243
votes
Did the ancients or other pre-industrial civilisations engage in unsustainable practices?
History is fact littered with civilisations engaged in unsustainable practices. Some of the worst offenders have long since collapsed, but the ecological damage they caused or contributed to often ...
- 97.5k
113
votes
Why, in ancient battles, did being encircled mean defeat?
While the total encirclement might be the most impressive thing about Cannae, remember that it's just a special case of a pincer movement where the pincer goes all the way around the enemy. A pincer ...
- 3,075
106
votes
Accepted
Why, in ancient battles, did being encircled mean defeat?
While the tactical factor (not being able to move units around) is important, the main issue is one of soldiers panicking. Remember that it does not matter what the numbers are actually; your soldiers ...
- 12.4k
99
votes
Did the ancients or other pre-industrial civilisations engage in unsustainable practices?
It is difficult to be completely sure because of the lack of written records, but some claim that the collapse at Easter Island was rather brutal.
But it seems clear that:
By that time [of the ...
- 12.4k
94
votes
Accepted
What were paper airplanes called before there were real airplanes? (i.e. untethered winged flyers, not kites or balloons)
They were called paper darts in the 19th century, as evidenced in this article, which contains many detailed references going back as far as 1864, and many illustrations
In fact, it appears that they ...
- 4,244
90
votes
Accepted
How did archers judge distance before range finders?
I'm a horse archer; we use instinctive archery – there are no range finders, just a bow, a string an arrow and an archer. After a few thousand shots at various ranges, your body just knows how to aim ...
MCW♦
- 32.4k
86
votes
Accepted
Did the ancients or other pre-industrial civilisations engage in unsustainable practices?
Most ancient agricultural practices deplete soil to some degree, but are just fine when population does not exceed certain limits. There are some examples of ancient cultures exhausting natural ...
- 8,875
79
votes
Accepted
Cultural understanding of Penelope's suitors
Xenia is a concept that represented the relationship between guests and hosts in Ancient Greece, and is a recurring theme in the Odyssey, Iliad, and other Greek works. Essentially, Penelope was ...
- 4,004
78
votes
What were paper airplanes called before there were real airplanes? (i.e. untethered winged flyers, not kites or balloons)
Short Answer
(Paper) Dart and (Paper) Arrow
These terms were used from at least the 1860s. However, not all of these designs were what we would today recognize and call 'paper planes'. Some clearly ...
- 108k
76
votes
Accepted
How did the ancient Greeks synchronize time?
In the particular case of Eratosthenes measuring the radius of the earth, it was done by observing the length of shadows at midday on the summer solstice, in cities that were north-south aligned (to ...
- 3,205
72
votes
Accepted
Were ancient ships named?
Xenophon in his Hellenica (an account of the last yearsof the Peloponessian War and its aftermath) mentions several named ships, for example, "Paralus" and "Salaminia". Thus, we can infer that at ...
- 8,875
72
votes
Accepted
Has an heir ever made the country believe the current ruler died in order to take over the throne?
Yes. King John of England attempted to take the throne from Richard I while he was on crusade. Richard's delayed return was due to the fact that he had been taken prisoner by Leopold V, Duke of ...
- 108k
65
votes
Accepted
How did they cook on ancient ships?
That's a good question. As far as we know, most ancient voyages didn't venture that far from land. Ships like the Bronze Age Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya shipwrcks are thought to have been coastal ...
- 77.4k
64
votes
Did slaves have slaves?
This happened in Roman Times judging by two notes in Slaves doing business: the role of Roman law in the economy of a Roman household by Richard Gamauf (2009):
A Roman slave could hold property which,...
- 23.2k
64
votes
Accepted
Did slaves have slaves?
Short Answer
Yes. There are examples of slaves owning slaves from different historical periods and in different regions of the world, including:
Ancient Near East
Early Medieval Sunni Islam
Late ...
- 108k
59
votes
Were ancient ships named?
