Hello, I have seen a lot of "how reliable is" questions for popular sources like movies or youtubers, and almost always the answer is "no, but you shouldn't be relying on them anyway they aren't historians". But I'd like to ask from the other side now, how popular do historians tend to get? I am not just interested in the very heights of fame for well established academics and their scholarly work, but also how well known any odd historian might be by measure of things like fellow historians attention and layman attention (articles, internet posts, videos, etc).

I was searching the internet for any reference on probably the only "scholarly" book I've read. However, Takie Sugiyama Lebra, despite Takie herself having been professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii and having published multiple books (I read Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility), didn't really seem to have garnered much attention in her life from non historians, and I really don't know exactly how to gage how much she got from fellow academics. I enjoyed the book but the only cross referencing I know that exists would be shallow and ill available resources like scattered public reviews, and the more reliable in theory but currently out of my reach resources on metrics like how many people have cited that book/her work in general would be great but I don't know where to go for something like that. Is Takie not actually that reliable a source and/or an outlier and most historians do have easily accessible resources available on what other people thought of their work or is it that for many scholars there just isn't that much out there in terms of other people's valuation of their work and/or scholarly accreditations are not easily accessible by the public?

In a lot of novels that take place in the Georgian era. For example in the novels of Jane Austen. Children live with relatives. Was is common to send your children to family and what was the reason for it.

It’s very fascinating to me, because on the one hand they made sacrifices to the gods, but on the other hand a lot of the myths about the gods that we know about were credited to poets like Homer. How could these stories have been written by poets but then accepted as real events?

I have a friend from Europe and he was telling me how the sun was now setting at around 3:30pm and he was curious about how did like ancient people see this sorta stuff, and he mentioned how the Vikings specifically had some pretty epic myths and wondered what they thought about it.

BBC News tonight (30/11/2020, UK date) had a segment showing how beavers have been placed in Exmoor and that the dam made is the first in the UK in 400 years. Are there any mentions of beavers in the British Isles before they went extinct in the region, how did they influence the British Isles, where were they common and why do we think of beavers as distinctly North American? Do we focus on beavers in North America because Europe "ran out"? Because navigable waterways were a main form of transport (at least in the medieval period) did that make beavers a public enemy? Would you say they were like how badgers are viewed in the UK today (as cute by some, as vermin by farmers for example because of tuberculosis)?

Sorry for the lack of coherence this was written with. I just tried to stuff all my ideas into one paragraph. Any and all thoughts are much appreciated.

I know that's a lot. I've just started reading an old book from 1908 entitled "The Heroes" or "Greek Fairy Tales" by Charles Kingsley and in the preface it mentions Clement of Alexandria, who said that God had sent down Philosophy to the Greeks as he sent down the Gospel to the Jews. I looked it up and found out he lived in Alexandria while the library was still there. But what exactly did the library contain?

The majority of warriors in the ancient world fought using spears and shields. These were inexpensive and had many positives. Spears had superior reach to swords, making it easy for a line of men to form a strong line.

In the ancient period, swords were mostly used by nobility as a status symbol. They were expensive to make and required a warrior to put himself in greater danger by getting close to his enemies.

In several reconstructions I have seen, men armed with spears easily defeat those armed with swords. The spear's reach allows a warrior to take control of a larger area than the sword.

In general, it takes longer to train someone in sword fighting than with a spear.

Why then were Roman legionaries armed with swords in the Imperial period?

In my research on Japanese internment, the property of Japanese- Americans is often described as "lost" but doesn't go into any detail how it was lost. For instance, another post on /askhistorians from u/Devchonachko said that, "What commonly happened was the loss of property to speculators, or shops and property handed over to friends were often lost during the war (Burgan, 2007)" and that "Not everyone returned to their property after the war, it was often written off as a loss."

Could someone elaborate on how the speculators and shops acquired the property? Were the houses foreclosed?

I have gathered that the houses were often looted but did they also lose ownership of the property as well?

