Questions tagged [history]
For questions dealing with the past events of a given world.
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how early can people build a giant clock?
Can a clock that measures hours and minutes be created using primitive technology? so at most gears carved out of wood/bone/stone or crude non smitthed copper and when? I tought that maybe a primitive ...
user104995
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Does magic speed up technology?
In a classic RPG magic system, energy/mana/handwavium points are expended to manipulate reality. The cost increases with the complexity and extent of the alterations being made.
Natural talents for ...
user104995
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What holds back this city of mages from declaring its independence? [closed]
Year 0. A great Empire, powerful due to its control over magic, collapses. A rival empire takes over their territory and scatters its people. They seek to destroy its capital and salt the ruins, but ...
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How long would it take us to detect that the earth had been enclosed in a shell 1 light year in radius?
Suppose we put a shell around the solar system that displays a 2D image of the rest of the universe on its inner surface. What year would we have had telescopes powerful enough to determine that this ...
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When countries combine, how do they pick a new name?
I am writing a story where two countries decide to merge into one larger country, but I am having trouble figuring out what they would actually name the new country.
At first I though that they would ...
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Is there an existing name for this hook-sword-like shortsword design? [closed]
I was looking to add this premise of a weapon for a character I'm writing. I remembered this style existed in Breath of the Wild as an Eightfold Blade. While it does have a hilt, it is only a very ...
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Near-Death Experiences At a Point in History with No Medical Science?
I want a scenario where a person witnesses a "near death experience". But here's the catch -- there is no medical science available (pick your time, as far back as you like). The person must ...
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Why does the faction/race with the most information remembered not wipe out the other factions after a planet-wide memory wipe?
In this world, there are several (around 7) "races" of humans. This has less to do with "Race" in the modern sense, more like a "subspecies" in that they can interbreed, ...
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What biomes would Gondwana, a supercontinent consisting of South America and Africa have?
Hundreds of millions of years ago, there was a supercontinent named Pangaea that had almost every landmass on Earth. Later on, that landmass drifted apart into continents. It first became smaller ...
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Justification for foreign intervention in an anarchist Middle East? [closed]
What would be a rational reason for Western countries to unethically intervene in the Middle East following a total economic collapse?
I'm writing a story where Middle Eastern countries descend into ...
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Can people have free time without technology? [closed]
I read a lot of answers about historical stuff in here, they go something like this
''X and Y would never happen because people back then were working 800 million hours per day and couldn't waste ...
user93352
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Don't give tech to the primitives for real [closed]
It's a common cliche for advanced cultures just giving tech to less advanced cultures always resulting in a bad outcome. Are there any real examples of this in human history that could be quoted in a ...
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Can a society completely erase all memory of a predecessor culture’s collapse in only three generations? [closed]
Something bad happened and the world chose to cover the event up by erasing their activities.
My world believes they are survivors/refugees of a "lost civilization" such as the Khmer, and ...
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How would a secretive vestigial population grow alongside humans, given that they live different lifestyles? [closed]
This is a heavily revised version of a post I made earlier, along with some edits from my friend Enthalpy.
This new post is strictly about population growth, and contains no extant references to third ...
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Is it possible to make mortar without lime in a medieval-ish setting?
The world which I am working on is set in the far future on a colonized/terraformed planet that has become reduced to a medieval-like level of technology. It was not previously inhabited by any life, ...
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Ideas for a human convenient, long term date system spanning many trillions of years
I have reached the stage in my latest science fiction epic (in form if not quality!) whereby I need to start solidifying the date system and setting the history of the universe concretely. The date ...
user97385
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What advantages/disadvantages would Neanderthals have in a 16th Century military conflict? [closed]
Homo Neanderthalensis is a Homo species that went extinct 40,000 years ago. Let's say that Neanderthals made it to the Americas and was isolated on that continent until Spanish colonization. Let's ...
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Empire across the Himalayas
I was bouncing ideas off the wall about empires that could've plausibly existed in Asia if certain things went differently, and I stumbled across the very physical barrier of the Himalayas.
So my ...
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Factors to why a civilization is not using past technology that is more advanced [closed]
In my world, there have been past ancient civilizations and empires who had better technology. Not just infrastructure, but also mechanical machinery, better inventions, and technics.
As the years go ...
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Were there problems for Babbage's Analytical Engine in 1850s? [closed]
Suppose that a mysterious philanthropist provided fundings for Charles Babbage's intricate projects and the Analytical Engine was finished by 1850.
Surely there would be a lot of raptured academicians ...
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How would school uniforms be designed? [closed]
In my fantasy world, there are academies where young people are taught the ways of magic, the first one during the early-late medieval period. Due to some of its origin, this one is also the first to ...
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How to justify guns being advanced earlier
In my world's history, firearms were developed in their medieval period, much like our world. However, they have things like culverins in the 1300s, and handgonnes that work better than in real ...
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What would have been the most infamous "Reaper's Moon" in history?
My story is an urban fantasy tale, set on an alternate Earth where every mythical humanoid that humanity ever thought was real, is in fact real, or at least used to be before going extinct. From ...
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How to start an industrial revolution without textiles
My world does not have stagnant technology, and of course there is going to be an industrial revolution. In the real industrial revolution, it began with the need for textiles, which led to the ...
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Is it okay to use real-world literary figures? [closed]
In my world's lore and history, there a mythical figures and heroes in it. My world is not Earth, but rather a different world (think ATLA or skyrim kind of different). I was wondering if I am able to ...
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What could cause a city to be buried underground but still remain relatively intact?