The autobiography of Ahmose, son of Abana, a Egyptian soldier in the early Eighteenth Dynasty (1550-1600 BC), mentions the names of a few the ships he was on. "Wild Bull", "Northern" and "Rising in ...
- 648
54
votes
Did the ancients or other pre-industrial civilisations engage in unsustainable practices?
For the list, read Collapse by Jared Diamond. The short answer is that yes, premodern cultures definitely experienced man-made environmental disasters.
Perhaps the number one cause of these was ...
- 14.3k
51
votes
Are there historical texts in England querying where Roman structures came from?
For the Anglo-Saxons, the knowledge that it was the Romans whose city it was is less relevant than why those cities were there no more, or, well, why they were in such a poor state. However, for a ...
- 10.8k
50
votes
How serious was Fermat's statement about the ancients?
There is a difference between abstract knowledge and "inventions". In the 17th century it was still widely believed that the ancient Greeks had discovered and formulated pretty much the sum total of ...
- 9,764
47
votes
Accepted
How prevalent were recreational drugs in the ancient world?
Drugs are certainly not a new phenomenon. Two well-known examples are opiates and cannabis. A great deal has been written about the use of hashish by medieval Nizari Ismailis (which gave us the word "...
- 77.4k
47
votes
Accepted
What is the earliest mention of space travel?
You should define more precisely what do you mean by "space travel" when you are talking about pre-Galileo times.
For example, Elijah, the prophet, was taken to heavens in a chariot of fire, ...
- 38.5k
46
votes
Accepted
Who was the first female ruler to be given the suffix, "the great"?
The only candidate apart from Catherine the Great would appear to be Tamar the Great of Georgia. Born in 1166, she ruled as sole monarch from 1184 to 1213 (or possibly 1210), having been made co-ruler ...
- 108k
46
votes
Did ancient peoples ever hide their treasure behind puzzles?
One man's lock is another man's puzzle.
Combination locks have been used since at least ancient Rome. Whether the lock uses numbers or letters (or other symbols), the combination to be entered may be ...
- 4,082
46
votes
What is the difference between the Ancient Greek religion and the Ancient Roman religion?
The biggest difference that I'm aware of is that the Classical Greek religion was much more the religion of myths that we all know, while the Classical Roman religion had fewer personifications and ...
- 7,596
44
votes
Aside from the Pyramids, what is the tallest man-made structure still standing in Europe & the Near East from ancient times?
I suppose that the Neolithic Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, built about 2470 - 2350 BC, is probably a contender for any list of the tallest European structures from ancient times.
At 39.3 metres (129 ft) ...
- 77.4k
44
votes
Were ancient ships named?
The idea of naming ships goes back several thousand years but, unsurprisingly, there is very little evidence from the earliest days of sailing.
EGYPT
Possibly the earliest evidence of an individual ...
- 108k
44
votes
Did ancient peoples ever hide their treasure behind puzzles?
The Copper Scroll
The Copper Scroll is a Dead Sea scroll found in 1952, unique in that it is of copper (with a little tin), has a list of 63 or 64 locations of treasure with "obscure hints of the ...
- 108k
43
votes
How did archers judge distance before range finders?
They mostly didn't care.
In combat, the purpose of an archer was not to land aimed shots on specific targets. It was to put large amounts of pointy wood-and-steel in the air, in the general ...
- 2,429
42
votes
Accepted
Aside from the Pyramids, what is the tallest man-made structure still standing in Europe & the Near East from ancient times?
I'll put in the Hagia Sophia, which reached the height of 182ft (55.6 meters) in the year 562:
...The emperor ordered an immediate restoration. He entrusted it to
Isidorus the Younger, nephew of ...
- 38.7k
42
votes
Accepted
What is the first horse name recorded in history?
The Kassites (Babylonia, c. 1531 BC and until c. 1155 BC) named horses and were well-established in horse-breeding. Some of these names have been dated to the reigns of Burna-Buriash II (c.1359–1333 ...
- 108k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible