanji, Buddhism and architecture technologies which contributed to establishment of old Japanese culture and regime. It is said that some of them had enjoyed social status high as adviser serving for emperor, which is so close to authority that leave possibility of them integrating their influence into the emperor lineage. Or maybe, this may be the least possibility but emperor lineage itself could be originated from continent directly. What is historian's view on this?

I've been hearing this for some time, that during the Middle Ages civilization was threatened by barbarians burning books and generally massacring everyone who wasn't a barbarian, and the Christian monks took it upon themselves to make copies and spread the threatened knowledge, thus saving Western civilization.

Was there really that much of a risk of most of Western Culture's knowledge being lost? Did the monks actually copy books like this?

So Alexander managed to take an army of Greeks from Greece to India, on foot, all while fighting numerous battles. My question is, what did his soldiers eat? where did the get / how did they upkeep their equipment?