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{ "a_id": [ "d8ncbdy" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "This theme excited me enough to make me prepare in advance. \n\n[Map of Sulawesi.](_URL_1_) Confusingly South Sulawesi refers specifically to the south*west* peninsula and some adjacent areas. The city marked 'Makassar' there was the capital of 17th-century Gowa, while major [Bugis](_URL_0_) kingdoms are more east. \n\nMy main sources for this are works by Leonard Andaya: specifically the recent(ish) \"Nature of War and Peace among the Bugis-Makassar People,\" but also his regrettably extremely dated article \"Treaty conceptions and misconceptions: a case study from South Sulawesi.\" The sad thing about Southeast Asian scholarship (especially in English) is that there are so few academic sources that you end up having to rely on dated ones. As far as I know the most comprehensive Western-language source of the Java War remains a six-book series in Dutch written around 1900...\n\n# War in South Sulawesi\n\nFor there to be peace, there must be war. So I'll spend quite a lot of the first part of this comment talking about the perception of war.\n\nThe peoples of South Sulawesi (the Bugis and the Makassarese) have been famed and feared for their martial prowess throughout the lands below the winds, as some call the Southeast Asian archipelago. The Dutch called the powerful Makassarese empire of Gowa \"the fighting cock of the east,\" while Bugis adventurers founded a royal dynasty in Aceh, 3,000 kilometers northwest of Bugis country. And when a Malay storyteller needs to show how great his hero is, he has the hero fight and defeat - of course - the peoples of South Sulawesi.^1\n\nThe Bugis and Makassarese themselves would probably have agreed. Warfare was a recurring event in South Sulawesi, and accordingly the region was quite militarized. Warfare had popular resonance, which is reflected in war songs (*osong*):\n\n > Sway, sway with the weapons, the clothing of the brave,\n\n > Let them shine, let them shine, \n\n > There beyond the endless mountain chains \n\n > On the marketplace of shields,\n\n > On the battlefield,\n\n > Where heroes like courageous fighting cocks clash.\n\nBut war in South Sulawesi was not simply fighting between men for practical reasons. Elite warriors (*pabbarani*) were so venerated that they were believed to have \"white blood,\" a marker of divine descent.^2 It was also an opportunity for the relationship between the ruler and the ruled to be renewed through the oath of loyalty (*mangngaruq*), an oath that gave courage to the troops in the face of death. From a Bugis chronicle:\n\n > [The king, seeing his troops flee, said] \"Are you not ashamed, my intrepid warriors, that you have let yourselves be put to flight? Do you not recall the unwavering oath and overstated words you uttered?\"\n\n > Shame [the warriors] felt in their hearts, as they recalled the unwavering oath and overstated words which they uttered. They all wished to give their lives for the land of their birth. Together they attacked the [enemy] troops...\n\nWar among the Bugis and the Makassarese was also a war of supernatural forces. Banners and drums or the sacred weapons in a kingdom's palladium were all imbued with spiritual significance.^3 Troops meditated and studied magic before fighting, fortresses incorporated graveyards and sacred sites, and during a war against the Dutch in 1859, a Bugis leader called upon 40 organ-eating demons. \n\nBut what was the purpose of wars? There were wars of conquest, to be sure, but they did not involve creating a uniform administration. In Gowa's wars of expansion, the vanquished accepted Gowa's authority but retained their independence. Heck, even an alliance specifically created to defeat Gowa was allowed to function under Gowa hegemony! In South Sulawesi, kingdoms were conceived as people and interstate relations as relationships between individual humans (family relationships or a master-slave relationship). Wars were events by which a state could improve its position in the interstate hierarchy.\n\n# Treaties and Peace in South Sulawesi\n\nPeace, then, also had to be more than just a cessation of hostilities. Rather, it established personal, familial relationships between kingdoms by which the signatories could gain security. \n\nGenerally, there were no punitive indemnities the vanquished had to pay (the leniency of peace treaties is discussed in more depth in the next post). Rather, what was paid was a *sebbu kati*, a sort of fine embedded in the sacred number 3, such as three types of items or three of a specific item. \n\nOnce this had been paid, relationships were formally reestablished through a treaty, or the giving of words of honor (*makkuluada* or *ma'ulukana*). As I briefly noted earlier, the relationship between victor and vanquished was defined in terms of a familial relationship common in Austronesian societies: brother and brother, older and younger brother, parent and child, master and slave. These settlements defined the status of the signatories. The aim of kingdoms in South Sulawesi was \"to maintain proper status differences\" through which a kingdom could gain protection, just as a child could be protected by his parent. Treaties held power because they were accepted by all to be the way to preserve the harmony of society, just as family ties preserved the harmony of society on a smaller level. Indeed, the empire of Gowa, facing collapse before a Bugis-Dutch alliance in the Makassar War in the 1660s, had this to say to its vassal:\n\n > Go home and seek your own welfare because Gowa is hard-pressed and can no longer provide you the wings under which you can shelter.\n\nThe treaties of peace that Gowa had signed following its wars of conquest obligated the vassal to help its \"father\" and Gowa to provide for its \"child.\" Gowa was no longer capable of meeting these obligations, and the power relationships of Gowa and its vassals were broken. Like this, family ties could also change depending on the geopolitical circumstances. After the Makassar War the Dutch replaced Gowa as the parent of the Bugis kingdoms, the children.\n\nThe strength of family ties in treaties is shown by the behavior of the kingdom of Soppeng in the late 16th century. Gowa was becoming far too powerful, and the three Bugis kingdoms of Bone, Wajoq, and Soppeng decided to ally. But Soppeng was so weak that it asked to enter a parent-child relationship with Bone and Wajoq. Bone and Wajoq each gave up some of their territory to Soppeng so that Soppeng could be the youngest brother and not a child. The conception of alliances as family members was so strong that it made Bone and Wajoq do things which would not make sense in realpolitik. \n\nThere is, however, a different type of peace. It is the *ceppa* or *cappa*, literally meaning \"to take part in something.\" A *ceppa* is not an exchange of oaths (*sitelli*), a sworn word of honor (*makkuluada*), or even a promise (*ma'janci*). It is, very literally, something that the signatories participate in. This type of peace is rarely mentioned in the chronicles, but the most notable exception is the Treaty of Bungaya of 1667, which the Dutch and their allies forced on a vanquished Gowa. The extremely punitive treaty that the Dutch had enforced on Gowa was, perhaps, not a treaty that held the full range of ritual significance that words of honor had (I include the terms of Bungaya in my notes, it might be nice to contrast the lenient terms of normal peace treaties in South Sulawesi - explained in detail in the following section - with Bungaya). " ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugis", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Sulawesi_map.PNG" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "djs2dlz" ], "score": [ 39 ], "text": [ "This is the thesis put forward by Alfred and Ruth Blumrosen in their book \"Slave Nation\" (introduction by Eleanor Holmes Norton). Basically the idea is that the Somersett case in England frightened the American Southern colonial slaveholders into agreeing to join in with Massachussets in the movement to American independence. The verdict in the Somersett case more or less allowed escaped slaves to become free men (and women) if they managed to set foot in England proper. It also set a precedent whereby the English courts could prevent a property owner (IE slaveholder) from reclaiming his 'lawful' property (IE slaves) that was 'wrongfully' stolen (IE the slave escaped). This verdict opened the way to future efforts for slaves to gain their freedom (via mutiny on ships, or via the ‘underground railroad’, etc.) because the English court made it clear that once a slave set foot on ‘free’ soil they were considered to be free from a legal perspective.\n\nThis issue dovetailed with the other issues driving American independence, such as 'taxation without representation' and the idea that the English Parliament did not have jurisdiction over the Colonies (only the King did according to revolutionary theorists like Samuel Adams and others). These were theories about property rights, wherein the American Colonial (white, property-owning gentry) rights were under threat from a British Parliament that was set on enacting new taxes and hindrances upon the Colonies.\n\nIn the 1770's the British army had physically occupied the city of Boston due to the tax revolt and physical violence that had been committed by the insurgent Sons of Liberty (headed by Samuel Adams and others) against the property and person of the Governor of Massachusetts. Typically, the American Southern colonies did not have a lot in common, culturally or otherwise, with the Northern colonies. In particular, the sentiment in the Northern colonies was turned decidedly against the continuation of slavery and against the slave-agrarian economic model of the South. But tracts by Samuel Adams and others became popular in the Southern Colonies and inspired acts of resistance against the British government there as well. The question explored by the Blumrosens is, why would the Southern colonies join in with the Northern colonies and send military assistance to Massachusetts in order to fight the British occupation, considering the large social and cultural divide between the regions. And Blumrosens’ answer is that leaders from the South (Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Washington, etc.) made a compromise with Northern leaders (John Adams, J. Hancock, etc.) that the Northerners would put aside their antipathy towards slavery in exchange for the South's active assistance in expelling the British army from Boston. The motivation of the Southerners to do this was to prevent the British government from being able to take away their slaves in the future.\n\nThis compromise to put the issue of slavery aside was baked into the eventual US Constitution in the 1780's, with a specific time limit whereby slavery was to be phased out. Of course, this didn't happen and the failure to resolve the slavery issue led directly to the most destructive war in American History in 1861." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cr5784o", "cr59eet" ], "score": [ 8, 51 ], "text": [ "hi! not discouraging further discussion, but you can get started with this previous post\n\n* [How did the ancients fist fight, has how to throw a punch evolved?](_URL_0_)\n", "Boxing is, admittedly, outside of my area of specialty (I don't like getting punched in the head), but I can offer a bit of insight here.\n\nOld boxers didn't really stand like the Fighting Irish guy. They stood more like [this](_URL_5_) and [this](_URL_1_).\n\nAnd here is a picture of two boxers squaring off: _URL_4_\n\nNotice how their hands are much lower than modern boxers. The forward hand is pointed toward the opponent, and the rear hand is curled slightly around the torso. The Fighting Irish drawing is something of a corruption of this.\n\nThe forehand is pointed toward the opponent because it would be used for a quick [jab](_URL_3_) or a [hook](_URL_0_).\n\nThe rear hand was held in close to protect the body. It would also be used for close but powerful strikes. You see positions like this in many martial arts that are practiced without protective gloves. And gloves are what makes all the difference here.\n\nBoxing gloves allow boxers to hit harder, and they allowed boxers to hit the head with dramatically more force. Boxers started holding their hands up to protect their head, because punches to the head started doing more damage than punches to the body (prior to gloves, body shots were more commonly used than they are today).\n\nHolding the hands up, with the palms turn in toward the fighters face and with the knuckles against the temples protects the head from a heavy strike, while still giving some of the benefits of the forward hand for jabs and crosses.\n\nGloves also kept fighters from grappling, which was a common and important part of pugilism.\n\nAnyway. I hope that helps a bit.\n\nSources:\n\nGladiators of the Prize Ring, by Billy Edwards.\n\nThe Complete Art of Boxing\n\n_URL_2_" ] }

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[ "http://www.irishcentral.com/sports/-the-origins-of-notre-dames-name-why-the-fighting-irish-are-the-fighting-irish-133610598-237740101.html" ]

[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23ah0s/how_did_the_ancients_fist_fight_has_how_to_throw/" ], [ "http://digital.library.villanova.edu/files/vudl:92991/LARGE", "https://www.google.com/search?q=bare+knuckle+boxing&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=678&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ZDlQVZ-8HMzhoASj8IGoCA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAg#imgrc=wjKkpZYBYTeQoM%253A%3BEWbabEUQgkQNXM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fupload.wikimedia.org%252Fwikipedia%252Fcommons%252Fe%252Fe6%252FJohn_L._Sullivan_1898.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fen.wikipedia.org%252Fwiki%252FJohn_L._Sullivan%3B2123%3B3141", "http://hroarr.com/manuals/boxing-pugilism/Complete_Art_of_Boxing.pdf", "http://digital.library.villanova.edu/files/vudl:92989/LARGE", "http://digital.library.villanova.edu/files/vudl:92985/LARGE", "https://www.google.com/search?q=mike+cleary+boxer&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=678&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=MDhQVZqZDNHFogT4i4GIAw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAg#tbm=isch&tbs=rimg%3ACesaKk_1EDA-fIjgLFX62I_1UU6QX4NvQZNEQyQFqyH1VoyTiOT0kxqyxsV50lXlv9NC38H_1urLVm3TrdrwrZmQFnV8SoSCQsVfrYj9RTpERpf3I33iyTdKhIJBfg29Bk0RDIR3JuIFKRc03UqEglAWrIfVWjJOBEEgD-MOnhx9yoSCY5PSTGrLGxXEc2sKmxsAr33KhIJnSVeW_100LfwRLyabjxkHoxgqEgkf-6stWbdOtxFIZtLy7VjvOioSCWvCtmZAWdXxEZPY5Qm3AbfG&q=mike%20cleary%20boxer&imgdii=6xoqT8QMD58LxM%3A%3B6xoqT8QMD58LxM%3A%3BBfg29Bk0RDJvCM%3A" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "druyo96", "druyusc" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Could you clarify whose perception you mean? For example, the Soviets themselves would naturally encourage the view that they were stronger.", "I think you need to be more specific with your question in terms of time frame and scope. \n\nHowever my intuition tells me you mean military might in terms of fielded manpower, ability to produce equipment and the ability to launch an threatening offensive into own or allied territory.\n\nI can only speculate how it was perceived, but I can tell you that they were way stronger right after WW2.\nThe soviet populations and armed forces were extremely mobilized and you had not only a horde of several million army personnel directly on Germany. This force was also well equipped and battle hardened. It is true that the Soviet army suffered unsustainable loses in 41 and 42. The the every increasing reconquest densely populated assured a never ending stream of fresh reinforcements.\n\nAfter the capitulation of Germany there was little in the way of the Western allies to contain the soviets and this threat was apparent. When plans for preemptive strikes that would involve former Wehrmacht forces were evaluated.\n\t\nFortunately, the Soviets rather licked their wounds and established a series of bufferstates that aimed to contain the weakpoint in Russian Geography that is the great eastern Europe plan.\n\nAs when the balance shifted is hard to say, given the vast mechanized formations and the nuclear deterrent. \n\nPersonally I would even argue it only really shifted after the demise of the Union. This however starts to enter the realm of speculation and I will refrain from it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ca6o2s8", "ca72cv3", "ca75o8j" ], "score": [ 2539, 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Intentionally or not, I think there is a great deal of revisionist misrepresentation and outright falsehood in that comment. The claim that Hitler was detached from the everyday workings of the Reich and simply used anti-Semitic rhetoric to get to the top without necessarily implementing it is one of the touchstones of revisionist historiography. \n\nStarting right at the top:\n\n > Actually no \"signing order\" exists of Hitler ever calling for an extermination of Jews. \n\nWhile this is true, current historians do not view it as particularly relevant. There are numerous reasons why Hitler might not have wanted to put an order into writing, and Irving's argument that this is the *only* possible evidence for Hitler's involvement is fairly obviously wrong. \n\n > He was a formerly well-respected historian ...\n\nThe respect Irving had was in the field of military history, not with regards to his views about the Holocaust or Nazi Germany more generally. Richard J. Evans, in his [expert report](_URL_1_) (pdf) to Irving's trial, gave numerous examples of historians taking a dim view of Irving's research. I can certainly say, as an anecdotal point, that among the historians I personally know, Irving was never treated with great seriousness.\n\nI can't speak to the assertions about the unnamed BBC documentary which says that Hitler was incapacitated, other than to note that Hitler's bad sleeping habits were not new during the Holocaust, and the idea that he was incapacitated to the point of being removed from the political functioning of the state is rather in contradiction to the documentary evidence of Hitler's continued involvement in state affairs.\n\n > Hitler gave lip service to [racial theory], but he was bored by it. When Alfred Rosenberg wrote \"The Myth of the 20th Century,\" all about evil Jews and gave it to Hitler, by all accounts he never bothered with it. Instead, he retired to his bedroom and dipped into his extensive Western collection of novels. (He preferred cowboys and Indian novels by Zane Grey and Owen Wister to thick tomes about racial theory)\n\nThe statement that Hitler \"preferred cowboys and Indian novels by Zane Grey and Owen Wister to thick tomes about racial theory\", while most likely correct (and irrelevant -- whether Hitler could bother to read others' ideological ramblings is no indication of his interest in implementing his own ideology), is an insinuation. As the review of Ryback's *Hitler's Private Library* that's cited actually says, there's \"no way of telling whether these remnants of Hitler's library actually represent the titles that he most truly cared about\". With regards to Rosenberg, Ryback notes (on p. 132) that Hitler had problems with the book because of its style and becaues he believed it diverged from pure Nazi ideology, rather than because he didn't actually read theoretical literature. \n\n > In the documentary, they gave an instance of Himmler being outraged by Hitler. An order had been sent out to \"Germanize\" all the new Polish provinces under Germany's command. Most governors interpreted \"Germanize\" as rounding up Jews, Gypsies and other undesirables. One governor just gave everyone under his territory German passports. \"Voila! You're all 'German' now.\"\n\n > Himmler was enraged and wrote Hitler to remove this man.\n\n > Hitler refused.\n\nThe Germanization policy was distinct from the Holocaust. As far as I can tell, this refers to Albert Forster, the *Gauleiter* of Danzig-West Prussia (an annexed territory rather than a part of the *Generalgouvernement*), but it's a misrepresentation of Forster's policies. He certainly didn't \"give everyone under his territory German passports\", and he was fully on board with \"rounding up Jews, Gypsies and other undesirables\". Himmler's problem with Forster was that he failed to follow exact SS racial policies, and was prepared to reclassify Poles to Germans *en masse*.\n\nForster's reason for this was not that he wanted to circumvent the government policy or safeguard the Poles, but rather that he believed many ethnic Germans in Poland had been culturally \"Polonized\" and could be rehabilitated. Moreover, Forster was suspicious of the challenge posed by the SS organization as a power base, and believed that through a more bureaucratic policy he could effectively outmanoeuvre them. (See R. M. Douglas, *Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War*, p. 50.) Hitler had been careful to emphasise that the *Gaue* in occupied Poland had autonomy to pursue whatever policies necessary in Germanization, and Forster was personally close to Hitler -- both of these gave him a leg up against Himmler. By all accounts, despite being *relatively* \"moderate\" Forster was otherwise quite happy to pursue policies of racial cleansing, and engaged in the overt mass killings that were common in occupied Poland as well as sending Jews to concentration camps. \n\n > several of [Hitler's] top generals were Jews.\n\nThis is based on Bryan Rigg's work *Hitler's Jewish Soldiers* -- except Rigg does not say this. His interest is instead in the Jewish genealogical *backgrounds* of particular officers who would have been *Mischlinge* (crossbreeds) under Nazi terminology rather than Jews. Field Marshal Erhard Milch, for instance, is cited as one of he most prominent of these *Mischlinge*, and Hitler suppressed investigation into Milch's ethnic background on the basis that he had been raised by his gentile uncle, and not his Jewish father (see Evan Bukey, *Jews and Intermarriage in Nazi Austria*, pp. 60-1). Interestingly, [one academic review](_URL_0_) of Rigg in *Holocaust and Genocide Studies* actually states that one of its important conclusions is precisely what this comment argues against: Rigg \"demonstrates ... Hitler's personal involvement in racial policy\".\n\n > And, according to a historian at the University of Kansas, 150,000 Jews were in the German army.\n\nSince Hitler didn't personally vet enrolment in the German army, this is neither here nor there even if it *were* true, which it is not (this is Rigg again, he's talking about \"halfbreeds\", or, as he says in the link, \"Men of Jewish Descent\", not actual Jews).\n\n > He also intervened to help a fellow soldier from WWI (who was also Jewish).\n\nThe source given states that Hitler's role in this incident is unknown: \"It is unclear what Hitler knew about the 1940 letter, which assures that Hess should not be deported or otherwise harassed.\" This amounts to insinuation rather than historical fact, then, and the soldier in question was later sent to a concentration camp.\n\n > Hitler, moreover, was also called a \"Jew-lover\" in his youth, for standing up to a bully who was bothering a Jewish friend of his. \n\nI cannot find this in the citation given (there's no page number in the comment). On p. 167, however, there is a discussion of a later accusation in the 1930s by Reinhold Hanisch that Hitler had been rather pro-Semitic in his youth. The evidence on this is, as the book states, fairly ambiguous at best. ", "I must ask, why does it matter if Hitler truly believed in racial purity or not? Even if you take the information given at face value, it's still overlooking the fact that Hitler was *promoting* a racist ideology, and whether or not he believed what he was selling, isn't important, he still played a powerful role in fomenting a fascist society that viewed 'unwanted' people as something to be segregated and sterilized *at best* and outright exterminated at worst.", "William L Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is an excellent source of information for anyone interested in Hitler, the Nazi movement, and WWII." ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1f2ws5/does_anyone_know_if_adolf_hitler_ever_actually/ca6e582" ]

[ [ "http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/holocaust_and_genocide_studies/v018/18.3fritz.html", "http://www.phdn.org/negation/irving/EvansReport.pdf" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqtbwlv" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "found an old thread and looked at the oed and both seem to support each other. This is the thread. It says \"school dances\" but the majority of the first answer (which is good) is about proms.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEssentially Prom King, Queen and Prom Dress both seem to appear around 1920 (though reading between the lines on the oed Prom may go back as early as the 1890s but that seems murky). \n\nThis broadly fits into larger trends into the changing system of calling, courting, dating, etc. with the rise of dating literally around this period. While I don't see anything specifically about Prom and given this isn't really a date (unchaparoned and involving the men paying for stuff…stuff sources say are significant changes during the period) but when where and why are probably closely connected.\n\n\nmore on history of dating and courtship (but only tangentially relevant though the first 10 minutes are funny in a \"history is odd\" type of way.\n\n_URL_1_" ] }

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[ "https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3456bi/eli5_what_is_the_origin_and_purpose_of_the/" ]

