I’ve mostly focused on history of humans ranging in the last 5000 years. However, now I’d like to take a dip in a bit of pre-history. What are some good books to begin with? My focus is on cognitive development of humans mostly.

Would, say, a citizen of Moldova and a citizen of Azerbaijan share any kind of kinship with one another over their shared status, or would that not be the case?

Hello his and herstorians,

I’m doing a research paper regarding some of the philosophical doctrines of the Ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus (535-475 BCE Western Anatolia). His only known work, On Nature, was (some how) lost over time, so that now we only have fragmentary remains of his original writings. I say some how because my research hasn’t resulted in any specific reasons or causes for the loss of his original work.

Scholars (like Kirk, Kahn, and Guthrie) believe that the book was written in the 400s BCE, and still around and available by the time of Plutarch (49-119AD) but after this evidence and explanations get real ambiguous, the only definitive answer I’ve found is from Kahn’s, the art and thought of Heraclitus, which shortly states

“Like all Greek prose before Herodotus and all philosophical writings before Plato, the original text of Heraclitus is lost. We are entirely dependent upon quotations, paraphrases, and reports in later literature that happens to have survived the collapse of ancient civilization and the destruction of its papyrus libraries”

This still seems ambiguous to me, so my question is what civilization collapse, or library burning could have been responsible for the loss? I think it would have to be sometime after the 1st or 2nd century AD since Plutarch could get a copy, but what happened after that caused its loss? The fall of Rome wouldn’t happen for another 3-4 hundred years so was it just collecting dust in that time? Or were there any non specific events sometime soon after that would have caused it? (Say, a Christian purge of pagan knowledge... or something, idk). Any help will be greatly appreciated and many thanks in advance friends!

Why don't we consider older places of education like Plato's Academy, or older Madrasahs from the midde east? Thanks!

I would like to start this question by making it clear that I am not trying to start an argument here and I am certainly not trying to downplay the injustice of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials.

As far as I am aware (and I am not a historian so I apologise for any inaccuracies), altough acusations of witcraft or werewolf sightings date back centuries, the main Witch Trial craze occured in europe in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, much of it inspired by the counter-reformation and the infamous handbook the Malleus Malleficarum (which was actually published nearly a century ealier in 1487). According to wikipedia, between 1580 and 1630 aproximately 50,000 people were excecuted as witches, 80% of them women. As a british person I am personally most familliar with the trial of the so-called "Pendle Witches" in 1612, and the campaign of the infamous "Witchfinder General" Mathew Hopkins during the english Civil War.

However, despite the countless acts of injustice commited during this time, it is actually a comparitavely minor event, one that happened 50 years after the end of the craze, that has become synonymous with Witchcraft in the modern psyche.

So what was it that led to the Salem Witch Trials becoming so incomparably famous. Why is it that Salem is such a pop-history phenomenon when really it was little more than a footnote of a much larger event. I dont mean to be dissmissive of Salem or the men and women that suffered there, but I would be very interested if someone could shed some light on which events and which movememts elevated the Salem Witch Trials from a relatively minor incident in a an isolated colony into the textbook Witch Trial.

The view that the 1983 Able Archer NATO exercises were very closing in causing a USSR-NATO nuclear war has been widely known for sometime now but a February 2021 report by the National Security Archive seems to confirm that it was more dangerous than we initially believed. However, Simon Miles, a Duke University professor says that the claims that the scares of the 1983 Able Archer exercises was only "mythical" and argues it was not as dangerous as it is often claimed to be. So was he right in that Able Archer was heavily sensationalised or it was truly a legitimate possibility of nuclear war on par with the Cuban Missile Crisis ?

While admittedly there weren't many other options for someone without an army under their control in a time when the law had become something of a joke I'm curious what Cicero's end goal was with Octavian. Even early on he had shown himself quite willing to ignore the law and the Senate's authority to strengthen his own position and while Antony was certainly the bigger threat to that authority at the time it can't have gone unnoticed that Octavian's actions weren't those of a staunch Republican.