I am taking inspiration from games like Dark Souls (Dark Souls 1: Lost Izalith, Dark Souls 2: Shulva - Sanctum City, Dark Souls 3: Profaned Capital) and Elden Ring (Eternal Cities - yes it is ...
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How fast can people dig in rock using primitive methods? [closed]
Considering the fire setting method (where you light a fire in front of the rock, then pour water onto the fire and rock) and digging purely with unpowered hand tools, how long would it take to dig ...
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A High School student time travelled through a certain time in Medieval Ages how would he/she survive? [closed]
Since it's the Medieval Age can mean any time period and any place you can suggest which place and time the student can most likely survive with limited skill.
How would a person with high-school ...
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Is 1000 years enough time for an event to be considered "legend" for a people whose average age is 150?
I have a world where the average lifespan of 90% of the population is 120-150 years old and history is almost solely maintained in writing (so there are not really many visual recordings of past ...
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How much binary data could reliably be stored on a wax phonographic cylinder?
Wax cylinders were used at the dawn of the phonograph to store audio recordings. This was long before the codec or compression, and they only had space for approximately two minutes of sound.
I'm ...
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How can the Bank of the United States surviving into the 20th century prevent the Great Depression?
The Great Depression was a time of great suffering for many Americans during the 1930s. It began in 1929 during the great crash of the stock market. This followed a period of unprecedented wealth and ...
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time machine and paradox problem [closed]
After doing more research on the earlier question. I have rewritten my question in order to change the framing so that it is not about characters but more about my factions and their use of the time ...
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This dungeon/ruin has been known to locals for ages. Why would it still have undiscovered portions ripe for looting?
There's a ruin of an ancient structure built by an old powerful civilization thousands of years before. Nearby is one of the fresher cities of this world, currently undergoing an industrial revolution....
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What would be a realistic length of minimal compulsory military service for a modern country's occupants?
I have a world in which several neighboring countries are in an ongoing long term military conflict. The style of conflict fluctuates between a cold war USSR vs US, current North vs South Korea and ...
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How can evolutionary pressures lead to a decrease in modern day human lifespan?
I, Charlemagne Darwinius, am a great scientist who has devoted his life to the study of the evolution of different species. Priests speak of man being created by a supernatural being called God, who ...
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What kind of alternate history would lead to modern China being a federal constitutional monarchy? [closed]
I'm contemplating writing a fiction set in modern China in an alternate universe. I have thought about how it would look like, but I need a plausible alternate history that could lead to such result.
...
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Development of a multi-color writing system
On earth, the first writing systems developed for accounting. You just cannot run an empire like Egypt or Mesopotamia without writing down who paid his taxes. Let alone organize mega-projects such as ...
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Did young people REALLY drink alcohol in the 1800s? [closed]
In my studying of the setting for my story, a fantasy world analogous to 1800 - 1850, I've found a number of interesting things - one of these is that people in the past did a lot of really odd things....
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Writing Xuanhuan, but when did men start to wear Veil Hat's? [closed]
I dug into the whole Veil Hat thing in Chinese history, but I have come across a small problem. The weimao or mili seems only ever to be used by women. So I wonder if it would be accurate to have my ...
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How practical would firearms be for early humans?
The basic setup for this world is that whenever someone dies, their soul is subjected to reincarnation. However, every once and a while this system fails and the souls are lost into limbo where they ...
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Speedrunning medicinal science
Many believe that being incredibly rich equals to being god on earth and in artificial situations, yes it would make sense... except it never happened.
All Kings and Queens got fooled, betrayed, ...
user86331
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What historical groups have used fur and/or bone amor? [closed]
I'm building a world where the main characters' civilization is seen as warlike and aggressive by outsiders (although this is not necessarily accurate). When designing their clothing aesthetics, I was ...
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How Would I Justify Keeping Most Magic Away from the General Public if it is Technically Learnable by Everyone? [closed]
In my book series, magic is a learnable skill that any person can learn to some degree (although some have much more natural talent with it than others and mastering even a single discipline of magic ...
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How long would it take for past information to be gone after a nuclear apocalypse
I have a post apocalyptic world where the main character is trying to learn more about the pre-apocalyptic world. However I don't know how long it would take for almost no knowledge to get to him ...
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How to justify new diverse cultures from the same ancestors [closed]
I'm struggling a bit in my worldbuilding on justifying the creation of different cultures on my land, when all originated from the same ancestors.
So on my continent I have a group of humans that ...
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2
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How would limited and mostly narrow living space affect pre-industrial warfare?
In my setting, the entire known world is clinging to the side of a humongous nearly vertical cliff. Living space is a kind of commodity since there aren't many cliff benches large enough to build a ...
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Could the Troubles in Northern Ireland and England have ended in reunification?
I am trying to plot the background of an alternate history story revolving around an Irish-British teenager living in a post-Troubles London where tensions are much higher. Unlike our timeline, the ...
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What kind of genetic problems would arise after three, five and ten generations of inbreeding? [duplicate]
In this case I'm assuming that the family has been inbreeding to a level of 2 or closer for a certain amount of generations. Given this what would be the likely issues that would arise after:
Two ...
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How could a lost time traveller quickly and quietly determine they've arrived in 500 BC France?
A time machine malfunctions and spits a traveller from ~2015AD out in 500BC northern France. With nothing but the clothes on his back, and minimising contact with the locals (as that may risk altering ...
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What would have happened if the USA never dropped atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? [closed]
If the USA never dropped the bombs on Japan, how different would have japan looked today?
Would it look like Taiwan or would it look like Europe?
What would have been Japan's technological innovation? ...
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