[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/233bjn/how_did_school_dances_come_to_be/", "http://backstoryradio.org/shows/love-me-did-a-history-of-courtship-rebroadcast/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d92rxqm" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "You would think so. But I don't think it was that bad. Most combat was at range, and the most common close quarter combat was some type of polearm. Helmet was also tied and secured.\n\nBut probably most importantly, those ornamental head figures are really restricted to high rank commanders, often large daimyos. Lesser samurai or lesser soldiers had little to no ornamental heads. In other words, the men most likely to fight did not have such elaborate decorations. The men who mostly did not need to personally fight but needed to be seen and heard did have these decorations.\n\n > [The outlandish shape of this kabuto would tend to suggest to the uninitiated student of Japanese armor, that it was made for predominantly decorative purposes. In fact, a large number of helmets made during the late Sengoku period…were in fact kawari kabuto – many of which were often far more bizarre than this particular example… \nThere were a reflection of the warrior’s desire to be recognized, with on the crowded battle fields of the mid-sixteenth century was no easy task. Although vanity was a strong factor behind such designs, they could also serve a necessary function in allowing important figures to make themselves easily identifiable to friends and foe alike. There were also a psychological advantage to be gained by many designs of kawari kabuto, which make a warrior appear taller and more menacing.](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.ca/books?id=8APyY3eIONcC&lpg=PA88&ots=dSdULxxCxo&dq=%22kawari+kabuto%22&pg=PA88&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgdj2qt", "cgdjeq4" ], "score": [ 23, 7 ], "text": [ "Most accounts of Spartacus indicate he was at some point a Roman soldier, which helps explains his tactical abilities.\n\nA lot of the revolt's success was based on the ability to attract new recruits by demonstrating their ability to beat Romans in the field. One of the most notable victories was against Gaius Claudius Glaber at Mount Vesuvius. Spartacus's men were besieged on Mount Vesuvius, but were able to defeat the Roman militia by climbing down the mountain with vines and attacking the army from the rear. This and other early victories gave Spartacus more weapons and equipment and also inspired more slaves to join his forces.\n\nIt's important to understand that the initial Roman response to Spartacus was fairly weak. Rome's armies were occupied in Spain and Anatolia, and, as [Appian writes](_URL_0_), Spartacus was first countered \"not with regular armies, but with forces picked up in haste and at random, for the Romans did not consider this a war as yet, but a raid, something like an outbreak of robbery.\"\n\nIn terms of how he made his fighting force so effective, there are many descriptions of Spartacus emphasizing taking/making weapons and equipment over acquiring gold and silver in order to keep his men well-equipped. He also encouraged his men to fight harder through actions like crucifying a Roman prisoner to let his soldiers know what would happen if they were defeated.\n\nIn terms of actual tactics and strategies, it's difficult to find many specific details. Climbing down a mountain and attacking from a rear is the most popular example, but it most writers allude to unorthodox tactics and strategies without actually describing them. All of my research has concluded that the [burning logs](_URL_1_) in Kubrick's Spartacus, for example, weren't actually used. I'd be very interested in hearing specific examples.\n\nIn short, the victories in the Third Servile War were due to a charismatic and talented commander who was able to inspire and equip troops while drawing from an enormous pool of potential soldier fighting against an unprepared military that underestimated Spartacus's capabilities. After a few losses the experienced Crassus and his men had a number of victories against Spartacus, and as Pompey returned from Spain and closed in on Spartacus, the war ended pretty quickly. It's not my place to speculate on how well Spartacus would have fared if so much of the Roman military hadn't been so far away from Italy, but I feel it's right to characterize Spartacus's successes as being the right man at the right time.", "I'll start by qualifying your original question a bit. Spartacus wasn't an existential threat to the Roman Empire in as much as he showed any sign of wishing to conquer it; I would argue that such threat as he posed was more in terms of undermining the slavery-based economic system. His successes threatened (and, if he had not been defeated, would have perhaps demonstrated to catastrophic ends) to Rome and its slaves that it was possible for slaves to rise against their masters. Appian and Florus mention that Spartacus intended to march on Rome, but he did not do so, and it certainly smacks of romanticism; there is very little other discussion from contemporary sources of any motive apart from an act of rebellion by desperate men, and attempts to simply move beyond the grasp of the Romans, whether by crossing the Alps or by hiring ships to cross to Sicily, perhaps to continue the fighting/banditry/rebellion there among a large slave population. In any case, it's difficult to determine precisely what Spartacus ever intended, and thus to what degree he posed a threat.\n\nIn terms of how he achieved the successes that he did, it's important to understand that Rome generally did not keep large forces in Italy proper during the late Republic. At the time of Spartacus's revolt, the bulk of Rome's soldiers were already engaged in fighting in Spain against Quintus Sertorius (the last vestiges of the Marian-Sullan civil war) and in the east against Mithridates of Pontus. The first fights that Spartacus had with Romans were with militia and under-prepared units who certainly made the mistake of underestimating Spartacus. I'm afraid I am not the best candidate for answering your question about the specific tactics he used except to point out that he is supposed to have used ropes to sneak men down Vesuvius when they were blockaded there, attacking Glaber's unfortified camp from behind and taking him by surprise. By the time that Spartacus's men were fighting consular legions, their earlier success had inspired many to join his army, and a pair of legions were fighting tens of thousands of slaves -- note that the legions had major success wiping out a group reported at 30,000 under Crixus before being defeated by Spartacus." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.chlt.org/sandbox/perseus/appian.cw_eng/page.14.a.php?size=240x320", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgywD3XJaWU&t=4m13s" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dab3b7h" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "The answer to this question really lies in the differences between the Russian Revolution and Civil War and the Second World War. Both conflicts not only took place in different geopolitical contexts, but also in a different ideological environment that conditioned Soviet responses to the national question and territorial formation. \n\nThe national question caught Lenin and company somewhat flat-footed in 1917. As Marxists inside an active revolution, they were naturally disinclined to give much weight to the national issue. In classical Marxism, nationalism was a tool of the bourgeoisie and monopoly capital to distract and divide the proletariat from achieving true class consciousness. Although the turn of the century saw the emergence of significant models of how nationalism would fit in a worker's revolution (eg Austromarxism, Cultural-National Autonomy, Personal National Autonomy, etc.), the Bolsheviks found after their seizure of power that they now had to deal with the nationalities question with concrete policies. The Russian empire, whose various state organs were disintegrating as the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace, was majority non-Russian, but a good portion of the Bolshevik leadership and rank and file were Russian or Russified. The result was that Bolshevik leadership tended to move on the nationalities question with a mixture of tactical declarations with the aim of using nationalism to secure the revolution. \n\nThis was not entirely successful at first. Lenin boldly declared after the November Revolution that the Bolsheviks championed the right of national self-determination with the aim of encouraging wider revolution. When Finland declared its independence in December 1917, the Bolshevik leadership accepted it in the hopes of that a Finnish communist party would take power, but an anti-communist government took power in Helsinki after a brutal civil war. Likewise experience in the Baltics, where anti-communist nationalists tended to take power with German assistance, meant that Lenin needed to condition his call for natioanl self-determination. This meant Bolshevik responses towards the national issue were often tactical compromises with a clear agenda that nationalism could not work against the wider interests of the revolution. \n\nThe historian of tsarist nationalities policies Eric Lohr has described the eighteenth-century tsarist approach to immigration as \"attract and hold\" meaning that they induced foreign colonists like the Volga Germans to settle and then kept them inside the empire through a variety of state levers. \"Attract and hold\" is also an apt metaphor for to post-Finnish Bolshevik nationalities policies. The Bolsheviks encouraged the revolution in the vast non-Russian empire and appeals towards nationalism was one of the tools in the Bolshevik's arsenal. The Bolsheviks simply could not ignore nationalism in light of the Civil War lest it be instrumentalized by the Whites. Leaving national movements alone risked another Finland. In Central Asia and the Caucuses, Lenin crafted an appeal to nationalist sentiment by dividing nationalism between exploiter and exploited nations. Bolshevik agitprop materials often emphasized the Great Russian chauvinism of the empire had encouraged a healthy counter-response among the exploited non-Russian masses. However, the Bolshevik approach always called for some sort of mediation of nationalism by the emerging Communist Party. This bifurcated approach towards nationalism, attracting non-Russians with promises of national justice but holding them within an ideological structure, became one of the hallmarks of Soviet nationalities policies. The 1920s saw the introduction of *korenizatsiia* (indiginzation or as Terry Martin terms it \"Soviet affirmative action) in which the Communist Party sought to raise up native cadres of Communist activists inside their own territory. Although the state walked away from *korenizatsiia* in the 1930s, it never really went away in the USSR and would remain part of the Soviet policy until the end of the USSR in 1991. This imparted a certain political stability to areas like Central Asia in which local elites assumed positions of power within the Communist Party apparatus. \n\nBy 1944/45, it was a much more different situation. Although to be clear, the Soviets did annex [significant territory](_URL_0_) from Finland, Poland, Romania, East Prussia, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltics, so sizable portions of Eastern Europe did end up inside the USSR. But Stalin's basic agenda for Eastern Europe was to expand the Soviet sphere of influence and secure the Soviet state (and these two precepts were pretty much indistinguishable). For areas under direct Soviet influence, this meant encouraging local Communist parties to take power, through legal and extra-legal means. Moscow could count on a wide number of emigre Communists to take these posts and nationalism was one of the tools used by these satellite Communist parties to cement their rule. While Communist-style nationalism had yet to achieve the prominence as a legitimization stratagem it would in the 1950s, wartime and postwar propaganda produced by these Eastern European Communist parties stressed a popular front and a desire for the nation to rise up and cast out the foreign German invader and their collaborators. \n\nPreserving national borders, albeit altered for Soviet purposes, also fit into the larger geostrategic designs of Stalin. Not only would massive annexations further rupture the wartime alliance with the Western Allies, it would also be counterproductive for the wider postwar Communist movement. Stalin expected, with some justification, that Western European Communist movements would achieve broad electoral gains in the immediate postwar period. Broad annexations in Eastern Europe would hurt this chance as nationalism still exerted a powerful force and French and Italian Communists were still French and Italian. The time was not yet ripe for the erasure of the nation and its replacement with a Soviet identity. \n\nThings, of course, did not play out in the postwar period as Moscow expected. Nationalism became one of the Achilles' heels in Eastern Europe and there was a widespread sentiment that the ruling elite did not really have the nation or the people's best interests at heart. The Soviet's use of hard and soft power to rig Eastern European elections for Communist victory likewise denuded the Communism of much of its postwar prestige in Western Europe. Ironically, the slightly higher standard of living within Eastern Europe and compared to the USSR created a degree of resentment within the wider USSR in the 1970s that their satellites were living better than the leading partner in the Communist experiment that had to bear the burden of being the elder brother in the family of socialist nations. \n\n*Sources*\n\nAbrams, Bradley F. *The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation: Czech Culture and the Rise of Communism*. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. \n\nSygkelos, Yannis. *Nationalism from the Left: The Bulgarian Communist Party During the Second World War and the Early Post-War Years*. Leiden: Brill, 2011.\n\nSmith, Jeremy. *Red Nations: The Nationalities Experience in and After the USSR*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.\n\nSuny, Ronald Grigor. *The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union*. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1993. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cs58mg3" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "You might want to consult my post on [\"what is fascism?\"](_URL_0_) to get an idea of the context of the ideology before reading this.\n\nFascism as a political movement originated in Italy as a result of the First World War. Many leading Fascists including Benito Mussolini were originally members of the Italian Socialist Party who were expelled or quit in 1914 because they supported Italy's war effort; unlike their German or French counterparts, the Italian socialists were vehemently opposed to supporting the conflict. The expelled members formed *fasci* which can be translated as \"band\" or \"league\". The leagues did not necessarily resemble the fascists that we're all familiar with; they still contained a considerable syndicalist or socialist presence and rejected the idea of scientific racism (Mussolini himself denounced the idea as absurd until it became a politically expedient tool for him during WWII). They were originally left-leaning nationalists (though the original *fasci* certainly contained the sort of reactionaries that would come to define fascism) with an obsession with militarism and irredentism, the idea that Italy deserved some slices of land on the Adriatic. \n\nWhile the Fascist movement began in Italy, its intellectual foundations were the writings of two French thinkers: Gustave Le Bon and Georges Sorel. Le Bon's work, \"Psychologie des foules\", argued that men are qualitatively transformed when gathered into a mass; they lose their capacity to reason and instead of thinking independently, manifest hereditary racial attributes. The civilized man in a crowd descended For Le Bon, the hereditary trait that was manifested in the Latin crowd was its emotionality and evocativeness. Latins, unlike Anglo-Saxons, craved authoritarianism and a strong and militaristic leader; ‘le type du héros cher aux foules aura toujours la structure d'un César. Son panache les séduit, son autorité leur impose et son sabre leur fait peur.' Despite being written in the 19th century, Le Bon's book eerily reads like a \"How to be a fascist dictator: for dummies!\" handbook.\n\nUnlike Le Bon, Sorel was a socialist revolutionary and was more influential on fascist practice than theory. He advocated the use of political violence by the working class for revolutionary ends which obviously appealed to the militarist *fasci*. He argued that violence was not abhorrent in and of itself; instead it was virtuous and conferred vitality when used in a revolutionary context. Like Le Bon, Sorel believed that people were fundamentally irrational and required a \"political myth\" to be successfully mobilized for political action like strikes or riots.\n\nBased on these views and their virulent support for military intervention and their conception of virtuous violence, the *fasci* and Italian Marxists/socialists became more and more antagonistic and eventually regarded each other as political enemies. The aftermath of WWI led to an explosion in fascist leagues' membership as great numbers of alienated young men returning from the front lines were upset with civilian society and sought military hierarchy and masculine comradeship that the fascists provided. This led to a \"rightward swing\" in the fascist movement that was solidified during Italy's \"Red Years\"; a wave of factory occupations and peasant seizures of land in the aftermath of WWI. The increasingly organized (Mussolini founded the nucleus of the Italian fascist party in 1919), militant and right-wing fascists sided with landlords and bourgeois factory owners and violently repressed striking workers and peasants. Oftentimes, fascist gangs would roll into \"red\" villages in the countryside in trucks provided by the landlords and brutalize the population, often forcing them to drink castor oil. \n\nThe fascists were now a considerable movement with wealthy and powerful backers in industry and politics, who thought that they could use the fascists to rid Italy of socialism and Marxism which would lead to their March on Rome in 1922 which ended in Mussolini's appointment as Prime Minister." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22ox1w/what_is_fascism/cgoz902" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ck50oq1", "ck55dss", "ck59szn", "ck5ch98", "ck5k8ky" ], "score": [ 28, 23, 236, 32, 4 ], "text": [ "Just curious, which islands are actually the ones rented?", "Why did America want those bases anyway? ", "Here's the status of the bases.\n\nBermuda (not part of the original deal, but the US got basing rights there for free): Closed as a US base 1995.\n\nNewfoundland (as Bermuda): The bases were closed 1961, 1966 and 1994. The land had been turned over to Canada 1975, but the US maintained a presence (a radar station) with Canadian permission.\n\nAntigua: Closed 1949.\n\nBahamas: The base is closed, but Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) retains a large testing lab on the island of Andros.\n\nBritish Guyana: The base was closed 1949.\n\nJamaica: The base was closed 1949.\n\nSanta Lucia: The base was closed 1949.\n\nTrinidad: The base was closed 1949.\n\nAs you can see, most of these bases were closed shortly after the war. They had been created for naval recoinnasance over the central and south-central Atlantic as well as the Caribbean. The increasing range of radar systems and jet planes had made them mostly obselete by the end of the 1940s, and they were closed.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_", "Does anyone know why these leases, and the Hong Kong lease, are 99 years instead of 100?\n\nEdit: wikipedia doesn't explain why it's's arbitrarily one year off a century. ", "50 Destroyers seems quite a lot. Could someone give a short summary of the naval strength of the key players in WWII?" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyers_for_Bases_Agreement#The_bases", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Undersea_Test_and_Evaluation_Center", "http://www.navsource.org/Naval/deal.htm" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccyv51q", "ccz0m9y" ], "score": [ 14, 3 ], "text": [ "This is a very broad question that I'm going to try and narrow down a bit into what I know. I believe it is can be argued that Western cultures have struggled less with decisions of modernity unlike many East Asian nations, or at least they faced and embraced that problem much earlier than East Asia. China, Japan, and Korea, all in the 19th and 20th centuries, faced the problem of imperialism by dominant western powers. This caused a question to be raised, whether or not traditional beliefs, ideologies, and culture could be abandoned for a new nation built upon western ideals and science. \n\nI'm currently writing a paper on the Revolutionary periods of China between ~1911 up until the Cultural Revolution in the 60s. A common element of these revolutions (National, Republican, and Communists), was to create a self sufficient government that could express its sovereignty by driving out Western Imperialism (And Japanese Imperialism). Be aware that though on a map, China is a very large nation, for the last two hundred years or so, it has also been the area for large scale rebellions and banditry that divided the nation into smaller independent provinces, usually ruled by warlords. These warlords were easily manipulated by various governments, Western and Eastern (Even it's own government, ie Qing Dynasty, Guomingdang, Chinese Communist Party). So as you can see, Chinese government never has a strong foothold on its people as revolutions popped up one after another, many requiring or receiving (without asking) foreign aid, which led to many unequal treaties that favored one nation or another, opening China up for Imperialism.\n\nI haven't studied Modern Japanese history too much (Though I'm beginning to), but one of the many reasons why Japan succeeded over China in preventing such large scale imperialism was that they simply got to see how Imperialism worked in China before it could reach Japanese shores (Up until the late 19th century, Japan had a very strict policy on emigration/immigration/foreign relations). After studying Imperialism on China, Japan successfully modernized itself, and in a span of 40 years, it went from being intimidated into opening it's ports [Matthew Perry (NOT THE ONE FROM FRIENDS THOUGH I LIKE TO IMAGINE CHANDLER THREATENING JAPAN)], into conquering Korea, and Manchuria and becoming the dominant Eastern Imperialist power up until the end of WWII. In a way, Japan was forced to modernize or face full scale Imperialism.\n\nTL;DR, During the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century (but dating back many generations), China was a hotbed for political and military revolutions, all of which left it open for foreign intervention/imperialism, an issue that would later on fuel further revolutions in itself. Japan was able to modernize itself and it shows its success in the 20th century. \n\nSource: Studying Modern East Asian history under Prof. Alan Christy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, there's numerous books and references I could show if anyone wants them.", "You might be interested in Ian Morris' *Why the West Rules, for Now*.\n\nTaken from the book list [here](_URL_0_):\n > An excellent overview of both Western and Eastern history. Morris combines a readable style and an ability to explain historical concepts in an easy manner with a historian's rigor. An excellent introduction to the topic of historical studies." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/general" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dc0xwnk" ], "score": [ 28 ], "text": [ "I'll speak to the traditional armor of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. I've had the great privilege to attend lectures by Tommy Joseph and Steve Henrikson, two of the world's experts in the traditional armor of Southeast Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. You can check out [a short lecture by Tommy Joseph here](_URL_2_), and [a longer (and more recent) lecture by Henrikson here](_URL_3_). \n\nYou'll find that traditional Alaska Native armor has a lot in common with the [armor used by the Chukchi](_URL_1_) and other Siberian groups. We have fewer surviving examples of Alaska Native armor, but many more examples of Chukchi and Native Siberian armor, so some of our modern study relies upon examples provided by those sources.\n\nWe also have several very well done sketches, descriptions and paintings that survive from Spanish, French, British, American and Russian travelers in Alaska during the last years of the 18th century and first years of the 19th century.\n\nIn any event, a lot of Native armor consists of *lamellar* construction. It's made up primarily of small plates sewn together with sinew. In western and northwestern Alaska, these plates would be made of bone. In one spectacular example that I've seen, the plates are a series of walrus tusks cut into slices and bound by sinew. In southeastern Alaska, which boasts (even today) significant stands of old-growth forest, these plates might be wood.\n\nIn Southeast Alaska, the Tlingit had a tradition of spectacular war helmets adorned with clan symbols or other representative designs. A human face was often used as a psychological symbol, at least in the surviving examples. Tlingit armor also included a neck/face guard that rested below the helmet and above the body armor. It was held in place by a semi-circular mouthpiece that would be bitten to hold it steady. Small slits allowed vision, and combined with a heavy helmet carved from a solid burl, the wearer's head was almost impervious to slashing attacks or arrow impacts.\n\nThe Tlingit are also known to have used the Chukchi-style armor cape (seen in the image I've linked above). If a wearer was attacked by archers, the wearer would turn his back, and the cape ─ in combination with lamellar body armor ─ would protect his exposed arms and head (assuming he wasn't wearing a helmet and face/neck guard).\n\nThis armor was effective against traditional weaponry, and even against the low-velocity matchlock and flintlock muskets used by the Russians in their initial advance across Alaska's coastline. In Alexander Baranov's first encounter with the Tlingit (an ambush in Prince William Sound) he wrote that the Russian bullets had difficulty penetrating Tlingit armor, and only the intervention of Russian cannon saved the Russians (and their Aleut/Alutiiq partners) from defeat.\n\nTraditional armor was far from immune to bullets, however, and improvements in gunpowder supplied to the Pacific Northwest (Russian powder was generally poor, but American and British traders brought higher-quality material) meant that it quickly outlived its usefulness. By the middle of the 19th century, Tlingit armor had become largely ceremonial, and you start to see armor created specifically for decoration. Some of the better examples, [such as that in the collection of New York's American Museum of Natural History](_URL_0_) are lamellar construction using Chinese coins. Those coins were bought in bulk by American traders, who then traded them to the Tlingit for furs that were then sold at great profit in China.\n\nAs far as I know, only one original set of traditional Tlingit armor survives, and there are only a few dozen surviving Tlingit war helmets." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/human-origins-and-cultural-halls/hall-of-northwest-coast-indians/hall-highlights/tlingit-armor", "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Warrior_armor_and_sinew_bow,_Chukchi,_19th_century_-_AMNH_-_DSC06208.JPG", "http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2wuv9v", "https://vimeo.com/195040720" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cz8hcor", "cz924ce" ], "score": [ 23, 8 ], "text": [ "If you don't get an answer here try the AcademicBiblical subreddit.", "Saying Acts is or is not historical is like saying books are either \"literal\" or \"not literal.\" Acts certainly has some historical information in it. \n\nWe know that Paul met James the brother of Jesus in Jerusalem (Gal 1:19). From Josephus (*Ant.* 20.9), we know that James the brother of Jesus was executed right around the death of Festus, which was 62 CE. We know that Paul was an adult well before he became a follower of Jesus, and we know that Paul did some traveling before he came to Jerusalem to meet James (again all Gal 1). All this and the fact that Jesus died around 30 and that Paul probably doesn't mention the destruction of the Temple makes it pretty certain he wrote at the very earliest in the 40s and the latest in the 60s. " ] }

