I shared this elsewhere a few days ago but might as well post it here too since it's history-related:

Well, history found me this weekend. I was out picking mushrooms south of Stockholm (Sweden) when I spotted a stone axe (close up with a mushroom knife for scale) under an upturned, wind-felled spruce. They have shallow root systems so when they fall they take the whole topsoil layer with them, making it interesting to poke about there. (don't do it if they've sawed off the trunk though, the root disk might fall back down and flatten you!) But finally, curiosity payed off!

So I took some pictures and noted the GPS position (a proper use of smartphones!) before taking it home. It's been duly reported to the authorities, so we'll see if I get to keep it. Locally these are called 'shaft-hole axes' (skafthålsyxor), a common late-neolithic type that's usually dated to around 2000 BC. This one's made in a typical material too for that era too, which we call "greenstone" (grönsten). That fits wonderfully with where I found it, on a moraine ridge at 25m above sea level, which puts it right at where the shoreline used to be in that era, thanks to post-glacial rebound. Settlement location perhaps? It'll be interesting to see what the experts say. (any North-European Stone Age archaeologists around - feel free to weigh in too!)

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As an update, I heard back today and it seems the authorities will try to send someone to check out the site before the end of the year, which has legal significance to whether I get to keep the find, so no news on that front.

I just wanted to apologize for my comments complaining about everything being deleted (which were also deleted). I hadn't realized how strictly moderated the sub was, and learned later that I was coming across as a jackass.

This is a great sub, and the mods do a great job. Keep it up. :)

I'm a little upset at all the comments to this link I posted in /r/Science yesterday. Specifically, two sets of comments made me upset for different reasons.

The first set was the vast amount of trolling/joke/racist comments relating the findings to Elizabeth Warren. For that I place the blame squarely on our President and the Sub-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

The second set of comments that made me upset were the ones that tried to undermine the study by suggesting other unsupported models for migration into the Americas (Solutrean hypothesis) or totally misinterpreting previous genetic studies to push other equally far-fetched ideas (a very ancient Polynesian migration across the Pacific). For this, I place the blame on science journalism and our collective bad habit of just reading headlines (I, myself, am guilty of this). As great as the internet can be, it has definitely ruined the way we consume information. If it cannot be read in a few minutes many of us don't even bother trying to read it all. And that's upsetting because it means people can misinterpret findings that have great importance to modern day peoples.

For example, the one study I kept seeing referred to by users was that some Native groups in South America have Australasian DNA. That's cool and all. And it certainly demonstrates that our understanding of Native DNA histories is incomplete and there's a lot more diversity than we previously believed. However, people took this connection to mean that Australasians settled the Americas first by somehow crossing the Pacific and leaving no evidence behind on any of the islands. That's not what this study suggested. It suggested that Native ancestors shared a common ancestors with some Australasian peoples tens of thousands of years ago before people even began migrating into the Americas. And when you point this out to people they sometimes double down and refuse to accept they are wrong.

It's upsetting because as an anthropologist I want to do anthropology for people and to help answer questions they may have about the past. And yet, despite putting this information out there people will take it, not fully read it, and then start pushing unsupported ideas out into a public realm where others may see it, not critically think about it, and accept it as being true until they are confronted face-to-face with facts. And then they either double down and begrudgingly accept they are wrong (which is rare).

And I guess what upsets me most about all of this is that I got upset to the point where my replies were coming off as curt, blunt, and even a little mean. I try my best to be the same person I am online as I am out in the world which I think is typically a rather cheerful and nice guy who is eager to talk about archaeology all the time. And what the topic has shown to me is that I am, in fact, an asshole.

Now that I am face to face with this truth, I must work on being a better person.

Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Thomsen (4 December 1897-16 August 1944)

But the responsibility for the Battalion centered on its commander, Lt. Col. Alfred Thomsen of Omaha; functions of command could not be delegated. Colonel Thomsen appeared big enough to handle the responsibilities. His height was over six feet two inches, and his big frame carried more than 225 pounds. He had been a railroad blacksmith in the Union Pacific shops; but his physique was that of the traditional village blacksmith. He was proud of his enormous strength and agility. This he used to demonstrate back at Camp Butner by walking over to his office doorway and kicking the top of it. He delighted in enticing young lieutenants half his age into trying to imitate this feat. Invariably they would fail, and would frequently fall flat on their backs in the attempt. His short hair left an island of baldness in the center which he blamed on the old-type steel helmet which he had worn in training during the First World War and the early part of this.

