Previous weeks' Tuesday Trivias and the complete upcoming schedule.

It’s a bright cold day in April and the clocks are striking striking thirteen… is a famous first from a famous novel, but what are some lesser known “firsts” from history? The first selfie, the first sports mascot, the first fad haircut? Or are any of the things we assume are “first” really astonishingly well predated?

PART OF APRIL FOOLS 2014! Almost everything in this thread is crap.

I managed to find the following on the relevant Wikipedia article.

Caste can be considered as an ancient fact of Hindu life, but various contemporary scholars have argued that the caste system as it exists today is the result of the British colonial regime, which made caste organisation a central mechanism of administration. According to scholars such as the anthropologist Nicholas Dirks, before colonialism caste affiliation was quite loose and fluid, but the British regime enforced caste affiliation rigorously, and constructed a much more strict hierarchy than existed previously, with some castes being criminalised and others being given preferential treatment.[38]

I also managed to find a paper arguing her point, namely The Political Construction of Caste in South India;

Our goal in this paper is to demonstrate that caste structures – more specifically the type and number of castes within a particular region – are not primordially given. They are a function of political processes. As Bayly (1999) points out, over the centuries, shifts in political control have resulted in shifts in the caste system because of changes in systems of patronage and allegiance. Dirks (2002) specifically looking at British colonial rule makes a compelling case that the British propensity for measurement and administrative control forced standardized categories onto a hitherto fluid system that in turn had important effects on political mobilization – essentially 25 creating the modern caste system. This paper takes this argument a step further, demonstrating that these changes have continued in the post-independence period – processes as diverse as caste-based social movements, affirmative action – particularly the processes of listing and identifying marginal groups to give them differential access to public programs, state and village level political competition, and other economic and social changes within states, have caused caste structures to nurture and evolve within state boundaries.

Of course, neither of the above ideas appear to be dominant in traditional historical discourse, as far as I can tell. Is this historical revisionism justified? Does this fit into the anti-realist and constructivist camps of historiography? Additionally, is this construction of a supposedly historical and "exotic" class stratification (often likened to a curse) an example of Western Orientalizing tendencies?

Thank you.

Hey /r/askhistorians. /r/engineering sent me here when I admitted why I was asking them how much dirt one man could dig in one day. They suggested folks here might know, based on records of similar projects in real history: Erie Canal (or other canals), digging foundations for the Great Wall of China, etc.; and also that folks here might be able to comment on the validity of the hypothetical project outlined below based on known historical attempts.

This is Game of Thrones inspired, but the specifics are absolutely based in reality and I need historical opinions and data. Using book-period technology, I'm thinking of how to beat the The Twins: two bridged towers, castles joined by a bridge across the Green Fork River.

It's stated or implied that this castle is not vulnerable to direct attack. A siege, then: fortified encampments on each bank, ships and river defenses to prevent relief by boat. Long, costly, and the usual risk of failure due to camp diseases or desertion. Hm, no siege. So, I started thinking what a good engineer/sapper might do:

• Speed up the river to destroy the bridge and/or erode the banks so that the towers collapse.
• Dam the river so they get no water; good, but it's a big river, and they might not have the technology.
• Re-route the river to expose the castle's weak flanks; presumably the builders trusted to the river to prevent attack there... ah-hah.

Technologically, this is within reach. But is it faster than a siege? I started searching for numbers.

Arya says the Red Fork River, south of The Twins, is 100 feet wide; a discussion of the Trident leads me to think the Green Fork is about the same size; also the River Quoile in Ireland-- the backdrop for The Twins on the show-- averages that. Problematically, the river depth is only described as "deep and fast."

Let's assume the soil is firm but easily turned. The Riverlands-- the region around the Twins-- is described as flat with lots of large and small rivers. It is an area of moderate rainfall that lacks the protective swamps of the region to its north, the Neck. It's also stated that it's a very fertile region. Thus my guess of firm but tillable soil.

Other than that... I am thinking we'd have to re-route a mile of river: a half-mile on either side of the castle in order to keep the bend out of easy bowshot. The flat land means little time spent on surveying, and presumably the castle would have cleared out most of the trees within a mile of the castle walls for defensive reasons (much like the Black Watch used to do at the Wall).

I'm figuring an army of 20,000 men (not coincidentally, about the size of House Stark's). For (relative) simplicity we'll assume they're all on work detail-- somewhere we found other men for investing one bank of the castle, for cooking, etc. Each man is digging with a shovel. How long would it take?

You're welcome to add any period-appropriate technology (e.g., oxen-pulled machines, water sluices) that you know of, just if possible include an estimate of how much earth one such machine could remove in a day, and how many could be employed at once.

Also, please feel free to add to or correct any of my numbers, along with sources or rationale. Thanks!

I will be posting a link to this thread in /r/gameofthrones, if they'll let me.

Edit: hated the length of this post so I wrote a better tl;dr.