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[ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/4293hg/why_are_pauls_letters_dated_to_around_50_ce_xpost/" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dweuy2k" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "We do. Or at least, historians who study the Mughal empire do. The general public may not associate the Mughals of India with the Timurids (if they know anything about the Mughals at all), but historians have certainly referred to the Mughal ruling house as the \"House of Timur\" or \"Timurid dynasty,\" and the Mughal empire as the \"Timurid empire.\" For example, the late John Richards, one of the most eminent historians of Mughal India, consistently uses the term \"Timurid\" in his book *The Mughal Empire* (published as part of the *New Cambridge History of India* series). However, the term \"Mughal empire\" is generally preferred by historians over \"Timurid empire\" simply to avoid confusion with the earlier Timurid empire, just as many historians prefer to use \"Byzantine\" instead of \"Roman\" simply to avoid ambiguity over what they are referring to.\n\nRegardless of whether modern historians or the general public associate the Mughals with the Timurids, the Mughals themselves certainly associated with Timur, and certainly derived legitimacy from claiming to be his descendants (which of course means they also claimed descent from Genghis Khan and the early Mongol conquerors, hence the term \"Mughal\" which simply means \"Mongol\" in Persian). The Mughals' strong sense of attachment to the Timurid legacy can be seen in Shah Jahan's ill-fated attempt to conquer the old Timurid heartland in Central Asia in 1645-47. Abdul Hamid Lahori, a Mughal court historian, describes the motives for this invasion as follows (excerpt from Lahori's *Badshahnama*, Vol. II, p.482, all emphasis mine):\n\n > Ever since the beginning of his [Shah Jahan's] reign, the Emperor's heart had been set upon the conquest of Balkh and Badakhshan, **which were hereditary territories of his house, and were the keys to the acquisition of Samarkand, the home and capital of his great ancestor Timur Sahib-Kiran.** He was more especially intent on this because Nasir Muhammad Khan had had\nthe presumption to attack Kabul, from whence he had\nbeen driven back in disgrace. The prosecution of the Emperor's cherished enterprise had been hitherto prevented by various obstacles, but now the foundations of the authority of Nasir Muhammad were shaken, and his authority in Balkh was precarious. . . So the Emperor determined to send his son Murad Bakhsh with fifty thousand horse, and ten thousand musketeers, rocketmen and gunners, to effect the conquest of that country.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "crpztn8", "crq1uy3" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "hi OP, just a comment that there are *still* plenty of nomadic people in the steppes, still riding horses & practicing archery, so you could consider asking them directly, e.g. /r/Mongolia, /r/Kazakhstan, /u/Kyrgyzstan, you may find some Tuvans or other in /r/Russia (certainly there are Tuvans in /r/khoomei but that's a throat-singing sub)\n\nedit: incidentally, you might be interested in this recent exchange about horse riding: [What are some examples of extreme military training from premodern history other than Sparta?](_URL_0_)", "Because horses and bows were their tools. Horses as transporation, food and 'weapons'. Bows obviously as weapons, for fighting and hunting. \n\nA nomadic civilization traversing great distances naturally will put a much higher emphasis on the importance of the horse and riding skill than other non-nomadic peoples. " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/37iepn/what_are_some_examples_of_extreme_military/crn7k4h?context=10000" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ca5tofi" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "We simply don't know. The nature of classical literature, and arguably even moreso the Medieval period transmission, means that what little survived is confined to a fairly limited set of interests, and unfortunately lighthouse operation was interesting neither to the classical literary set nor to Irish monks.\n\nOn the other hand, many of these matters, such as oil quantities needed, should stay fairly constant, so i am eager to hear about other periods." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "elqwyr2" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "[There is a very interesting answer written here that you might want to take a look at.](_URL_0_) This great answer was provided by /u/wotan_weevil" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/an7vqp/which_civilization_invented_gunpowder_and_are/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dbgyjtt" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The Second World War created the largest refugee crisis in history.\n\n\nI can't speak for every single situation, but one refugee crisis that I do know about was with regards to Germans in the East. This group included people from what was then Germany proper and is now Poland and Russia (now Kaliningrad Oblast) as well as Germans from Czechoslovakia (known as *Sudetendeutsche*) and Southeastern Europe (primarily Hungary, Romania and Serbia) who were known as *Donauschwaben* or Danube Swabians and to a lesser extent *Siebenbürger Sachsen* or Transylvanian Saxons. These people were the descendants of Germans invited to settle areas that had been liberated from the Ottoman Empire and emptied by Turks and other Muslims fleeing toward Anatolia.\n\nAs the Soviet Union advanced eastwards, entire cities full of Germans fled west as they heard rumors of mass rapes and murders by the Red Army. Many who didn't flee were expelled east of the Oder-Neisse line which is the current border between Germany and Poland.\n\n\nAs for the Donauschwaben and Siebenbürger Sachsen, the majority of them were forcibly expelled by the newly set up communist regimes in the countries that they resided in. \n\n\nThese people mainly went to Germany, specifically the sectors of British, American and French occupation that would become West Germany and numbered around 16 million people." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckrp6j0", "ckrzsf8", "cks65ml" ], "score": [ 446, 177, 29 ], "text": [ "You may be interested in this section of the wiki:\n\n[What was science fiction like in the past? How did ancient people imagine the future?](_URL_0_)\n\nSpecifically:\n\n[What did people in the past, such as Ancient Rome, think of the future? Did any of them have any sort of science fiction like today?](_URL_1_)", "Honestly, the closest thing I can think of is Horace's *carmen saeculare* or Vergil when he is feeling particularly mantic (Anchises speech in book VI being a famous example). Both foretell visions of a future golden age of peace and prosperity and good morals and the like. However, both are also clearly addressed to Augustus, and more importantly play off of very old tropes of praise literature, with echoes as far back as Mesopotamia. So we can't say these really show authentic Roman predictions of the future, but they do show how Romans could use visions of a utopian future, and what that future would look like.\n\nOf course, you also have Ammianus Marcellinus, who concludes his work by, essentially, saying that things are in the toilet and the handle just got pulled down.", "It will depend on the Roman (or Greek). As /u/Tiako writes, some Augustan poets characterized the future as a golden age, mirroring the mythical golden age of the past, though this vision is deeply tied to Augustus' propaganda that he was \"restoring\" the Republic, religion and morals after decades of civil war.\n\nMore interesting for you, maybe, would be how certain political thinkers thought about the development and future of mankind. Two of them come to my mind from the Roman period. One is the second century B.C. historian Polybius, an Achaean Greek who lived at Rome for much of his life and who wrote a world-wide history of the rise of Roman power down to the year 146 B.C. The second is the first century B.C. poet Lucretius, an Epicurean who wrote a six book poem titled \"On the Nature of the Universe.\"\n\nBook 6 of Polybius' histories is about the Roman politeia (\"constitution\", though it's not a perfect translation) and why it is superiour to those of other states. In writing this book he presents a cyclical vision constitutional change and of human history:\n\nPolybius 6.5: _URL_0_ : \"What then are the beginnings I speak of and what is the first origin of political societies? When owing to floods, famines, failure of crops or other such causes there occurs such a destruction of the human race as tradition tells us has more than once happened, and as we must believe will often happen again, all arts and crafts perishing at the same time, then in the course of time, when springing from the survivors as from seeds men have again increased in numbers and just like other animals form herds — it being a matter of course that they too should herd together with those of their kind owing to their natural weakness — it is a necessary consequence that the man who excels in bodily strength and in courage will lead and rule over the rest...\"\n\nThe key phrase for me there is \"and as we must believe will often happen again.\" So just as for Polybius, kingships will turn to tyrannies which will turn to aristocracies which will turn to etc..., and just as every state has a cycle of strength to weakness, so too does the whole human race have a cycle of reverting to an almost \"state of nature\" due to natural disasters and then to rebuilding political society again.\n\nLucretius in book five of his poem narrates the creation of the world and the development of animals and mankind (all in a way that precludes divine intervention: Epicureans did not believe in the gods and thought that the world was made up of only atoms and void). A link to a translation here, though unfortunately there are no line numbers. Ctl+F \"But the race of man then\" to get to the history of mankind part:\n_URL_1_\n\nLucretius describes the development of mankind from nomadic roots to the rise of civilization and societal institutions, and tackles a lot of technological progress along the way, such as the use of fire and language. Lucretius argues that nature and reason prompt men to adapt and pick up new technologies and new ideas, including justice, art and religion. He ends the book with:\n\n\"Thus time by degrees brings each several thing forth before men's eyes and reason raises it up into the borders of light; for things must be brought to light one after the other and in due order in the different arts until these have reached their highest point of development.\"\n\nLucretius doesn't deal with the future per se, but as far as I know this is one of the few ancient texts that deals so directly with technological change. That's interesting for us moderns, because technological change is key to how we view the future due to the rapid advancement of technology in our own lifetimes. It, however, did not generally play a part in Roman conceptions of the future, which (they assumed) would look pretty similar to the present. But I think you can make a case that Lucretius at least, even if he talks about the \"highest points of development\", was able to conceptualize a future in which nature would prompt mankind to adopt new technologies and concepts. \n\nThis is all probably a much longer answer than you wanted, but I think both Polybius and possibly Lucretius hint at very different but interesting visions of what the future of mankind would have in store, especially when you compare Polybius' cyclical pessimism and Lucretius' natural progression with the optimism of Augustan age poetry. And I'm sure that there are other Greek and Roman writers who had very different but equally interesting conceptions of how the future would turn out." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/dailylife#wiki_what_was_science_fiction_like_in_the_past.3F_how_did_ancient_people_imagine_the_future.3F", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/116lfa/what_did_people_in_the_past_such_as_ancient_rome/" ], [], [ "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/6*.html", "http://newepicurean.com/suggested-reading/lucretius-de-rerum-natura/munros-lucretius-book-v/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7b2ofn", "c7b42hu" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "There's also Japan, Incas, countless Islamic dynasties, to name a few. There were those who were descendant from Gods as well as living Gods (Pharaos descendant from Ra), there were those who were living Gods (Roman Emperors) and those who merely were guided by the Holy Spirit in their rule. With Christianity it somewhat went out of style in Europe, at first those rulers who converted their peoples were sometimes made saints with miracles ascribed to them which is a bit similar. Certainly, legitimacy from the divine didn't disappear, with the divine right of kings there was usually an incentive for rulers to convert. I'd say the practice of divine legitimacy was the usual until quite recently. Chinese had their Mandate of Heaven. Not always divine legitimacy by direct descent though. ", "Your question seems to have two aspects:\n\n* Tracing the lineage of royalty back to gods/prophets *in order to confer legitimacy*.\n\n* Tracing the lineage of royalty back to gods/prophets *just because it can be done*.\n\nI mean, it's not like the British royal family have ***ever*** claimed that their descent from Mohammed, or Zeus or Woden, is the *reason* for their being monarchs. They claim their title through the simple fact of being descended from earlier monarchs of Britain and England, who were usually just the people who managed to use military might to enforce their rule - and not because of any descent from gods or prophets. They have at times used the power of the Christian God to legitimise their position, but only as God's appointed representatives on Earth, not as his descendants.\n\nIt's also worth noting that millions of people claim descent from Mohammed [in India alone](_URL_1_). If you go far enough back, we're all related.\n\nSo... to the guts of your question (I assume!), which is about royal families that have used their putative descent from gods or prophets *to support their claim* to their throne. I'll give some examples from my studies of late Republican Rome.\n\n* The Pharoahs of Egypt weren't just descended from gods, they *were* gods on earth. This is one reason they intermarried so much - to keep the godly bloodline as pure as possible.\n\n* Julius Caesar could trace his family tree back through Aeneas to Venus. This is one reason that Cleopatra chose him to father her children: she was a god, and he had the blood of a god in his veins. Similarly, her other famous Roman lover, Marc Antony, was related to the Julii on his mother's side, and was therefore also descended from gods. So, all four of Cleopatra's children were descended from gods on both sides of their family tree, which is as she wanted it.\n\n* Julius Caesar was deified after his death. This allowed his adoptive son, Octavian, to add the cognomina (nicknames) Divi Filius to his name: son of a god. Octavian/Augustus himself was later deified, allowing *his* heir to claim descent from a god. This became a standard practice of the Roman Emperors.\n\n* Augustus [commissioned 'The Aeneid'](_URL_0_), which recorded the foundation myths of Rome. In this story, his descent from Venus (via Julius Caesar and Aeneas) was recorded. In fact, because of the combination of various foundation myths of Rome into one narrative, Augustus ended up being able to claim descent from *four* gods: Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Juno. As well as being the adoptive son of the deified Julius Caesar.\n\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascanius#Aeneid", "http://www.navhindtimes.in/panorama/descendants-prophet-muhammad-india" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dzvykrk" ], "score": [ 24 ], "text": [ "Upper and Lower Egypt, for most of dynastic Egyptian history generally refers to geographical regions and not to two distinct political entities. This is a regional distinction made by the ancient Egyptians themselves, and hasn't been retroactively applied.\n\nEgyptian history has been separated into 'dynasties' since antiquity, and the model is generally associated with the Ptolemaic 'historian' Manetho. Before the king who founds the 1st Dynasty, Narmer, Egypt hadn't been unified at all. Before Narmer (and geographically) ancient Egypt therefore comprised two distinct regions: the interior portions of the Nile Valley being one (Upper), and the Nile delta as the other (Lower). Upper/Lower therefore refers not to relative up/down position on a north-facing map, but to upstream and downstream as the Nile flows into the Mediterranean. \n\nThese are two naturally and environmentally unique regions, with settlement and cultivation in Upper Egypt occurring mostly within the immediate vicinity of the Nile, thereby forming a narrow strip of land, as opposed to Lower Egypt where settlement was more spread out because of the greater and broader fertility of the delta.\n\nAs Egypt underwent the gradual development of civilisation and kingship in the 4th millennium BC, predynastic kings of Upper and Lower Egypt began to rule over larger territories, eventually coming into more meaningful contact with each other towards the end of the 4th millennium. Dynasty 0 was an Upper Egyptian dynasty, and has gained the name '0' since it precedes the geographical unity which Narmer alleges to have achieved.\n\nThe best source for the 'unification' of Egypt under Narmer is the [Narmer Pallette] (_URL_0_), which allegedly depicts scenes relating to the two regions that Narmer claimed had dominion over. On one side, he wears the white crown of Upper Egypt, about to strike a captive; on the other, wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt he stands in front of a procession and piles of dead enemy bodies - presumably after conquering his enemies in the north and removing Lower Egyptian rival kings.\n\nAlthough Egypt didn't necessarily stay united throughout all of its ancient history (for example, 'Intermediate Periods' concern those times when centralised power broke down and Egypt returned to regionalism), the distinction of Upper and Lower Egypt as separate 'political' entities (I use the term lightly since limited sources and primitive proto-kingdoms do not a country make) did not extend past the initial 'unification' which Egyptologists conventionally regard as the beginning of dynastic Egyptian history.\n\nA good reference point and the secondary source for much of this information is Marc Van De Mieroop's *A History of Ancient Egypt* (Wiley-Blackwell: 2011), which is great for quick reference in answer to a particular query, as well as more in-depth period studies." ] }

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[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Narmer_Palette.jpg/320px-Narmer_Palette.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cd6cjjm" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "In the larger scheme of the last few hundred years of history, perhaps the most important aspect to remember is 1904 is well after the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution occurred in different places at different times (earlier/later, different speeds, etc) but generally saw centralization of population to urban centers, growth of factories to replace the prior 'cottage industry' method of producing goods at home (clothes, tools, to a lesser extent food), and the rise of the middle classes (store owners, factory owners/managers). Also this means electricity, books, newspapers. However no radio (yet, soon after), cars are rare, and still early days of human flight. \n\nThis is not to say that industrialization happened everywhere, nor did everyone move to the cities. As it sounds from your description (and some quick wiki-ing) the play is set in the [Aran Islands](_URL_0_) off the west coast of Ireland, so probably fairly delayed/isolated economically, socially, and politically from the 'currently' happenings of Ireland and the greater United Kingdom. \n\n\nPerhaps someone who knows more about Ireland during the early 1900s can expand. \n\nSource: European history on industrial revolution, definitely not expert on this exact location. Hopefully someone else can provide more details. \n\nPS: saw [this book](_URL_1_) when googling, perhaps you could pick it up. \n\nEDIT: If you don't get any more responses, you should re-post asking specifically about Ireland + year, asking about rural lifestyle." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aran_Islands", "http://www.amazon.com/Field-Shore-Daily-Traditions-Islands/dp/0905140133" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cozeob2" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "There's a few different ways to answer this question, but the simplest answer is because the Supreme Court has allowed for broad presidential power in regards to pardons. Their deference is probably because the power to pardon is written into the Constitution in pretty clear terms: \"and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.\" Note that the president has the power to pardon those who committed \"offenses against the United States,\" rather than say, the power to pardon those convicted." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e59mqi0" ], "score": [ 58 ], "text": [ "Also, how does it compare to the overal suicide rate for non-veterans of similar demographic background?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d4h3qn1" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "No, no one has ever tried to literally encircle an enemy force with pikemen. Outflank them, yes, but the idea of forming a circle of tightly-packed pikemen with an enemy inside is ludicrous. An enemy force would have to be either pathetically tiny or you would have to thin out your own rank of pikemen to an absurd degree to achieve that literal circle of men. A commander would have to spend lots of time in drilling his men to form a big dumb circle, time and energy that would be much better spent on training your pikes to advance in the normal way, which is already effective and complicated enough that you wouldn't want to throw a giant wrench into the works. If the enemy force is small enough and its commander is stupid enough that you could even attempt to do it, you've already won. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dc7fj58" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "That really depends on what you mean when you talk about whiskey. The art of distillation of spirits spread pretty quickly after it's introduction to Europe from the Middle East in the 13th century arriving in Ireland and Scotland by at least the middle 15th century if not earlier. So the most technical answer would be that the first whiskeys were distilled in Ireland and later Scotland by monks using their most prevalent source of local sugar which would have been malted barley in the 15th century.\n\nHowever, the catch is that these early distillates are not anything that you would recognize today as whiskey because undoubtedly when you think of whiskeys you are thinking of a brown, aged spirit containing 40%-50% alcohol by volume whereas these earlier spirits were much more aggressive. They were of a significantly higher proof (typically 70%+) and the process of finishing the distillate in oak barrels had not been developed yet so you would probably more likely call this moonshine whereas the earliest European distillers referred to it as aqua vitae, the water of life. It wasn't until the late 17th century that you really see the evolution of this spirit into modern whiskey with the addition of water in order to control the proofing and later in the 18th century with the finishing of the whiskeys in French oak sherry casks. After these innovations larger scale distilleries started to open very rapidly including many still open today both in Scotland (Glenturret - 1775, Bowmore - 1779, Oban - 1794) and in Ireland (Kilbeggan - 1757, Bushmills - 1784)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cu84lmb", "cu85u97" ], "score": [ 18, 13 ], "text": [ "Well, it really depends on where you live and who your history teacher is. I distinctly remember that my highschool history teacher spent a lot of time on teaching us about art, culture and even complex concepts like \"time\". He was one of the reasons why I went on to study history at University.\n\nMany people assume that studying history, even at University level, is all about learning dates and names. It's far more than that. Political history is most often used to provide a framework that allows you to think chronologically and makes it easier to understand and place a wide variety of information within the big picture. That's why a big portion of your early history education at University usually features a lot of political history. Once you have that rough and basic framework, you can start expanding on it. It's a method which makes sense because it's a lot easier to apply chronoligical markers to political history than it is for example with cultural history. So in a way, it's the perfect framework to start thinking about more vague and complex subjects.\n\n", "I think the emphasis on teaching political history can be traced back to the beginnings of professional history in the 19th century. It isn't by coincidence that history was professionalized alongside the \"Springtime of the Nations\" in the middle of the 19th century. Most German, Italian, French, and English historians during that century all couched their historical narratives in terms of national exceptionalism. Such narratives were the means through which newly formed nations (but also old ones, too) could establish a national mythos that would unify previously disparate or fragmented peoples into what Benedict Anderson has called an \"imagined community.\" We see this, for instance, in the works of G.W.F. Hegel and English Whig historians (Whig historiography began about a century earlier, however, in the mid-18th century). With the modern world being conceptualized primarily through the lens of nation-states, politics and statecraft--which are, in theory, the expression of national will-- has been the most obvious lens through which historians could make sense of historical events and processes.