The colonel always was fixing up some kind of device for added comfort or convenience. Back in California he had invented an instrument for passing up written messages from a jeep to the cab of a big truck in a moving convoy: it was a clothes pin on a stick. One member of the group was wearing a wrist watch whose strap was secured not by sewing, but by an application of Colonel Thomsen’s glue--and it worked. He used his favorite glue for everything--on metal, paper, cloth, wood, or leather; the substance did not matter. This was his panacea for all mending. When a member of the battalion found himself confronted with a broken part of a weapon or damaged vehicle, he was likely to call out for some of “Colonel Thomsen’s glue.” In order that he could have shelter in which to sit up during maneuvers, he had an additional strip of canvas sewed onto his pup tent. Disgusted with the perpetual shortness of raincoats, he obtained two of the waterproof garments and had the lower half of the second sewed onto the bottom of the first. It fell all the way to the heels of his shoes; when he wore it he looked as though he were peering out of the top of a pyramidal tent. The men would refer to things of the Colonel’s in making comparisons in the superlative: an especially large tent or balloon was “as big as Colonel Thomsen’s raincoat”; a massive pack or bulky load was “as heavy as Colonel Thomsen’s bed roll”; a big collection of papers was “as thick as Colonel Thomsen’s notebook”; all the men had known exactly the type of lifejacket they were to be issued on the transport ship when Major Weyand told them, “They look just like Colonel Thomsen’s field jacket.”

When he wished, the Colonel could command all of polish ever required of a lieutenant colonel of the United States Army at the most correct social function. But in the field he preferred to let his boisterous, swashbuckling nature dominate. Alfred Thomsen was as string in his principles as he was boisterous in his talk. He was a “rugged individual” and he would stand firmly against all odds for what he believed to be right. When the chaplain held church services in the battalion, he and the major always would go and sit in the front row. He urged his officers to do the same thing. Once in England a few days before the Battalion’s departure, Headquarters and “M” Company officers were sitting at the dinner table when he paused in the conversation and then said, “We all have our fun with Chappie, but you know it wouldn’t hurt any of us to go down to his services and help him out; it is not going to be very long now until we are going to be needing help from Somebody up there who is a lot bigger than any of us; then we’ve got to have something to believe in to give us hope.”

From Huston, James W. Biography of a Battalion: The Life and Times of an Infantry Battalion in Europe in World War II. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2003. (Reprint from Gering: Courier Press, 1950)

Minor question: On July 27th 1944* in a cave in Vercours, in southern France, a Red Cross team was executed by German troops. I have spent hours looking for them, and asked at my local library.

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I am looking for the names of this small team. Apparently it was a Priest, two doctors, and a "small nursing staff". Where could I go to find their names?

Sometimes it is surprising how many notable individuals can appear in such a small location in history. You may already be familiar with the coincidences of Vienna, but have you ever heard of General Buller and his army's attempt to relieve the siege of Ladysmith. Serving under Buller included the 12th Earl of Dundonald (grandson of Thomas Cochrane of El Gamo fame) and the Natal Indian ambulance team which included Mahatma Ghandi (prior to his acquisition of nukes of course). Also present was a certain war correspondent named Winston.

EDIT: Also, a few months later (after Buller was replaced by Lord Roberts) in Bloemfontein in a medical tent was a certain doctor named Arthur Conan Doyle.

Hello all!

I have a question that I fear would not do well as a standalone post as it's not about history but about the historians in this sub: what literature book did you read on your topic or field of study that you felt was really historically accurate as well as enjoyable and well written? Can be fiction or non fiction, must be narrative.

A bit meta, I know! My reason of asking here and not in /r/askhistory or in /r/suggestmeabook is that I've been lurking for a while and I'm frankly impressed by the standards that this sub mantains and how knowledgeable flaired users are. My question is specifically aimed to this sub.

