For reference I'm watching the tv show Deadwood. In season 2 a telegraph operator shows up but he's only one person. Would there be certain times that a telegraph would be expected? How would he be able to always get the telegraphs? I feel like at a later point a town might have multiple people monitoring the telegraph, but how does it work before that when the telegraph in that area is first set up?

I always read about tributes paid, alliances formed, diplomacy and Christian covertion, etc. How is this possible?

Avid student of Chinese history here. One thing that bothered me was just how massive the armies were in famous battles recorded throughout Chinese history. During the warring states period, countries regularly fielded armies of 200,000 men or more. In the battle of Changping, for instance, the state of Zhao was supposed to have suffered 400,000 in casualties. When the first emperor conquered Chu, the invasion force was supposed to have been over 600,000 men.

The ability to field massive armies of over half a million men can be seen again and again throughout Chinese history, during the Han, Three Kingdoms, and so on.

So I was wondering how much of this was exaggeration and how much of it was fact. I believe that Cao Cao deliberately inflated his numbers at the battle of the Red Cliffs. So how consistent was this practice and should we take most of these numbers with a grain of salt? Is there a consensus among mainstream historians on this?

For comparison, the Romans would not field more than a few legions at once, and the differences between East and West just seems too big.

Daphne is the eldest daughter of a Viscount in London in 1813. When she marries Duke Simon, she still has no clue how babies are made, how sex or masturbation works, or what everyone is making a fuss about when they giggle about her wedding night. Did Regency-era women (or, at least upper-class women) really know nothing about sex? I could believe her not knowing everything, but being completely clueless about sex seems like it could just be a steamy plot device. What's the deal?

To my understanding, automatic weapons used the force created by the shot being fired to push some bolt back in order for the next round to be loaded. Was this possible with black powder? was any effort made to do such a thing, or was it only thought of when smokeless powder came around?

I'm racking my brain with this question. I know that from the moment someone is able to learn a language they can interpret/translate/teach others. But how would that person go about it? Especially before written languages were created. If the languages were similar enough I suppose it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but what about those that were very different? I'm assuming children would have had a role in this if they lived somewhere with people from multiple nations. But how would someone set off to a totally different land and manage to stick around long enough to learn the language?? Please help me!! I can't stop thinking about this!!

I was thinking about how it's such a social sin to ignore something like Christmas. It had me wondering if we've placed more and more emphasis on agreeing with a common social narrative over time. Are modern Americans more complicit and more herd-like in their behavior than Americans were in the 1800s?

I don't want to limit this discussion to Christmas, although maybe that would be a good starting point. Were there as many shared social customs 100+ years ago as there are now, and how taboo were they to be broken?

Granted, I keep using Americans from the present vs 1800s because the sub rules require specific places and times, but I don't know if these are the best examples or not.

One point of clarification: I know of many anecdotes, but prevalence and strength of claim is much harder for a non-historian to know. Yes, I know Christianity used to be a stronger force. I know communities were smaller and tighter. The question is, how much tighter were they, and how common was that? This is in comparison to present day, where social norms get communicated through social media at the speed of light, and social justice is delivered even faster for people who step out of line. For that reason, my assumption is that we effectively live in a more rigid time, with more religious-like views (the modern ones are not about astrological or metaphysical origins, but everything else is the same) because of this. Thus, people are more likely to be viewed as antisocial now for something that would have been completely ignored in the past.

Why did it take off when it did? What exactly caused it to gain so much momentum during this period?

I know about the lady on the bus who refused to switch seats which resulted an uproar on its own, yet, had it happened 20 years prior, I doubt there would have been as much sympathy for her then.

What changed in society that made the civil rights movement possible?

I really don't know the specifics of how closely guarded the Queen's secrets would have been in that particular domain. I realize that she would have been closely guarded, but would English society at the time been so "puritanical" (I know, but I couldn't think of a better word) at the time that that sort of thing would have been completely unacceptable? I'm guess that with her feud with Mary, she probably would have been constantly in physical and political danger, so that would add to any scrutiny. I'm asking because I have always assumed that she did whatever she wanted, but the more I think about it, it probably would have been extremely difficult to do anything that she wanted...

From Rome to America and everything in between, I'm looking for interesting, engaging history books of any kind that are told for a general audience.

As a side note, I love and respect this sub so much. So if this post breaks any rules and gets the bum's rush, forgive me. I just really want to get my mitts on some quality history in the new year and figured this is definitely my first stop.

Is there a map I can use during reading Thucydides Peloponnesian Wars?

Or were those aspects of Norse mythology an addition that came with increased Christianization, to cast things in a more black-and-white good-versus-evil light?

The collapse of ancient societies does lead to a lack of maintenance on their structures, that I understand, But the sheer amount of dirt covering sites I do not. How can a mosaic floor be discovered under what appears to be multiple meters of dirt in some locations? Is it expected of any area? Or is it the result of shifting geology in specific places. is this even the proper place to ask this?

I have been following the Auschwitz memorial on twitter and they post photos of several victims a day, along with the date they entered the camp and the day they died, or if they survived.

It is really intriguing as well as being unutterably horrific and heartbreaking.

As I have been following them for a little while I decided today to find out why exactly the inmates  were being photographed.

I learned about Wilhelm Brasse who took the photos and I learned that they were somewhat for administrative purposes, I'm not sure on this though.

My question?

Why take the photos if the end goal was to destroy the person in the photo? They knew what they were going to do ahead of time, right?

If you want to exterminate a people, why bother to even count them as they were coming in?

I can't get my head around it.

Was it so they could have proof of what they had done? For reference?

Why go to such effort to record and organise everything (tattooing, for example) if you care so little.

Not to be indelicate but in my mind a good analogy would be to write out a beautiful letter, address it and stick a stamp on it only to crumple it up and throw the letter away...

So why did the nazis do this?

Edited to add and for spelling and grammar

Edit 2 - any answers?

Was there any attempts of recovering artifacts or evidence of ancient civilisations even from the standpoint from people back then? Or was the notion of previous civilisations preceding them waiting to be recovered something not taken seriously to spend time on?

It’s an island.

When you spend a little time on this subreddit you'll quickly learn that spears were the dominant weapon of the pre-gunpowder world. However, I have also seen multiple times that the Roman army, in at least one of its incarnations, used swords as its primary weapon and throwing javelins non-melee purposes.

I recognized that the Roman army varied significantly across history, so is it the case that this was a relatively short-lived phenomenon, or are there other reasons to explain this seeming exception to the rule?

In the Norwegian show called "Beforeigners", (which has time travellers that are threated like refugees) there's been quite a few mentions and encounters of 18th century Bohemian gangs selling drugs in the streets of modern day Oslo.

So why is that? Are they native to Kristiania or did they just migrate there in the show's modern day timeline?