First, it not that difficult to think of piling rocks, that's why it's common.

Then, northern civilisations: of course there is nothing in Antarctica and the Arctic... there are no human civilisations in the Antarctic and humans living in the Arctic usually do not build permanent structure.

As for northern civilizations... it's tricky. Building a monument like this supposes a complex society (a powerful and rich government) that is able to build large structures: so you find some in China for example (it's not that complicated to pile rock). Not really in Europe and North American because before the Middle Ages they didn't have the wealth, when they did (by late Antiquity), it just wasn't the style anymore).

What you find a lot in those places is earth pyramids, tumulus. So yeah they kinda build those.

Because witches are based on medieval antisemitic stereotypes: in medieval art Jews are sometimes represented with big noses and pointy hat. The hats are loosely based on a hat some Jews wore in some areas.

After expelling the Jews from their lands European Christians started using their antisemitic stereotypes on a new marginalized enemy: the "witches". It wasn't intentional to be clear, it's was basically just "that's what bad people look like".

Interesting facts: Spain expelled their Jews way later than the rest of Europe (1492 compared to the 1200s-1300s in other places) and there weren't that many witch hunts in Spain (but a lot of paranoia about "secret Jews")

>Southern American natives

I'm not sure they had ships but for trade the Inca Empire had a well documented set of very efficient roads.

>but does this "myth" have any merit?

In the middle ages people had a good understanding of basic hygiene, in short immersing yourself in water (warm if you can afford it) is good. The Romans had bath after all, it's nothing groundbreaking. And yes there were many bathhouses in medieval European cities which served both as bath houses and brothels.

The "dirty era" is actually the modern period (16th-18th centuries). Because bath were seen as dangerous: doctors thought that pores would open in the bath and let enter all the diseases. That's where you see stories of "a man proud of never having taken a bath in his life" and actual doctor saying that washing anything more than the hands and face is unhealthy. There's a reason why everybody stank at Louis XIV's court.

A sub completely unrelated to history: asking subs likes r/AskReddit or r/NoStupidQuestions. A sub where people are not specialist... this one.
This is the non specialist sub. The professional specific is r/AskHistorians

What? I don't understand your question.

Please rephrase are you asking: if people thought that people in the Illiad were Christians? That it happened "recently", in their era? That being Christian they didn't believe in history?

What do you mean?

Yes, arrows work on knights. At Agincourt the English did not decimate the French with crossbows but longbows. Japan had those too.

Without trying to be dismissive this question isn't really answerable because it's based on a false premise. That you can compare Knights and Samurai. Knights and Samurais are not npcs with stats in a rpg. They were not a monolith. They were professional warriors who knew how to adapt to how war was fought. Yes the French knights were decimated by longbows... that's why the next time they showed up with a lot of crossbowmen (they still lost but they tried to adapt). When the gun was introduced to Japan the warriors immediately adopted it, just like the knight did in Europe. You can't compare them because faced with a new situation, they will change and adapt. They don't follow a script.

There is no one knight you can compare to one samurai. There was a wide range of different techniques to use in different situations. Due to Hollywood we tend to forget that this, for example did you know that European knights often used axes? In close quarter is easier to use than a sword. We rarely see that.

In the end those are two warriors who can adapt, they are two professional men who fight broadly with the same technology... so depending on the situation it's basically 1 vs 1. Because it's one man without firearm and with a full armor against one man without firearm and with a full armor.

There isn't a single timeline but usually "late middle ages" (14th century and on) for Western Europe to the 17th century. As for why: war and money. More centralized means more money to do war better. The 100 years war was a big catalyst for central power in France and England, even though it a process that started earlier.

That's outside of my area of expertise and it's speculative history, so I don't really have an opinion on Alfonso VI.

What I can say is that the Inquisition was linked to widespread antisemitism, on a European scale, its dealing with Muslims came later. So I think that the causes of the Inquisition are mainly independent of the Reconquista.

Also those armies are not motorized and very rarely all on horseback. It's not hard to find them.

