AskHistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
In the game Civilization 6, universities get bonuses if they are adjacent to mountains. In my life, I've noticed that many colleges I've been to are all pretty often in the hills, a bit away from the nearby city/town/urban center. Is there a reason they're so often on hills?	1848
If I were a small landholder in 700CE Europe, how would I get places? Am I walking through people's land? Were there commonly tread areas that people considered 'roads' and thus not part of someone land? If I live in a rural area, am I just cutting across open land and hoping to find paths?	1110
How is it that Orange, a town in Southern France, is so fundamental to the Dutch (through their Monarchy, and through Orange as the national color) -- when it so very distant from the Netherlands?	856
Why didn't Iceland collapse after exhausting the supply of timber on the island?	373
How long did Roman/Phoenician/Greek ships last? Were merchants/fleets constantly rebuilding ships to deal with attrition?	222
What movies got historical facts surprisingly correct?	120
Why, after Charlemagne, did France remain large and (generally) unified, whereas Germany split in to many small states?	107
Some of the Germanic tribes that invaded Britain in the 500s came from the same place as some of the Vikings (Jutland); but media/books all paint a sharp difference between the 'Anglo Saxons' and the 'Danes' -- would those at the time really see that much of a difference?	104
Carthage was able to very quickly hire mercenary companies to fill their army after great losses, why were there so many soldiers available for hire? What are these soldiers doing that they can drop their lives to go fight?	100
Other than Snorri, where do we get our current understanding of Norse mythology from?	84

« < > »