Herodotus' main goal was to collect knowledge through inquiry (ἱστορία, historia) . He didn't always have the means to really examine it, though he would sometimes demonstrate a preference when given more than one option. Some of this would come from works written by others before him, local knowledge (e.g. "the people of this specific place say..."), common knowledge (e.g. "the Greeks say..."), speaking with other people he considered to be holders of knowledge (e.g. priestly class), and access to people who either lived during/through events or knew those who did. There's not always a clear indication of why he chose to discuss certain things and why he leaves some things out (sometimes painfully so), but sometimes those alternatives survive through other sources and he does occassionally note that something is already known in an essentially "so why would I bother to tell you?" sort of way.

While it has become less popular to do so, there were attempts in modern history (and some in antiquity) to dismiss what he did because of a lack of critical evaluation, but considering what was available to him, when he wrote it, and the scope of the writing it's a monumental and greatly important work.

There were many competing measurement systems, at least one per country. Literally look up "pound" in Wikipedia and see the 4 systems used in England. After a while, there were conversions between the most-used systems and rules of thumb a out which system was best for which industry.

Generally, I believe they worked the same way the old standard Kilogram worked--there was one or a small number of reference units--this physical object is exactly one pound/mark/whatever. Standard weight sets were made using simple scales and comparing to the reference unit. And then the weights that merchants would use were made the same way, compared to standard sets (you don't want to handle the reference weight too much). Ideally, any two merchants could pull out a 1-ounce weight and they should balance out in a scale. And they largely did (though dishonest merchants might have a lighter set that just looked like a standard set to cheat people with. The Sheriff might compare weights, too, and then you might have to explain to the man with the keys to your jail cell why yours were so different....)

[ETA: for heavier objects you'd see scales with some mechanical advantage, but of a set amount. A "steel yard balance" is a good example. They were still balances--east to observe, hard to cheat, easy to replicate, as long as the weights were reliable]

Also remember that money was generally a set amount of precious metal. A silver penny contained X amount of silver and should weigh a set amount (ignoring clipping and devaluation). So, a payment could be literally weighed. But, it was still the same simple scales using known weights.

Specifically in Europe

Most of the time securing the body of a dead monarch was of the utmost importance to confer legitimacy on the succeeding monarch, but there were scenarios when a monarch disappeared during a battle or was taken into captivity and never seen again.

For one example, the Roman Emperor, Valerian, was taken captive after the Battle of Edessa and disappeared into Persian captivity, never to be seen alive again. The same thing happened a little less than a thousand years later when Baudouin IX, count of Flanders and Hainaut and Latin emperor of Constantinople, was captured by the Bulgarians after the Battle of Adrianople in 1205 and disappeared into Bulgarian captivity, never to be seen alive again.

In both cases, the result was panic and confusion. Valerian's capture reignited the Crisis of the Third Century and caused the temporary breakup of the Roman Empire. Baudouin, on the other hand, was quickly replaced as emperor by his brother, Henri, while his young daughter, Jehanne, became countess of Flanders and Hainaut, though her rights were often challenged as there was more doubt that her father was actually dead. In 1225, a Burgundian serf named Bertrand took advantage of the confusion to claim that he was actually Baudouin and became involved in revolts of nobility and peasants alike against Jehanne. He was, however, eventually unmasked as an imposter by Jehanne's cousin, Louis VIII of France, and executed.

Earlier in history, even though there was a body, there were rumors that Roman emperor Nero wasn't actually dead and would return one day. There were no less than three Nero imposters, even as late as the 5th century.

More famously, the lack of a body allowed Perkin Warbeck to masquerade as Richard of Shrewsbury and earlier, during the Third Crusade, John of England tried to take advantage of his brother Richard's long disappearance to seize the throne, but he achieved little support and Richard later turned up as a prisoner in Germany.

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"?

Not sure if it's the same but in Britian we have the class system and everyone knows what class they are in . We know the terms people use for use for us too. So I would assume yes people historically were the same

Are you an urban peasant? Maybe we will be described as that in the future, who knows

The thing about the Epic of Gilgamesh is that it's arguably the oldest extant example of a tale that's very loosely based on a true story; Gilgamesh is generally agreed to have been a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk... but anything beyond that basic fact is unknown.

While little is really known of the historical Gilgamesh, surviving Mesopotamian law codes such as the Code of Ur-Nammu, Laws of Eshnunna, and Code of Hammurabi don't support the idea of any actual kings having the legal right to rape their female subjects. While rape of women in these law codes was often treated as a property crime against a woman's father or husband (or owner if she was a slave), it was nonetheless a crime.

