Literal public squares in real life also don't have gatekeepers. They're just open spaces where anyone can naturally congregate. Emphasis on the "open".

The Soviet Union arguably had some of world's finest engineering talent, but many of those most skilled left as soon as they could. Some of these, or their children, would go on to found startups.

Edit: It occured to me, perhaps Wilson is thinking about this subject primarily from the Greek perspective, when most of what we know comes from others.

r/askhistorians, which as far as I know is reliable, does not seem to dispute that they at least existed. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mwbdpd/why_...

Edit: Charitably, it could be awkward phrasing - not that the sea peoples didn't exist, but that the whole hypothesis around them is believed to be off.

Edit: Personally, I enjoyed that particular addition to the plotline, as unrealistic as it is.

Edit: I still am a strong believer in anonymous usage of the internet. Increasingly it feels like we've become an endangered species.

At some point, you have to take the path that offers at least some hope for the future. To turn into something that has lost all hope - there is no fixing that.

Russia's problem is that all their reasons for invading Ukraine, they made up. The very people Russia claims to have been 'saving', are the ones that they are disproportionately killing.

Just because you haven't heard of Russia colonizing doesn't mean it didn't happen just as much. It just wasn't where the other imperial empires were. How else would one city come to a rule a continent-sized territory? A big difference is, they didn't keep records of such things. People picture Siberia as an empty wilderness and have no idea that rich societies once lived there.