87
votes
Did Aztecs know how many continents there are on earth?
Do you know how many continents there are on Earth? (I don't!) Is Europe a separate continent from Asia? Is Australia the biggest island or the smallest continent? Is Antarctica an ice-locked ...
- 8,170
58
votes
Accepted
Why was the Cold War carried out over the whole world instead of between Siberia and Alaska?
Location of Conflicts
This is because fundamentally, the Cold War was about which ideology would dominate the world. Both sides wanted to export their ideology, or perhaps more importantly, stop each ...
- 97.6k
31
votes
Accepted
Did Aztecs know how many continents there are on earth?
I was hoping that someone with better resources on Aztec mythology would speak up, but in absence of that, I'll tell you what I found looking into this online. Chief among it was that I could find ...
- 122k
30
votes
Accepted
Did pre-Columbian Americans know the spherical shape of the Earth?
Firstly, it is important to be aware that our understanding of the civilisations and culture of Pre-Columbian America is far from complete. Secondly, I don't propose to attempt to cover every ...
- 77.2k
29
votes
Accepted
Why was the northern boundary of the Mongol empire set where it was?
There always is a trade-off when occupying someone else's territory: the resources you can extract plus any strategic value versus the resources you need to invest to maintain control.
The wooded ...
- 9,406
27
votes
Accepted
Did ancient or medieval people know about underground rivers/lakes?
Awareness of (and habitation alongside) underground rivers dates back many thousands of years. Cave systems with rivers, providing a ready supply of one life's essentials, were shelters from both the ...
- 108k
25
votes
Who was the first person to get a more accurate measure of the earth's circumference than Eratosthenes?
The accuracy of Eratosthenes's calculations of the circumference being 252,000 stadia depends on assumptions about the modern equivalent of length of the stadion.
The same issue applies to Posidonius'...
- 2,846
23
votes
Kurds and their relation to the start of civilization?
That seems highly unlikely.
The invention of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent was roughly 10,000 years ago, principally in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley system. The people living there when ...
- 122k
21
votes
Did anyone in Europe predict the existence of the Americas?
Europeans, perhaps not, someone in the old world, yes.
Al-Biruni (973–1050) lived in Khwarezm (modern Uzbekistan). Among other works in mathematics, astronomy, physics, mineralogy, history and ...
- 1,082
21
votes
Accepted
What evidence exists for the historical name of Kuwohi Mountain (formerly Clingmans Dome)?
The written source material we can access is from an ethnology done by James Mooney in 1891, The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, Volume 7. The Cherokee names of four mountains in the area are ...
- 41.5k
20
votes
What was the error in 1790, if any, of the lat. and long. of Greenwich Observatory of 1783?
I found the answer. In 1790, no error was found.
Roy [who headed the survery] probably did not know that in 1785 Maskelyne [who was confident of the coordinates of Greenwich] had equipped his ...
- 409
19
votes
How many different countries could a person alive today have lived in without leaving their hometown?
Metohija
Ottoman Empire (until 1912)
Montenegro (1912-1915)
Austria-Hungary (1915-1918)
Serbia (1918)
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats
and Slovenes (1918–1929)
Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–1941)
Italian ...
- 191
19
votes
Where on a modern map are these areas of Ptolemy's map?
More or less, it's something like this:
Not all the details are correct, but that is to be expected for an area that is known mostly by hearsay.
The Malay Peninsula and Sumatra are conflated;
...
- 72.5k
17
votes
Why was the Cold War carried out over the whole world instead of between Siberia and Alaska?
This question made me scratch my head for a minute. I think there may be some false premises in the OP's question that have been overlooked. I will paraphrase the Q: "Why didn't they aim nuclear ...
- 271
17
votes
Accepted
Are there any ideas as to what the English landscape was like before the arrival of the Angles?
The Angles, along with the Saxons and the Jutes, probably started arriving in Britain around the middle of the 5th century, some 50 years after Rome abandoned its northern-most province. They would ...
- 108k
15
votes
Accepted
What was an upper and a lower region?
Typically it refers to a river, and "lower" is down-river (closer to the coast), while "upper" is up-river (further inland). This is because the land at the mouth of a river is lower (in altitude) ...
- 122k
15
votes
Accepted
Who was the first person to get a more accurate measure of the earth's circumference than Eratosthenes?
Wikipedia articles on the "History of Geodesy", "Earth's circumference", and so on give a thorough summary of potential candidates, but suggest that this question isn't going to be ...
- 23.1k
13
votes
Accepted
Since when is the Nile Delta known as "Delta"?
Francis Celora in Delta as a Geographical Concept in Greek literature (login required, 100 free articles / month) notes:
That a stranger who arrives at the mouth of the Nile in times when maps were ...
- 72.5k
12
votes
Why was the Cold War carried out over the whole world instead of between Siberia and Alaska?
The reason the Cold War resulted in conflicts across the world and not just between the US and USSR's closest points is because neither side wanted to actually enter into open hostilities, because ...
- 4,010
12
votes
Accepted
Kurds and their relation to the start of civilization?
It is certainly true that many of the foundations for later civilisations, like the development of agriculture, the development of writing, and even an invention of the wheel, can be traced to The ...
- 77.2k
11
votes
Did ancient or medieval people know about underground rivers/lakes?
The river Reka (literally: river) in Slovenia goes underground in the caves of Škocjan (San Canziano, St. Kanzian) and comes out as Timavo some 35 km further west.
According to the Wiki page linked ...
- 736
10
votes
How did it happen that countries and cities got different names in different languages?
Q How did it happen that countries and cities got different names in different languages?
This can be re-phrased to "why are there (geographical) exonyms and how do they develop?"
And that ...
- 80.8k
10
votes
Accepted
When did "Africa" become the name of the whole continent?
The earliest available evidence of 'Africa' applied to the whole continent (including Egypt) would appear to date from the work of 16th century map makers. Abraham Ortelius (1527-98) produced this map ...
- 108k
10
votes
When and why did "Near East" become "Middle East?"
This article at the Washington Post claims the name Middle East for what was the Near East started changing after World War I, when the British started governing territories that were formerly part of ...
- 283
10
votes
Accepted
Where is Hermodontus?
There's an important hint in the footnote at the end of p. 96 - it tells that Albinus (Albinus pauperis scolaris / Albinus (cardinal)) included the list of Roman provinces by Polemius Silvius at that ...
- 3,640
9
votes
Accepted
Why is Hungary geographically important to travel between Europe and the Middle East?
(original image by Wikimedia Commons user San Jose)
If you look at a topographic map of Europe, the reason should be self-evident: the easiest land route from northern/western Europe passes through ...
- 8,739
9
votes
How area of a country used to be calculated?
Satellites and modern technologies are irrelevant here. If you have a map of the country, break it into sufficiently small pieces (so that each piece is approximately flat, and the scale of the map is ...
- 38.8k
9
votes
Accepted
Did pre-16th century Europeans call the Pacific Ocean the Atlantic?
Kind of. To the extent that Europeans were even aware that a body of water existed beyond China, it was indeed thought to be connected to the Atlantic. But this body of water was often given its own ...
- 97.6k
8
votes
Accepted
When and how was the cairn structure in the "Sea of Galilee" covered in water?
It appears that water levels in the Jordan valley have moved around greatly. Between 70,000 and 12,000 BP there was actually a lake covering the entire valley which has been named Lake Lisan
I ...
- 122k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible