History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII

I know the United States and the Ottoman Empire were on opposite sides during World War 1, but did they ever fight directly against each other on the battlefield? If so, can someone name any of the battles they had against each other?
 
I agree with most of what you wrote. However, not everything, of course.
Imagine the millions and billions (of $) Egypt could make if this ancient wonder of the world was uncovered (and restored) and opened for tourism! I'd pay to go and see it, without a hesitation.
Since economic boost through tourism is more than certain (after a successful excavation of this structure) then what is holding back the Egyptians from letting archeological expeditions proceed with the work?

Well, exactly my point. Maybe the reason work isn't carrying on has nothing to do with governmental interference and more to do with the low value of the work.

Dr. Hawass has been tried for involvement in (alleged) theft of ancient artifacts, corruption accusations against him have been made. He is in good relations with National Geographic and overall a powerful figure in the world of Egyptology/Archeology.
To me, only a naïve person would listen to what this self proclaimed expert has to say. It's clearly stated that he was using intimidation when he tried to convince the Metaha team not to reveal their finds to general public.

He's a somewhat dodgy character but he's not a "self-proclaimed expert", he's a genuine expert with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. In any case, he hasn't said anything about this case, so we can't listen to it or not. You only have the story of the Mataha people from their own pretty dodgy website. You certainly don't know whether their claims of intimidation are correct. As I say, the Mataha people don't seem to have demonstrated any academic credibility on this matter. Even if their findings are indeed being suppressed by the Egyptian government, it doesn't follow from that that their findings are of any value. If they were, they wouldn't need to resort to websites to publicise them.
 
I know the United States and the Ottoman Empire were on opposite sides during World War 1, but did they ever fight directly against each other on the battlefield? If so, can someone name any of the battles they had against each other?


I don't recall hearing of any. The US entry into the war was so late that they weren't involved everywhere. The US was still ramping up for the war when it ended. The Army and Marines were in France. The Navy in the Atlantic.
 
I know the United States and the Ottoman Empire were on opposite sides during World War 1, but did they ever fight directly against each other on the battlefield? If so, can someone name any of the battles they had against each other?
I don't think they were at war. The US was an Associated Power, not an Ally. The ostensible reason for US entry into the war, unrestricted submarine warfare, was nothing to do with the Ottomans. Likewise, the Ottomans already had their hands full losing to the British Empire.
 
When William the Conqueror died I believe he left Normandy and other French holdings to his oldest son and England to a younger son. Was William slighting his older son, or did he just want to split his territories among his sons?
 
Gavelkind was the concept that you split up your land amongst your sons and is one of the main reasons that Charlemagne's empire crumbled after his death. I believe that William the Conqueror saw the Duchy of Normandy as more prestigious than his English holdings, hence he left his primary title to his eldest son and so on.
 
I don't think they were at war. The US was an Associated Power, not an Ally. The ostensible reason for US entry into the war, unrestricted submarine warfare, was nothing to do with the Ottomans. Likewise, the Ottomans already had their hands full losing to the British Empire.

I think they did declare war on the Ottomans, though, and were offered a mandate in Armenia after the war, so it's possible. I agree it was unlikely, though.

Did they have any involvement in the Pacific?
 
Gavelkind was the concept that you split up your land amongst your sons and is one of the main reasons that Charlemagne's empire crumbled after his death. I believe that William the Conqueror saw the Duchy of Normandy as more prestigious than his English holdings, hence he left his primary title to his eldest son and so on.

No - he considered Normandy and other French holdings as more valuable than England.

I'm confused though. Wikipedia says William wanted to disinherit his oldest son completely and giving him Normandy was a compromise. Is it wrong, or was William unable disinherit him?
 
I doubt that he had total control over the issue, especially given the many attempts on his life when he was younger and the fractious nature of his barons.
 
What do you think about "The Arctic Home in the Vedas" theory?:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arctic_Home_in_the_Vedas

The Arctic Home in the Vedas is a book on the origin of Aryans by Lokmanya Bâl Gangâdhar Tilak, a mathematician turned astronomer, historian, journalist, philosopher and political leader of India during 1880 to 1920. It propounded the theory that the North Pole was the original home of Aryans during pre-glacial period which they had to leave due to the ice deluge around 8000 B.C. and had to migrate to the Northern parts of Europe and Asia in search of lands for new settlements. In support to his theory Tilak has presented certain Vedic hymns, Avestic passages, Vedic chronology and Vedic calendars with interpretations of the contents in detail. The book was written at the end of 1898, but was first published in March 1903 in Pune.

(...)

Evidence in support of the theory:

1) Vedic Evidences

Particulars of Hymns and Verses in ten Mandalas of Rigveda are given. For example Hymn 1, Verse 2, Page 459.
Particulars of Passages in Taittiriya Samhita are given. For example Passage I, 3, 9, 2, Page 91.
Particulars of Hymns in Vajasaneyi Samhita are given.
Particulars of Sama Veda Samhita are given.
Particulars of Atharva Veda Samhita are given.
Particulars of Aitareya Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Kauhorsehockyaki Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Taittiriya Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Shatapatha Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Tandya Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Sadvimsha Brahmana are given.
Particulars of Taittiriya Aranyaka are given.
Particulars of Upanishads are given.

2) Avestic Evidences

Particulars of Vendidad passages are given.
Particulars of Yashts passages are given.
Particulars of Yasna passages are given.

Influence:

The Arctic Home in the Vedas has been cited in the works of Julius Evola, Savitri Devi, Rene Guenon, Jean Haudry and John G. Bennett.

