The Time Machine

Q: Were early hunter-gatherers monogamous?

4:25 AM

@TheHistorian Obviously because of a merger... kind of straddling the line on trivia there.

Fizz

4:49 AM

In an article, reporting on research by Mark Dyble, anthropologist, pre-agricultural human societies are described as predominantly monogamous: Only when more resources became available, did sexual inequality emerge according to their hypothesis published in Science. This may quite be the...

sexuality anthropology

5:35 AM

@Fizz Certainly not provable one way or the other, but most humans for most of history were monogamous, out of necessity if nothing else. There's certainly no reason to believe it was any different in pre-history.

I would say the largest contributor to sexual inequality is warfare however, not agriculture as such.

1 hour later…

Fizz

6:45 AM

@Semaphore On the level of musing, it would have been really nice if these pre-writing folks would have left some paintings of their own society instead of just animals they hunted etc. Perhaps they thought it wasn't interesting enough.

7:08 AM

There are a few of humans actually, like some of the Namibia ones; but it's pretty hard to interpret stick figures.

Aegon

7:26 AM

@Semaphore Your proposal here has garnered 5 UVs compared to the 2 by @sempaiscuba's. Do you guys think that we got the community consensus?

It's been 11 days already. I think that's the best we are gonna get

7:41 AM

@Aegon Huh. I'm surprised there has been more votes, it was still a tie when I gave up.

Aegon

8:01 AM

It's still close if you consider only upvotes. You got 7. he got 5.

Yes, let's wait some more.

Aegon

Alright. Thanks

Q: How did Carthage Lose the First Punic War to Rome?

8:52 AM

The first Punic War(264 to 241 BC) was fought between Carthage and Rome. Carthage seemed to have significant advantages at the beginning of the conflict. Carthage had heavily fortified defensive towns on Sicily a major front in the war. They had the larger Army. The Carthage Navy was both large...

ancient-rome carthage punic-wars

2 hours later…

Q: Need help to identify this uniform

11:14 AM

My great grandfather disappeared in 1930 and the only record I have of him is these photos. He fathered my grandmother in 1914 in Australia and had a second family in the late 1920's. I have only just discovered his second family via ancestry DNA testing. His grand daughter provided me with the p...

united-states military

3 hours later…

Q: How much material was shipped to Europe per month, after D-Day?

2:26 PM

Once D-Day landed (1944 Jun 06), how much material was shipped into Europe by the Western Allies per month? Did this monthly figure change much by 1945 May? Material includes basically everything, the food, weapons, ammo, fuel, equipment, etc. I'm looking for an agglomerated weight, like 10,000 ...

united-states world-war-two britain canada

1 hour later…

3:35 PM

@TheHistorian Favorite factoid I found researching this question:

The British actually used bagpipes for their attack on El Alamein in North Africa during WWII. Which leads us up to this wonderful Wikipedia entry:

> Although the attack was successful, losses among the pipers were high ...

(in German) "I don't care about the tanks, take out those bagpipes!"

Makes me wonder if the attrition rate among Doof Warriors was similarly high.

Q: How the history affects present?

4:28 PM

I am taking an intro history course. There are assumptions that bother me: My professor said that the method by which historians study history is that they consider only single topics (i.e. exclude every other conditions in the time period they are studying than the one under their scrutiny.) ...

philosophy

-1

Q: What is good literature for studying the history of archeological conservation

I do realise that archeological conservation is a science/art and plus some other things, but since it's history we are talking about, I thought it best the question be asked in the history page of the stack exchange. I couldn't really find any place that was better.(If anyone has an idea where t...

cultural-history

1 hour later…

5:58 PM

@T.E.D. They should have deployed vuvuzela corps then

6:38 PM

@SPavel Not employing vuvuzelas was part of the gentleman's agreement that effectively discouraged either side from engaging in chemical warfare during WWII.

1 hour later…

7:41 PM

@T.E.D. I thought Hitler didn't deploy such weapons because the Wehrmacht was mostly horses, and German industry was unable to provide horse earplugs in sufficient volumes?

Also, @T.E.D. since you are basically king cheese of history.se I figure I'll ask you - how come after 7 years this site is still beta?

@SPavel I'd dispute the "King Cheese" thing, but I am probably the best person to ask that particular question....

There's probably a meta thread where I go over this in detail but the tl;dr is:

@T.E.D. Very well - Kaiser Cheese

@SPavel Because History.SE doesn't get a steady ten questions a day, essentially.

o "Beta" doesn't (anymore at least) mean what you probably think it means

@Mithrandir :( I suspected it had something to do with that

I guess I need to start asking 5 questions every day

And then we can have a cool design

7:51 PM

@Mithrandir Yes, that's the nut of it.

@SPavel Don't hold your breath.

Graduated != design.

Some graduated sites have been waiting years for a design.

I don't think its a hard finish line at 10 questions, but that is the current published standard.

Man, this chat just keeps dashing my dreams

Q: Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites

371

Back in April of 2010, Joel shared our assumptions about the role of small sites in the newly minted Stack Exchange network: If a site does not have enough activity at the end of 90 days, it will be closed down. Any existing Q&A will be archived and made available for download, but the site...

discussion beta-phase beta-sites graduating-sites

My hopes and dreams, ground under the heel of the cruel tyrant

7:53 PM

I have made a study of this site's progress over the years I've had access to the mod stats. We are in general making slow but (mostly) steady progress in our question rate. So I have full confidence we will eventually get to 10 per day.

@T.E.D. That's great to hear!

This is basically the best Stack on the network.

However, 10 isn't some magic line at which a big switch gets flipped either. They have instituted sort of a slow rolling graduation process.

The standards for what makes a good answer are much higher than in the other stacks I visit (RPG, worldbuilding, for example)

My current best guess is we are about 4 years from hitting the 10 mark. But that's assuming a constant rate of increase. Its quite possible things self-build (start to go asymptotic) instead. But even if it takes the full 4...those 4 years will pass anyway no matter what you do.

In the meantime, (as gone over in detail in that post @Mithrandir linked), there's no danger to the site from remaining in "beta". As long as the site remains functional (keeps itself clean, is not a playground for spammers and the like) we can stay in this state as long as SE can keep the lights on.

8:08 PM

Hm, well, SE will keep running if only because Silicon Valley runs on SO

Hmmm. Just rechecked the stats. If I were to say this today, probably closer to 2 years. We're on a nice up-spike though. Say 2-4 years, because that's about the level of certainty in my estimates anyway. IANAS (I am not a statistician.)

SE recently had to lay off a lot of staff... hopefully things will pick up.

Yeah, that's why I mentioned keeping the lights on.

Just to give yourself an idea, you can surf history.stackexchange.com/questions with "newest" selected. At this very moment, it looks like we have 5 in the last 24 hours, 5 in the day before that, and 10 the day before that (average of a bit under 7 per day).

8:31 PM

Ouch, Homebrewing has 1.3 questions per day

9:02 PM

@SPavel As a guy who is rather particular about his beer, I find that entirely reasonable. :-)

9:42 PM

@T.E.D. Well there's also an Alcohol stack

with 0.4 questions daily

2 hours later…