Articles welcome.

Thank you.

This might be a dumb question but I was just wondering: When historians found or find written texts of ancient, (extinguished), societies, in whatever form (carved in stone, written on paper or parchment, you name it) how can they distinguish if the text tells an actual fact or is just a fictional but realistic sounding story some guy made up?

Example: Let’s imagine some historian finds a text that he dates back to the ancient Greeks and the text is about a philosophical debate between two famous philosophers. How can historians be sure that the debate written in the text actually happened and is not some fictional scenario someone wrote down?

It’s common for everyday people to assume that studying history requires lots of memorization of dates, people, and events (most of us probably experience this). I usually reject this assertion and try to convince people otherwise, but how would you as a historian or someone who’s interested in history respond to someone who asks “Why is history valuable?”

I understand this is a very general question, which is why I ask, because there’s so many ways to answer it and I want to see what other people might say who have more experience than I do studying history (I’m a junior at university). I guess when someone asks me this, I tend to have a little bit of a different answer each time. There are also many different ways to word this question, so have at it.

Im new, first of all, so Im not saying this to offend, its just to now if its just because this page is made by people who dont have knowledge about every topic (which I understand) or if its that im being ignored. Is it normal (Im an insequre person and ive had this idea around for some days) I really like this subredit, but I find this kinda... anoying? Is it normal?

When you see pictures or recordings of urban warfare during ww2 and afterwards, it’s usually of soldiers using bombed out buildings as cover and fighting street to street. But this was done using the aid of a variety of modern equipment and weapons such as bombers, tanks, and more. So how was this type of fighting done before then, when soldiers were still being issued muskets and stood in formation?

Ötzi received 61 separate tattoos in the Italian Alps 5000 years ago. 2000 years ago, tattoos were known to the Romans as a Pictish practice. 1000 years ago, ibn Fadlan noticed tattoos on some of the Varangian merchants he encountered along the Volga. Yet when Europeans encountered tattooed Polynesians in the 17th century, this practice seems to have been quite foreign to them.

How and why did tattooing disappear between the 11th and 17th centuries? Do we know attitudes toward tattooing might have been held by the church?

Is there any research into transgender culture in the evenki people of Siberia? If anyone here is either a scholar of this indigenous group or is a part of it I’d love to talk to you about some things about a story im writing

It took the USSR 4 years to develope their nuclear bomb and establish the 'balance' or status quo. My question is did the USA did anything or tried to influence something on the global stage while they had monopoly on nuclear weapons?

Most folks I think are familiar with the image of the one-room rural schoolhouse in the United States and Canada, often with a single teacher - often a woman - such as in Back to the Future Part III. How realistic was this, given how limited educational opportunities for women were in the 19th century? Did single, educated women really get sent out to rural communities to teach, or is this more of a Hollywoodism?

So in my readings, I have come across a variety of ideas like structuralism, post-structuralism, post-modernism, etc. in historiography.

Even tho finding what those approaches, or "way-of-thinking", are is not hard, but I have seen nowhere good book or article that would give a starting point to understand what those approaches offer in historiography. How can I know if some historian is close to one of them? How can I try to see history in different ways by understanding them?

I don’t have a specific event or person to ask you about, I’m just wondering about Native American culture and beliefs, specifically Central American Natives. Who are their deities and how do their beliefs impact their culture? Did they go on the conventional concept of a god, as in are they actual entities or more just concepts? I’m really curious because it’s not exactly something you’ll find in any high school history book.

Before the sexual revolution, it seemed protocol for a couple to not have sex until they are married. My question is, did people actually follow this rule or was it common for couples to secretly have sex beforehand?

How does this differ with commoners and nobility/upper class? Was it also common for people from the upper class break the rules?

I'm not sure this is the best place to ask this question, But I thought perhaps more experienced eyes could share their favorite places to gather sources for historical research. primary and secondary sources.

When trying to find good information, I think it would be helpful for me to know where to look.

apologies if this question is misplaced.