And armies don't want to occupy little villages. If there is one big city in the region, that's where they're going.

Yes and no. People misunderstand what this mean. His antisemitism wasn't influenced by America, so

>Did he learn how to treat Jews based on the way Americans treated blacks

no.

But when crafting racial laws, specifically those that defined who was or wasn't Jewish as far as Nazis were concerned, Nazis took inspiration of the "one drop rules" in some US laws.

So not in how to treat people, but yes in how to craft laws to discriminate against them.

No. Why would it be? The Spanish Inquisition was formed out of paranoia that newly converted Jews (and later Muslims) were not truly Christians. And so they hunted hidden Jews in the kingdom.

This. But IIRC we do have Herodotus writing about Egyptians telling him that Phoenicians went around Africa and that the sun was in a different position in the sky due to how south they were (which happens apparently). So it’s not impossible for an ancient circumnavigation of Africa to have taken place once.

I wonder if the South America thing comes from that.

Here’s the thing. People do not really care about the 16th century. They just are familiar and enjoy the Elizabethan esthetic and Shakespeare.

And do people really care about 1066? Or has school drilled into them the idea that it’s an Important Date that Should Be Remembered? Do they know actually what William or Henry Tudor did or do they just know the names because “it’s important”.

The English civil war is bad optics for a monarchy. The people killed the king, they would much prefer to talk about the birth of the English state (the Tudors) or the birth of modern British politics (the Glorious Revolution). When institutions want to hide under the rug a whole era it's difficult to get people excited about this. And at this point it's so far away that you would need to change the whole popular view of English history to put it at the forefront... and let's be honest not many people care about 17th century history.

It depends on where and especially when. Traditionally not really because a feudal society implies a somewhat rigid hierarchy.

But that doesn't mean you can't climb up, what change is how much you can climb: In Western Europe most people were serfs in the Middle Ages, meaning they were legally bound to the ground. The literally were forbidden from leaving their village (this was true in Russia up until the late 19th century by the way). Now depending on when and where you are it was absolutely possible to leave serfdom (usually buying your freedom). You will after that be a freeman who would usually rent your land. That's a step up. So there is definitely room for progress here.

What is important to understand is that there a feudal society is not simply "lords rule over peasants, and that's it". There is an internal hierarchy that you could climb: in a village you had poor serfs, you had free men tenant, you had even somewhat rich farmers. In cities you had citizen/burghers, people with specific rights (economic and political) in the city (that's usually the merchants and tradesmen) who were above the people simply living here.

So yeah, you have a complex social structure which you can absolutely climb with luck, connection, marriage, so on. The one barrier that is usually impossible to cross is the nobility: the nobles rule, they are on the top of the pyramid. And if you're not a noble, you're not getting in. In the "classic" feudal system, you cannot cross that. You have a whole internal hierarchy that goes relatively up, but it stops short of actual political power. This changes later, in later centuries during the modern period (15-18th century) in France specifically you could buy a noble title, but it was incredibly expensive.

So could you rise up? Usually no. If you could it was very local. The main thing people could hope for was no longer being serfs. For people in town trying to get into the craftsmen class. So social climbing, but far from rags to riches.

Simple answer: technology does not exist in a vacuum. It's not a civilization-like path towards progress. Technologies exist to solve a problem. If the problem doesn't exist (or isn't perceived as existing)... then why would you invest a lot of money to solve something that is not there? That's why for millennia we've had scientific knowledge of things and did nothing with it, because it was useless as far as people were concerned. If there is no incentive, there is no technological development.

I'm unfamiliar with a lot of examples you give but I know two well: Roman steam engines and ball bearing. Romans knew those existed... and only used them in very specific circumstances. There were no proto roman car or trains. They just thought it was neat and used it for doors and statues. Because they had no use for it, those were very inefficient products and they did not perceive their use outside of those circumstances.

Same thing with early electric cars... they worked. But were way more expansive and way less useful than oil based cars. So when oil came around... they all switched. Why would you invest a lot of money into perfecting something when there's a way better solution around the corner.

