I saw a question on Yahoo Answers a few days back asking why the Samurai always get stereotyped as being individual warriors who are master swordsmen but lack basic warfare stuff such as how to hold a wall of pikes or how to do hit-run tactics on horse and later with riflemen infantry, and so many other basic tenets we associate with the Romans and other organized military superpowers. The poster was complaining that people have the image of Samurai being master swordsmen who can individually cut down a gang of mooks but lacked the training to do something as basic as building obstacles to stop enemy cavalry and such.

I wish I can find the post but it seems to have disappear from Yahoo Answers.

But I recognized everything he wrote. Whenever you see debates about Samurai vs Spartans, or comparing Japanese warfare with say the Roman empire, the common comment that comes up is that "Romans would lose to Samurai because Romans only fought in shield walls while Samurai were experts at dueling" or "an army of Zulus would slaughter Samurais because Samurais were too reliant on disorganized fighting like barbarians while Zulus were skilled at square formations and disciplined maneuvers and outflanking the enemy!"

Basically not just on the internet but i notice in real life too many people seem to have the impression Samurai were all master swordsmen and Japanese warfare was a serious of disorganized solo combat where people fought like barbarians outside of organized square blocks in the manner how Bravehart portrays battle.

Why did this stigma come? I mean not just Samurai cinema but even martial arts movies show Japanese armies using stuff like trenches for poorly train rifle men to sit in and battle from or using ships to attack an enemy fortress that has an unprotected opening because the river is the assumed barricade. Even anime shows Japanese militia holding pikes in a wall formation and duelists like Musashi ordering Mongol tactics such as shoot with a bow and than follow up with an organized cavalry charge!

So I am wonder why the general public esp internet debaters on "warriors vs warriors" topics (esp knights vs Samurai and Romans vs Samurai) think that all the Samurai was ever good at was disorganized civilian fighting such as dueling and that all Japanese warfare was about is sword vs sword? Japanese media westerners often point out as proof the Samurai were the best swordsmen often shows Japanese feudal warfare executing stuff like the Napoleonic square formation of riflemen or using cavalry charges followed by a feign retreat followed by a sudden turn and counter attack similar to the Normans at Hastings!

What caused this reputation of "individual warriors" and "lack of formation and military tactics, strategy compared to the Spartans and Romans" to be cemented in the eyes of the general public towards the Samurai?

You don't have to understand fundamentals like aerodynamics and lift or be aware that heavier-than-air flight is possible to notice that paper folded in a certain way can fly quickly and predictably. Which came first?

I have seen a tumblr post going around the internet that stated the Greeks believed “when Apollo was drunk he created people with the wrong genitalia”. And goes on to claim that this was their explanation for people who felt transgender.

Is their any merit at all behind this fact? Thanks so much!

I recently came across these two quotes:

“[Scythians eat the] half-raw flesh of any kind of animal whatever, which they put between their thighs and the backs of their horses, and thus warm it a little.” - Ammianus Marcellinus (4th C.)

“When travelling they (The Nogays) put a piece of meat under their saddles. From the heat thus produced the blood [in the meat] somehow evaporates. Then they take it out and eat it.” - Abu Bakr b. Bahram al-Dimashqi (17th C.)

Is there any truth to these claims 13 centuries apart?

I've been trying to write an article on the history of "combat fatigue," PTSD, and similar conditions amongst medieval knights when I started thinking about some other neurological conditions that may also have affected them, namely chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). I'm wondering if any medievalist out there know of any sources that describe this sort of madness amongst veteran knights. Essentially, CTE (now more commonly associated with football players) is a neurodegenerative disorder caused by repeated head injuries. Tangles of detrimental tau protein begin to accumulate in the brain, similar to what we see in Alzheimer's patients. Symptoms tend to manifest as erratic behavior, violent mood swings, dementia, and even some suicidal behavior. In Blood Red Roses, archaeological records of the wounds from Towton seem to indicate that a high percentage of battlefield injuries were delivered to the head/neck, and this distribution seems to be corroborated by other archaeological findings. With all that in mind, it stands to reason that men-at-arms probably sustained a great deal of head trauma. As I said, do any historians out there know of any good sources that describe veterans as displaying CTE symptoms? Or, if not, could there be some survivor bias--that is to say, we primarily see head wounds in mass graves because they are the most deadly, whereas survivors probably didn't get hit in the head as much? Thanks!

Hi,

I have a historical question regarding Alexander The Great, and his nationality/ethnicity was it Macedonian, Greek, Bulgarian, or a Slav? Because I hear Macedonian nationalists telling us that he's Macedonian not Greek.

But, didn't he spoke Greek, had Greek parents, and was born in Macedon?

Most of the talk about covid has been getting rid of it via a vaccine. But whatever happened to the last worldwide pandemic? Did it just...go away? How did it die out? I couldn’t find anything regarding a vaccine so I’m curious how/why it finally died out.

Was looking on Google Maps and discovered this, was curious why the border is so jumbled there

For example in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains they had the Romans, Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, Saxons,etc. fighting the Hunnic Empire with Amali Goths, Sciriis, Thuringians, Heruli,etc.

More than a dozen different fractions. 451 AD, so uniforms are not a thing. The battle lasted 2 days, so when 2 groups of soldiers encountered each other in the fog of war, how did they know if it was friend or enemy?

I've been reading a bit on nuclear war policy during the Cold War and the idea of mutually assured destruction. In this event, any use of nuclear weapons would almost definitely ensure the destruction of both parties. Did the US ever plan to target the whole USSR such as cities far away from Moscow including Dushanbe, Tashkent, Baku, Riga, and Tallinn? Or would it be more limited?

In the blitz for example why didn't Hitler use chemical weapons against the civilian population? Is it because he feared the British doing the same thing and was concerned this would lead to mutually assured destruction?

Say around the 1890s to 1920s - when the image of the pilgrims celebrating that first Thanksgiving with Native Americans became so prevalent in the popular culture - did any Native Americans respond to this, especially considering ongoing efforts by the government to contain or curtail Native Americans on reservations?

My friends and I were arguing about the fundamentality of the order of operations (PEMDAS). They argue that PEMDAS is correct because we said it is, whereas I am inclined to think that regardless of how you represent values, you would be required to follow a congruent order.

Is the fundamentally correct answer of (3 * 2 + 4 / 2) = 8, or is it only 8 because we decided to use PEMDAS? Is, say 5, a valid answer if we had different rules all else equal? To answer this, I was hoping to find out if distinct number/mathematical systems throughout history would reach the same answer for a given expression (as they would express it). I feel that addressing the validity of PEMDAS may be out of the scope of this subreddit, so if you could just answer the latter question, that would be fine (math in history).

As opposed to Hungary, or its own country?

Did roman religion change drastically over the years as their civilization transformed, developed and complexified (particularly as a pagan institution, beyond christianism)? Was the notion of religion different during the civil wars of the late Republic in comparison to the years of Pax Romana? In times of particular turmoil, insecurity and fear for example, was there a particular religious upsurge or strengthening belief in auguries?

I understand that all of those are vague terms at the best but typically in everything from modern pop culture to politicians in India and China portray their respective civilizations as much older and ancient than the broad Western culture. However, the Minoans are the oldest Western civilization and they date back to the 2000's BC while China's Xia dynasty goes back to 2000 BC and India's Harappan Civilization goes back to 3300 BC . None of these seem too far off from one another so why are Asian societies portrayed and portray themselves as so much older than the West?

Through searching the sub I saw that these relationships were certainly frowned upon, but I couldn't find anything addressing what happened to the children.