The pop culture depiction of weapons in pre-metal cultures tends to be a bunch of people running around smashing each others heads in with glorified stone clubs and jabbing with pointy sticks, before suddenly inventing swords. How accurate is this? Were "late model" nonmetal weapons really still that primitive? Given mankind's propensity for ingenuity I find it hard to believe, especially when it comes to cultures like the Native Americans (who were fairly sophisticated relatively speaking). What were weapons really like just before the transition started?

My question is two fold:

1. What kind of elephants did the Carthaginians and Hannibal use, North African or Asian? (I am assuming North African, but I am seeing there is some disagreement on this, but I am not sure what the consensus is).

2. Did Hannibal have the elephants shipped to him specifically for the invasion of Italy, or did he already have a supply of them in Iberia that he had been using? (this is the question I am more interested in, btw)

By Pax Romana I mean an extended period of peace for 200 or so years. I know that he won the battle, but what did he do afterwards?

My degree course has recently touched upon WWII and during casual research into commanders, I came across Erwin Rommel, a German commander who Wikipedia tells me, disliked Hitler's anti-semitism, never committed war crimes, never made mistakes as a general, conspired against Hitler and died to save his family. Suffice to say, I was both surprised and immediately skeptical of this.

As such, I turn to Reddit and ask, 'is Rommel considered a good man in any sense or definition of the word'? Indeed, can we disassociate him from the evil of the Nazi's? What is the current historical thinking on the matter?

I am curious about how Historians view WWI and WWII together. When I read history, I see things like the 30 years war, or the Hundred Years War where there long periods of peace interspersed with war and battles. As we are now nearing the 100 year mark to the beginning of WWI, are Historians debating the mentality that WWI and WWII are uniquely different vs. a part of a single large conflict?

Given that it's /r/askreddit, I'm inclined to think not.

I had this question made today in history class, and I didnt have any clue about it.

What do you think?

European countries could colonize many countries mainly because they were more advanced militarily, with large armies and many weapons. Many civilizations were more advanced than Europe agriculturally, technologically, etc. while Europe was more advanced militarily. Why is that?

Sorry if this question is too vague, it's just something that occurred to me.

I remember reading somewhere a lack of copyright laws helped information and literature be spread throughout Europe, and that once these laws came into place it became much more difficult to share, for example, new information on scientific discoveries.

Is there any truth to these claims? What role did copyright have on the exchange of informational and literature? Are there any other notable effects of copyright? How did rules of copyright differ in places like Germany/Italy vs England/France, considering the late unification of the first group.

Thanks!

So I've been reading a lot of ASOIF (the show A game of thrones is based off), and the fastest method of communication in the series is to send out a bird, more specifically a crow, with a letter tied to it's leg.

In european history is there any record of using birds to communicate from city to city? What kinds of birds were used? how were they trained to remember different locations, and how did they know which to bring the letter to?

im a big fan of assassins creed and before every game i try to research the time period and the people in it before hand so ill enjoy the game and characters more. We never really covered the french revolution in my school and since the next game is set in it and Im currently learning french i thought I wanted to do some serious studying on it.

What are some things I can read, documentaries and/or movies to watch and people to reasearch for the time period?

Thank you.

I realize this is a vague question since it's going to depend by author. But I'm basically curious about how popular the novels we consider "classics" were during the time period when the authors were alive.

If she was, why didn't see take it?