I've heard it frequently claimed on the Internet (and I've also encountered it in some books) that European academia had no real understanding of bird migration until the 19th century. Allegedly, until the first scientific documentation of a Pfeilstorch ("arrow stork" - storks found in Europe with African arrows embedded in them) in 1823, Europeans were unaware of what happened to migratory birds every winter, with theories ranging from hibernation, transformation into other species, and even going to the moon. The Wikipedia page for "Pfeilstorch" makes this claim.

However, wouldn't educated people (or even just experienced farmers and hunters) have noticed the birds flying off in the same general direction every year as winter approached? And surely migratory birds with embedded arrows have reached Europe and been noticed by somebody prior to the 19th century? Plus, given that Europeans have been aware of the existence of lands beyond Europe for millennia, surely it would be more intuitive to assume the birds flew to another land (even if the people might not have known exactly where) than that they physically transformed?

I feel like "people didn't know where birds went in winter until the 19th century" is one of those stories made up to exaggerate pre-modern ignorance, akin to the misconception that people believed the Earth was flat until Columbus set out to prove it was round.

In fact, I doubt whether these women and children are really innocent? Do they have the capital or ability to control policies that exploit Indians?

I'm particularly interested in the approach Western governments took towards the manners and etiquette of normal diplomatic relations with Hitler and Nazi Germany more generally.

For example, the 1936 Olympics clearly took place as normal, did the British Prime Minister attend lunches with the Fuhrer? Did they exchange gifts when there were state visits?

Reading through some of the posts here, I came across mention of a so-called 'principle of law' in Medieval Germany called 'Stadtluft macht frei' which (as I understand it) meant that anyone who lived in a city for (usually) a year and a day was considered 'free' (ie bound to the city instead of an aristocrat). It seems to have been abolished in the 13th century, at least in the HRE but may have been in force for a couple of centuries?

While it was in practice, to what degree did/could the aristocracy challenge this? Could/did they hire bounty hunters or equivalent to go into cities and try to track down missing serfs? Were there legal remedies (or military ones)? And to what degree did city residents protect or encourage runaway serfs?

so, i was reading a book by Garret Ryan called "naked statues, fat gladiators, and war elephants". in the chapter 27 it mentioned the story of how an escaped leopard got close to the focused sculpturor. usually I'm not the one to check sources, but i was interested in the story so i did so. it was leading to the book 40, chapter 36 of "natural history" by pliny the elder. but when i looked at it, i did not find anything about this story. i also used a tool to look into related wors in the 36's book ("leopard", "sculptor", "stone", etc.) but couldn't find anything. i read the book in translation, so could it be that the translator messed up the sources? or did i looked the wrong way? sorry for the stupid and overly-specific question, but i genuinely want to know details of this story so bad

Has fascism ever been derailed by a socialist party?

Has there ever been an instance where a far right party was gaining support and a socialist party came along and stole its momentum?

I've been trying to figure this out, however different sources give different dates. Such as 201 BC, 146 BC, 46 AD, 73 AD, 196 AD, or other dates.

I'm not sure so that's why I'm asking, but from my understanding it was subjugated in 146 BC, and annexed in 73 AD or 196 AD.

This is admittedly a tough question due to the abstract nature of 'cute' and 'hot'. For our purposes let's call 'cuteness' an attraction to the mannerisms and nature of a person, and 'Hotness' an attraction to a person's physical body. I've noticed that this general dichotomy exists between the two across some cultures, so I was wondering how long it has existed for. Has such a concept existed since since ancient times, or did it only come about in the 18th century with growing literacy and an urban class?

I was thinking about this in the context of hekatombs, the (alleged) sacrificing of 100 cows in Homeric works. How many days wages did that represent?

How come technology, science, and other forms of human advancement have developed so rapidly in the 19th, 20th, and 21st century, but it seems like everything took hundreds and thousands of years to develop before? I mean people shat in the streets for hundreds of years before they found a better way to do it. Was that by choice or did they really not have any idea that maybe everyone shouldn’t shat in the street and then walk around in it and then go home for dinner?? Idk I get so confused with human advancement as well as a lot of our choices back then.

Please explain this to my like I’m 5 lol

Some of the options I would pick are Us stationed In Greenland Germans in Norway

The legendary Scorpio reportedly won over 2,000 races but died at just 27, and Diocles is reported to have participated in 4,000 races. They are particularly successful charioteers, but are these absurd numbers? Or, could a successful charioteer at this time and place be expected to race this often as long as they survived? Were they racing multiple times a day? Traveling the country to participate in more events?

I understand that many cultures used astronomy for travel either by following stars or trying to map there position with them. I would think that trying to do this believing the sun or earth were at the center of the solar system might lead to different calculations or navigational directions.

I also understand that some cultures and regions recognized heliocenterism earlier than others or from the start. I’m sorta thinking about the Catholic Church’s repression of heliocentric through and if it actually caused any issues or damages due to inaccurate navigation.

Some Tesla owners and shareholders are disgusted by the actions of the company leader, and have severed ties with the company. Did American’s have the same reaction when Henry Ford began making his political position known?