\n\nBut by the 1960s historians began to look at history differently. They viewed history through the lens of groups that were traditionally marginalized by previous historians--the working-class, ethnic and racial minorities, women, and more. Since that time, we've seen a fundamental shift in the way history is written and taught. Professional historians have given much greater emphasis to these groups, probably even more than they once gave to politics. That refocusing has trickled down (although perhaps not as thoroughly as it should) to the teaching of history. \n\nWithin the last two decades there has also been the rise of transnational historiography, with its practitioners who are overtly concerned with tearing down nationalist myths. These historians have focused on a range of topics outside of politics (although they cover that as well) that trace the movement of people, goods, and ideas across national boundaries. By moving historical inquiry away from the national unit of analysis, transnational historians have been able to offer a more holistic historical picture that accounts for the various ways in which non-political actors have shaped history. Transnational historians have tried very hard in recent years to get their conclusions into high school classrooms, which you might have heard about in the recent fights over the AP US history curriculum.\n\nIn other words, I think in recent years there's been a marked shift in the teaching of history that gives much more credence to non-political actors. This shift has been more thoroughly cemented in university courses, but from what I've come across, it's also begun to find its way into high school courses as well. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cb7sjcw", "cb7zwdb", "cb8dye1" ], "score": [ 10, 6, 2 ], "text": [ "My grandfather, Charles M. Hudson, was the preeminent scholar on Southeastern North American natives. His book 'The Southeastern Indians' is considered a classic work on the topic. I know that's not as comprehensive ad you'd like, but it's a small step in the right direction. ", "I can't say that this is one-hundred percent applicable to all the natives in North America in the 1100s, but it's a fairly large map that I've used in the past for reference.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt pretty much checks out with the info in Charles Waldman's \"Atlas of the North American Indian\" (I have the 1985 version).\n\nI'm not an expert in the field, but more of an enthusiast. My hometown was the site of an 'Indian battle' that has a fairly large reenactment crowd, and I'm part Blackfoot, so there's always been an interest.", "For that time period, about the best you're going to find are broad-scale maps of archaeological cultures, like [this one](_URL_0_). In some cases, we have a good idea of which archaeological culture corresponds to which historical culture; in other cases, we have a good idea but the exact nature of the relationship is uncertain. \n\nFor example, the Fort Ancient culture is thought to be related to the Shawnee. But did the Fort Ancient culture self-identify as the Shawnee in its entirety? Did just a portion of the culture? Or did the Shawnee identity develop later? Unsolved mysteries for now. \n\nBy 1100, there were also several migrations of people that were either just wrapping up, just getting underway, or looming in the future that would redefine the cultural landscape of North America into what it'd be like when European records began in the 16th Century. \n\nAssuming that the Pisgah Phase does in fact represent the ancestral Cherokee, then their migration into the southern Appalachians happened about a hundred years earlier. In the southwest, the ancestral Navajo and Apache had just entered the area around this time. This time period is in the middle of the potential time frame of the Mandan migration up the Missouri from the Middle Mississippian region, and more migrations from and within that region would be coming in a century or two as the Middle Mississippian chiefdoms go into decline. \n\nWhich is all my way of explaining why getting a detailed map of such an early time period is exceptionally difficult. Even maps using historic tribes and nations are full of anachronisms, but I'll explain that in another post." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.emersonkent.com/images/indian_tribes.jpg" ], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Mississippian_cultures_HRoe_2010.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ce55m2o", "ce5cbij" ], "score": [ 16, 7 ], "text": [ "I asked a similar question to this a few weeks ago, and decided to look the matter up in R. H. Robins's *A History of Linguistics*.\n\n~~Essentially~~ Formally speaking, the answer is no, as the study of language in antiquity—as far as we know from extant sources—was restricted to writings on the grammar of Greek and Latin, as well as philosophical debates on the origin of language. As you might be aware, the term \"barbarian\" comes from the Greek *βάρβαρος*, an onomatopoeic word referring to the supposedly garbled, unintelligible language of non-Greeks (it's kind of funny to imagine a Greek imitating a foreigner by saying \"barbarbarbar\" and getting a ton of laughs).\n\nThough the opinion is recorded that Latin was a mixture of the Aeolic dialect of Greek and other languages, it wasn't expounded upon in a way that resembles modern historical linguistics (see RomanImp's comment below for more on this).\n\nThe genesis of Indo-European linguistics is often placed in 1783 with Sir William Jones's remarks on the similarities between Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, although similar sentiments had been raised by visitors to India in the preceding couple of centuries.\n\nBut you know, I've always wondered if the idea ever surfaced—it's a really interesting thought.", "To add to this thread, there were a surprising number of Roman grammarians spanning several centuries, who would have studied and taught literature as well as the etymology and structure of languages. Moreover they would have come from all over the empire, and wouldn't have just been of Italian origin. The fascination with language groups, structures and categorisations is not a modern phenomenon in the slightest. \n\nMore to point, however, there is a fantastic article by Benjamin Stevens called \"Aeolism: Latin as a Dialect of Greek\", The Classical Journal , Vol. 102, No. 2 (Dec. - Jan., 2006/2007), in which he discusses the \"grudging ancient awareness that languages and social groups, including seemingly distinct groups like \"Greeks\" and \"Romans,\" are in fact always \"mixed,\" and thus that identity is a matter of fluid participation in shared social practices\" (115). He gives excellent examples of Roman culture overlapping with Greek and other cultures it was in contact with over the years. \n\nIn one instance he points to Dionysius' *Antiquitates Romanes*, \"[In contrast with some other Greeks] the Romans speak a language neither completely barbaric nor wholly Greek, but one mixed from both, of which the greater part is Aeolic; the only consequence of their frequent interminglings [with barbarians] is that they do not make all the sounds correctly\" (1.90.1). \n\nThe Greeks and Romans would have definitely had the idea around linguistic similarities and discrepancies between different groups and that, as Stevens puts it, \"language and people follow the same path\" (Stevens, 119). " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8w0dyz", "c8w1ofi", "c8w81e5", "c8w8sj0", "c8w92ez", "c8wffo0" ], "score": [ 7, 17, 3, 6, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Not really a hoax, because it's not intentional, but more of a historian jumping to conclusions and the idea catching on...\n\n[A lost Roman legion ending up in China, participating in battles and starting a village there.](_URL_0_) ", "The \"Hitler Diaries\" bought by a German magazine for 9 million German Marks in 1983 only to be soon discovered that all sixty books were forgeries. [Here](_URL_0_) is the Wiki article about it.", "Maybe not the biggest hoax of the early modern era, but one that, well, makes me feel really bad for the target. let’s say that you are [this guy]( _URL_5_), living at a time of crisis that called into question the cosmology that had ordered the European world-view for a millennium; The Reformation created two churches, and there isn't room for two churches in a world that is supposed to be a perfect microcosm of the divine macrocosm. The problems involved on the political end have caused a lot of turmoil in your country. You’re a decent guy, and smart too. In fact, you have the [largest personal library]( _URL_3_) in all of England and have the distinction of being the first person to translate [Euclid’s Geometry in English]( _URL_7_). So you say to yourself, “Hey, I’m living during a time when direct observation is figuring out the answers to all sorts of problems. I’m going to use my knowledge to directly observe the structure of the Universe so that people will stop all the fighting.” Unfortunately, though, no matter how smart you are, you are no Galileo. You are stuck in [the scholarly view of cosmography that comes before the scientific revolution]( _URL_0_). Of course, you also believe that [angels are the ordering agents of the universe]( _URL_9_) as did many of your contemporaries, such as the artist of the linked image, Robert Fludd. \n\nYou tell yourself that if you can just find the correct optical instrument to observe angels, you could lay to rest a lot of the most problematic issues of your day. So, like Galileo’s telescope, you come up with [this bad boy]( _URL_2_) as a way to see into the world of Angels. But you have a problem. You know that you really can’t see into the crystal ball so well because you aren’t [melancholic enough]( _URL_8_), and therefore not as easily influenced by astral forces. So you hire melancholic people to do it for you. Unfortunately, England is filled with con-men who are perfectly willing to pretend to be melancholic. One such guy is [Edward Kelley]( _URL_6_), a complete hack and charlatan who is willing to tell you absolutely any amount of bullshit so long as you pay him. So he looks into your little crystal ball and, lo and behold, he sees angels who tell him all kinds of stuff that sounds gloriously mystical. The angels, through Kelley, tell you that *you are destined to heal Europe’s religious divisions*! Oh Happy day!\n\nSo you slowly get drawn more and more deeply into Kelley’s narrative until, after several years, you believe any bullshit he throws out there. One day, the Angels tell Kelley that he must diddle your hot young wife. This really hurts your feelings, but hey, it’s what the angels want! So nine months later, a baby boy is born to your wife who looks strikingly like Kelley. Then you guys go off to Europe on the divinely-appointed mission of healing the religio-political divisions of the day. As soon as you get to the court of Rudolph II, you and Kelley sell to the king [a manuscript that might actually be the era’s biggest hoax, a manuscript that Kelley may or may not have written]( _URL_4_).\n\nAnyway, he immediately tells everybody that he can turn lead into gold and drops his connection with you like a hot coal. [Things will end badly for him]( _URL_1_). However, you are left to return to England believing that you have failed in your holy mission. Your wife dies of plague. You go broke. And finally, there you are in the backroom of your decrepit house, trying to talk to angels who don’t answer, occasionally remembering that one time that Edward Kelley nailed your wife. Poor John Dee.\n", "One of my favorite hoaxes of all time happened in \"my\" period: [\"The Turk\"](_URL_0_) was an amazing clockwork man that could play competent chess in 1770, centuries before IBM invented Big Blue. Of course, it was actually a hoax and there was an actual human controlling the game hidden inside the cabinet. The human was able to see the progress of the game through magnetic interaction of the pieces with a panel in the cabinet ceiling, as viewed by candlelight. It was quite an ingenious piece of showmanship that survived for decades and several masters, and a number of luminaries played against it or saw it in exhibition including Napoleon and Edgar Allen Poe. Poe wrote an essay about it in 1836 in which he claimed \"the most general opinion in relation to it, an opinion too not unfrequently adopted by men who should have known better, was, as we have before said, that no immediate human agency was employed--in other words, that the machine was purely a machine and nothing else.\" Poe himself was [not fooled](_URL_1_), though he guessed somewhat incorrectly at the mechanism.\n\nThe Turk was just one of many automata from the 1700s. This was the period where the prevailing idea was one of reductive analysis and the power of man's reason. People were delighted by mechanical devices that seemed to reproduce what had once seemed organic, mystical, or out of reach. This is when people began to think of phenomena and bodies as *like machines* -- governed by mechanics and ultimately reproducible. There are even indirect linkages between these automata wonders/toys and modern computing. One of the most famous automata makers (though not the Turk designer, natch) was Vaucanson, who made among others a mechanical duck that ate corn and pooped poop, and a life-size man who played tunes on a flute. Vaucanson was also the first person to create a fully automated loom, using punchcards; this technology was refined by Jacquard for looms, and ultimately embraced by Babbage in his 19th C computer design and IBM in their 20th C computers.\n\nBy the way, The Turk is where Amazon's Mechanical Turk service gets its name: it's a web-based service where companies can pay people to to do little tasks that ideally would be done by computer, but are still only within grasp of people. ", "The most famous hoax from my period actually never happened -- it's an urban myth. The \"Potemkin Villages\" were supposedly facades erected on the banks of the Dneiper by the Russian official Potemkin in order that Catherine the Great would be impressed with how well he developed the region as she sailed past. The *idiom* of Potemkin Villages, meaning something constructed simply as a deceptive sham, is very useful. However, the actual incident with Potemkin and Catherine is at this point considered to be largely a fictional embellishment.\n", "[Prester John](_URL_0_)\n\nSomeone wrote a letter, apparently from a Christian King in the Orient, ruling over a long lost Christian kingdom amidst Muslims and Pagans. In it he promised to help the Christians in their war against the Muslims.\nThe Pope even sent a letter eastwards, but nothing is mentioned of the messenger or if there came a reply. For centuries, the legend of Prester John lived in Europe and at times they believed he and his kingdom was in India or Ethiopia, and when the Mongols began their conquests in Central Asia and later Middle East, the Europeans believed first it was Prester John coming to their aid, which they in relatively short time found out was not.\n\nI actually first read about the legend when doing conscription service in 2003 and it was an article in *Illustrert Vitenskap: Historie* a Norwegian history magazine and the issue was released sometime during Fall 2003. That article said it was most likely students in Constantinople who wrote the letter to the Emperor Manuel and which was circulated quickly to other European monarchs." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romano-Chinese_relations#Hypothetical_military_contact" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries" ], [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=SaJlbWK_-FcC&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=medieval+christian+astrology&source=bl&ots=7lkgOtOc5E&sig=tktsetwYWt-h6uqcq_4fq1ypp5E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hFJDUbz6EIPg2AWV5oCQBA&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=medieval%20christian%20astrology&f=false", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Kelley#Apogee_and_fall", "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ky1bf81QrMw/TOAfiP6s9lI/AAAAAAAAA2w/UsjrRrW3Mh4/s1600/crystal_ball.jpg", "http://www.amazon.com/John-Library-Catalogue-Bibliographical-Society/dp/0197217958", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript#Authorship_hypotheses", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Kelley", "http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22062/22062-h/main.html", "http://www.cosmology-divination.com/uploads/docs/Voss%20The%20Power%20of%20a%20Melancholy%20humour.pdf", "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2wrxq5rbIaY/T9pqs1I83vI/AAAAAAAAAO4/W5-K6kvfapM/s1600/bild22.Den+Hemliga+L%C3%A4rans+och+M%C3%A4starnas+spr%C3%A5k+-+6+juni+2012blogg.jpg" ], [ "http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Racknitz_-_The_Turk_3.jpg", "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Maelzel%27s_Chess-Player" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e76q55n" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ " > Most of the books I've come across look like pop history books\n\nPart of the reason for this is that it is *very* difficult to treat the events of 1848 as a discrete, singular event. The masses took to the barricades for many different reasons depending on the political, economic, social, and historical context of each area. The 48ers were an incredibly diverse lot with competing and contradictory agendas. Studying 1848 at a regional level often reveals how complex and multifaceted an entity it was. \n\nThat said, there are some solid academic books that examine 1848 at a European-wide level. Jonathan Sperber's *The European Revolutions, 1848–1851* is a textbook-level synthesis of a good deal of scholarship on the various 1848 revolutions. The doorstopper anthology *Europe in 1848: Revolution and Reform* is a series of essays written by specialists that tries to present a mosaic of 1848 on a European level. Eric Hobsbawm's *The Age of Revolution* is an influential Marxist take on the reverberations of both the French and Industrial Revolutions and places 1848 within this context. Axel Körner's anthology *1848- A European Revolution?* examines the larger memory and processing of the 1848 events after their failure. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f77i7j2" ], "score": [ 22 ], "text": [ "Never. The average European peasant was, to the extent that we can assess these matters, very likely worse off. \n\nEuropean imperialism and colonialism was very probably harmful to the European countries' economies, compared to a counter-factual of free-ish, peaceful-ish trade, such as that Europe had with the US post the American Revolution. This is a long line of argument in economic history, dating back to Adam Smith's 1776 book The Wealth of Nations (and more recently championed by Deidre McCloskey).\n\nAdam Smith's insight was that it is better to have a richer trading partner than a poorer one, and that colonialism, as practiced, was destructive of the economic production of the subject countries. Colonial rule was typically violent, destructive of both physical and social capital, and people's lives, and dead people can't do much labour. The actual colonial officers (traders/etc) were typically out to line their own pockets and head home rich (particularly in tropical areas before the development of medical treatments for various tropical diseases), with no interest in maintaining the long-term productive capacity of the subject country. And said colonial officers had rather limited interest in their home country's economy either - said agents would at times destroy some of the production of the subject country with the intention of raising prices in their home country. Companies like The East India Company, or the relevant Crown, may have had a longer-term view but their ability to control the actions of their agents was limited, particularly when the fastest communications was via sailing ship. And, even once faster communications were avaiable, colonisers typically lacked local knowledge of things like farming conditions or existing political situations.\n\nEven if we ignore these problems, the benefits of colonisation relative to trading with an independent country aren't as high as is commonly imagined. In the short-term, a coloniser can steal existing wealth, but in the long-term ongoing production still has to be paid for one way or another. Even if you enslave people, you have to feed them and shelter them not only enough to keep them alive but also to raise the next generation - and you have to pay the costs of the slave drivers. And most economic activity requires capital both in and of itself (eg looms, irrigation systems, mining machinery) and also to transport it to the home country. This requires capital, and capital is far more mobile than labour. So in the long-term, the cost savings of exploitation versus just buying out right are smaller than often thought.\n\nAdam Smith's original argument has been supported by economic history since 1776. The American Revolution didn't stop the British Industrial Revolution. McCloskey (2006) notes that the growth of British real income per head slowed in the 1890s and 1900s, the height of British imperialism.  \n\nBeyond Britain, Germany industrialised in the 19th century without colonies, as did Switzerland. Meanwhile France, a large colonial power, was relatively slow to industrialise amongst the Western European countries, Crouzet (2003) reports that employment in industry only overtook agricultural employment in 1911 (the same time as Germany's). France's glorious years of economic development were post WWII, as it was losing its colonies (when Japan, Italy and West Germany were taking off too, all also without colonies).\n\n[Rewritten from an earlier comment of mine.](_URL_1_)\n\n**Sources**\n\nFrancois Crouzet, The historiography of French economic growth in the nineteenth century, Economic History Review, LVI, 2 (2003), pp. 215–242  \n\nDeidre McCloskey, 2006, Keukentafel Economics and the History of British Imperialism, South African Economic History Review 21 (Sept 2006): 171-176. _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/docs/imperialism.pdf", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dt3vr2/comment/f6vi1c4" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9wo922", "c9wrbs3", "c9wtluo" ], "score": [ 12, 18, 4 ], "text": [ "The more racist states? Hmmm. Be careful there..\n\nSchools in the U.S. South *still* teach that the Civil War was states-rights driven more so than slavery driven, thus glorifying the Confederate cause; mine did\n\nHistory has shown that this is not the case and that the states-rights issues that were part of the secession mentality were largely if not completely rooted in slavery. \n\nYou can thank the lack of public education funding and a conservative state legislative body for this. They tend to have a very romantic, Gone with the Wind-like view of pre-Reconstruction, pro-slavery south; aka the \"Lost Cause\" view.\n\nEdit: see: D.W. Griffith's *The Birth of a Nation* ", "The short answer is: yes, it was taught quite differently. The focus was primarily on generals and the \"big men\" of history, and much less on common people - particularly slaves. Before the civil rights movement, there was very little study on the lives of slaves. This was before the \"social history\" movement, so most history was written from the top down. That is to say, historians seemed to believe that only the most powerful (presidents, generals, etc.) were worth writing about. So the war was taught from battle to battle, focusing on generals and troop movement. Social history became popular around same time of the civil rights movement. Historians then started looking into the life of a common soldier and what slavery looked like to those who were enslaved.\n\nI think the spirit of your question is on the topic of the causes of the war. Historians prior to the civil rights movement still agreed that slavery was the root cause of the war. However, the focus was on white politicians benevolently saving the oppressed slave. There was almost no one arguing that slaves played any part in obtaining freedom or ending the institution of slavery. White politicians heroically swooped in to rescue the helpless slave who didn't really know any better.\n\nSouthern historians generally sidestepped the issue of slavery. Most of them wrote about the war itself instead of the causes. Romanticizing confederate soldiers and generals was a way to retain pride in southern history without addressing the fact that southerners were fighting to preserve slavery. When that topic was addressed, these historians generally argued that the war was over states rights rather than slavery. The general tone was one of a \"lost cause.\" Southern soldiers heroically defended their region from northern aggression despite knowing that they could not win the war in the long term. These men knowingly marched to their death to defend their honor and their way of life - not to preserve slavery.", "The teaching of the Civil War has changed dramatically over time. In the years following the war, it was (of course) taught very differently depending on the section of the country one was in, but both the North and the South centered slavery very prominently in the story. Northern textbook's like \"A Child's History of the United States\" taught about the heroism of black freed people and slaves in supporting the Union cause while claiming the war was caused by greedy southern slaveholders. Southern texts meanwhile pointed out that the North profited from slave produced goods, and was thus acting hypocritically in attacking the institution.\n\nAs the North and South reconciled toward the turn of the century, the teaching of the war between the sections converged. This is where we get the rise of the \"Lost Cause\" and the idea that each side was acting nobly and for a higher purpose -- the North for union, the South for states' rights. Slavery and the role of black people tended to be written out of the history at this point. And slavery, when it was discussed, was presented as an old-fashioned foreign import (a Spanish idea) that the white South was happy to be rid of because it prevented them from making industrial progress. This was the mainstream story told in U.S. schools (North and South) until basically the late 1960s. \n\n[Much of this comes from Loewen's \"Lies My Teacher Told Me\" as well as an unpublished conference paper a colleague of mine wrote a few years ago that studied southern children's textbooks in the late 19th and early 20th century] " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cf6paty" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "That region is Cilicia, which was also called Lesser Armenia in medieval era, since numerous Armenians fled there when Armenia proper fell under Seljuk Turkish rule.\nWhen the First Crusade arrived from the west, the crusaders destabilized Anatolia enough so that local Armenian nobles managed to defeat the Byzantine and Turkish forts in Cilicia, with Crusader help, and in the aftermath the Armenians set up their own principality, and later kingdom, which was to last until 1375.\n\nSome historical sources have named the kingdom or principality as the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia or variants thereof, to distinguish it from the Bagratid Armenian kingdom that existed in Armenia proper from 885 to 1045 or the Armenian kingdom of antiquity.\n\nWriting from work, so have no sources to come with more detailed information for the time being. Also, it is not a topic I am very familiar with (used Wikipedia to double-check dates), so hopefully someone more knowledgeable in Armenian matters can give a more detailed response." ] }

