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  1. WI: Justinian never invaded Italy?

    A relevant video on this topic by one of my favourite YouTubers (Maiorianus) just dropped: What if the Byzantine / Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian had not attacked the Ostrogothic Kingdom?

  2. Where would you "divide" history?

    I would go with a start date of 9703 BC, the year that global climate last flipped to the current interglacial conditions (this apparently happened very rapidly, like flipping a light switch). Almost immediately after this, we start to see the beginnings of Neolithic culture in the fertile...

  3. Why do WW1 threads always get so many replies and are full of controversy?

    I wish that I had written down the stories I was told about my paternal ancestry. One of my father's brothers had researched his (and therefore my) family history back many centuries, based in part on paper archives that did not survive WWII, so it cannot be fully reconstructed today.. The...

  4. Why do WW1 threads always get so many replies and are full of controversy?

    You are two years ahead of me. Born in 1962, my father was born in 1933, his father sometime in the late 19th century (don't know the exact date). My father's father spent time in Siberia as a prisoner after the Communist Revolution, my father told me stories that he had been told, of him...

  5. Why do WW1 threads always get so many replies and are full of controversy?

    I am convinced that of all the possible timelines that could have started from our June 27, 1914 (the day before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand), the one we are in would be in the worst few percent, perhaps even the worst few tenths of a percent. The Great War was a very unlikely event...

  6. Why do WW1 threads always get so many replies and are full of controversy?

    I know that Canadian troops had a terrible record of atrocities, so it's certainly not confined to one side. Honestly, as far as I can tell every country's soldiers would do Very Bad Things (tm) on occasion. Don't know who were the worst overall. The Ottomans?

  7. Why do WW1 threads always get so many replies and are full of controversy?

    I have never once heard anybody making such a claim. That sounds like a straw-man argument to me. I personally think that if Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated, a wide range of possible timelines could have happened, from the Great War still happening at a later date from some other...

  8. Why do WW1 threads always get so many replies and are full of controversy?

    Probably because WW1 was so pivotal to the rest of 20th century history, and so much stupidity and sheer bad luck was involved in its origins. Also, for a very long time, responsibility for the war was attributed to the losers, when the reality was that there was plenty of blame to go around ...

  9. Question about the culture that produced Gobekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe, Nevali Cori, etc.

    I have a question about nomenclature. The only name I know of for this culture is Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, but that sounds more like a developmental stage than an actual name of an archaeological culture. All I have read suggests that this culture is a direct organic...

  10. WI: Solutrean New World

    Fossil footprints show humans in North America more than 21,000 years ago David Bustos heard about the “ghost tracks” when he first came to White Sands National Park in New Mexico to work as a wildlife scientist in 2005. When the ground was wet enough at certain times of the year, the ghostly...

  11. Ranking the greatest generals in the American Civil War

    I don't like his methodology, which measures "total wins above replacement" rather than "winning percentage above replacement". So Napoleon, who fought in a huge number of battles, with quite good but not perfect average results, does better than generals like Hannibal or Alexander, who won...

  12. WI: Most technologically advanced world

    I wrote the following post in 2012, and it seems relevant to this discussion: So to answer the OP's question: Prevent the rise of the Roman Republic/Empire. Perhaps Hannibal ends up defeating and subjugating Rome? This would allow the Hellenistic scientific revolution to continue, and...

  13. Why do some believe the Ottomans are a continuation of the Roman Empire?

    This is what we used to think, but in reality it seems that the Neolithic population of Britain was almost completely wiped out by invading Bell Beaker peoples (probably early Indo-Europeans who adopted the Iberian Bell Beaker technology package).

  14. What if Harold Godwinson kept his promise and supported William the Conqueror to the English throne?

    I must state that I am very doubtful that Harold Godwinson ever made such a promise to William. It sounds very much like an ex post facto attempt by William to justify his seizure of the English throne -- after all, Harold was not exactly still around to dispute promising anything.

  15. WI: Indo-Iranians head to China

    I wrote this here about 5 years ago. It appears to be relevant to this thread: Afanasevo culture Ordos culture Yuezhi Wusun It appears that at one time, almost all of central Asia was occupied by Indo-Europeans, who had arrived in several waves. The furthest east of them, the Ordos...

  16. WI Jesus was a figure who lead an Anti-Roman revolt?

    I once read a book (cannot recall its name) which argued that the origins of Christianity were actually rather similar. It argues that Jesus was executed for anti-Roman activities, of which the accounts in the Gospels gave a whitewashed, heavily redacted version. His attack on the...

  17. Do real Cavalry Charges trample down over troops that don't have Shieldwall Formations or Blocks of long spears and other pole arms?

    From the book Cannae by Adrian Goldsworthy: Hand-to-hand combat is especially difficult for us to visualize accurately and all too often conjures up images which have more to do with Hollywood than with reality. In cinematic epics the two armies rapidly intermingle, every soldier fighting...

  18. What is the closest thing in history have to a 'religious genocide'?

    I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the Islamic conquest of India, and subsequent massive and very frequent - at times almost daily - massacres of the indigenous Hindu, Jain and other peoples. In terms of total body count, it was probably surpassed only by the Mongol wars of conquest, which...

  19. WI: Paul of Tarsus dies on the road to Damascus

    I think that the early prominence of women in Christianity, and their later suppression from leadership roles, is fairly well accepted by scholars.

  20. WI: Paul of Tarsus dies on the road to Damascus

    Without Paul's writings, I expect that one of the other strands of early Christianity would become dominant, and perhaps become the 'official' version of Christianity, as the Pauline version did in OTL. (Assuming that Christianity would still grow to the point where it eventually becomes the...
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