The Vedas and the Avesta of course contain founding myths of the Aryans. Those myths were obviously much, much older than times when they were written down on paper. Before that, they had been transmitted orally from one generation to another - like in all illiterate cultures. However, we should not a priori ridicule such oral traditions, and we should not consider them as totally unreliable. There often is a grain of truth in such myths.

For example, Maori founding myths saying that their ancestors "came in 7 great boats" turned out to be - more or less - true:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/ancient/AncientRepublish_817069.htm

Whyte also analysed the ‘haplotypes’ (groups of closely linked genes) carried on mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only through the female line. Each population has a unique range of haplotypes. While Europeans have over 100 haplotypes in a particular region of DNA, studies so far have only found four different Maori haplotypes in the same region.

“The reason for this difference is what we call a genetic bottleneck. When people leave an island to go to the next island, obviously not everybody gets on the boat, so some of the genetic diversity is being lost,” she said. “Some of the maternal lineages may not have got on the boat, so they’re not carried on to the next place.”

Whyte has now identified 10 haplotypes in New Zealand Maori. “From that we have worked out that 56 women came to New Zealand to create the diversity of today’s population,” she added.

Whyte said these findings were consistent with Maori legend.

“The story I was told when I was growing up is that there was a fleet of seven great waka (canoes) that came to New Zealand," she said. "Every tribe knows which waka their ancestors arrived in. My ancestors were in a waka called Takitimu.”

“There might have been 20 people travelling in a canoe the size of a waka. Seven waka, that’s about 140 people. And if, as we think, about half or 56 of these people happen to be women, it does seem to tie in.”

In this case genealogical evidence from ancient DNA extracted from bones indeed seems to be linking the lineage of a hunter who lived around 7,500 years ago in Karelia (see the graph below), with the current predominant Y-DNA haplogroup in Northern India and Central India:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13853092&postcount=6928

Large version (link): http://s7.postimg.org/6gf8nevmx/PIE_Tree.png

Small version:

Spoiler :



Of course the "North Pole" as an exact location must be dismissed... but Karelia is reasonably close, and indeed sub-Arctic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subarctic_climate

Map showing areas with sub-Arctic climate (which include Karelia):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Koppen_World_Map_Dfc_Dwc_Dsc_Dfd_Dwd_Dsd.png

Check also:

"The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ba...27s_Epic_Tales

And the Seima-Turbino phenomenon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seima-Turbino_phenomenon

http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_R1a_Y-DNA.shtml#Greek

PIE homeland near Proto-Uralic homeland:

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124812

The strongest geographic indicator of the location where PIE was spoken is the fact that PIE and Proto-Uralic (PU) appear to have been geographic neighbors. They had core vocabulary items that look suspiciously similar ('name', 'water') and similar-looking pronouns (Ringe 1997; Janhunen 2000, 2001; Koivulehto 2001; Kallio 2001; Salminen 2001; Witzel 2003; Parpola 2012). One kind of relationship between PIE and PU that would account for the apparently shared pronouns, noun endings, and basic vocabulary would be ancestral: The two protolanguages could have shared a very ancient common ancestor, perhaps a broadly related set of intergrading dialects spoken by hunters at the end of the Pleistocene.

Finally, Nostratic languages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic_languages

The closest relative of PIE was apparently Proto-Uralic, followed by Proto-Altaic and Kartvelian (the latter spoken in Caucasus region). This shows that PIE homeland was most likely somewhere between the Ural Mountains, the Baltic Sea and the Caucasus.
 
Because he didn't have Polish Winged Hussars.

Well, Hussars aren't the reason Poland are STRONK. And the Germans with their pretty sweet UA should have been able to amass enough of an army from torching barbarians to overwhelm those weakling moors.

On a more serious note, I think everybody seems to underestimate the military strength of the Moors. Also, Charlemagne was facing rebelliousness within his own possessions so he couldn't commit to warring with the Moors. Another thing to consider is that Charlemagne didn't necessarily want to conquer the Moors- he just wanted to eliminate them as a threat ad while he couldn't completely do that, he at least managed to form a buffer state- the Spanish march.
 
Well, had they not disintegrated it is unlikely that the Christian states of the Peninsula would have gotten strong enough to defeat them when they unified again.
 
Having watched the films "The Ten Commandments" and the more recent "Exodus: God and Kings", I was led to believe that the Exodus was an actual event (frogs, plagues, locusts, etc. excluded). However, in reading Wikipedia: The Exodus, no archaeological evidence has been found c.a. 1250 BCE. Does this effectively place the entire Old Testament's historicity into question?
 
Having watched the films "The Ten Commandments" and the more recent "Exodus: God and Kings", I was led to believe that the Exodus was an actual event (frogs, plagues, locusts, etc. excluded). However, in reading Wikipedia: The Exodus, no archaeological evidence has been found c.a. 1250 BCE. Does this effectively place the entire Old Testament's historicity into question?
It places the OT into the exact same category that all other 'historical' documents from that time period go into. They are useful for giving us an understanding of what the writers thought and, when corroborated with other information, can be useful as a historical record.
 
Having watched the films "The Ten Commandments" and the more recent "Exodus: God and Kings", I was led to believe that the Exodus was an actual event (frogs, plagues, locusts, etc. excluded). However, in reading Wikipedia: The Exodus, no archaeological evidence has been found c.a. 1250 BCE. Does this effectively place the entire Old Testament's historicity into question?


It pretty much is entirely in question. We know there was no Noah's flood. We know there was no Adam and Eve some 6000 years ago. Why should the Exodus story be any different?
 
Top Bottom