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[ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Europe_mediterranean_1190.jpg" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cba1rp6", "cba49vc", "cbanhre" ], "score": [ 35, 4, 3 ], "text": [ "Since my last answer was within the 20 year rule limit, there are other historical examples of triple agents that are somewhat well known, particularly within the period around the 2nd World War and early Cold War period. Eddie Chapman, [who worked simultaneously for the British and the Germans] (_URL_0_) and Kim Philby, [who worked for the British and the Soviet Union early on in the Cold War years] (_URL_1_). ", "What's the current consensus on Mata Hari? ", "I'm not sure if it qualifies, but I think Richard Sorge would be a good example of a triple agent. He wasn't officially anyone's spy, except for the russians, but he played german and japanese secret agencies as well, who both thought of him as a reliable source. His most notable achievement was sending a message to the russians, that Japan wasn't going to invade, so they could free up one million soldiers to fight the germans on the east front. (From an old \"Der Spiegel\" article)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/special-forces-obituaries/6789355/Eddie-Chapman.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9fnang" ], "score": [ 81 ], "text": [ "To break it down very simply:\n\n1) Expenses. As one user here suggests, it was expensive to protect these colonies with military forces. There was a general devolution of military control towards the colonies so that they could fund their own defence forces rather than have it be all Empire troops. Also important is that in the late 20th century, British Imperialists believed that it was time for its colonies to help carry the load of Imperial defence. Joseph Chamberlain (related to Neville from the 30s) was the British Colonial Secretary in 1902 and said that \"the weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of his fate,\" meaning the Empire was prohibitively expensive. An interesting tangent to his argument is one which says Germany recovered so quickly from WW1 in part because it had all its colonies stripped away in 1919 and was able to focus on national recovery. That's speculation on my part though, I have no sources at hand to confirm it.\n\n2) Progress. It was believed that the devolution of powers as seen through the creation of an Imperial Commonwealth (or as it was known before WW1, an Imperial Federation) was a natural progression of these colonial nations. They \"developed\" enough to possess more political control over their own affairs, and, it was believed, would still contribute to the British Empire even after they were more separated from it. Part of the confusion you have seems to come from hindsight. Today, we know that this devolution would effectively lead to the dissolution of the \"white Empire,\" yet this is a result of emergent national sentiments and several decades of events. No one in 1900 thought that the Empire would dissolve by making Dominions more independent. Most imperialists of the age believed that they would become more involved in the Empire, some Canadians even believing that their country would supplant Britain as its centre by the end of the 20th century. Only by looking back can we understand that these events led to 'decolonization,' political decision makers did not see it that way at all.\n\n3) Politics/Cultural attitudes. This is kinda related to point #2, but in Britain there was also changing political conceptions of the British Empire. As I mentioned above, Chamberlain's belief that it was time to help the \"weary titan\" reflected a changing understanding of what the British Empire meant - it was no longer a purely colonial empire, but represented historic and cultural connection to its Dominions as well. They became more independent as Britain became less interested in a colonial, one-way imperial relationship. I am not well versed in this topic, but there were changes in British Liberalism and Conservatism that I suspect had political consequences for imperial policy.\n\n4) First World War. Australians were not impressed with the slaughter at Gallipoli or on the battlefields of western Europe in 1917-18. Like Canadians, they won the war as \"shock troops\" used to hammer the Germans in the last 100 days of the war, but suffered extremely high casualties. In the Canadian case, they eagerly volunteered their soldiers for these campaigns to prove their value to the Empire, expecting greater control over their own affairs or at least in influencing the decisions of the Empire. Prime Minister Robert Borden joined the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917 expecting to be informed on decisions about the war and able to influence them for Canadian interests. He discovered, however, that he had almost no influence and all he had accomplished was achieve some degree of responsibility for the failures of the Western Front and the casualties inflicted by British strategy, which he absolutely had no role in deciding, but was now was part of the \"Cabinet\" that decided it. This left a bitter taste in the mouths of Canadian politicians, who slowly shifted away from playing such a minimal in Imperial affairs, and you can see the post-war imperial policy reflection the Dominion PMs demands for greater autonomy after failing to achieve it during the war years." ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationality_Act_1948", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1926", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Westminster_1931", "http://pnz.sagepub.com/content/60/2/15.abstract", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#Changing_status_of_the_white_colonies", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_Imperial_Conference", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Immigrants_Act_1962" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cdforsd", "cdfp75u" ], "score": [ 3, 6 ], "text": [ "In Australia during WWII, there was a plan by Critchley Parker Junior to build a Jewish settlement on Port Davey in South West Tasmania, it was supported by the premier Robert Cosgrove but lost traction after Critchley died in 1942. [Source](_URL_0_)", "Well, there were already many Jews in Palestine and organised infrastructure and bodies encouraging immigration there (The Jewish Agency Etc.), plus the British already promised to found a Jewish state in Israel in the Balfour Declaration in the 1910s. Truman was convinced that the Jews needed a state by Jewish forces in the US, and Stalin, although he hated Nationalism, decided to support a Jewish state in Palestine because he was sure it would be a Communist stronghold in the Middle East which the USSR wanted (the Jewish leadership in Palestine at the time was Socialist, and quite a few were even Marxist, but there were many other factions, such as liberals, Religious Zionists, Revisionists and others). Speaking of Stalin, he refused to allow Jews in the USSR to move to the new state of Israel, and preferred that they live in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, which exists to this day in south eastern Siberia. Not many Jews there though." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2010/s2795292.htm" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fc99gn5" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Well the specific term \"mammal,\" and its grouping of so many creatures under a common heading (by their teeth and the fact that they suckled milk from a breast — hence \"mammal,\" which is derived from the Latin _mamma_, \"breast\") was done by Carl von Linné, best known as Linneaus, in his _Systemae Naturae_ (10th edition, 1758). He saw them as a common \"type\" of creature, not a common lineage (Linneaus believed that taxonomy was fixed and rigid; he was a Creationist). \n\nPrior to that, Linnaeus categorized mammals and many other creatures as simply quadrupeds (following Aristotle). Previous taxonomists classified animals under many different schemes, such as whether they had red blood (Aristotle). So we can pretty definitively give \"mammals\" as a specific classification (based on teeth and teets) to Linnaeus. \n\nIt is worth noting that the choice of _mammae_ as the definitive quality of the grouping is a curious one, given that there are other choices that could have been made for the grouping (like the hollowness of their ears, or the presence of hair). The historian of science Londa Schiebinger has argued in a well-cited article that Linnaeus' choice of _mammae_ is an odd one (considering that they are only functional in 50% of all species, and it is the only such animal class that Linnaeus used that was based on reproductive organs), and one that reflects a 18th-century European obsession with the idea of the magical powers of \"mother's milk,\" and Linnaeus' own efforts as a physician to end the practice of wet nursing. \n\nFor more information on the development of the idea, as well as its antecedents, see Londa Schiebinger, \"Why Mammals are Called Mammals: Gender Politics in Eighteenth-Century Natural\nHistory,\" _American Historical Review_ 98, No. 2 (April 1993), 382-411." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwxb2x9" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Do you have access to ProQuest or JSTOR?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpvtflu", "cpvvsa7", "cpw8ei4" ], "score": [ 2, 5, 5 ], "text": [ "miklagard = constantinople \nsvearike = sweden\n", "OP, it's not entirely clear what you're looking for: only the names of the 3 waterbodies? do you have questions about the other placenames listed? are you requesting additional contributions?", "I had written quite a post on this subject, before AlienBlue (reddit's iOS client) figured it might be a nice idea to crash thrice. So here's a quick rundown on what I had written.\n\nThe ocean between Iceland and Greenland is the North Atlantic. That part specifically is called Grænlandssund in Icelandic (lit. translation: Greenland Strait - Eng. translation: Denmark Strait). There are other areas you need to consider as well.\n\nGrænlandshaf (lit. translation: Greenland sea - Eng. translation: Irminger sea) lies to the west of Iceland. Íslandshaf (lit. translation: Iceland sea - Eng. translation: Greenland sea) is to the north of Iceland. You can see how the translations might be misleading. (Unnsteinn Stefánsson, 1999. Hafið - aggregated from _URL_0_)\n\nHowever, today this area (and more of them) are called \"Norður íshaf\" (North Ice ocean). In Old Norse, this was called Dumbshaf (Bárðar sögu Snæfellsáss, ch. 18)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d2st3ck", "d2svj09", "d2sw0kw" ], "score": [ 3, 7, 3 ], "text": [ "BA in German and Scandinavian Studies here\n\nVery little Viking clothing has survived from the period, especially in Iceland, as the volcanic soil is highly acidic and there for less than ideal for preservation. Furthermore, the sagas (transcribed oral history), which are our only primary source of information on the Vikings beyond accounts from other cultures who encountered them, are focused on people, their relationships, and events - they rarely delve into the aesthetics of the physical world the stories take place in.\n\nTL/DR - Your best bet for finding information on Viking era silk is probably someone who studied period clothing in general, unless some hero can come up with a quote from the sagas about silk. ", "Here is a picture of a silk hood found in Coppergate, York, during the excavation there. It was, according to the museum's website, found in a 10th century pit. I'll let you make your own judgement on exactly how the cloth looks, but in my opinion it's recognisably shiny.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nHere's another picture from the Yorkshire museum. Unfortunately I can't tell if it's a reproduction or whether the item was on loan. \n\n_URL_2_\n\nThere's much more information about the excavation results in the York Archaeological Trust's book, \"Anglo-Scandinavian Occupation at 16-22 Coppergate: Defining a Townscape.\"", "[Here](_URL_2_) is a piece of Chinese silk (Tang-dynasty) found at Birka, the largest town in viking age Sweden and used from around 790 to 960AD. It's dated to around 618-700AD and most likely found its way here through Constantinople. [Source](_URL_1_)\n\n[Here's](_URL_0_) another piece of textile found at Birka, although not Chinese. Click the image to enlarge." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://jorvik-viking-centre.co.uk/about-jorvik/gallery/", "http://jorvik-viking-centre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Silk-Cap.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/M8ORg26.jpg" ], [ "http://mis.historiska.se/mis/sok/fid.asp?fid=617959", "http://historiska.se/upptack-historien/object/617937-fragment-av-textil/", "http://catview.historiska.se/catview/media/highres/349619" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cd9m14r", "cd9ml80" ], "score": [ 12, 3 ], "text": [ "I would argue that Columbus may have been aware of the Norse voyages to lands to the north but did not consider them as having travelled to the New World. Instead he probably regarded them as having only found extensions of the existing Scandanavian lands.\n\n\nAlthough there were previous voyages to the Americas via the North Atlantic, such as the one that landed in Helluland under Leif Ericson in 992, they \n\n > 'had no historical impact as Ericson’s Vikings failed to integrate their findings in an irreversible manner either into the European economy or history of their own people’^1 \n\nEssentially, except within the communities that actually undertook such travels and realised they had found previously undiscovered land, this knowledge was not transferred to the wider European marine Zeitgeist of the fifteenth century.\n\nAnother historian, J. B. Brebner agrees, suggesting that \n\n > if others from Europe and Asia had been to America before, they failed to incorporate the fact in the main body of geographical knowledge.^2 \n\n It is possible, but very difficult to show from existing sources, that Columbus may have had knowledge of a much more recent (1477/78) voyage to the Americas undertook by Danes with a Portuguese pilot, who had actually revisited Labrador. Fred N. Brown III (kick-ass name I know) suggests that the presence of a Portuguese mariner within that voyage implies that the knowledge of lands to the north across the ocean was more widespread than widely assumed.^3 \n\nHowever, the key reason the knowledge of Leif Ericson's voyage and others mattered little to Columbus was that he did not think it was an endless ocean. He expected to reach Asia fairly quickly based on a miscalculation of distance. His estimates for the distance to Asia across the Atlantic were the result almost exclusively of refinements and calculations based on previous, sometimes classical, pieces of work. Columbus had calculated the earth’s circumference at only 18,000 miles, and he also believed Ptolemy’s over-estimation of the eastward region of Asia. With these two mistaken beliefs, he arrived at the conclusions that 3,000 miles west of the Canary Islands he would find Japan. He did not believe the world was flat, as is often thought, and so it was only logical that he would reach the lands of the East if he sailed West.\n\nThe voyages of the Norse/Danes (or Welsh Prince Madoc ab Owain Gwnedd, or the Irish monk Brendan) were not widely-known, and there was certainly little in the way of accurate maps made available to the Iberian peninsula or even Genoa, which could neatly show where the lands the Norse had discovered were. That is not to say accurate maps of the Norse voyages did not exist, just that they were not relevant to what Columbus and Ojeda, Juan de La Cosa, the younger Pinzón, Vespucci, both Cabots, Magellan, and countless others were looking for.^4 The previous voyages had found lands that bore no resemblance to the fabled lands of Marco Polo that Columbus and co insisted lay just 3,000 miles west of the Canaries. Instead they had found only lands that held\n\n > volcanoes, Judas on his annual day’s holiday near the mouths of Hell, icebergs and implacably hostile natives called Skraellings^5\n\nand so even if Columbus had known about them, they held no interest for him. It should be noted that there is no mention of these previous voyages in the accounts of Columbus's first voyages, nor in the journals of any of the other major explorers (to my knowledge, but I stand to be corrected by anyone with more recent access to the primary sources!)\n\n**TL/DR** Even if he knew, Columbus did not care about earlier voyages for they hadn't been to the land of gold which he was looking for and he certainly did not believe he was sailing into an endless ocean.\n\n\n\n\n^1 Enrique Dussel, *The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of “the Other” and the Myth of Modernity* (New York, 1995), trans., Michael D. Barber\n\n^2 John Bartlet Brebner, *The Explorers of North America, 1492-1806* (London, 1933), p.5 (very old work)\n\n^3 Fred N. Brown III, *Rediscovering Vinland: Evidence of Ancient Viking Presence in America* (New York, 2007), pp.103-115\n\n^4 See [Arlington H. Mallery, 'The Pre-Columbian Discovery of America: A Reply to W.S. Godfrey', *American Anthropologist*, Vol.60, No.1, (Feb., 1958), pp.141-152](_URL_0_)\n\n^5 Brebner, *The Explorers of North America*, p.5", "The idea was that he'd at some point run into Asia, which he would have, if it weren't for the New World, so maybe \"endless\" is the wrong word to use.\n\nThat having been said, Vinland doesn't feature on any Medieval maps (unless we count 20th century forgeries), so it's not likely Columbus would've heard about Leif Ericksson's travels.\n\nA thing to consider, though, is that Leif Ericksson had traveled to the Hebrides, Iceland, and Greenland all before reaching Vinland. It wouldn't have been obvious to him that he'd discovered a landmass as big as the America's are. Had Columbus known about Leif's journey, he wouldn't have thought this could get in the way of his goal of reaching Asia." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.jstor.org/stable/665613" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c4m57cj", "c4m59f4", "c4m5mvc", "c4m5y0n", "c4m6u0m", "c4m7fdz", "c4m7lfj", "c4m7rvg", "c4m807u", "c4m8v3i", "c4m9nxc", "c4m9x1h", "c4mev63", "c4mfkid" ], "score": [ 43, 30, 20, 13, 21, 21, 13, 6, 13, 5, 7, 5, 2, 5 ], "text": [ "There are lots of specific ones I can think of, but the thing they all share in common is that they a) would demonstrate some actual insight and b) would necessarily require a conversation to unpack.\n\nSome examples:\n\n- The novels and poems of the war are an amazingly useful tool for presenting the war to students, but how accurate are they historically and how can we account for such concerns when teaching them?\n\n- The popular perception of British generalship during the war is heavily informed by blackly satiric media like the *Blackadder* series or *Oh What a Lovely War*, but what are the perspectives of military scholars? Those in other disciplines?\n\n- With the centenary of the war's commencement fast approaching and the death of the last living combat veteran, how might our perceptions of the war begin to shift?\n\nThese are the sorts of questions that would make me cry \"Well, now...!\", pull a fresh pair of pints, and gesture towards the high-backed chairs in the corner. Someday ;___;", "One day I will get a not-loaded question about Central America and I will jump to the stars and skies!\n\nOne day...", "\"Please tell me about the relationships between humans and nature embodied in food, and how those relationships changed as the nature of food production changed.\" \n\nMan, I would drop some knowledge in that case.\n\nReally, though, I frequently get \"What is environmental history?\" and that's a question I don't mind answering at all, but one that doesn't count for this thread.", "\"What can you tell me about Hungarian history?\" -\"Let me tell you about Matyas Corvinus!\" Then eventually dissolve into talking about Hungarian history is mainly a long line of complaining about how things did not work out for the best.", "Considering the amount of misinformation that is present in the west in regards to the Soviet Union I would like *every statement* made to be in the form of a question because even if accurate the context surrounding it is not. \n\nAs well, this can apply for everything that deals with history when historians are involved. There are no black and white answers or statements that can be made with any type of authority or confidence. A Manichean view of history is highly outdated today considering the information available and the methodology and theory that is at a historian's disposal. ", "I studied the European Revolutions of 1848. I would like to have people ask me to compare them to the Arab Spring, but they don't, so I bring it up anyway. Mua ha ha.", "Honestly I love discussing the 'Götterdämmerung' of the Third Reich, it's so incredibly fascinating. Especially that of Berlin during the last days, although many military historians consider it anti-climactic the battle was so incredibly emotionally charged and surreal (something you can see in the limited mounts of footage available). If you're interested in this I'd suggest Der Untergang (Downfall) an amazing film about the last days in the Führerbunker. For something more in depth I'd recommend Max Hasting's 'armageddon: the battle of germany'.\n\nHowever whenever I mention my knowledge in the subject of Nazi Germany I'm bombarded with 'what if' questions and people telling me how stupid Hitler was for declaring war on the U.S.S.R.", "Gee, I sure wish you knew the history of rap and rhythmic poetry over the last few hundred years leading up until gangster rap and pop music!!??\n\nLong answer..", "'Tell me about Central Asia's relationship to the Near Eastern world between 700 BC-600 AD.'\n\n'Tell me about all of these cool sounding Greek populations settled across Asia!'\n\n'How did the legal system of Athens actually work?'\n\n'How do all of these Near Eastern Empires compare to one another?'", "PM me and I will use a sockpuppet to ask whatever questions you feed me.", "Anything about the Balkans that is not about wars. It's like the proverbial \"but you fuck one goat\".\n\nAlso, something about cities and the common life of different populations. People are usually more interested in actual buildings then what was cool about how people used them.", "The impact that the American Revolution had on European Foreign relations, and why even though the British were the ones who lost against the Americans, it was actually the French who technically came out worse even though they were on the winning side. ", "To have any question on Egyptology that does not involve cats, mummies and alien/superhuman conspiracies...makes me smile just imagining the scenario. Credit where its due, that kind of question never flares up amongst you fine people and incredibly rarely on /r/ancientegypt.", "\"Why were the British, who were not only one of the most free peoples in the world but they also *considered* themselves to be the most free in the world, able to justify to themselves ruling over such a vast empire in an unfree way?\"\n\nNo one ever asks." ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/teymf/youre_at_a_party_in_mixed_company_the_people/" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "c547lno" ], "score": [ 27 ], "text": [ "The mainple's primary hay day was during the height of Roman professionalism. It was not the universal staple of Roman combat, and they actually fought at several points without the usage.\n\nThe maniple was using because it worked with what they had. Not all formations are for every kind of army. An army of Hoplites trying to utilize a maniple would find themselves completely destroyed, but the distinct Roman fighting style and advances in professionalism gave them the edge they needed to utilize the formation.\n\nThough I'm not one that likes to rely solely on wikipedia (I highly recommend Adrian Goldsworthy), take into consideration that until about 315 BC [Romans fought in phalanxes much like the Greeks and Etruscans](_URL_0_), and it was not until the first major military reformation that hoplites stopped being used.\n\nThe manipular style of warfare was a hobnob mixture between efficiency (both perceived and real) and social standing. It was believed the Velites, being the youngest and smallest, would make excellent skirmishers so they were far to the front, Hastati were the youngest \"fit fighting men\" so they made up the front line, the Principes were experienced veterans who could supposed the Hastati, and the Triarii were aged men of war that did a better job at support than actual fighting.\n\nAlso at this time, the Roman Army was nothing like how many people know it today. When people think of Roman armies they think of the legionaries, they think of *Gladiator* and *Spartacus*, or even *Rome*, and how men clamored for a paycheck and a home. The Republican army, in contrast, was modeled on the concept that the poor should never be allowed to fight, because they have no stake in warfare (which led to manpower shortages and negative economic consequences) and instead the army should be staffed by land owners and family of land owners, so there was a certain degree of professionalism inherent to begin with.\n\nFollowing the Marian Reforms, in addition to doing away with the Republican dependency on land owners to fight their battles, there became a standardized training regimen that equalized the armies, cut down on the centuries, re-engineered the *pilum*, altered the size of cohorts, universalized the standard tactics, relied upon the general to equip his soldiers with more universal equipment rather than bringing one's own equipment with him, and so on.\n\nThe maniple was flexible and allowed for a nearly \"squad\" level command by centurions and other officers, which again depended highly on the discipline, exceptional training, and professionalism of the officers.\n\nEventually, this became too expensive for the Roman Empire to maintain. They couldn't rely on the best equipped, highest trained soldiers anymore there simply was no way. \n\nFollowing the collapse of the Principate (on or around the ascension of Diocletian), the overall decline of the Western Roman Empire, and the lack of a major outside army to fight, alliances and conscription took over for the method of warfare for the Roman Empire. Gone were the days of legionaries and maniples, replaced by the Foedatari and primarily auxiliary regiments that brought with them their own local fighting styles.\n\nSo where am I going with this? The bottom line really is that it wasn't a case of anyone forgetting, it's understanding that the people who made up the Roman army could take advantage of the maniple, while others recognized they couldn't. The feudal systems of Dark Age (I know people hate that term, but late Roman Empire to 10th century Europe is very certainly fair game for being called the Dark Ages, though calling the entire Middle Ages that is absurd) and later the Middle Ages did not really allow for the types of discipline necessary to take advantage of maniples. Often times, wars were decided very simply by shooting a ton of arrows at your opponent then trying to run him down with cavalry. If that didn't work, send in your infantry and hope for the best, because this was the quality of soldier they were working with.