ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Hanseatic flags

So, imagine a long time ago, there were a bunch of cities that wanted to trade with each other. They decided to make a group called the Hanseatic League, which is just a fancy way of saying they all agreed to work together.

Now, these cities wanted people to know that they were part of this group, so they made special flags. These flags had special symbols on them, like crosses or animals or even pictures of cities. When someone saw one of these flags, they knew that the person with that flag was part of the Hanseatic League.

These flags were really important because they helped people trade more easily. They also helped keep things fair because everyone knew who was part of the group and who wasn't. So, you could say that the Hanseatic flags were like special badges that people wore to show that they were part of a really cool club.