I've read that bows were late on the scene for many NA indian tribes. Can anyone supply a time-line for the introduction and spread of the bow in the Americas?

Also: was the atlatl wide-spread before the introduction of the bow?

If doctors were paid as much as janitors, it would seem that very few would choose to go through the hell that is medical school. In the former U.S.S.R., how much more were "professionals" paid than blue-collar workers? Was it really a classless society?

What kind of accents did "Americans" have around the time period of the American Revolution? Would they have sounded vaguely "British" to us? Had regional differences (Southern vs. Northern, for example) already appeared? Did they have their own slang or colloquial language that differed from the general British public?

Instead, the German Confederation was formed. I've read the Wikipedia article on the latter, and as far as I can see it doesn't explain why the Holy Roman Empire was not reformed as an entity similar to its pre-war form.

I posted this in /r/explainlikeimfive before realizing that this would be a more appropriate place to post it. Because I want a legitimate, sourced answer...and because I don't think anybody needs to dumb down the explanation to a question like this.

Films and TV shows throughout the decades have crowds at theaters throwing tomatoes at poor performers, and angry mobs doing the same in public areas. Where did this start and why?

An open port with plenty of Western influence and endless vice in a particularly volatile time in Chinese history...what was life like there back then, dealing/being involved with all sorts of illicit activities? How did life change over these two decades, with civil war and ultimately the Japanese invasion? Overviews and perspectives of different groups of people are welcome.

What are the texts that you have encountered from other disciplines that deepen or inform your knowledge of history? I know that the question is fraught with hand-wringing over interdisciplinary pursuits in general and the stuctural integrity of history itself (well, it was in my department), but I gained a lot of contextual and theoretical understanding from reading outside the field.

Off the top of my head I'm thinking of texts like Said's Orientalism or Geertz's "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight". I know that we have frequent visitors from the 'ask an academic' redditsphere, and I would love your recommendations as well!

I'm referring to societies where a patriarch would have multiple wives, not simply multiple lovers.

Also, would each wife have her own room and bed?

I'm sure there was a diversity of responses, but I'm curious if other nations had trouble understanding why it was even an issue.

I am a science major so I am pretty useless when it comes to history; hopefully you can enlighten me a little.

I was doing some reading about the Tripartite Pact that Hitler had signed with Japan and Italy, and it made me wonder: if Hitler wanted to restore the Aryan race, what would his plans be for other non-Aryan populations such as Japan? I am mainly curious in this because if they had this signed alliance with these nations (and unofficially with others), was Hitler preparing to betray them and shift the war effort against those countries (even though they were allies at one point)?

Curious when the 'flyover' states became never-ending fields of the same products. How/why did this happen? Was there a time when they were more similar to modern California where multiple types of food are grown?

I did a quick read on Wikipedia but there was nothing substantial. I also just watched Viking Apocalypse which strongly suggested a burial site could be Jomsvikings (found in England somewhere). Just wondering if anybody had anything additional. Thanks!

Before Islam was a prevalent religion in the middle-east, what was there before?

With Germany split and NATO and Soviet forces on opposite sides of the split, what was the readiness of those troops like? We're armed soldiers constantly patrolling the border for instance? Was the border militarized or were units at nearby bases just ready to move if called?