So was Cicero simply doing his best with a bad situation, hoping that once Antony's power was curtailed that Octavian's ambitions could also be dampened and some kind of order restored with the Senate resuming its former prominence? Or did he underestimate just how high Octavian's ambition stretched and really thought he would be the man to restore the Republic?

Do you ever find yourself studying about other historians from earlier times?

Would noble men be able to have sex with women before they were married and during their marriage, without any repercussions? Or were there consequences to a man having sex on a regular basis, with a woman or women that were not his wife? I am thinking that the most obvious choice for a noble man would have been to go to a brothel and/or to have a mistress. Was there any stigma attached to men that engaged in such behavior?

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And with regards to women, were they able to engage in regular sex with a man, before they married or after they were widowed? Provided that they did not end up pregnant with a child, outside of marriage?

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Also, how aware were the people in the Middle Ages of sexual transmitted diseases and how were they able to prevent getting them or how were they able to treat them, once they got them?

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When most people refer to the Cambodian genocide, they refer to the totality of excess mortality within DKR, which is made up primarily of deaths by starvation as a result of poor economic planning, as well as political repression. From my understanding, most of these starvation deaths emerged as an attempt to reform Cambodia towards agrarian society rather than an attempt to eliminate a particular ethnic group.

I've heard some scholars label this a form of "auto-genocide", but the concept is confusing to me for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons I'm confused is that similar events - starvation resultant from incompetent policies of a government towards its own people, e.g. the great leap forward - aren't generally labeled genocide.

To be clear, I'm not referring to Pol Pot's targeting of specific ethnic groups; I can easily see how the massacres against the Cham and Vietnamese populations, among others, fit into the definition of genocide, since they were very clearly aimed at the destruction of those peoples.

My question is as follows: how do these deaths fit into the notion of a broader Cambodian genocide, when they don't seem to specifically target any ethnic group? Is Pol Pot's concept of "New Peoples" and "Old Peoples" central to this?

Apologies for any misconceptions. I'm not an expert, please correct anything I've said that's inaccurate.

The Romans conquered Britannia at one point in history. Britain, except for Scotland was under Roman rule from 84 AD - 410 AD, 326 years. While a Vulgar Latin dialect existed, it died out 300 years after the Romans left. Why did British Latin die out while many other languages were able to survive?

While it was said that invasions destroyed the language, I don't see that happening for other countries. France for example was invaded by the Franks who established a kingdom there and adopted the local dialect of the region they settled on. Even Romania, which had been under Roman rule from 106 AD - 275 AD, only 169 years spoke a Romance language.

With such a long period of Roman rule, why didn't the people in Britain speak a Romance language? Why didn't the Anglo-Saxons adopt the culture of the Romans as the Franks did?

I'm somewhat skeptical of some of the feats attributed to "White Feather". I've never heard it's name, the name of the general, where it happened, or possibly if it even happened at all. If so, where do sources of Hathcock's feats come from?

Pardon me for asking several holocaust-related questions over a period of days.
I am doing my own homework on this. But almighty google can't give me everything.

This is related to a question I asked in anticipation of future conversations with a denialist.

I've been looking at the story of the deliberate extermination program that involved Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.

I'm aware that after the war there were trials in West Germany and Russia that convicted officers for mass-murder. On wikipedia and elsewhere I've come across segments of testimony from officers regarding Aktion Reinhard and Sonderaktion 1005.

One thing I'm curious about: in any of the trials that focused on deliberate extermination, what was the extent of denials amongst witnesses and the accused?

Did any officers attempt to deny that a deliberate extermination plan existed at all?

An ancillary question I have as well: Where on the internet can I find more information on European trials of holocaust perpetrators? I'm looking for some entry points.

Thanks.

like did both sides just decide to not shoot at each other while the trenches were being dug or was the fighting still going on then? hoping someone can provide some details on that part of the war.