It actually happened very often, especially if both men were similarly armed and armored. I'm gonna assume you're referring to pre-modern battles since you mention Samurais and swords.

Usually, the majority of an army was infantrymen wielding melee weapons, and in fact the word "melee" refers to the confusing, scary part of pre-modern battles where two infantry contingents finally clash and don't have much room to maneuver.

Medieval European martial arts manuals have sections on hand to hand combat, including grappling an enemy with a sword or spear with and without your own weapons.

Indian martial arts under the broad label of Kalaripayattu include armed and unarmed instruction. Same with Chinese martial arts.

I don't really know much about other parts of the world, but wrestling and grappling seems to be a fairly universal past-time. You even see Mongol and Turkic wrestling traditions, and those dudes were most famous for horseback fighting. Those skills would probably be necessary for lance-wielding cavalry if they get dismounted.

Canonically, Western Rome 'falling' in 476 (end of Antiquity) and the shift of Latin to Greek as the administrative language of the Eastern Roman Empire by the end of the 7th century, following the Arab conquests & the loss of their eastern provinces (end of Late Antiquity). All in all, these are arbitrary pickings. They don't necessarily correspond to major events in reality. More significant than Odoacar deposing the last Western Roman Emperor is, for example, the establishment of the Carolingian Empire, or prior to this the Renovatio Imperii of Justinian and the ensuing Justinian Plague.

Salt

Author Jared Diamond might have some notes about trade routes, especially the book Collapse.

I read this tale where a Japanese dude wrestled with a fully armored sword wielding samurai and beat him off with martial arts. How often did hand to hand combat occur against melee users?

Visit Harlech castle as well if you ever get the chance it’s another amazing one.

I actually live 10 minutes away from this castle!

Know what I can search for to learn more?

Your confusion on this makes sense, because there is no universal agreement on the number of continents.

You'll learn a number in school, but not all schools are going by the same system. There can be as many as seven, and as few as four continents. The main disagreements come down to the Americas, and Europe, Asia (and even Africa). There's no wrong way to divide them though. If you view a continent as one continual landmass, then: America, Eurasia, or Afro-Eurasia are all totally acceptable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Number

How else can they be viewed, and why? Well, a large part of viewing them as distinct and separate comes down to cultural views. With Eurasia there has been a strong divide between East and West since antiquity. While Greeks, and Romans, both made conquests into the East, these territories have always been harder to hold because of the large extent of land and the amount of powers that traditionally have existed, which also means it's been harder to extend cultural imperialism into the region, which makes them different. They would then view them as "the other" and othering cultures is incredibly common. Whether it's Persia, or later the Ottomans, there's a strong "us" vs "them" in history.

Historians and sociologists have long looked at this phenomenon, and works like Edward Said's Orientalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book) brought the problematic nature of these views to the forefront of academia in the 70s, which has resulted in some change in academia at least, but there are still cultural hangarounds.

Funnily enough, it's the opposite in regards to the Americas which was seen as one continent for quite some time, and the US would lay claim over the influence (to put it very kindly) of the entire hemisphere with the Monroe Doctrine. But, by the middle to end of the 20th century you see a shift where there is a desire to disconnect from (what we would call) South America, and a desire to other them. And while Canadians might not like being called American because of the term's association with the USA, people in the southern countries can get annoyed with the term's more popular meaning in English because they see themselves as American because everyone on the/both continent/s are by their nature American.

In short: there's no wrong way to view the number of continents, the separations other than just connected landmass are mainly due to geopolitics, historical isolation, culture, and othering.

Many of the North American roads and trade routes were formed by migrating animals who traveled to find salt. Some of these routes are major roads and highways now.

By the time the nuclear bombs were dropped, it was already clear that Japan had lost the war. In fact, Japan was already willing to conditionally surrender, but as I'm sure you can appreciate, after the horrors of WW2 the allies were interested in nothing less than an unconditional surrender.

Japan was hoping that the Soviets would be able to broker a peace between the two parties that was more favourable to Japan.

The bombing of Nagasaki and the declaration of war by the USSR happened on the same day, and there is considerable debate amongst historians about what ultimately led Japan to finally surrender.

I'm personally in the camp that the Soviet invasion was vastly more impactful than the Atomic bombs, but that's appeared to be somewhat unpopular on reddit in the past.

I'm looking for information on how the historical mongols tanned leather. I've seen one vague reference to them using 'fermented milk, butter, and egg yolks', but I'm looking for actual details.

Mountain ranges/coast lines provide natural boundaries that are better at defending invasion.

Which way a river flows can also have an impact. The Alps to the north west and the Danube flowing east had a pretty big impact on Austria's ultimate sphere of influence, for example.

Gotta love those!

Thanks! Highlander fan, am I right? :D

Im not sure what you mean by strange but the bloody baron is pretty eyecatching. The Lions led by donkeys podcast also has a good series on him.

We regularly find new information through archaeology. Once archaeologists can dig up new evidence it can be examined, and it can be added to our understanding of all the relevant fields.

History isn't like a jigsaw puzzle, there is no final missing piece, it's more like a never ending brick wall. Sometimes there are bricks missing in the middle that need to be replaced, sometimes there's new information found that makes the wall higher, or wider, but it's still very sturdy and isn't going to fall over just because a new brick is found.

There's no "status quo" to shake up, finding new information, adding to understanding, and arguing for new perspectives is what academics do. Anyone who is telling you that there's some grand conspiracy has a reason to be lying to you. Go on down to your local university library and read through some historical journals (or see if you can get free access on Jstor) and read some recent articles on new finds. Academia is constantly telling older historians that they got things wrong, it's part of the process. There's no point in publishing a work to say "good job, chaps, nothing's changed" it's a necessity of the job to continually make new arguments, new positions, and change the field. It's a requirement for getting a PhD to do work that no one has done before. And that's a good thing!

Thank you for your enthusiasm.Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos contacts or tries to contact to Henry II about the war with a letter to Henry II. In the letter, Manuel I Komnenos says that he also sends ambassadors with the letter. But, we don't know if this letter even reached out to the Henry II. If the letter reached, there is a high chance of finding registered documents about it, and this can lead us to some new informations to pinpoint the exact location. Sadly, there are only few sources to gather information about this war, and none of them gives the exact place of the war. Due to the lack of ground survey about this matter, many cities claims that this war happened in their territory. If we can find the logs, we maybe can find the true location of this war.

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In the Middle Ages people bathed regularly, and bath houses were literally one of the most, if not the most, popular places to go.

Hygiene took a notorious nose dive in the following centuries (King Louis XIV was the 17th-18th century, for instance), which were not in the Middle Ages.

Anybody have good book suggestions that cover the various civilizations and empires?

Where is the other surviving chest from the Boston Tea Party (Not the Robinson chest)? What is the story of this other chest, and what does it look like?

Marxism is the theories of Marx & Engels, generally referring to the economic, historical and sociological theories of both. Leninism is the theories of Lenin regarding the running of a post-capitalist, pre-communist state. Bolshevism more or less refers to the broader ideology of the Bolsheviks which could mean Stalinism or could mean Trotskyism

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Who were the strangest man during the Russian Civil War?