I’m interested in whether there’s historical evidence for the existence of figures like Ram or Arjun—not as gods, but as real people who may have later been mythologized, similar to Jesus of Nazareth. Have we found any evidence suggesting that central Hindu mythological figures were real individuals, if not divine, then at least as highly revered historical figures? If not, why is that the case? What challenges make it difficult to determine their historical existence?

Some friends and I are starting a book/reading club and after I proposed some topics we decided to start with state building for our first session. I skimmed through Tilly’s popular paper on war making and state making but I’m not sure whether it’s the best foundation to talk and discuss. It would be useful to have a paper that broadly covers state formation from the feudalist states (of the middle ages) to the nation-state of the 19th and 20th century. Appreciate any advice :)

I am particularly interested in whether it was able to achieve any of its goals around media infrastructure (radio spectrum access, television broadcast regulation, geostationary orbit allocation).

There is a thread of ultranationalist Japanese war crime denialism or historical revisionism that claims to have debunked the accounts of and evidence for the Rape of Nanking and other war crimes during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Examples of which can be found at the so-called "Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact" and Japanese Quora among others. Is there any existing literature or scholarship that examines in detail and dismantles this alleged debunking?

I can't accept the answer of "it's human nature" thing. 30 years earlier in first world war, Germans didn't commit massive, systematic genocide in Russians territories but in ww2 they treated a lot of people like animals. was millions of their population mad about losing ww1 that they didn't feel bad about their atrocities or they were promised something like land or wealth?

I mean they had propaganda against Jews but not against every single nation they bordered with! they committed terrible atrocities in all nations that they conquered which I just can't comprehend WHY. were they just millions of pure evil people? if so, it's so fucking scary because if human nature is evil (which i don't believe in) then same thing can easily happen again with current rise of power of far right in Europe and USA...

I'm reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. In it, he writes the following:

The tender beginnings of a psychotherapy or psychohygiene were, when they were possible at all in the camp, either individual or collective in nature. The individual psychotherapeutic attempts were often a kind of “lifesaving procedure.” These efforts were usually concerned with the prevention of suicides. A very strict camp ruling forbade any efforts to save a man who attempted suicide. It was forbidden, for example, to cut down a man who was trying to hang himself. Therefore, it was all important to prevent these attempts from occurring.

(the relevant paragraph is reproduced for context, but I'm interested in the bolded part)

I'm not sure if Frankl here refers to an actual SS rule the inmates were expected to obey, or that preventing somebody from ending their suffering via suicide was frowned upon by the camp's culture and unwritten rules of the inmate life.

The wording really makes me think it was the former (at least at the camp(s) that Frankl was at) which seems strange since Frankl claims that he was in what were ostensibly meant to be work camps, and thus SS presumably expected the inmates to perform useful work and inmates committing suicide reduced their workforce.
But, the sentence is surrounded by the discussions of camp culture, life, and coping strategies, and how suffering, hope, and nihilism interacted. Therefore, it seems more likely that this was an unwritten rule.

Can anyone shed any light on what Frankl meant here?

I stumbled on a couple of novels where the main plot point is young boys "orphans and second sons" in the area of what is now Switzerland, being purchased by the Knights Hospitaller to be taken to the Holy Land to be trained up as soldiers. I don't know enough about fighting orders to know if this is legit, but a lunch hour of Googling has yielded nothing. It's not the Childrens Crusade, it's them straight up buying excess children from peasants. Can anyone point me in the right direction of primary sources?

I’m reading E.P. Thompson’s “Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism” for one of my classes and he references the use of clocks that would make people work longer:

“Petty devices were used to shorten the dinner hour” and quotes a witness who says “[the minute hand] drops three minutes all at once, so that it leaves them only twenty-seven minutes, instead of thirty.”

I don’t doubt that managers would be willing do this sort of thing by using rigged clocks or setting the clock forward/back to lengthen work hours slightly (working conditions were not good). I don’t know a whole lot about clockmaking, so this could be fairly easy to rig or fairly hard and simply not worth doing. Regular drift in timepieces was also more common than today so it could be more circumstantial/happenstance.

And in any case the perception of malpractice seems to be real.

So, is there more general evidence for this sort of thing? And if so (or perceived to be), did it affect early labor movements (as opposed to a more general push to shorten workdays)?

First of all, sorry for my English, as it's not my first language.

I recently did some casual research about the Teutonic Order, and I came across a couple of articles about Templar Knights being able to live up to 60 years old due to their healthier diets. So I was wondering if that statement is true at all.

If that first statement is true, my follow up question is, how did that bonus life span affect them in terms of fighting and condition? Because if you're a fighter and get to live more, you'll get wise in terms of strategy, but also your body will tend to grow weaker, and it can be detrimental against younger combatants.

I'm a college student going for a social studies education degree, I want to learn more about US history as I want to teach it. I've heard that the Oxford History of the US series is one of the most comprehensive book series to learn more about the subject. Does anyone have any advice on how to approach this series before I jump in?

With all the sanctions and conflict with the West what does archaeology look like in this area? Some of the oldest civilizations on the planet existed here and it seems we know so little. Is there any hope that we will learn more about these ancient civilizations?