\n\nArmies were mustered by a lord calling upon his vassals, who did not command a full time army, but were instead calling upon people who were sworn to him. The knights and high society may have been fond of playing war and staying in shape, but others were not, and no one was going to fund a permanent standing army.\n\nLater in the Middle Ages as we broke away from feudalism and started to accept the concept of personal freedoms (limited though they were) and rights outside of the monarchy and nobility, we started to regain professional, volunteer armies of high discipline. By this time however, the maniple formation was starting to lose its relevance, due to the changing nature of warfare, the advent of longbows, the usage of gunpowder, but perhaps most importantly, the extensive use of the stirrup.\n\nAnd now you know." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic#Hoplite_armies_.28509.E2.80.93c._315_BC.29" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d5fckte" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "As you note, _URL_0_ is promoting the most eye-catching interpretation of the evidence, rather than the most likely and rigorous interpretation. There isn't any evidence for pre-Columbian, trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific trade in tobacco or coca. \n\nThere are two main sources for this persistent myth (which crops up pretty frequently as evidence for the really bad Afro-centric interpretations of world history). First, you have the mummy of Ramses II. In 1978, abundant tobacco pollen and leaf fragments were discovered in the body cavity of the mummy^1. Second, in 1992, Balabanova et al. published their results indicating showing the presence of nicotine in the hair, bones, and soft tissue of a number of mummies based on radioimmunoassay and gas chromatography^1. They also identified compounds associated with cocaine and marijuana subsequently. \n\nIn both cases, the preferred interpretation was that of transmission across the Atlantic or Pacific from the Americas and the use of tobacco historically by Egyptians. I'll outline several of the problems with this interpretation, including likely sources of contamination.\n\nTo begin with, let's address the utter lack of evidence in any other form that there was pre-Columbian trade in drugs between New and Old Worlds. As you note, we should see some evidence for this trade either on the Atlantic side or the Pacific side, but the evidence pops up conspicuously only in Egypt. Not only do we not have any evidence from elsewhere in the Old World of this trade, but aside from these mummies we have no evidence in Egypt aside from the botanical and chemical remains. No art depicts cigarettes, pipes, or any other smoking of tobacco (let alone cannabis), and the epigraphic and textual record indicate extensive use of a variety of medicinal and ritual plants, none of which match the description for coca or tobacco. \n\nThis is all without considering that it would be really exceptional for people to be trading just these two drugs across hemispheres, without a shred of any other evidence making it to either side of the world. No Egyptian art found on the east coast of North America or evidence for Old World crops in the New, let alone evidence for any other kind of trade in artifacts or botanical to the Old World. **Why exclusively coca and tobacco?** \n\nAs for the botanical and chemical evidence, there are a number of alternate explanations which fits better the vast preponderance of evidence that indicates no exchange between Egypt and the New World. \n\nFirst of all, every basic archaeology course is going to teach you that the story of an artifact doesn't end when it is placed on a museum shelf. All sorts of natural and anthropogenic processes will still have an impact on those objects even after they have been stored away. This is especially true of objects like many Egyptian mummies which where excavated in the late 19th and early 20th century, prior to modern standards of museum curation. Systematic contamination of a number of mummies is a very plausible explanation given this, and why I don't understand the argument about the sheer number of mummies identified with nicotine present as evidence against it being a matter of contamination. If all of those mummies where curated largely in the same way, systematic contamination of all of them is certainly possible. \n\nSecondly, we need to carefully consider what the evidence actually tells us. While the presence of macro- and micro-botanical remains (like the leaf fragments and pollen in the body cavity of Ramses II) doesn't suggest use during life, and at best indicates use during the mummification or burial processes, even the chemical evidence from Balabanova et al. needs to be carefully considered. While the easiest interpretation of chemicals associated with cannabis, tobacco, and cocaine being identified in the soft tissue, hair, and bones of the mummies is that these drugs were used by these individuals during their life, there are alternate explanations. \n\nTo begin with, as Schafer points out in their response to Balabanova et al., that the identified chemicals would be stable within a mummified human body for over 3000 years is never established^2. I'm not familiar with the forensic toxicology of this, but we would need to establish that even given the unusual circumstances of mummification that these chemicals would be at all identifiable in any significant quantity after so long a time. This is especially so given their storage conditions after dis-entombment which may have aided in the breakdown of these drug compounds (due to increased oxygen). Additionally, again as noted by Schafer, we need to establish that the presence of the compounds in the soft tissue, hair, and bones is a product of use during life rather than use during embalming or some later contamination of the body. Perhaps by demonstrating differential quantities of the chemical compounds in parts of the hair at different distances from the scalp, rather than uniform quantities^3. \n\nFinally, and most importantly, we need to consider the possibility of contamination in the 19th and 20th century in whatever museums and storage facilities these mummies where housed in. It has been suggested that the macro-botanical tobacco remains in Ramses II may have been modern snuff introduced into the body, though that explanation does not account for the tobacco pollen necessarily. However, the pollen may also be the product of a number of chamomile plants native to the Old World that may have been used historically in the embalming process^4. However, these plants were also used as an insecticide historically.\n\nSimilarly, tobacco is notable as a natural insecticide and was historically known to be such. Use as an insecticide in the embalming process was an original interpretation of the Ramses II tobacco, but use as part of modern museum conservation of the mummies is a much more probable source of the nicotine. Likewise for the examples studied by Balabanova, from Egypt and Eurasia. Control of insects is an important component of conservation practices, and Buckland and Panagiotakopulu point at textual evidence of tobacco being used as an insecticide in museum contexts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries^5. A lack of good object biographies for these mummies means we can't confirm this interpretation, but it is far more in line with existing evidence than is the use of ancient Egyptian tobacco. \n\nWe also can't discount the possibility that recreational drug use by curation staff at the turn of the century could have also contributed to the contamination, particularly the introduction of cocaine. While it might seem slightly absurd, the sensitivity of the techniques used to identify these trace amounts of drug compounds can potentially make them sensitive to environmental contamination, even from something as simple as smoking. While they use a different trace element technique (and so the sensitivity may be different), the recent study by Crown et al. to identify caffeine and theobromine (a compound in chocolate) in ceramics from the U.S. Southwest required that their analysts wear masks, gloves, and gowns in order to avoid contamination^6. Likewise, they were required to avoid bringing any caffeinated drinks into the lab. Even these minor sources of contamination were shown to be a possible source of contamination in the elemental tests, especially over the course of a number of years in a museum context. Keep in mind that this is all due to the sensitivity of the elemental analyses used, and the techniques used to identify the nicotine in the bodies may be less sensitive to such trace contamination.\n\nIn summary, the preponderance of evidence (and lack thereof) strongly indicates that the presence of these New World drugs in Egyptian mummies is the result of contamination in museum and other contexts from the last two centuries. The chemical analyses are hardly smoking guns, and the complete lack of any other evidence for such exchange across the hemispheres (or in any goods other than coca and tobacco) means that trade is a fairly preposterous explanation for the presence of these drug compounds on the mummies. \n\nEdit: Grammar and typos.\n\n^1 Buckland and Panagiotakopulu 2001: 550\n\n^2 Hertting et al. 1993: 244\n\n^3 Ibid., 243\n\n^4 Buckland and Panagiotakopulu 2001: 552-553.\n\n^5 Ibid., 553-554.\n\n^6 Crown et al. 2015: 11436-11437.\n\n\n**Sources:**\n\n* Buckland, P.C. and E. Panagiotakopulu. 2001. Rameses II and the Tobacco Beetle. *Antiquity*, 75(289):549-556. \n\n* Crown, Patricia L., Jiyan Gu, W. Jeffrey Hurst, Timothy J. Ward, Ardith D. Bravenec, Syed Ali, Laura Kebert, Marlaina Berch, Erin Redman, Patrick D. Lyons, Jamie Merewether, David A. Phillips, Lori S. Reed, and Kyle Woodson. 2015. Ritual drinks in the pre-Hispanic US Southwest and Mexican Northwest. *PNAS*, 112(37):11436-11442.\n\n* Hertting, G., N. D. Philip McIntosh, and F. Parsche. 1993. Briefe An Die Herausgeber: Responding to First identification of drugs in Egyptian mummies. *Naturwissenschaften*, 80(6):243-246." ] }

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[ "Cracked.com" ]

[ [ "Cracked.com" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fg471mt" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "First, for the benefit of other readers, let's cover what the National Firearms Act of 1934 (or NFA) is and what it does. The NFA was the first substantial US federal gun law. Prior to this, gun laws were handled almost entirely by the states, and while some states did flex those muscles (New York passed its strict Sullivan Act in 1911, for example), a person in a state with very liberal gun laws would face no legal restrictions to speak of on obtaining any firearms at all. \n\nThe NFA of 1934 was a restriction not on the transfer and possession of firearms in general, but in particular on weapons which were believed by its proponents to be especially dangerous. It required them to be registered with the federal government, and assessed a tax on their transfer that was intended to be burdensome to prohibitive. The exact scope of these restrictions can be very complicated (there's a category called \"any other weapon\" that causes confusion even today even among many gun enthusiasts), but for the sake of this question we can say that for practical purposes the NFA restricts mostly silencers, machineguns, and rifles and shotguns under a specified length. (Today \"NFA items\" also includes things like very large-bore firearms and weaponized explosives, but these were added when the NFA was amended by the Gun Control Act of 1968, so they're not relevant to your question.) There are some exceptions and complicating factors, but for most purposes these items must be registered, a $200 tax must be paid on each act of manufacturing or transfer (a very large sum in 1934), and the owner must get approval before moving the items across state lines. \n\nSo what prompted this law in the first place? In the 1930s, Congress was looking for a way to address the common perception that existing law enforcement practices were unable to deal with \"motor bandits,\" the popular image of which was a group of robbers armed with powerful weapons and transported by automobile. With the relatively new availability of automatic firearms and motor vehicles, there was a perception that existing local and state police who had traditionally dealt with violent crime were unable to respond quickly enough and with sufficient force to stop these especially dangerous robbers, and a federal solution was sought. \n\nIn his [1986 *Cumberland Law Review* article on the legal-historical background of the Firearms Owners Protection Act,](_URL_2_) attorney David Hardy sums up the context of the NFA thus (citations omitted in my excerpt): \n\n > The late 1920s and early 1930s brought, however, a growing perception of crime both as a major problem and as a national one. Public officials did much to support the perception; Attorney General Homer Cummings, for instance, publicly estimated that America was being terrorized by half a million armed thugs, a force larger than the contemporary United States Army. The mobility of the automobile enabled criminals, in those pre-police radio days, to move between jurisdictions before police units could generally be alerted; such criminal gangs found the submachinegun (a fully automatic, shoulder-fired weapon utilizing automatic pistol cartridges) and sawed-off shotgun deadly for close-range fighting. The resulting quest for law enforcement solutions approached the incredible. At one 1933 hearing, for instance, a Senate subcommittee heard, with no recorded skepticism, calls for a ban on felons riding in automobiles, universal fingerprinting of all citizens, mandatory \"papers\" for interstate travel, and enactment of national vagrancy laws authorizing warrantless search and arrest of anyone \"reputed\" to \"habitually violate\" the laws (with law enforcement officials to testify as to the arrestee's reputation). On a more practical plane, the Department of Justice proposed what became the National Firearms Act of 1934. \n\nThe original draft of the NFA was substantially stricter than what ended up being passed. The \"short barreled\" rifle and shotgun restrictions were orginally part of a larger restriction of all concealable firearms (which consisted of registration and a five-dollar tax on handgun transfers, with the short rifle and shotgun restrictions intended to cover handgun *alternatives* as well), and a definition of \"machinegun\" that included \"any weapon capable of firing twelve or more shots without manual reloading\" (a definition which would today include the vast majority of semiautomatic firearms). \n\nTestimony and advocacy by General Milton Reckord (then executive VP of the National Rifle Association and acting on its behalf) resulted in the removal of handguns from the Act, and in a machinegun definition closer to the common meaning of that term (\"any weapon which shoots[...]automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger\"). \n\nThe quid-pro-quo of the debates refined the NFA toward this specific aim of disarming gangsters and bank robbers, as opposed to restricting the general civilian use of guns for sporting purposes and self defense. Throughout, Congressional advocates for the NFA consistently frame their concern in this way. The preparatory meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee on May 15 1934, for example, [quotes the Attorney General as saying:](_URL_1_) \n\n > The development in late years of the predatory criminal who passes rapidly from State to State has created a situation which is giving concern to all who are interested in law and order. ... There lies the heart of our problem. The roaming groups of predatory criminals who know ... that they are safer if they pass quickly across the State line, leaving the scene of the crime in a high-powered car or by other means of quick transportation. \n\nSimilarly, the Senate Commerce Committee hearing of May 28 1934 contains many references to brazen motor bandits in general and prominent criminal personalities in particular, such as in [this exchange between an NFA advocate and the NRA representative, discussing a potential restriction on ammunition sales:](_URL_0_)\n\n > Senator Copeland: All right. I Approve that. \n\n > Now, what about the ammunition? \n\n > General Reckord: Well, we don't think the ammunition, as such, is dangerous. \n\n > Senator Copeland: Do you think it is proper for one Dillinger to be able to go in any ammunition shop in the United States and buy all the cartridges that he wishes? \n\nThere were of course also contemporary desires for broader federal gun control legislation that went beyond the particular specter of John Dillinger and his peers; the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 licensed and regulated all firearms dealers, and the debate would continue throughout the period discussed here on r/askhistorians (most significantly with the current licensing system instituted by the Gun Control Act of 1968 and refined by the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986). But when discussing the National Firearms Act of 1934 in particular, the stated motivation was explicitly the belief that high-profile violent criminals were using machineguns, sawed-off-shotguns, and motor vehicles to overwhelm the law enforcement of the time." ] }

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[ [ "https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d021562917&view=1up&seq=21", "https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013467827&view=1up&seq=489", "https://guncite.com/journals/hardfopa.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cc5hhi9" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "From the Roman period on into the medieval, it was called the *Mare Tenebrosum* or *Sea of Darkness*. The Arabs also called it *Bahr al-Zulamat* which means the same thing. I can't give you either a *terminus ante/post quem* for it unfortunately, but assuming the Franks were still up on their Latin learning, they *probably* would have appropriated the name. I've seen referrences to the *Oceanus Occidentalis\" or Western Ocean on some maps, but we're well into the Renaissance by then.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fimlehk" ], "score": [ 21 ], "text": [ "(1/2)\n\nI am a medievalist specializing in the 12th Century.\n\nThere's a lot to unpack with Arthurian legend because the line becomes very blurred. Geoffrey himself opens the *Historia Regum Britanniae* with:\n\n > While my mind was often pondering many things in many ways, my thoughts turned to the history of the kings of Britain, and I was surprised that, among the references to them in the fine works of Gildas \\[*De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae*\\] and Bede \\[*Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum*\\], I had found nothing concerning the kings who lived here before Christ's Incarnation, and nothing about Arthur and the many others who succeeded after it, even though their deeds were worthy of eternal praise and are proclaimed by many people as if they had been entertainingly and memorably written down. I frequently thought the matter over in this way until Walter archdeacon of Oxford, a man skilled in the rhetorical arts and in foreign histories, brought me a very old book in the British tongue, which set out in excellent style a continuous narrative of all their deeds...\n\nIt is true that neither Bede nor Gildas mention Arthur by name, though they do name many of the other figures in Geoffrey's narrative, such as Hengist and Horsa, and Vortigern. The Introduction to the text edited and translated by Michael D. Reeve and Neil Wright, also point out many similarities between Geoffrey's work and Nennius' *Historia Brittonum*, which he does not specifically cite. However, the identity of the \"very old book\" is never given specifically. That Geoffrey seems to be readily familiar with Arthurian stories, and that he says \"**as if** they were entertainingly ad memorably written down\" indicates that not only had they not previously been recorded in a format Geoffrey had seen (the *Annales Cambriae* don't seem to be referenced in connection with Geoffrey of Monmouth, though they also mention Arthur by name), but that stories of King Arthur had already passed into oral tradition by the time Geoffrey was writing. It is important to remember that we only have a *fraction* of Medieval writings, and there is a great deal that has been lost.\n\nWe don't have any way of knowing, really, if Geoffrey thought he was writing down facts, or if he was just recording a popular legend. Monmouth is now located within Wales, but during the twelfth century, the actual border would have been constantly changing as marcher lords and Welsh princes quarreled. It is very likely that Geoffrey would have been familiar with colloquial stories, and he may have had Welsh ancestry, though we can't be sure as he provides little in the way of autobiography. In fact, he may have also been of Breton origin, though we can never know for certain.\n\nGeoffrey also told us who his intended audience was:\n\n > Though I have never gathered showy words from the gardens of others, I was persuaded by his request to translate the book into Latin in a rustic style, reliant on my own reed pipe; had I larded my pages with bombastic terms, I would tire my readers with the need to linger over understanding my words rather than following my narrative.\n\nGeoffrey did not mean for his History to be read only by other clerics and scholars, but by secular aristocrats, whose knowledge of Latin would not have been as carefully cultivated. This is important to note when considering Geoffrey's style and bias throughout the text. He is not only writing to pass on information, but to convey a message to his audience about how they ought to behave, and what ideals they should espouse. Geoffrey dedicated his History to two leading nobles: Robert of Gloucester, bastard son of King Henry I and leading supporter of Empress Matilda during the Anarchy, and Waleran of Meulan, a member of the powerful Beaumont faction who largely supported Stephen, though it must be noted that the dedication to Waleran does not appear in the text as consistently.\n\nWe are in luck that we have several medieval scholars who were writing at the same time as Geoffrey: Orderic Vitalis, Henry of Huntingdon, and William of Malmesbury. Orderic had undertaken initially to write a history of his monastic house, but his work eventually expanded until he had written effectively a history since the time of Christ, which also included long sections about England, Normandy, and Anjou, and the First Crusade. Orderic intended to write a serious history, in line with Bede; he even titled it as the \"Ecclesiastical History\", presumably in homage to Bede. Henry of Huntingdon, like Geoffrey, was writing a history he intended to be read by secular people, and often wrote with the intention of leaving behind moral lessons. William of Malmesbury was another serious scholar, and probably the most sophisticated of his time. We can surmise, with reasonable certainty, that William of Malmesbury was a source for both Orderic and Henry of Huntingdon, and we know that Orderic was sent to visit William for research purposes.\n\nTo start with Orderic's views on Geoffrey, we know that he certainly read Geoffrey's writings (though he may not have seen a completed version of the *Historia Regum Britanniae* before his own death). Orderic cited instead the Prophecies of Merlin, which is often included with the *Historia*. Orderic does not reference Geoffrey directly, but states:\n\n > If anyone withes to know more details about this and other events concerning the Britons, he may study the books of Gildas, the British, and Bede, the English, historian, in which the reader will find a brilliant account of Vortimer and his brothers and of the brave Arthur, who fought twelve battles against the English.\n\nMarjorie Chibnall, the editor and translator of Orderic, notes that Orderic incorrectly attributes his knowledge to Gildas instead of Nennius (a similar omission to Geoffrey), and that this would be the first extant work in which Geoffrey of Monmouth would have been referenced. Orderic then goes on to include a section of the Prophecies of Merlin, and then attempts to connect them with current events. This indicates that Orderic at least takes these stories as truth." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cv7gshu" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Is a recession the way we think of one even possible back then? Or would it just be a famine?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dds29ay" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "His birth year was believed to 1474 for years, but in the 1970s documents from a lawsuit were discovered in the Archivo General de Indias (an archive of Spanish Empire documents) that showed his birth was actually 1484. \nSince then, biographers/historians have used the 84 date, but you'll still find resources showing the 74 date, written before the discovery or based on docs from before. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dn2z6ew" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The \"Subarmalis\", \"Thorocomachus,\" \"Himation\" or \"Peristithridion\" is often mentioned in both Roman sources and Roman art. For example, the tombstone of Severus Acceptus appears to show a qulited gambeson, and so do the Split and Eleutherna Sarcophagi.\n\nTombstone of Titus Calidius Severus: _URL_1_\n\nTombstone of Severus Acceptus: _URL_0_\n\nFurthermore, a quilted linen Greave liner has been found at Vindolanda and a second from Dura Europos. A leather fragment from Ballana in South Egypt might be from such a gambeson called a Peristithridion.\n\nFabric Greave liner: _URL_2_\n\nThe question is \"did they always wear it?\" And the answer to that seems to be \"no.\" Segmentata technically doesn't need it, other than to make it more comfortable - a properly made segmentata (Say by Matt Lukes) can take a hell of a beating without a single dent. Scale and Lamellar are also much better at absorbing shock than Maille as well. Chainmaille is what technically needs it, because of its flexibility, but even then we don't usually see it in art alongside the \"Subarmalis\"\n\nIt also seems to have been used as armor on its own (particularly during the Byzantine Era when it's called a \"Kavadion\" which is what turns into the Gambeson proper of the High and Late Medieval Era). Even at its height, the Roman Empire couldn't supply all of its troops with armor. In the late Empire we know they could supply about 50% within each unit with metal armor (still 10 times higher than anyone else). In the early empire that ratio may have been higher but we don't know. Quilted linen provides excellent armor for low cost for those who couldn't afford superior bronze or steel armor, and had been in use for centuries. As such, it was probably often used by those who did not have armor.