"Peasant" is a very general term that have very little social meaning. Peasants were people who grew food (including raising animals) and they could include anything from a slave to rich free farmer who could himself own slaves and servants -and anything in between, depending on time period and location.

In popular culture Medieval "peasant" is associated with "serf", but that's completely wrong association.

Medieval European societies were very hierarchical, starting with very strong hierarchy in the family. "Equality" basically did not exist at all anywhere, it could only exist between people of the same social status, that is you could find it in institutions like guilds (and then only to a degree) and not places and communities.

Tin trade from Ireland in to Mediterranean dating back perhaps to Bronze Age. Ancient Greeks called Ireland "The Tin Island/s".

Russia did invade. But Japan was hoping to the last moment that USSR will stay neutral and could be used to negotiate some end of war agreement with Western Allies that would not be unconditional surrender. When Russia did declare war and then overrun in the very short time Japanese army in Manchuria and Korea, it was the last straw.

Historians still argue what was the the event that made Japan surrender, atomic bombs or Russian war declaration.

Bolshevism does not exist as a theory. Bolsheviks was name of the party, not a theory. Leninism also does not exist per see, what exist is Marxism-Leninism, which is theoretical extension/modification of Marxism made by Lenin and his colleagues born from a necessity to actually implement Marxist theory in practice. Or in other words to reconcile Marxist theory with practice in actual conditions of Russia and Europe as experienced by Lenin and his Bolsheviks.

And yes, it is confusing.

That's a large complex topic. Barter was always in use, but as a substitute of money as we understand them, couple of different things were used in different location across the globe. Generally speaking these were objects/materials that had it's own high value, were durable, easy to store and transport. Metal in different forms, usually ingots of different shapes. That includes not just precious metals but also iron, cooper and bronze. That eventually led to actual coins. Cloth was used, again, in different forms, including actual costumes and garments. Today cloth is cheap, but in pre-industrial era cloth was very laborious to make and expensive. Animal skins were used, especially luxury ones. More exotic objects could be used, usually in some smaller isolated and more primitive societies: sea shells, coral beans -usually in placed where these were been imported, not where they were abundant.

(Eastern Asiatic) martial arts were generally developed as a substitute to combat with weapons where weapons were restricted. For example when some classes of the society were forbidden to own weapons (slaves, peasants) or geographical restrictions of weapons (ban of weapons in towns). This actually includes not just bare hand fighting but also substituting weapons with some other objects and tools, like farming tools (nunchagu might be the most famous example).

Therefore it's safe to say that it occurred often. But that does not mean that it was a good or proficient way of fighting. More like something out of necessity.

There is no evidence of Winter War having any direct influence on Hitler's plans. The goal of invasion of the USSR was laid down by Hitler before he even came to power. It was (in his opinion) necessity to carve out "living space" and colonial empire for Germany and Hitler saw that space in the Eastern Europe.

As for timetable, it was set by the developments on the Western front and general situation in Europe and had nothing to do with Finland.

There is plenty of written sources about him and he's one of the better known historical figures. Starting with so called Secret History of Mongols.

>Ptolemaic line is Greek

Macedonian.

>lost knowledge

Roman concrete. Greek fire.

Not sure about this particular case, but war games like that were conducted on maps.

Duma was Russian parliament and as such was official institution of the state. It predated revolution. It was controlled by political parties. At first by liberals that overthrew czar and then socialists.

Provisional government was the government of the Russian republic (established after first revolution that overthrew czar Nicolas II) and was subordinated to the Duma.

Soviets (literally councils in English) were effectively parallel parliament/government established by the people (mostly workers) during revolution and rival power of the Duma and the provisional government. They were organized locally (for example in factories) and then deputies would be send to the higher level Soviet (for example city). The most important Soviet during and after revolution was Leningrad Soviet, which served as an unofficial top Soviet. Bolsheviks gaining majority in the Soviets made them major power that could eventually defeat their opponents and gain control over country.

In the competition between Soviets and Duma/provisional government, Soviets eventually emerged victorious, mostly because they were able to control soldiers, railway, telegraph and factory workers. Basically they could control revolutionary masses while Duma and government could not.

