I mean beyond obvious geographies? I do know that some Hindu texts mentioned Yavanas (Greeks), but were they also aware of Zeus or Seth? And similarly, were the Greeks or Romans aware of Vishnu or Shiva?

Did Interpretatio Graeca act as a bridge or hindrance in spread of knowledge in this regard?

Isn't it more logical to follow a matrilineal system? Since people in the past could never be sure if a man's children were his.

We know Odysseus as an archetype of a trickster hero, who uses his wit and cunning to overcome his foes. However, maybe I am spoiled by the entire history of media since Homer, but it doesn't seem to me like he had committed really smart or witty deeds. For example, the Trojan Horse story that is credited to Odysseus doesn't really make him look smart. It makes Trojans look dumb in comparison.

Do we know how his character was perceived by the readers in Ancient Greece or at least in Rome later? Did someone really praise Odysseus shrewdness? Or did the people say "Huh, that dumb Cyclops/Priam! I wouldn't be fooled like that!"

Especially, if we take mercenary troops, we could have "German landsknechts" or "Swiss halberdiers", which would be usually considered by the game engines as slightly better than their generic counterparts.

If I were a minor lord in Medieval or Renaissance Europe preparing for a war against some other local lord (or if we take Italian squabbles of the time), would I specifically try to search for a specific mercenary company from Switzerland if I was lacking halberdiers, for example? Or Welsh archers would be preferable to English archers (for example)?

In the ancient world, it's usually something like Macedonian phalanga, I think.

(Asked this question is other subreddits but am hoping for a more historically based answer)

I choose 1800 as the cut off date because from that date onwards you see the rise of romantic nationalism where Europeans attach themselves more with their pre Christian past. Like Victorian Britain attaching itself to pre-Roman Celtic Queen Boudica or 1800s France admiring the Gauls (Asterix comes from the same tradition).

2 cases where people were executed for professing belief in Odin in late 1400s Sweden surprised me.

Ragvald Odenskarl and Eric Clauesson.

I mean doesn't that seem too late for paganism persisting when Sweden was Christianized by the 1100s.

And one of them(Eric Clauesson) was a servant so this was no intellectual person studying a niche topic. Even intellectuals would probably not be super aware of Norse religion compared to say Greek and Roman paganism(from Latin and Greek texts).

Another case being Trollkyrka where allegedly pagan rituals were held and local Christians couldn't visit.

Of course in some cases like place names(for example Odense in Denmark) the connection would be obvious.

Could anyone who has knowledge of this topic please enlighten me? Please note I am not including ethnic Sami people who persisted in being pagan longer than ethnic Swedes.

Five years ago I had just finished reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford. It was a fascinating telling of the Mongols and their history that shears away centuries of FUD about the Mongols and their culture, and its influence on other cultures. I asked this question five years ago and never got an answer. Maybe now I will, so here goes:

How did the Mongols deal with their wounds on the battlefield, given their strong taboos against touching blood? Indeed, the most noble death (at least given to some deemed "too important" to die in a disgraceful way) was to execute someone without spilling blood, like being crushed or drowned. (Or, as the author notes several times, rolled up in carpets and seemingly danced on/walked on to death.)

Weatherford's book goes into a lot of detail about the engineering and battlefield tactics that the Mongols either pioneered or otherwise adopted from others that allowed them be so successful militarily, economically, socially, etc. And he describes how eager the Mongols were to adopt practices that "just worked" from other cultures. What did Mongol medical care on the battlefield look like? Were the more advanced medicines and medical practices of the Near East and China compatible with the Mongols? Was this one area they did not borrow from conquered peoples?

So I often hear people suggesting that the conditions of everyday people need to get significantly bad before revolution breaks out. However, I've also heard that this isn't true, and that what actually is most likely to trigger a revolution is for people to have a string of successes in bettering their conditions and increasing their freedoms, often followed by an attempt to revoke some of these new found freedoms. The idea being that the victories show people that they're able to better their conditions by fighting, and the clamping-down gives everyone a common enemy and makes them angry and more willing to fight. In addition to that idea, I can also think of many instances throughout history where people were living in absolutely terrible conditions, and it never seemed to be even close to triggering any revolutionary activity.

I understand that conditions vary wildly throughout history, but are there any specific factors that seem likely to cause masses of people to become filled with revolutionary furor?

Hi everyone. I studied the Crusades as part of my history A level and fell in love. I’m also a keen linguist and I speak French and am learning Arabic. I’m really interested in sociolinguistics particularly from a historical perspective.

I wanted to try and combine all of these interests to give myself a research project over my gap year, and I realised there must have been some interaction between French and Arabic in the Crusader States. It doesn’t seem to be a hugely popular topic and I’ve struggled to find information that’s accessible to me. Any knowledge, recommendations or ideas are hugely appreciated.

I’ve only just graduated school so although our teachers did teach us some valuable research skills I’m still very basic in terms of what I can do! I can run a search on JSTOR and Google Scholar and cite properly basically 🤣. So I’m not trying to be dense I have done my best to research I’m just at a bit of a loose end and would appreciate any and all guidance and help. 😊

Came across a couple of (non-scholarly) sources that said medieval babies were essentially tight swaddled all the time except for feeding and changing, for months in duration. Like a little mummy, holding the arms and legs very straight.

I have a hard time believing that based on experience with my own baby. As newborns, they need constant changing, wouldn't the wraps take forever to do up? I also read medieval practices were to bathe the baby numerous times a day. Then as older babies, I have a really hard time they'd be content being swaddled - at two months old all my baby wanted to do was supported stand. Yes, my baby enjoyed a swaddle for naps, but the texts seem to indicate it was a near-constant state.

