It seemed like like a safe and comfortable place to swim or learn how to swim. I would.

We often hear about the Inca, Maya, and Aztec, but I have never heard much about any large-scale, organized societies like that north of the Rio Grande. Do we know of any great cities and civilizations from time? If so, why isn't there the same kind of archaeological record of their societies? If not, is there any generally accepted reason why?

Why were they considered more refined and civilized than the Germans?

It's something I always wondered. When things got bad, why did the Romans in the West not simply abandon their frontier and hold Italy? Why did they allow Rome and the Italian heartland to be raided over and over while trying to hold Africa and Gaul/Germania? It seems logical that when you see you're overextended to simply retreat within a smaller area even at the expense of your empire.

I guess there isn't much more to expand. What kind of foods did the Berlin airlift deliver? Why did they choose those kinds of foods? What kind of system did they use to deliver it to the people of Berlin, and make sure everyone was getting food?

Did those surviving rebels receive high positions in government? Were they compensated as nobles? Or did they just gain high ranking positions in the military? Also, any info on the rebels that were recruited once in Cuba, what was their fate?

Also with napoleon coming to power after the revolution, how did he stop other people from taking power? What was his role in the revolution?

I am a particle physicist. Using ancient lead shielding will improve the signal to noise ratio in my experiment. There is really no reasonable alternative so I will need to destroy a few ingots. As a scientist I very much understand the frustration of historians over the destruction of samples before they can be studied.

As a physical scientist though, I have access to scientific resources not normally available to historians and can devote a small part of my budget and expertise to characterizing the ingots before I process them.

I would like the input of historians as to how I should direct my resources. I have access to virtually any test equipment (Ie. I can book time at major facilities if I can make a good case). What are the most important tests and scans I can perform on the ingots? It would also be helpful if you can rank order them?

thanks

Considering how poor were the emigrants like the Irish during the great famine, I wondered how the trip was paid for. Did they pay it entirely themselves? Did the institutions in place support their trip and settlement to some extend?

The Zen master Ikkyu often talks about visiting brothels in Japan at this time. I was wondering under what circumstances a woman might end up in a brothel in this time period.

I am especially interested in the treatment of deaf people who lived in rural areas or in pre-industrial revolution times.

It makes sense that a mother and father would take care of their children, as they have probably since the dawn of Man. But when/why did the notion of a modern extended family come to be? When did we start keeping track of cousins, generations-removed relatives, in-laws, etc, and what was the motivation behind it?

Hello, and thanks in advance for any answers/sources you might provide!

My question is driven primarily by geneology, although that is not directly what I am asking about. To dive right in:

I have a family story that I can't verify, and I'd like to know what you think about the probability that it is either true, or has a kernel of truth. The story is that my great aunt, my paternal grandmother's oldest sister, was born and (in her early years) lived in a wigwam in Dixmont, ME. My paternal grandmother was the youngest of 16, and born in 1919. She was the last (by a wide margin) of her siblings to pass away, this occurring in 2001. She is the one who always told me this story when I was young. To complicate matters, very few of her older siblings had children, and they were mostly only children. My youngest relative (aside from my father) is twenty years older than my father is. My father was an only child as well. Needless to say, there is no family network to speak of, and what few relatives I've been able to find and contact either don't have any information, or just don't really care.

What I'm asking is - is it possible this family story is true? If so, is there any legitimate way I could go about researching it? Dixmont Maine in the 1800's was apparently right on the stage road between Augusta (the capitol) and Bangor, a major location for lumber processing/shipping, but the "town" itself still never amounted to much, so I'm unsure what records might be available, and my initial assumption (please let me know if I am off base) is that they wouldn't much care about tribal matters regardless. It's possible I might find something about my great grandfather, who was european of primarily English descent, but that would be it.

Second - Can someone point me to some high quality books or papers on the Penobscot tribe specifically?

Again, thank you very much for any input you have!

I've recently learnt about Eleanor of Aquitaine while reading Europe: A History by Norman Davies.

My wife is really interested in these kind of strong women in history, so I am looking for a present for her to read more about Eleanor. I've found a couple history books on the subject, but not sure which one is a good one.

It's really important to get a good history book because you don't want the story to be one-sided or biased.

Forgive me if that's not a correct question for this subreddit. I just noticed that people always give good sources when answering questions, so I thought you know your way around history books.

I apologise if something similar has been asked before, I did use the search function, but no topic seemed to match exactly what I was looking for.

Here's I few problems I can imagine they had

People pretending to be account holders

People taking loans and disappearing

People claiming they have money in other branch's ( how was a persons balance checked before withdrawal)

My 9th times great-grandfather arrived in Philadelphia in 1750 aboard The Phoenix at around 19 or 20 years old. He was not an indentured servant, had the means to pay the 7 1/2 pounds fee and signed his own name to an oath of allegiance to King George II, rather than marking an X. Apparently, he came from the Koblenz area of modern Germany. What factors would have led a young, literate man to immigrate at that time?

The Wikipedia page for Soviet cinema states that the USSR stopped the import of foreign films in 1931. It also says that the Red Army brought 2000 films back after WW2 and released a small number for public and private viewing.

I understand that Wikipedia isn't the best source to be going off, and that the Soviet Union didn't have consistent rules and laws over its 70 years. But in general, did directors such as Tarkovsky have the freedom to see films that the general public couldn't? Did film schools show films to their students that were considered politically controversial in the USSR? Was there an impact on the style of Soviet cinema due to being cut off from films considered artistically important in the West? Was there any recorded instance of an accomplished film director discovering a "classic" late in their career?