\n\nSources: \n\n* Graham Sumner, Roman Military Dress, 170-175\n\n* M.C. Bishop, Roman Military Equipment, 63, 98, 263" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.livius.org/pictures/turkey/kadikoy-chalcedon/tombstone-of-severius-acceptus/", "https://i.pinimg.com/236x/37/2e/2d/372e2d80df393b8c775ef9e919114443--roman-sculpture-roman-art.jpg", "https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a6/14/8d/a6148dbfcb954a354799c3c28c521ad2--warfare-armour.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eak11j4" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Related question: Why did Buddhism also fail to compete (locally) despite originating in India!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d7vk7l2" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Well, we do have [some letters](_URL_0_) from Simon bar Kokhba from his revolt in 132 CE. Unfortunately, he holed up in Betar, which was destroyed by the Romans (who, per Jewish tradition/sources, killed everyone in the fortress save one witness). The letters have been found relatively recently, and new discoveries are found in Israel reasonably often, so it's possible that more documents may some day be unearthed. \n\nUnfortunately, Jewish Messiahs other than Jesus tended to lead revolts, and the Roman response to having legions destroyed got more and more extreme with each uprising. And that's on top of the fact we have a very small percentage of all written records from before the age of the printing press, for various reasons." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.livius.org/ja-jn/jewish_wars/bk07.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dp3mxzg" ], "score": [ 81 ], "text": [ "Several posts about feudalism on this sub makes it clear that there never existed \"feudalism\"\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4brnwe/theory_thursday_academicprofessional_history/d1bwo8m/?sh=360f964a&st=itvqbjlv", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26tn74/when_historians_say_feudalism_never_existed_what/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch9oukt", "ch9rxl5", "cha6spf" ], "score": [ 142, 75, 8 ], "text": [ "Hinduism valued virginity of the male. Specifically, the virginity was held to be a source of power, which could be expended, or kept without expending it. An example of such a story from the hindu mythology is that of [Rishyasringa](_URL_2_) who was tricked to use his virginity to cause rain in a kingdom. Another is the example of the historical figure [Sankara](_URL_0_) who had to answer questions about sexuality without actually losing his virginity. Further examples include the practice of [Brahmacharya](_URL_1_) specifically lifelong practice, which required virginity and celibacy.", "In many German tribes in the Iron Age, such as the Suebii, male virginity was very highly valued. In book VI of his *Comentarii De Bello Gallico*, Julius Caesar documents this, writing that the Germans felt that male virginity \"makes young men taller, stronger, and more muscular.\" Amoung the Germans, \"to have had intercourse before the age of twenty\" was frowned upon highly.\" Those who did manage to stay chaste were \"most highly commended.\"", "While by no means as emphasized or glorified as feminine virginity, masculine virginity and chastity played an important role in medieval monastic practice. From the outset masculine virginity presents difficulties as it existed at the intersection of various perceptions of masculinity, virginity, and chastity that are constantly in flux and change across time and between authors. Masculine virginity was a complex and delicate issue, and historians have debated how medieval societies gendered males that maintained virginal status or took a vow of chastity. I want to stress that while masculine virginity was valued, it was not treated in the same way as feminine virginity (which was shaped by its own cultural and social context) and although the feminine strain gradually came to the forefront in virginal discourses over the course of the medieval period, the sexual integrity of men was still a crucial subject that required the attention of liturgical communities.\n\nThat being said, the value that masculine virginity and chastity played in monastic communities and liturgical practice during the heyday of medieval monasticism is fascinating. The monastic and ecclesiastical reforms of the eighth and ninth centuries provide an interesting insight into the emphasis on monastic purity and orthopraxy. For God to be honored, the liturgy had to be performed perfectly by a purified community. As such, the Carolingian reforms were geared towards revamping and cleaning up monastic communities and setting a uniform rule and custom. Eventually, *the Rule* of St. Benedict gained prominence, as did the influence of Irish monasticism, exported back to the continent and popularized in various penitential texts. These texts stressed the purity of the community and the individuals who comprised it, and sexual purity by no means played a small part. The *claustrum* or cloister, around which the monastic life was centered, was taking shape not only as an architectural space, but as an ideological one as well, guarding the purity and sanctity of an introspective and secluded community of ascetics from the outside world.\n\nSo what does this all have to do with masculine virginity?\n\nIn the ninth century, as the Carolingian reforms were in full swing, the primary means of entry into a monastic community was through oblation, or child offering. While it was still possible to take up the habit as an adult in a personal renunciation of the world, the majority of monks grew up within the confines of the cloister. The Council of Aachen (817) outlines a ritual in which the parents present the child for oblation during the Offertory of Mass, with witnesses to testify to the parents’ vow. Now virginity and chastity are difficult terms that both carry their own connotations at different times for different authors (it doesn’t help that in spite of this they are often used interchangeably in medieval texts). That being said, I think it is possible to speak of virginity in a general sense for novice monks. Oblates were carefully guarded by the community- Garrulous Hildemar describes a system in which three to four masters watch over the children at al times: at their studies, during meals, and in the bathroom and dormitory (all potential sources of temptation). The [Irish penitential of Cummean](_URL_1_), one of the many that was in circulation on the continent and much esteemed by Carolingian ecclesiastics, lists multiple infractions viewed as sexually polluting, committed by children, and the appropriate penance. The sexual purity of oblates was jealousy guarded, and appropriate discipline was seen as necessary in the formation of perfect monks capable of performing effective liturgies for the Carolingian society. \n\nNow in this case, the value of the sexually pure monk is related to his ability to properly participate in ritual, it is my no means the only take on masculine virginity in medieval thought. The preoccupancy with novice virginity and general chastity extended into the high medieval period and the Gregorian reforms, with authors writing at length on the subject. Guibert in the eleventh an twelfth centuries stressed the value and benefits of virginal ideal for the individual, specifically targeting adolescent monks and exhorting them to combat and renounce sexual desire in the pursuit of a holy lifestyle. In the *Opusculum*, Guibert places a strong emphasis on virginal integrity, raising it above chastity (though he still recognizes it as praiseworthy). Like the Carolingians before him, Guibert also recognizes the need for wardens and teachers to watch over and protect the young novices and this need for constant vigilance of monastic youths is mirrored in the regulations set by the monks of Cluny, which even warned against casual touching and conversation for fear that it might awaken impure desires. Others, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, differed in emphasis, stressing instead the importance of chaste humility, but the Cistercians are a little outside my realm of knowledge so I will have to leave it there. \n\nSuffice to say, the virginity of novices -and the sexual purity of the monastic community in general- was highly valued during the high tide of medieval monasticism, and while there were at times multiple takes on how the virginal ideal was presented, the instruction and guardianship of novices in sexual purity was crucial in their development as participants in a liturgical community where orthopraxy was seen as vital for the performance of effective ritual and the health of the both the individual and the spiritual community. \n\nSources/Further reading:\n\nMayke De Jong. “Carolingian Monasticism: the Power of Prayer.” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Rosamond McKitterick, Vol. II .Cambridge University Press: 1995. pgs. 622-653.\n\nKaren Cheatham [They Hasten toward Perfection: Virginal and Chaste Monks in the High Middle Ages](_URL_0_). 2010 \n" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Sankara#Meeting_with_Mandana_Mishra", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmacharya#Sexual_abstinence", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishyasringa" ], [], [ "https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/32202/1/Cheatham_Karen_20106_PhD_Thesis.pdf", "http://www.ldysinger.com/@texts/0650_cummean/02_pen_cum-txt.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cadvjti", "cadw3ba", "cadxtg2" ], "score": [ 6, 11, 8 ], "text": [ "Charlemagne was in the 99th percentile for height at 6' and King Richard the Lionheart was supposedly 6'5\"... but Alexander the Great and Napoleon were about average. Hard to say much beyond that without speculation.", "The only king i am relatively familair with in terms of height is Henry VIII and his height certainly didn't hurt. He was, IIRC, about 6'2 or 6'3, so pretty tall. In his early years, it certainly helped him estabilsh himself as an athlete (in tournaments and tennis and whatnot) and I certainly doubt it harmed him.\n\nAn example that looks at the other side of the coin, however, is Richard III. if the corpse that was recently recovered is in fact his, then he had scoliosis. ergo, he was a hunchback. that was certainly used to make him out to be more sinister than he already was. (Shakespeare's Richard III as an example of propaganda of course)", "According to Snorri Sturluson, Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, was almost seven feet. Contemporaneously, the English Henry of Huntington described Hardrada as being taller than six feet and taller than most men. So there's a large body of history to support the contention that Hardrada was a very tall individual." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cs7doc6", "cs7g9sc" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "The first use of coins was seen in Lydia, c. 600 BC. I don't know why the Lydians switched to coins, but I will give you a reason why the Greeks switched to this system.\n\nCoins were used in ancient Greece to facilitate trade and make it easier. Multiple cities issued coins, printing their own emblems on them to signify \"city ID\" so it really came down to which cities were trustworthy and which ones were not; could you really take the given weight at face value? For instance, you're trading somebody who hands you a silver coin supposedly weighing 5g (completely arbitrary number). As a merchant, could you accept that it was actually 5g or would you have to weigh it to make sure? Athens issued coins and it was known to be extremely trustworthy; if I were a merchant receiving an Athenian coin, I would trust it. Trading would be easier and go much smoother in general. If it were from a lesser-known city or one with a questionable reputation, I would be inclined to weigh it for myself instead of trusting the supposed value. \n\nSource: [\"The Ancient Mediterranean World: From the Stone Age to A.D. 600\" by Robin Winks](_URL_0_;)", "Look at David graeber's _Debt_, which challenges the idea that barter was the predominant form of exchange before coinage." ] }

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[ [ "https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-ancient-mediterranean-world-9780195155631;jsessionid=7D81A97386BA7DB04C8BC096631061FC?cc=ca&lang=en&amp" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9zdqze", "c9zqdko" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "This is probably not going to help you but the answer is most things are still being actively researched. In some cases the facts have all been acquired and known for decades, but the interpretation of their significance is still contested. ", "There are *thousands.* That's pretty much all historians do. Even extremely well documented people, events, and places have *some* mysteries left to them. Then you get into subjects like ancient central Asia and it's practically a big blank spot except for some archaeological evidence. Historical research is basically all abut looking over the sources and trying to figure it out. If there's only one source, obviously it's going to include the writer's biases and preconceptions, so we have to figure out where they were right or wrong. If there are multiple sources, there are always going to be some inconsistencies between them, and we have to find some way to reconcile those." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f348qo2" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "TLDR: Short answer, Christianity was in decline prior to WWII. Some point to the industrial revolution as to when this change began happening, and by the 1880s, one can see a transformation in religion, as scholarship becomes more critical, and theology has secularism interjected into it. In the US, you also have the rise of the Fundamentalist movement, which is push back to the secularization, which moves from the idea of being religious to spiritual, which effects polls. This all leads up to the Second World War, where people are faced with the problem of evil, and the classical view of God, the all powerful and all loving God really dies off, while theologians try to explain the issue of suffering. This leads to more of a drop off in Christianity as the impact of the Holocaust really changed almost everything. This decline though is felt more in Europe, as by the 1980s, Christianity again begins to rise in the US.\n\nThis is a rather complicated question. WWII, and specifically the Holocaust, changed religion dramatically. According to Murray Haar, in his article, God, the Bible, and Evil after the Holocaust, states that two questions really arise. \"Where was God, and where were we?\" The whole idea of how God and evil relates was changed after the Holocaust. For many, this meant that the classical view of God, as all loving and all powerful, was dead. \n\nIn God's Problem, Bart Ehrman lays out the basic view of theodicy, which deals with the idea of how can God be just if there is so much suffering. This leads to the problem that is based on three assertions. God is all powerful. God is all loving. There is suffering. Not all of these can be true, and that means that to view God, one has to shift the first two assertions a bit. For others, that meant leaving the faith. \n\nThere have been theological arguments that attempt to explain those three assertions. My favorite is by Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. He argues that God wishes to intervene, but God's hands are tied. This has been adopted by others to form a panentheistic view of God, which states that God is both part of us, but also greater than us. So we all have a spark of creativity but to allow that spark to really shine, God has to take a more hands off approach to allow humans to be the creative humans they were created to be. But in order for creative processes to be had, you have to have chaos as well, which can lead to evil. This is the view that Alfred North Whitehead, and process theology have moved towards. \n\nThat is the religious environment that sprouts up after WWII. Seeing the immense evil of the Holocaust demanded that the question of evil and suffering really be addressed. This was especially true for Jewish people. For instance, Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author of Night, speaks of how God was put on trial at Auschwitz. The ruling was that \"God owes us something,\" or chayav. \n\nThere was also something else that had begun in the late 1800s and was kind of wrapping up in the first decade or so of the 1900s. Albert Schweitzer, in his The Quest for the Historical Jesus, outlines how the view of Christianity was changing. His book was published in 1906, and what his attempt was was to look at the scholarship up to that point on Historical Jesus research. But it also gives us an overview of the trends in Christianity at those times. \n\nGoing up through the 1800s and to the 1900s, a less literal approach was being given to the Bible. It was a rise of critical reading of the texts. A lot of the miraculous or supernatural was being disregarded outright, or attempts to explain them through natural means was what was happening. This was spreading not only in the scholarship but also to the lay audiences. So by the time of the 1880s, you begin to see a decline in religious affiliation and you get a push towards more spiritualism. Those who believed in God wasn't declining too fast, but those who identified by a religion was declining. In this you also get the rise of the Fundamentalist church, which was a push back against this more liberal view, as well as the idea of Spiritualism, which was more centered on connecting with spirits and the like. \n\nMartin E Marty has done some great work on this time period and specifically on Fundamentalism. He was part of the Fundamentalism Project, but well worth a read here is Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America. He speaks of how we see a transition from people belonging to a certain denomination, and from attaching a religion to them, to saying they are more spiritual. With that, we get a rise of non-denominational churches as well as inter-denominational churches. And all of this is leading up to the second World War, especially in the United States. Europe had some of the same makings, but Fundamentalism didn't take a hold there. \n\nFor the United States, after the War, while there was still a decline, it wasn't the same as in Europe, and this may have been because there was a different religious foundation in the States. While places like France and England had state religions, the US did away of that and forbade the country from adopting such a practice. This, according to Dr. Mark Hall of the Heritage Foundation, probably made religion more popular in the states. Unlike in Europe, where the churches were supported by tax dollars, in the US there was more of a free market, so religious organizations had to be more innovative. \n\nThat is probably why Christianity rebounded more so in the United States later on. Walter H Capps, in The Quest for Transcendence, looks at how in the 60s, it was declared that God is Dead. America was becoming much more secularized leading up to the 60s and into the 70s, but by the end of the 80s, religion was once again rising. Part of this is because of the fundamentalist movement and a new sort of revivalism. \n\nIn Europe, the decline had also began earlier than the second World War. According to Thomas William Heyck, in his article, The Decline of Christianity in Twentieth-Century Britain, for Britain, the decline began with the industrial revolution. It brought in an era of modernization, which helped spawn more of a secular culture. Modernization didn't produce hostility to Christianity, but it did help people feel more secure and less powerless. We also have the rise of modern science which didn't directly compete with Christianity, but what we see is theologians trying to integrate science and religion, which made the theology more secular. This is really what Albert Schweitzer was also addressing. \n\nBut in Britain, up until the First World War, all the Christian denominations continued to grow, but by the 1880s a shift begins appearing. During the First World War, number fell, and while they would steady themselves in the 20s, and even recover in the late 1940s and 50s, by the 1960s, they were declining as well. \n\nSo in Britain, we do see a modest rise after World War II, but it didn't last. The decline that had already begun in Britain was simply propped up by a few years of what could be considered the shock from the horrors of the Second World War. And then we have the question again rising, if God is all powerful and all loving, how did the Holocaust happen. \n\nNow, I can't cover all of Europe, but I will touch on Germany quickly. Jack D Shand wrote a great article titled The Decline of Traditional Christian Beliefs in Germany. He's looking at just the time from 1967 to 1992 in his article. But Germany had a lot of the same similar ups and downs with religion as Britain did. \n\nI mention Germany because I think they can really show why there was a decline. So in West Germany, from 1967 to 1992, the belief in God fell from 68 percent to 56 percent. People were also going to church a whole lot less, and traditional beliefs fell. For instance, in 1967, 42 percent believed Jesus was son of God. In 1992, that number had dropped to 29 percent. \n\nMuch of this was split along a generation gap as well. Those who were 30 or younger only half as many believed that Jesus was the son of God, as compared to those who were older. There was also a push back against the Pope, with 54 percent of those who attended Mass in 1967 accepting the infallibility of the Pope and the Virgin birth, to only 36% believing the same in 1992. \n\nMost telling though was that non-traditional forms of Christianity, those who say they are spiritual and not religious, grew considerable during that time. While traditional Christianity was shrinking (such as Catholicism and the major Protestant churches), non-denominational or what could be called heretical forms of Christianity were growing. \n\nThis is the trend that we see in not only Germany, but also in the United States and Britain (more so in the US). After WWII, while there was a decline, there also arose a larger movement that didn't consider themselves religious, but spiritual. In Germany and Britain, this didn't amount to a growth in theist views over all, but in the US, by the 80s, there was a revival taking place." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d570ra3" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "When the Soviets were converting PzIIIs to SU-76Is, two weak links were discovered in the \"donor\" tank, namely the [engine](_URL_1_) and [tires](_URL_0_).\n\nHowever, these issues are not even close to what the Tiger and Panther suffered from. *Survey of Allied Tank Casualties in World War II* also covers German tanks left over on the battlefield. Out of 100 PzIIIs, PzIVs, and StuGs, 40 were abandoned due to breakdown, and 60 were destroyed in combat. The Tigers and Panthers were not so lucky: Guderian estimates that 60-70% of Panthers were lost as a result of breakdown rather than enemy action, and a POW (tanker with 8 years of experience) is quoted as saying that over half of all Panthers broke down during march rather than during fighting." ] }