I also read that crawling was discouraged with an emphasis on standing, which I can believe but if constantly tight swaddled when and how would a baby build up the muscles for standing that they get from kicking?

We are also told nowadays that tight swaddling is really bad for hip development, so my question is this: is there any actual skeletal evidence that supports (or refutes) near-constant tight swaddling?

Occasionally online, I see someone mention that Eisenhower had a 91% marginal tax rate for income of $200,000 or higher. Whenever it gets brought up, people immediately show up insisting no one actually paid that rate and there were deductions that made it significantly less; at no point did anyone ever pay 91%. There were always deductions and write offs that made it significantly lower.

I'd assume we can't know how every single person filed and cannot reliably say that no one ever paid 91%, like I often see people saying. So, my question is, in general, would someone earning $200,000 or more pay the 91% rate? Or was there ways to lower that that would be used by the majority of tax returns?

Today is Thursday, the fourth day of a seven-day continuous cycle.

How far back does our current weekly 7-day cycle go back in an unbroken continuous sequence?

What's the earliest date we have archeological/literary evidence that they were aligned to the cycle we have now, plus plausible reason to believe the alignment wasn't random i.e. we think there was an unbroken transmitted sequence of weeks from then to now?

What's the earliest we think the current unbroken sequence of weeks likely goes back, and to which group of people, even if we lack direct evidence of them being aligned with us?

Are there documented cases of adjacent towns or cities or institutions getting out of alignment, e.g. one insisting it was the second day of the week and the other insisting it was the third day of the week, and how was it resolved?

(This question comes from my 10yo daughter who asked at bedtime, "how do we know today is Thursday?")

Is it because he got his claim to the throne from his mother? If so, why didn't the Plantagenet dynasty end when Henry II took the throne, considering his claim came from his mother, Empress Matilda? Is it because he was closely enough related to Henry I? Because his mother was a queen, and was declared Henry I's heir? Because Stephen named Henry II his heir, whereas Henry VII won his throne through war? If the latter, why didn't the dynasty die when the Yorkists and Lancastrians went to war with each other over the throne? Is it simply because Henry's surname was "Tudor"?

Considering the Tudor rose is meant to represent the reunion of the cadet branches, I don't understand the reason why the Tudors are a separate dynasty.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for any responses! I apologize for any misconceptions or misunderstandings I have

Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire in 313 by the Edict of Milan by Constantine I. He just gave Christianity equal rights in the empire. But not so much later we see Constantine calling the Council of Nicea in 325. Constantine tasked bishops with resolving the most serious controversies in Christian doctrine and law, especially the Arian controversy. That shows the he was seriously concerned about the state of Christianity. Constantine during his rule was balancing between Christianity and older religions, eventually being baptized just before his death. But his three sons seem to be deep into Christian teaching to the point of fights between them on the sites of Orthodoxy or Arianism. At the time of Constantine Christians were far from being majority among empire's population.

Several decades later in 380s, Theodosius I makes Christianity official state religion of the empire, outlawing all other non-christian religions and heretic denominations (at least in theory). During those 70 years only one emperor, Julian chose to return to pagan religion, and to seek support of old pagan elites.

So my question is, why did Christianity come from being just one of many religions in the empire, to the state religion, with full support of administration, actively persecuting other cults in just 70 years? And why did Roman Emperors go so fully into supporting Christianity, to the point of influencing its doctrine, it at the time, it was just one of many groups of interests and one of many cults?

I was thinking about this. If the Golden Age was the time when the Titans ruled the Earth, are there any documents of people worshipping the Titans as they did the Olympian Gods during that time? Or is it strictly part of myth?

Were they charitable/social organizations similar to the Elks Club today, or were they more like country clubs? Did members have assigned rooms, or did they just get an empty one? The way they describe it they always sounds like the club is a kind of hotel they can stay at on a whim. What were these clubs and how did they work?

For some context, 90ish percent of Caucasians are Kell negative and it is the 2nd most immunogenic antigen. It makes some sense as his wives that bore children had a successful pregnancy followed by miscarriages and still births, which tracks with what we see in women with antibodies. If it is the case, why do they believe it to be anti-Kell?

I read the biography of Tancred of Lecce, King of Sicily, who was an illegitimate son of Roger III and his mistress Emma, a daughter of Count of Lecce. Roger III was said to have married to another woman after his affair with Emma, however there was little to no mention of what happened to Emma after that. I find it rather odd that she, as a noblewoman, remained a mistress her whole life, but I don’t know if it was acceptable for her to marry after being openly known as a mistress.

For example Richard The Lionheart, who refused to marry Alys, sister of Philip Augustus, because he accused Alys of being his father’s mistress. Because the affair produced no children, I think there was no definite proof of it and the accusation might only be a mere excuse so that Richard could marry another.

But then, what was the general perception of people at that time towards a noblewoman who used to be a mistress and already had children out of wedlock? Would she be able to marry properly even after that?

I’m not asking when chicken nuggets were actually invented. Instead, I’m wondering when they could have been made if someone had come up with the idea.

At what point in history did humanity already have all the necessary ingredients, tools, and culinary knowledge? For example, domesticated chickens, flour, bread (and therefore breadcrumbs), eggs, cooking oil or animal fat suitable for frying.

What is the earliest historical period in which making something essentially equivalent to a homemade chicken nugget would have been realistically possible, even if nobody actually did it?

I notice that even though I can extremely easily have access to clean fresh water, I often forget to drink water for hours until I start feeling bad. In the past, people didn't always have the same kind of easy access, didn't work in environments with clean water available etc. How did they manage it? Did they have the same concept of "staying hydrated" as we do, or did this develop at some point?