As for actual political parties, there were liberals that actually organized coup that overthrew czar and started the first revolution (February Revolution). Two main liberal parties were Union of October 17 - otherwise known as Okrobtrists party and Constitutional Democratic Party otherwise known as Kadets. They organized anti government coup and forced czar Nicolas II to abdicate. Their idea was for Nicolas II to pass rule to his small son that would serve as a weak ruler of the constitutional monarchy similar to Great Britain. But Nicolas II refused and passed crown on to his brother grand duke Michael. However when liberals came to Michael, he told them that he will accept only if they can guarantee him safety, which they could not as coup got out of their hands and turned in to revolution with liberals having no control over masses on the streets and army.

Liberals were then forced to declare republic and created provisional government (until general elections), but were replaced in the Duma and the provisional government by Socialists who had majority in Soviets. Head of the provisional government became socialist Kerensky (hence "Kerensky government").

Main Socialist parties were Mensheviks, Socialists Revolutionary party called also Esers (basically socialist party that oriented itself on peasants rather then workers and performed political terror -political assassinations). Esers later split in to Left and Right Esers, former allied with Bolsheviks while later allied to other Socialists and liberals. Socialists were first to gain majority support in Soviets so they pushed liberals out of Duma and provisional government.

Then there were Bolsheviks, who before revolution split from socialist party of Mensheviks. They were more radical socialists. They were at first minor party that did not play any role in the revolution, but after Socialists took over Duma and provisional government, they begun gaining support in Soviets and eventually overthrew Kerensky, Socialists and their Duma and provisional government in the second revolution (October Revolution).

There were also various royalist parties and anarchists, plus parties of ethnic minorities (mostly of socialist kind) -for example Jewish socialists, but those did not play larger role.

During Kerensky/Socialist rule, there was failed attempt at counterrevolution organized by part of the army (mostly officers) and some political parties (originally Kerensky himself agreed to join but then he changed his mind fearing that he would be betrayed). Military force was send to take over Leningrad under general Kornilov and to disperse Soviets. Attempt failed as Kerensky flipped sides and most of the soldiers in Kerensky force refused to carry orders.

After Bolsheviks took power in October Revolution, general elections were held but as results were not flavoring Bolsheviks, Bolsheviks and Left Esers boycotted them which resulted in failed elections. After that civil war effectively started between Bolsheviks, Left Esers and few minor parties on one side and everybody else on the other.

At the beginning of the civil war Left Esers attempted coup against Bolsheviks, because they disagreed with their policy of making peace with Germany. Coup failed and Left Esers were purged.

Bolsheviks emerged victorious from the civil war and political struggle and united all political leftovers in to new Communist party.

[Edit:] One more important thing to understand is what made Bolsheviks and Left Esers disagree with other Socialists in Russia:

According to Marxist theory, development of human society comes in socio-economic stages:

Tribal society -> Slavery -> Feudalism -> Capitalism -> Socialism -> Communism

Russia at the beginning of the 20st ct. was in many ways still feudal society that just begun to adopt capitalism.

Most Russian socialists therefore believed, that Russia first have to became capitalists, before becoming socialist and then communist. And so socialists wanted to establish capitalist republic after revolution. Meanwhile Bolsheviks believed that it is possible for Russia to skip capitalism and go strait to socialism and wanted to establish socialist republic. That was the main point of disagreement.

That's not "mixed-gender fight club" those are pictures of "trial by combat" or in other words, judicial duels where legal disputes were to be settled by duels ordered by the court.

As women were considered to be at the disadvantage in combat, men were to be handicapped in duels with women to make fight more "fair".

Pictures are from a fighting manual supposed to teach people how to fight these trials.

Correct. In the past people saw old documents in a very practical way and not as some artifacts of historical value. Same attitude applied to other things like architecture, tools, weapons and so on. It was natural for them to take an old thing and "improve" it as they saw fit.

Point been made is about Germany doing total mobilization of economy late, not that Germany did not switch economy to military footing. Those are too different things. Or it other words it's not about Germany not mobilizing it's economy, but rather about Germany not mobilizing it to the maximum.

Essentially claim is that Germany did not do maximum it could and did not use all resources it could to maximize military production earlier in the war. And that's evidenced by the fact that later in the war Germany indeed did it.

I think people exaggerate how rare pitched battles were. In most major wars in medieval Europe, you see at last one pitched battle. That said pitched battle alone did not necessary decide the war as pitched battle was not war goal on it's own. Given most of the time war goal was control over territory and resources and territory and resources were usually protected by some kind of fortifications, you needed siege to reach your goal. So pitched battles were important as far as they either led to a successful sieges or prevented enemy from successful sieges. There are number of examples of military campaigns and pitched battles that did not result in successful sieges and control over territory/resources. Notorious example are English campaigns in France during Hundred's Years War. English often won major battles, sometimes in spectacular way, but they sometimes failed to transform those victories in to territorial gains and control.