A little side note, I'll soon start researching for my thesis about censorship in music (probably aimed to what's called "national rock") during the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-82), so any suggestions on censorship in the music or arts in other dictatorial regimes, specially in Latin America, would also be great.

Thanks!

Reposting my question from earlier this week here: How responsible was John Evans for the Sandcreek Masacre? It was originally my understanding that John Chivington was sort of acting on his own when he led the massacre, but I've also now heard that John Evans had endorsed/requested these actions, although he was in DC at the time with Lincoln, not in Colorado. Can someone just sort of clarify the timeline/chain of command for me please?

Random question: is there a way to tag a post with the number of valid answers it has?

I hate opening 4-5 neat questions to find that only maybe 1 has been answered.

Here's a tiny little window into the history of Kristallnacht (which happened 80 years ago today): https://twitter.com/ElishevaAvital/status/1060914913328148480

I'm not sure if I understood this right but I'll give it a shot.

I'm trying to find a historical match for a fictional sword (or greatsword, I don't know) with the following characteristics:

• Something around a 1.2m-1.5m length
• Blade almost as wide as the hilt
• Having a ricasso
• Fuller of 2/3 the blade length (guess it's called XII type)
• A simple and straight Guard, without curves
• Long grip
• A spherical, non-flat pommel, without a peen block

The closest match I've found was The Tritonia but that doesn't match the blade width nor it has a ricasso. Since what I have in hands refers to a fictional weapon, it would look like this or, better yet, something like in this WIP sketch

What historical event had the most diverse personal biases and opinions (good or bad) about the causes or effects of the event during it's occurrence?

For example if today you were to pick a dozen people from different regions, ethnicities, social classes etc. of the United States and asked them what they believed about a police brutality case involving two different races (assuming the evidence put it in a gray area of right or wrong) I'm sure you would get many differing opinions and social beliefs about why this happened and what should happen to people involved.

As a history undergraduate student, what kinds of things should I be doing while at university to best prepare for a career studying history?

What are some historical terms for left-handed people? I know southpaw but what else is there?

Posting this here rather than as a separate question because it's pretty vague and there is no way I can phrase it that isn't going to be super loaded/controversial/offensive.

What I'm wondering is... what's the deal with Irish people? It seems like every historically-persecuted ethnic/cultural group has a lot of positive things to say about them, and every more or less progressive publication will make a point of highlighting those positives. But as far as I can recall, whenever I've read anything about Irish people as a group, it has been negative or at best neutral.

You never read about how inspiring it is that the Irish community kept this-and-this powerful tradition alive in the face of savage persecution. You do read a lot about them being corrupt cops, or being the ancestors of some of the saddest and most screwed-up redneck communities in America, or beating up other persecuted minorities (the linked article is what spurred this realisation and this comment). And even the classic narrative of Irish people standing up against discrimination doesn't exactly paint them in a favourable light.

I worried I wasn't being fair to Ireland, so I tried to do a gut check by comparing them to Scotland – similar location and culture, similarly marginalised by the English for centuries. And I quickly realised that off the top of my head I could name a world-famous Scottish poet (Robert Burns), novelist (Walter Scott), philosopher (David Hume) and scientist (James Clerk Maxwell). I could not name a single similarly prestigious intellectual of Irish descent (Jonathan Swift is an edge case, I suppose – EDIT: there's James Joyce, thank you /u/sunagainstgold). It seems like either Ireland had a worse climate for intellectuals than Scotland, or the Irish roots of prominent intellectual figures were downplayed – by themselves (an Irish inferiority complex as opposed to Scottish pride?) or by the Ireland-hating outside world.

So... Maybe I'm being totally silly and there's nothing to this except my own confirmation bias based on a very small sample of publications. But that's why I'm asking: is there something about Irish history that can explain why they are either genuinely screwed up in ways that other historically-persecuted groups aren't, or why the Western cultural mainstream in the 21st century feels okay with talking about them in a negative/disdainful tone, in a way that definitely wouldn't fly if it were about other historically-persecuted groups?

There's a ton of history I don't know both about Ireland and the Irish diaspora in the US, so any resources on the topic would be greatly appreciated.