The text about the pharaoh Unas is, however, another ball of wax. Its context is a pyramid text honoring Unas as a living incarnation of the crocodile-headed fertility god, Sobek. So, we probably should be hesitant to take that passage literally. Unlike with the Mesopotamians, however, we can't look at any actual law codes, because no ancient Egyptian law code has survived.

Besides the obvious, I assume?

The Galleon would generally have had around 38 guns as a main battery, with more, generally smaller guns, if it was being used as a warship. The additional weight needed for war could cause problems, though, like the extra weight causing ships to partially fill the bottom decks with water; the end result was clunky, if not outright dangerous. Unsurprisingly, they also tended to be quite slow given their bulk, which caused serious problems for the Spanish Armada during its infamous attack on England.

Dedicated warships would come to be double-planked in the 17th Century, making the hull more resistant to guns, and the rigging was also improved. If we're going even further to the 18th, and also going all out by comparing Galleons like the Triumph (roughly the same kind of class used by Francis Drake,) with the Océan class (probably the most advanced class of its century,) we get:

1. A tonnage of 1000 for the galleon against 2750 of the warship.
2. 124–136 heavier guns against a roughly 1/3 of lighter for the galleon.
3. The 10 knots of the warship against the 8 knots of the non-war prepared Golden Hind.
4. Such a difference in sailing characteristics that weather which would sink a war galleon could be at least survived by the Océan class.

Suffice to say, a fight between the two would be quite the massacre.

They acted according to the majority of settlers their allegiances. Those colonies who were populated by for example puritan emigrees sided with parliament, whereas crown colonies typically sided with the king. Their was some limited fighting but overall the colonies were pro-Parliament. The last rebellious islands in the Caribean were forced in line by Cromwell by 1652.

An entire bomb? I don't think so. Unplanned nuclear reactions, yes. I just saw some YouTube shorts about the "demon core" that killed two scientists in separate incidents in 1945 and 1946.

My understanding is that Marx is saying history begins with communism and ends with communism, so probably not him!

So in general when starting off an assignment that you know nothing about, start first by looking at what those who do know have said. Go to your school library, or city library, or even a local university library if you're not yet at university, and search to see what's available -- feel comfortable asking one of the librarians for help if you don't know how to do that.

You can also use things like Wikipedia, many pages on there have the bibliography broken down into primary and secondary sources.

But it is good to find something written recently, it will give you the best insight into the current field, what academics are saying about it. You want it to be a book by an academic too. Things like "Published by University of X Press" are a good sign, but when in doubt you can google the publisher and the author and see if they're legit or not.

Within that they'll either discuss primary evidence directly "in a letter written to X, Y wrote that.." that letter is a piece of primary evidence. See if you can find it and study it directly, or you can use that historians translation -- just make sure you credit them. A lot of stuff will be translated already in an area like that, but yes it can be an issue for other fields. So if you do plan on sticking around this topic, you're going to want to start learning the necessary languages.

You can also just google and see what primary sources are mentioned by others online. Not good things to cite, but can lead you towards something helpful.

The first city that took metallurgy from "small hand tools and ornaments" to "more or less mass produced weapons or trade goods."

Idk if it actually happened that way anywhere, but I think it'd be cool to live in the first "city of metal." Worship the god of metal. Metal fountains in the square. Metal cups at taverns. And of course soldiers with larger metal weapons and armor.

This is assuming perfect fantasy circumstances like not dying of tuberculosis and getting to insert myself into the revolution as it happens with my time traveler knowledge

Oh goodness so many I want to visit...but for practical reasons wouldn't especially being a woman 🤣

Mortain might be suitable. Part of German occupied France until 3rd august 1944, recaptured during the 7th-13th during Operation Lüttich, then finally in Allied control.

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.

I don't know of any that would fit the bill before 1932. There was a German 13 mm anti-tank rifle introduced in 1918, but it wasn't fitted with a scope and was not suitable for sniping in any case (due to being too heavy and bulky).

If I recall correctly, the US experimented with a .50 anti-tank rifle, but decided that the M2 heavy machine gun (also in .50 BMG) would fill that role better.

Everyone pitched in. Many people themselves suffered property destruction, or at the very least had friends or family that did. Governments planned initiatives to clean up war debris, but on a smaller scale locals would've also done their fair bit of cleaning for themselves or those around them in order to rebuild their homes and livelihoods.

In fact, people to this day are STILL cleaning up from WWI and WWII. There are many areas on the Eastern and Western fronts (of both World War I and World War II) where the Iron Harvesr happens — the1 recollection of unexploded war munitions. Every year European farmers plough the ground and unearth new ones.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest

I know German POW were enlisted to clear minefields after WWII, both naval and on land. Some fortified buildings like U-boat pens resisted demolition and were left as they were.

Some land on the WWI western front was so severely destroyed that it still hasn't been returned to agricultural use

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.

How bout Zenon, the father of stoicism?

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