This is one of the best comments I’ve read on Reddit. I don’t have the expertise to question it closely, but I’d want to agree with you even if I knew you were wrong.

I think it’s in a chapter that focuses on how hard life was for people, particularly women in the region of Texas that LBJ represented.

I’m sorry, but I think your understanding of the advent of firearms is off by two hundred years or so. A few examples of early use does not constitute evidence that they were widely used or that armor was initially a response to them. Their design and use was limited. Gunpowder was not readily available. Crossbows we’re still the preferred ranged weapon of Conquistadors through most of the 16th century. Gunpowder use prior to the 15th century would have been unreliable and usually uncompetitive with bows unless conditions were ideal. There just isn’t anywhere enough evidence to support your position. From 1000-1400 AD the chances of being killed on a European by a gunpowder weapon versus edged weapons or bows would have been minute.

It was always my understanding that plate armor was made obsolete by firearms, not because of them. If anything made earlier mail “worthless” it was the advents of the longbow and crossbow. Also, the other claim that they didn’t have plate armor during the “heyday” of castles is inaccurate.

No, I was actually trying to bolster your point. If Celtic names (and genes) are largely missing even while Latin ones managed to make it through, it doesn’t bode well for the idea that the Celts were integrated in the area. I don’t think genocide or “replacement” are great leaps in logic to come to. I think genetic and archaeological evidence are showing more and more that older populations all over the planet were replaced by successive waves of migration and technology. The genes of the oldest human remains almost never suggest a common lineage with present day populations.

Oh, aren’t there even good examples of Latin place names? Londonum…