> And we have also gotten better at producing higher yields of crops, and preventing plant diseases, which ensures the health of animals and people. So humans can flourish, be strong, and thrive.

we can do that without using animals though, along with dodging zoonotic diseases

Sure. But not many of those things were coin toss spur of the moment decisions. They came via a long chain of previous events that led people to act a certain way in particular situations.

And the Mongolians? They were/are real

As stated, your idea of Samurai facing Medieval European knights is pure video-game. Neither went one on one with each other, or even their own cohorts, so I will leave it the great fantasy in the sky. This is the history forum, after all.

So I understand they never met each other, I just wanted to get a hypothetical. But didn't japanese have crossbows too? Also what about Ghengis Khan's cavalry archers? They didn't use crossbows and they defeated the knights in Ukraine

You would like Real Time History then. They do weekly releases of a big topic then do a mega edit at the end to make it one cohesive video.

This one on the franco-prussian war is my favorite and really highlights how technologically and tactically behind the US was in its Civil War that was starting around the same time. https://youtu.be/vWZz-lHCu-M

OK, your question is completely implausible. Samurai and Medieval knights never encountered each other. Except in fantasy video games. European Medieval knights went into battle, fully armoured, which did them no good, because their chainmail was easily penetrated by the arrows of cross-now archers. These were not Robin Hood willow branch bows, but projectile trigger action cross-bows (think of them as an early rifle). I don’t think the Samurai had anything like this, so they would have been destroyed if they had faced a European Medieval army. Heavier iron armour did those knights no good, because it was so heavy that once knocked off their horse, they couldn’t get up again. From the C17 onwards, no one relied on the cavalry (Knights) in Europe except as “shock and awe” to terrify civilians. Wars were won with fire-power - artillery. There is a basic reason why Europeans went like fire and flood through so many nations, to their great disgrace, because they really had better technology for making war.

I'm just asking if a samurai or how many Samurais could defeat a knight

A lot of sense. Feeding armies by pillaging was the main way to get supplies for a very long time. Supposedly Napoleon started the trend of carting around supplies, but he also took his greatest defeat in Russia due to not being able to pillage supplies in enough quantities and the cold.

I think it was the wide spread use of the potato that really put an end to the practice. Potatoes can stay in the ground for a lot longer than other crops, forcing armies invading just after the harvest season of most crops to choose between not pillaging or picking the crops out of the ground themselves. Potatoes are native to South America.

With a cross-bow? Where did you get that from? Which video-game?

So you're saying one samurai with a bow kills a knight?

Any archer with a hauberk (cross-bow) was more than capable of bringing down a knight in full armour, and they did. Once on the ground, halberdiers could cut his throat with a simple knife, much less a pike or broadsword. The age of armoured cavalry was a short one in Europe. I expect Samurai, should they have found themselves on a medieval European battlefield, might have found that a bit tricky too. Maybe try a different video game?

You're on the right path but ISIS was over a decade after that.

Related is when occupying Japan after WWII MacArthur was sure to integrate the former Imperial military and avoided that issue. Bush, as a student of history, should have known about that. Especially given his father's WWII experience.

In feudal Japan and European times, how, many Samurais do you think would be able to defeat one knight, both sides in full local armor and weapons?

Anyone else noticed how in the last ten years every significant historical event have gotten a climate related reasoning attached to them?

Correlation is causation! You read it here first!

Loved that book. Mike Duncan covers this too in his podcast. He really discusses this at length in the French and Russian Revolutions. Terrible harvests because of horrible winters were likely a major factor in causing some of the issues which led to the French Revolution. The February Revolution probably doesn’t happen if it wasn’t such a nice day outside and everyone decided to get into the streets, where it just so happened that the International Working Women’s march was happening. Two of the biggest events of the last 250 years, both significantly influenced by weather.

https://time.com/6107671/french-revolution-history-climate/

Hopefully military dictators don’t start marching their troops into Washington D.C. over and over

I wonder if it’ll happen again, the razing part haha.

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I'm very tempted to take this tour next time I drive through this region!

Some fun facts about African Americans in my corner of Appalachia:

• Cheryl LaRoche's book talks some about how in Southeast Ohio and Northern Kentucky, the iron furnaces were an important part of the region's Underground Railroad network. Ironton was founded by a white abolitionist, and many African Americans worked in the iron industry on both sides of the river, so that became a mode of mobility and a geographic guide for freedom seekers.

• Lewis Woodson, regarded by some as the "father of Black nationalism," lived with his father and siblings for a number of years in Chillicothe and later in Jackson County, Ohio. Woodson later advocated for African Americans to move to Ohio and places like it, and used his father's rural Ohio community as an example of the possibilities for Black self-determination that didn't require moving abroad. Woodson felt that the rural landscape would allow African Americans to live away from racists, but also felt that there was some moral and spiritual value in that.

• Richard L. Davis was born in Roanoke, Virginia, and moved to Rendville, Ohio, notable for being an integrated mining town in the 19th century. Now, for some important context, Hocking Valley's coal industry had experienced labor strikes in that area, and at least some were temporarily broken by Black strike breakers, because coal companies new they could exploit racial labor issues by bringing in Black workers from Southern States to work for a much cheaper price, given that white unions excluded them. Davis helped to found the United Mine Workers Of America, and focused his energy on securing Black members, and in doing so made significant progress in breaking the caller line in the region.

That's not even scratching the surface, and clearly I am only talking about one tiny pocket of Appalachian Ohio. I'm sharing this because, particularly among people outside the region, there are these popular assumptions that Appalachia is just white people, or that any Black history began with the Great Migration. But across the region, if you know where to look, you can find so much early Black history.

Also the diaspora of displaced people means that there is more movement and disease spreads quicker and easier. Think Spanish Flu spreading globally because of World War 1 moving armies and displaced people around.

I was thinking this as well. Our historical memory is super embedded into our culture in the US.

I think a lot of Americans also tend to look back to or identify with a mythologized version of the countries their families immigrated from, if they have that knowledge, because we don't have such a long history of being in one place and having the long origin story there. So they can look back at that cultural group and borrow material from there too.

And a sign of things to come when climate change devastates our climate.