I would also say "I've seen science articles claim cavemen did amputations and their subjects survived", we never lost that. Amputations wasn't a death sentence, it was extremely risky but for centuries humanity developed skills to make it less lethal. It's not like prehistoric societies had a 100% survival rate and that a few millennia later we had only 2% survival rate.

Which lead me to an observation. A lot of your example make it seems that we had wonderful things we later forgot. While there are historical example of that (it took centuries for Europe to develop dome again in architecture after the fall of the Roman Empire, or how we invented closed toilet five times and each time it didn't take)... the example you quote are out of context and/or widely exaggerated. To go back to Roman steam engines... they had something using that principle but it's not like they had a research program looking into steamboats.

Again in short, no science doesn't come and go. It's just that if there is no incentive to develop something, just having the scientific knowledge of something does not lead to discoveries.

Okay. Yeah they know. Peasant is not an insult, it's a neutral descriptor. And they know it exist because they know that even if they represent the vast majority of the population, there are people that do not live like them. Even if rural community are relatively isolated (compared to a town) they're not completely cut off from the world (the stereotype of the village man who never saw anyone that wasn't from his village is nonsense). They pay taxes to their lord and/or the king, that means a tax collector (and the lord itself). Their priest is educated in a neighboring city and rarely from the village itself. They sell their products to a market town where they meet people from all other... they are in contact with the wider world.

So yes they use the term or local equivalent... when talking of themselves in relation to other groups. "We, peasants, are not like you city folk", that kind of things. Otherwise if they have to use a term they use the name of their village ("we are the people of St Johnston up Avon" or whatever). Just like if you live in a city nowadays you're more likely to say "I'm from Manchester" rather than "I'm a city dweller" unless you have to specify in context.

When and where? 1788 France is very different from 15 AD Rome.

But in general... yeah. Why wouldn't they? It's just a word. Help me here, I'm not really sure I understand your question. Do they know that they are called by a specific word? Is that it?

Can you be clearer? What period are you referring to? What do you mean by "peasants or countrymen". Do you mean: do peasants understood their status as "non city folk"?

Are you talking about a Canterbury cross specifically? Because if so, yes, that's strange. I think it's more likely that it's just another similar cross (Cross of St Cuthbert perhaps?). There are a lot of them out there. Rather than specifically the symbol of the Anglican Communion.

The era of Global superpowers and Globalization. Yes the world wars will still have a place in mainstream, like Napoleon. But from the a historical standpoint I think we will focus way more on the post 1945 world.

The Huns have nothing to do with the Mongols. The Timurids are an off shoots of the larger mongol peoples (with Turkic influence).

The only link between them is that they are steppe people, which is a category as vast as "native Americans" or "Europeans". It's geographic and includes a lot of very different people that have nothing to do with each others.

>some examples of ways they were superior in intelligence?

None. Because no civilization is superior in intellect to another.

When talking about "primitives" people take for metric: knowledge of technology, complexity of political structure (which are usually way more complex than what outsider see). They say they are less intelligent because they assume that if they don't have steel/guns/wheel/boats/kings/huge buildings, it's because they can't, as if anyone anywhere could come up with those on the fly. While in reality we only develop those technologies if we have the need to. You need specific circumstances, not a bigger brain.

Societies are not more intelligent nowadays that they were 15 000 years ago.

It's not what you asked, but it's similar enough that I think we should mention it. A similar practice is associated with the Ottoman Empire for a very simple reason: up until the 17th century the Empire (like many Muslim states at the time) did not have a clear succession rule beyond "be a member of the dynasty". Any child could inherit... which led to civil war. So in the mid 15th to the late 16th century it was the legal for the new sultan... to execute his brothers (at least those that could challenge him). After enough public outcry the practice was abolished and a proper succession order was made around 1600, after that the eldest son inherited the throne... the others were imprisoned (in a golden cage, but still) to prevent any trouble.