So how would major military campaign of the Medieval era look like in Europe? Feudal lord, for example king would declare war over some (usually territorial claim). He would set up a war goal, usually town or fortification commanding that territory. He would call up to arms his subjects and set a place where troops would gather. This might take few months. Preparations would have been done in advance (could be as much as year or half a year in advance) to gather equipment and supplies (may include ships). Once assembled, leadership would be assigned and march routes planed. Then army would march to it's objective. On the way army would conduct raids and siege any fortifications and settlements that would pose obstacle towards objective and to secure lines of communication and supplies. Once at the objective, siege would begun.

Opposing side in the mean time would start assembling it's own forces, typically with a time lag of few months. If force assembled was deemed large enough to confront the attacker, army would march at the enemy with the goal of either preventing him from reaching his goal or lifting his siege of the objective if he already reached it. If nothing else intervened, armies would meet and fight pitched battle. If attacker lost, war would be over. If attacker won and his force was still strong enough to carry on to the objective, he would proceed with his goal. There was still the chance that he would fail his objective however as he might still have to fight the siege. There was also chance that even after victorious battle, losses would be such, that attacker would not have enough strength to capture the objective, in which case he would fail.

If assembled defending force was not deemed large enough to confront attacker in open battle, it could still try to frustrate attacker's siege of his objective. They could try to de-blockade siege town or fortress, reinforce it, raid enemy rear, set up ambushes, prevent him from foraging effectively or just simply pose threat by been present nearby.

In some instances defender might fail to assemble his force or assemble it on time and attacker might have already taken his goal. If defending side refused to accept such outcome, they may try to mount their own campaign later to recapture lost territory. Sometimes one or more years later.

Thanks to character of feudal mobilization and economy, feudal warfare was extremely indecisive. Meaning it was very hard to defeat enemy decisively on a strategic scale. Forces that could be mobilized at any moment in time were as a rule only fraction of actual military capacity of the country. Large part of feudal levy was immobile and incapable of leaving far from their homes because of the lack or transport and seasonal character of agriculture. And even more mobile part of levy composed of feudal lords, their retinues newer assembled in full when called. Therefore feudal armies were small in size relative to overall military capacity of the country and were restricted in time they could effectively spend on the campaign. Therefore even if such army was defeated in the field, it was always possible to assemble a new one over time. Add to that fact that movement and communications were slow, feudal wars tended to drag on and resemble pendulum: Side A would assemble force and attack side B. Since side B started to assemble it's force later and with a time lag, side A would have initial advantage pushing forward. However over time force of side A would diminish while side B would have assembled it's own force gaining advantage in turn. Rinse and repeat. Therefore large feudal wars tended to go forward and back for years with sides gaining and loosing momentum as they gathered their war resources, spend them, retreated back to recover, gathered their resources again and so on.

Because of above, lot of medieval warfare was actually raiding. In fact some military campaigns had raiding the territory as a goal, rather then capture of that territory. This was to some part also caused by character of motivation of Medieval soldier, for whom war booty was important part of warfare. Over time such raiding could diminish resources of the opposing side and could be more effective then any pitched battles.

In Egypt for sure. In Greece, no. And then even in Egypt it was in every day use by higher ups. Common people did not even know how to write.

There is reason why people were busy looking for alternatives. If papyrus was inexpensive every day item for most, people would not use sheets of leather laboriously made by tinning out skins of animals instead.

Depends which writings and when. Papyrus scrolls were used to store large literally works, but papyrus was expensive and had to be imported from Egypt. Vellum and parchment were used too, both been made from skins of calf or sheep/goat respectively. Another alternative was sheets of textile -paradoxically some ancient literally works were preserved to our times because they were reused as wrappings for mummies in Egypt (up to Roman imperial times).

Note that all above materials were fairly expensive and not readily available for commoners. While today textile for example is cheap and mass produced, in historical pre-industrial times textiles had to be laboriously made by hand. Similarly vellum and parchment had to be laboriously made by working off and thinning out the skins of animals.

For shorter more day to day texts and records, clay/pottery was used. Either in form of sun dried tablets or shards (called ostraca).