AskHistorians

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To what extent did the Battle of the Morannon affect the demographics of Middle Earth in the Fourth Age?	125
In his book 1491, Charles Mann says that one of the reasons for the popularity of potatoes in Europe was that they could be stored in the ground, rather than in granaries like other crops, and thus were much harder for nobles or armies to steal. Is there any evidence for this hypothesis?	116
Why did the Catalan Revolt during the 1640s and 1650s fail, but the simultaneously occurring Portuguese revolt succeed in reestablishing an independent state?	105
All the American and European revolutions up until 1848 were liberal revolutions, but after that they become almost uniformly socialist. Why?	104
Was the existence of a State required before currency could be invented, or did the invention of currency predate the rise if the State?	98
Why did Mexico encourage Anglo-American immigration to Texas in the 1820s? In retrospect, it looks like an obvious mistake.	96
Throughout the Medieval and Early Modern periods, scholars who did not share a common language would often write letters to each other in Latin. When scholars visited each other, would they also speak in Latin, or was Latin a purely literary language by this stage?	87
In the premodern period, the Eurasian Steppe was dominated by nomadic tribes whose military power was largely cavalry. How did the Kievan Rus, a settled state whose armies relied on a core of sturdy infantry, thrive on the steppe, given the widely understood supremacy of horse archers over infantry?	86
Around the 1st century AD, there were many different popular schools of philosophy: Aristotelianism, Platonism, Cynicism, Stoicism, Skepticism, and more. But 300 years later, a combination of Platonism and Aristotelianism called Neo-Platonism was almost completely dominant. How did this happen?	78
Why are the Greek and its descendant writing systems written left to right, when it was derived from Phoenician which was typically written right to left?	67

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