I chanced upon an image of Ptolemy's world map and noticed that even though the dimensions are wrong, the map does mention China, Sri Lanka and India.

My question is how much and subsequently how many ancient Indians knew about the Romans, and how much and how many Romans knew about the Chinese and the Indians and all the other various kingdoms bordering the Indian ocean?

Also, did other people like those in Somalia and Assyria knew about the Roman empire, and did they communicate with each other?

(Ps: I would also be grateful if you could direct me towards other sources. Thanks a lot!)

I recently took an interest in ancient Chinese pastimes most popular around the Ming Dynasty, as it's one of the interesting/innovative points in China's history. I've researched the topic myself before, but there are just so many activities that endured throughout ancient China's history that it's difficult to narrow down what (if anything) was unique to this specific period. Any information/feedback available (Sources are most appreciated) on popular sports, children's games, board games, family games, public events such as theatre, and general recreational activities is welcome. Thanks!

I’m a Sociology major and next semester I am taking an Interdisciplinary Studies course (History/English) on monsters in western history & literature. From my experience, every discipline/field has a different way of doing things. Words and concepts can have different meanings and uses compared to other disciplines. Frames of reference also differ.

I’ve never taken a history class before, so I’m looking for reading recommendations on how to study and “do history.” More specifically, how to make sense of, and produce, historical research.

Are there contested topics/methods/ideas? What are the current trends in History? There are probably different perspectives on these things. I’m mainly interested in finding a good way to get a picture of what they are before next semester. I’d rather ask these questions now than when class starts and I realize that I’m not clear on what’s expected.

TL;DR What are you historians up to these days?

Also, I’ve read lots of Foucault. He’s kinda polarizing, but I find him quite useful. How is he regarded among historians? If I did a project using Foucauldian methods, would that be acceptable?

It's generally understood that French-speaking Québecois were marginalized before the Révolution Tranquille (Quiet Revolution) of the 1960s, secularization, and the rise of Québec nationalism; for example, it's thought that the owners of Québec's industial and financial corporations tended to be overwhelmingly Anglophone, while the working classes were predominantly French-Canadian.

And yet, most of Québec's political leaders during this period were French-Canadian themselves. Why, then, did inequities presist for so long - were those leaders simply more "in touch" with other social and political elites than with the (predominantly French-Canadian) working classes? How did class and language intersect in Québec before the 1960s?

big international relations nerd so I’d love to see these in some European museum one day.

In the face of waves of European oppression were there organized efforts at Jewish diaspora emigration back to Biblical Judea (or Palestine), prior to the 19th century Zionist movement?

Hello! I’m looking for books that focus on the following topics:

1. History of the soviet economy and economic policy, and how that shaped daily life (I’m not that interested in the internal dynamics of soviet policymaking - more how that policy shaped people’s lives, for better or worse).

2. Daily life in the Soviet Union, preferably with personal, firsthand account(s)

In terms of period, I’m mostly interested in post-Stalin, but books that cover Lenin and Stalin’s reigns are also welcome.

I’d also like to find books that cover the same but focussing on the DDR, and Tito’s Yugoslavia.

I’m an academic myself (political science), so I’m not averse to academic books, but for the second ‘genre’ I’d prefer it to be much more generalist and accessible in tone. These books are for personal consumption, so aren’t needed for any academic research or the likes.

I want to avoid the sort of books that are typically popular in western literature on the Cold War: “soviet bad, west good; the eastern bloc was a disaster.” Basically, no propaganda!

Thanks in advance!

It is my understanding that the pharaoh was a religious ruler and the majority of the Egyptian people believed in the Egyptian gods. So how did that work under the Ptolemaic dynasty?

I'm talking about how the pyramids have recently been discovered to have near perfect bearings to North by multiple decimal places, calculated pi and e to something like 7 dps perfectly accurate and have made all their designs exactly the same to the same precision not even being able to place a piece of paper between 2 blocks. There are writings of somewhat celestial beings providing help and information nearby, and similar halfway across the world by other historic sites. Do historians give the idea of aliens or non human beings any credibility??

I realise this is a broad question over a long period of time. I'm in particular curious about the period spanning from the post-Roman era until shortly after the Norman conquest.

Some things I'm wondering about are:

(a) How likely were peasant farmers to own their own land? (b) On the other hand, how common was serfdom? Or even slavery? (c) What political power did they have -- I've heard of folkmoots, were they something similar to modern democracy at the local level? (d) Was there a shift (pre-Norman or post-) from peasants becoming serfs? Did they lose political power? If so, how was it lost?

What were the agricultural yields like in the america's compared to europe/asia?

without draft animals and ploughing what percentage of the population could work outside of agriculture?

If never encountered, would the native americans ever have been able to support the same population densities as the europeans or asians, and the same percentage of people not working in agriculture? without ploughs or draft animals?

Thanks in advance!

A guillotine isn't exactly something you can just sneak up behind someone and use on them like a knife or gun; you'd have to incapacitate the person to get them in position to use it, right? How did they do this?

Hello,

I enjoy reading about history, but most of what I read is non-fiction. Lately I have been thinking about reading some historical fiction books, because I feel it would be a much easier read, before going back to non-fiction. However are there good historical fiction writers? Of course it will be always fiction, with made up characters and imagined dialogues, but is there someone you think distinguishes him/herself by trying to be as true as possible?