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[ [ "http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2014/11/su-76i-trials.html", "http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2014/12/weakest-link.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dsv1yti" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ " > first two world wars\n\n > Russia's losses\n\n > collapse\n\nDo you mean to ask about the heavy casualties in the wars and how they related to the rise and fall of the USSR? There are other.. stranger interpretations of this question so I'm trying to clarify for others." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fb1psgl" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "[A related thread might interest you](_URL_0_). It had several responses, although by no means should this discourage further ones!" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/e01esa/given_that_preislamic_arabia_was_a_very/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e7n3lqo", "e7n3mxm", "e7n3oj0", "e7n3p7v", "e7n3p83", "e7n3qz8", "e7n48kv", "e7n4kc9", "e7n4tqo", "e7n4z4r", "e7n56e9", "e7n5c7c", "e7n5f5f", "e7n5hlk", "e7n5jrl", "e7n5ndh", "e7n5scl", "e7n5txx", "e7n61r9", "e7n699r", "e7n6bt5", "e7n6ecw", "e7n6ioj", "e7n6ks2", "e7n6mxv", "e7n6psu", "e7n7106", "e7n7116", "e7n712s", "e7n71g4", "e7n7758", "e7n791t", "e7n7brq", "e7n7ep3", "e7n7gh5", "e7n7jh2", "e7n7lcj", "e7n7lfs", "e7n7n3q", "e7n7ny2", "e7n7ovd", "e7n7smq", "e7n7zwd", "e7n8ge9", "e7n8h6k", "e7n8l7w", "e7n8m5v", "e7n8q20", "e7n8thw", "e7n92tk", "e7n93da", "e7n98z3", "e7n9kto", "e7na0w6", "e7naax5", "e7nagha", "e7nahid", "e7naj8q", "e7nas3s", "e7nauee", "e7nawhw", "e7nb1t7", "e7nb2k4", "e7nb42f", "e7nbdtd", "e7nblzn", "e7nbswa", "e7nc1xv", "e7nce53", "e7ndrzz", "e7ne8tc", "e7nedtb", "e7nevv1", "e7nfch6", "e7nfcn2", "e7nfh3e", "e7nfnpd", "e7ngdfn", "e7nh2x9", "e7nih6s", "e7niuco", "e7nium6", "e7nk31x", "e7nk5r1", "e7nktqw", "e7nl15d", "e7nlaur", "e7nm2hj", "e7nmgil", "e7nn7fi", "e7np14e", "e7npkwe", "e7nq1w0", "e7nqtx4", "e7nqzi7", "e7nr2of", "e7ns0wr", "e7nsdrq", "e7nt4jm", "e7nt5xc", "e7nv6y8", "e7nvcmg", "e7nw9k6", "e7nysso", "e7o0gzu", "e7o4elb", "e7o6w1r", "e7o8npd", "e7o9ka8", "e7oji0i", "e7ojl0k", "e7ok505", "e7oklol", "e7oktyt", "e7om1hm", "e7om43f", "e7om8m6", "e7omjz0", "e7omoyr", "e7onsc4", "e7onvf6", "e7onwje", "e7oolf7", "e7osyo7", "e7otnij", "e7ouwqr", "e7ovhdx", "e7oxjsr", "e7oxw5x", "e7p0wnm", "e7p21l9", "e7p3z8x", "e7p4txw" ], "score": [ 293, 44, 874, 167, 5, 2, 249, 7, 105, 66, 14, 51, 142, 278, 115, 13, 19, 99, 27, 31, 4, 25, 4, 7, 6, 5, 6, 30, 12, 23, 19, 10, 2, 14, 20, 54, 32, 5, 496, 26, 3, 14, 6, 2, 91, 9, 61, 36, 2, 11, 15, 4, 3, 2, 5, 4, 11, 2, 2, 80, 15, 7, 3, 2, 31, 2, 4, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 4, 3, 22, 2, 2, 3, 5, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 3, 3, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 7, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 6, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "No one ever talks about Thebes, why not?", "How much money did a soldier make of that era, and was the pay different for type of soldiers?", "Besides Thucydides, what sources do historians draw on in order to form an image of these battles?\n\nAlso, have anyone found weapons, armor and other remains that are definitively from these battles?", "How much of naval combat was ship on ship actions like ramming? There were obviously people on the vessels but how much of an impact did archers, marines, etc. play in the grand scheme of a battle?\n\nAre there any actual records of giant melees in battles that weren’t a rout? That’s always the go-to to look cool in movies and games but breaking formation historically seems to have never ended well.", "What were the biggest battles during the war? I know that the siege of Athens was a turning point (due to the plague from grain) but other than that what else?", "Would you describe one, if not several, of the stratagies used within their army that had been successful during their time?\n\nEDIT: To know some of their best units would be great as well.\n", "Socrates was noted for his bravery in the war. After the end of the war, he purported to side with the Spartans in the way they ruled Athens. In what ways did Athenian culture change when do the war? And did Spartan culture also change?", "What's the general opinion in the academy of Victor Davis Hanson's work? ", "Which is your favorite: Sparta or Athens?", "What did they do with booty? Was loot a free-for-all or did the generals claim a significant share?", "What in the world were the Spartan's thinking at Sphacteria?", "How realistic are the same-sex romance scenes in the game? \n\n_URL_0_", "How (in your opinion) could have Athens won the war? Or what mistakes did Athens make that stopped them from winning? ", "What kind of roles would women have had related to the war? Would they be nurses, laborers, weapon-makers, soldiers, etc?", "Why did Sparta refuse to destroy Athens? Was it a sense of honor or something else?", "What role did cavalry play in battles, and in what capacity did their role change over the course of the war.", "What was the cause of the war? Was there a single moment like there was for WWI? or was it just a build up between Athens and Sparta?", "How did the plague of Athens affect the war? I can only imagine how badly it affected Athenian morale and leadership.", "In Greek tales taking place during battles like the story of Troy, it often has someone stop fighting so they could retrieve the body of the person they killed\n\nWould this really happen back then", "i have a question though not on warfare unfortunately, the game has a lot of underwater and offshore ruins some of which are named others not. for example one such being a sunken temple to Aphrodite \n\nmy question is were ruins like these real or are they more elements to populate the game world", "It's not a conflict I know much about, so a \"simple\" question:\n\nIf you had to sum up the entire conflict in a single sentence or short paragraph, what would it be?", "What single fact about the Peloponnesian war is unknown but you would give up your little toe to know the answer?", "Who in Sparta thought it was a good idea to install the 30 tyrants which eventually led to the reversal to all of Sparta’s progress and victory in the Peloponnesian war?\n\nThanks for doing this btw!\n\n\nEdit:\n\nD:", "In your opinion which of the Greek City states was the most powerful in terms of military and economic prowess? I know most people think of Sparta when it comes warfare but in truth was it another?", "What impact did this war have on later events like the conquest of the Macedonians? Did this war set the stage for that in some ways like how WW1 set the stage for WW2?", "How, and how much, was military intelligence used? Were people convicted of spying often? Were people's movements curtailed in the presence of an occupation? Travel papers issued? Who utilized intelligence more? Etc...", "I've heard that Corinth is the most able on naval warfare amongst Sparta's ally. If that true, how did they fare against Athenian navy ?", "Creasy listed the Battle of Syracuse as one of the 15 most decisive battles in history. How important was the battle to the overall defeat of Athens? And, given that Athens is today the capital of Greece while most people don't even know where Sparta *is* (and today it's basically a small town), does it deserve to be included?", "Were dogs involved at all in this war? If so approximately how many?", "All thing considered (training, armament, leadership, etc.), how capable was the Theban black band compared to the run-of-the-mill Spartan hoplite? And were Athenian hoplites as shit as everyone says?\n\nP.S.: Not to gush but you are exactly what I want to be when I finish school.", "I'm afraid I've got more than one question:\n\n1. During the Peace of Nicias, was there at all a sense of a continuing state of 'cold war' with Sparta, if you will, or was it genuinely believed that there would be a lasting settlement?\n\n2. Do we know anything of how the other Greek states reacted to Sparta obtaining Persian support, and if this had any bearing on the Thermopylae myth?\n\n3. How much of a contribution did Sparta make relative to its allies in terms of manpower and material support? Were they simply the nexus around which the alliance revolved? Did this differ between the Archidamian and Decelean wars?", "I read that Persia supported Sparta at the end of the war. What was the strategical benefit of them helping Sparta? Why did Sparta use them despite their past?", "Have you played the game? My question is, why is the Temple of a lot of the gods in disarray? I traveled by the Temple of Athena and it was burned down and all rubble. ", "What was the likelihood of a warrior fighting without a shield in the era? \n\nNot on the topic of warfare but if someone else knows about this I would like to know the answer to a different question. In the game there are sidequests from hetaera, did they really differ from the pornai significantly in how they were viewed by society?", "Do we know what actually physically happened when two phalanx came together in battle? You have long lines of men with long spears but it seems there is a great deal in attention placed on the push forward. \nHow were they able to actually bring shield to shield pushing on each other with a 6, 8, or 10 ft spear poking out in front of them? ", "I guess this is not about the Peloponnesian War, hope that is okay.\n\nYou mentioned [here](_URL_0_) fairly recently that all the examples of battles by champions and duels deciding conflicts in Greek warfare were mythical or semi-mythical and a historian, Dayton, believes such forms of combat \"may have been a real attempt to reduce the human cost of war\".\n\nReading that answer now, I am reminded of parallels in East Asia which I wrote about [here](_URL_1_), in which duels were common place, or even played a central role, in historical fiction, where as the evidence in reality is that while the commander and his guards might have lead the charge, duels were rare exceptions and seldom decided anything.\n\nI believe similar theories were once believed in European warfare as well that have since been rejected: knights only fighting duels (they did not), or fighting was confined to the knightly class to lessen the human cost on society (ignoring conscripting and raids the burnt and pillaged everything), classical fighting only decisive battles to lessen casualties and material damage (you frequently pick this appart), etc.\n\nSo for my part, not being an expert on Greek Warfare but seeing parallels elsewhere in history and historiography, I am more inclined to just dismiss the entire thing as fiction, and that while champions and their guards might have led the charge, duels, even in the mythical and archaic ages, were extremely rare and cases when they decided something even rarer.\n\nAre there historians of Classical Greek warfare of this same belief, and what do you think about this hypothesis?\n\n**EDIT:** Just to actually add a question on the Peloponnesian War:\n\nThe war ended when Sparta, the self-acclaimed leader of all the Greeks against the Persians, who continues to use this as justification for Spartan leadership, acquired funding from the Persians for a fleet to match the Athenians so they can finally challenge the Athenians at sea.\n\nHow did Lysander convince the conservative Spartans to allow such an action, and was there any pushback from within Sparta itself or from the rest of Greece against this hypocrisy?", "Any books you recommend?", "Is there a current consensus on what the Athenian plague actually was? I've heard a lot of theories, but when I last looked at the topic 6 years ago it seemed like a lot of people were leaning towards the bubonic plague. Has that changed?", "I'm currently teaching this in a very simplified way to a class of 8 and 9 year olds. We are only really exploring the war because of their curiosity, but they are ridiculously enthusiastic about our Topic of Ancient Greece and have fractured into two factions who prefer either Sparta or Athens. Are there any great (suitable!) facts you would share with this age group? This whole thread has been great so thank you!", "Alcibiades is one of my favorite historical figures who gets no love (though probably deservingly) in most history classes I’ve taken. What are some interesting parts of his life/influence that get overlooked even by people familiar with him?", "What's your theory for what happened to Thucydides that meant his work cuts out in 410BC? It's also debated if Thucydides or Herodotus was the first historian, what's your view on this?", "Thank you for this.\n\n* My understanding is that Donald Kagan is the goto historian for this setting. Do you agree?\n\n* Many people call Thucydides the first articulation of realpolitik, but a running theme I sense in his *History* is an unabashed appreciation for the ideals that Pericles espoused. Do you think Thucydides \"bought\" these ideals (and Athenian manifest destiny), or saw them as propaganda?\n\n* My friend once joked that the Greeks never recovered from the Peloponnesian War. Is there any merit in that?", "How exaggerated are army numbers in ancient history? Numbers in the hundred thousands seem unfeasible for the time, so were they really that big? Thanks in advance!", "How much did \"the illiad\" affect Greek warfare? Also did people of that time take it as fact?", "Everytime Athens and Sparta are represented in media, we see their citizens, soldiers, and ships outfitted in blue and red garb, respectively. How accurate is this, if at all?", "[One of your answers](_URL_0_) indicated the lack of physical evidence so, presumably, few \"new finds\" in archaeology are going to pop up to change the discourse of your field of study. First, is that assumption correct? If so (or in spite of it), other than trends in theory for warfare, like the dreaded Hoplite debate, where do you foresee new evidence or methodology to further the discourse in your field springing from? Will reenactment studies play a bigger role later on or will they continue to be mired with bickering?\n\nRelated to that question, with scarce physical evidence are army sizes, logistical analyses of campaigns, and strategic movements of troops, like on those [pretty battle phase maps](_URL_1_) that we see in pop history books, mostly conjecture and taking source material at face value?\n\nAnd lastly, thank you for taking time to do this. Even though it is a passion of yours, it is still very time consuming and many people appreciate that sacrifice.", "I mean, i's only tangentially connected, but we've heard the rough descriptions of Athens as this center of culture, and Sparta as this rough and tumble, fight to survive world, but to what extent was this real, and to what extent was this stereotyping by other Greek city states? Were there other stereotypes for other city states that have been recorded? Were stereotypes such as these utilized in propaganda to make the war seem righteous? Or was the mentality of the time, \"They have stuff, we want it,\" and that was all?", "How good were the Spartan millitary in reality? I know Hollywood and the media loves to portray them as amazing superhumans.\nBut I've read that their milliary prowess was greatly exaggerated and that they were just better than average due to their more regular training, and that they didn't might not even have had the best hoplites in Greece.\n", "How integral was Greek tribal loyalty in choosing sides? Did all Dorian Greeks side with Sparta and did all Ionian Greeks side with Athens? Or was it really a case by case basis?", "The Peloponnesian War is a staple in the poli sci / international relations literature as an example of the problems that arise when a rising power challenges an established power (also known as the [Thucydides trap](_URL_0_)), and it's commonly used to draw parallels between the US and China today.\n\nWhat kinds of lessons did Thucydides' contemporaries take away from his account of the war? As a historian who studied the war in detail, would you agree with the basic premise that the war was primarily caused by a shift in the balance of power between Athens and Sparta?\n\n\n\n", "Can you speak to Macedons importance/influence in the earlier days of the Peleponnesian league? I have always wondered how relatively powerful they were considered to be in the pre-Phillip/Alexander days. And did their military organization have any distinguishing features (compared to to the other greek city states) before Phillip implemented his reforms?", "Oh! This is my favorite historical episode.\n\nCan you tell me what you believe happened to Alcibiades at the end of his life? Some say he was assassinated in Turkey while others say he just disappeared into the Hellespont. ", "What part did Alcibiades play in the Peloponnesian War?", "I haven’t actually played the game but what are the best books to read about this war? Are there any particular battles that have fascinated you personally and what happened during these? How accurate are sources about these battles? I’ve heard a lot how the Spartans liked to toot their own horn, is this accurate or were they as elite as they said they were?", "As I understand it, the name of the war is a more modern name for it? Assuming my assumption is correct, what did the people of the time call it?\n\nAlso if I may get a second question in, was there much ‘international’ involvement from neighbouring nations seeking to put a horse in the race, so to speak?", "What impact did the war have on agricultural production in Greece? Did it result in shortages or even famine?", "Were hoplites still the core of greek armies at this point?", "Do you think the experience of the Peloponnesian War or the economic prosperity or government of Athens at large had a bigger impact on the cultural golden age they experienced? It’s a question I’ve been interested in for a while but I’ve never seen it debated as to WHY Athens boomed culturally so much during the period. ", "Beyond food, where did an army source it's equipment? Did armies fight over resources to produce equipment?", "Oh my god yes thank you so much, an egyptologist did an AMA for origins last year and it was fantastic. My question is about the armor they would have worn. In game the basic Athenian soldiers look accurate enough except for using a spear instead of a sword, but the Spartans are only wearing a helmet with a spear. What armor was generally used by the sides? Thank you for doing this.", "Are there any good sources you would recommend about the athenian navy in the 5th century BCE in general? (I‘m writing a relatively short paper about it for my ancient greek course)\n\nThank you very much!", "I've seen depictions of Spartan warriors with a lambda glyph on their shield, presumably for \"Laconia\". How common was this, and did the warriors from other city states follow this practice?", "I’m actually trying to research Classical Greece for my History Courses at my University!\n\nDo you have any sources for warfare and and the factions involved you’d recommend about the Peloponnesian war? I’ve especially been having a little trouble finding reliable sources for images.\n\nThanks!", "Other than Leuctra, is Epaminondas famous for any other battles? How did the Spartans react? Did they adapt their tactics? Or try to avoid him", "Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey has you play as a mercenary. \n\nIn real life, what were the roles that mercenaries played in the Peloponnesian War? Were they very prominent, and was anyone especially noteworthy?", " Thucydides famously says that the true cause of the Peloponnesian War was the growing imbalance in power between Sparta and Athens. Namely that the growth of Athenian power challenged the existing Spartan led power structure. This is a widely cited and influential observation in foreign policy circles. \n\nTo the best of your knowledge, is this the actual cause of the conflict? ", "I was wondering if you could talk about the Urban Warfare in Ancient Greece as when I think of the decisive battles of wars in that era (Gaugamela, Marathon, Leuctra) they were all fought outside of cities. \n\nWhere there any significant urban battles in Ancient Greek Warfare? Did tactics like the phalanx change while fighting in the cities?", "I hate coming into these threads late, and hope this doesn't get lost, but I have not seen anything mentioned here about Lysistrata. If I'm right, this was first performed in 411 BC, which puts it more or less in the middle of the war. Do we know about anti-war moments in this time, or if any of this comedy had a basis in reality?", "What do you consider to be the most humourous fact about the war, something you could use to entertain and grab people's interest?", "Super awesome of you to do an AMA in response to the game! I've been reading through some of the questions so far and you've provided some very interesting answers. Thanks for giving us a glimpse into the past. \n & nbsp; \nI was unsure what to go with, but absolutely wanted to ask something. I'm not far into the game and also am not very knowledgeable about this time period, but here goes: \n & nbsp; \n- In your opinion, what was so special about the Spartans that contributed to them becoming such a pop-culture phenomenon in our era? and further, what happened to Sparta/Spartan culture that lead to them no longer being around today? \n & nbsp; \nThanks again for your time!", "Thank you for the AMA, Dr. Konijnendijk! Can you speak to the use of mercenaries in the war and how they'd compare to Spartan/Athenian \"regulars\"? I suspect mercenaries would have been hired companies at a time rather than singular \"champions\" and primarily used in roles similar to Roman auxiliaries (skirmishers, cavalry, or other specialty support roles) but how would their skills rate compared to a typical Spartan or Athenian company if an equivalent existed in the regular army? I've heard that hoplites were actually pretty rare - what did a field army from either side typically consist of? ", "Did the concept of war crimes exist back then? How did they view the atrocities of war? Did the greeks have notions of : \n1)bad things you do if you win (or bad things that happen to you if you lose) \n2)Bad things that happen if things go nasty \n3)Bad things that never happen, or if they do, they are remembered and condemned", "I learned a while back that the ancient Greeks were the first to develop the crossbow. Was it even used in battles or was it just a design concept that didn’t see use till much later?", "Should we take the Melian dialogue to be a genuine outline of Realpolitik, or are its intentions more literary - for example in foreshadowing Sicily?", "When I think of Ancient Greece, I tend to think of it as \"European\", and it's neighboring powers of Persia and Egypt as \"Non-European\". But after reading some posts on AH it seems like they were far more interconnected than I thought, and that the idea of Ancient Greece being \"European\" and Persia being \"not European\" is a modern narrative that tries to trace \"Western Civilization\" to the ancients. Would it make more sense, then, to think of the entire Greece/Near East/Egypt region as a \"Eastern Mediterranean\" region, rather than dividing it up into \"Europe/Asia/Africa\" regions? ", "Were there any technological advances during the war? And by technology I would include weaponry, but also things like strategy and fortifications or even supply line instantiation. And how effectively were these advances deployed i.e. to what effect?\n\nEdit:\nIn what way did each city appeal to the gods for success? How did the priestly class play a role, if any, in the war effort? ", "Why does it seem like Greece produced so many \"thinkers\" (philosophers, mathematicians, historians, etc.) compared to other Eastern Mediterranean cultures, and why did they have such great influence for so long (the Romans, the Caliphates, etc. all seemed to greatly value Greek texts and knowledge.) ", "This is a very open ended question with probably a ton of answers and I'm sorry. I know (what I consider to be alot) about this time period and the famous or historical people to come out of this time. What I want to know is if there are any ones I missed because what this perosn contributed to history or w.e isnt considered like Socrates. Idk how to word the question better. Basically I like AC because of the historical characters you meet. There are a bunch I know in AC Odyssey but what are the less famous ones. ", "Hi u/Iphikrates My question is: Was there an actual secret cult trying to control Greece and their relations at the time? Also was there any belief in supernatural objects that involved those secret Cults?\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAnd how was the Sparta Architecture? Were they scientifically and architecturally as advanced as the other nations? I understand that they prefer a minimal, more humble, rural buildings for their people, less extravagant and embellished. Thanks for your time.", "How did Greek phalanxes hold their dory? Underhand resting on the shield as portrayed in 300 or overhand like a javelin thrower would hold it? Would they hold it in both ways in different times for different purposes?", "This may already be asked, if so I apologize, but any books you recommend to those wanting to learn more?", "Are there any good works out there that describe the life of subaltern's during the Wars that are accessible outside academia?", "The new Assassin's Creed game has a young character, about 10-12 years old, running errands across Athens and even being sent off to different cities to engage in (potentially) dangerous activity. Was giving such young children this level of independence and responsibility common at the time?", "What would be the best source to learn more about the Athens-Spartan dispute as well as the Persian invasion that took place around that time? ", "What happened to soldiers who were captured by the opposing side? Were they sold into slavery? Ransomed back to the other side? \n\nAlso, how common were mercenaries in Classical Greece?", "Where the battles really as chaotic as they are portrayed? Or where they more organized with front lines and archers?\n\nAlso, did the sides actually hire mercs for every battle?\n\nThanks for doing this!", "A longstanding modern reading of the war, particularly via Thucydides' writings, has been to see the Peloponnesian War as ideological contest as much as anything else. Do you feel that the belligerents understood it to be an ideological conflict in any significant sense?", "Could hidden blades like the ones in AC have existed as they are (spring loaded or something like that) in ancient Greece?", "In Thucyides (IV, 47) it describes corcyreans trapped in a building being summarily taken out and killed by crowds in batches of 20 until the men in the building refused to go out any longer. And so, the captors broke the roof and began hurling missiles and anything that would kill them. Some began to take their own lives and this lasted most of the night. This seems incredibly brutal, Thuc. even says fathers kill their own sons (III, 81). \n\nWas this the norm for greek warfare? I understand that the ancient world was definitely harsher than our own but christ in heaven it's a bit grim. \n\nDid people during this time understand that this was what war is or were they just as shocked to hear of this?", "How common was the practice of taking military prisoners during this period, and what would the experience be like for someone who surrendered? Could a well-off hoplite expect to be treated reasonably well and then return home after a ransom or prisoner exchange, or would capture typically just mean immediate loss of status and enslavement? ", "Just want to say this thread is A+ and you are doing a great service here :)", "The role of Argos in the war (especially during the Peace of Nikias and the \"war\" fought during the Peace) has always confused me - from what I recall their political system and motivations are somewhat of an enigma. Is this primarily because no sources about Argos remain or were even writers in antiquity (like Plutarch) in the dark about the city? Thank you!", "Als Leids Geschiedenis Student, groet ik je", "What was life like for a slave during the Peloponnesian War? Did the Spartans and Athenians treat their slaves any differently?", "To start, /u/Iphikrates, this is an outstanding (and by my memory, quite a large) AMA you have hosted and I salute you for it. \n\nI asked on the main sub why pop culture seems to like to depict Athens as blue and Sparta as red (*Odyssey* does the same). Do we know where or who this comes from? \n\nLysander seems to appear almost out of nowhere when he assumed a leading role in defeating Athens, what do we know of his (apparently allegedly lower class) background in Spartan society? Sparta is typically casted as naval-ignorant, what was the general attitude to a Spartan making his fighting name on the sea as opposed to the land? ", "Very specific topic you got there. I don't have a question right now but I love everything Ancient Greece and studied a bit of Greek and Roman civilisation in college and just wanted to say you're awesome ", "I'm aware that the backbone of the greek armies at the time were made out of citizens acting as hoplites, peltasts and such, however, I am also aware that the greeks were pretty big on slavery, my question is:\n\nWhat roles, if any, would a slave fill on a greek army? Would they receive any benefits participating in the war effort?", "I've read multiple times that the Persian's would routinely give money to the Athenians or the Spartans (depending on who was actually winning the war at that point), in order to keep the war going and strengthen one side or the other. \n\n\nDo we have any actual evidence of this happening, from say, Persian sources? Because to me it smells a little of propaganda designed to frighten other city states into siding with someone.", "Since you mentioned Assassin's Creed...how prominent were assassinations at this time, especially during war? Were they brazen affairs (knife in a crowd or arrow in public) or did they tend to run a bit more subtle (poison, made to look accidental, etc..)?", "Hi there! So I was wondering—they taught us *Antigone* in a literature class when I was in high school, using a translation by Aharon Shabtai. I read some of the comments at the end of the translation, and it mentioned that the play was partially written as an anti-war statement: political divisions are no excuse to give up our basic human (and religious) values, and in fact it was said that people at the time would have agreed with Creon’s actions. However, this was not mentioned at all in class, and I partially assumed that it was a form of political censorship of ‘leftist’ ideas.\n\nWas it really a political statement the way Shabtai interpreted it, or is that just a very personal and perhaps fringe interpretation?", "Is it true that Sparta (all Greek city/states?) typically sent two commanders (generals or admirals) to lead their forces in battle? If so, what was the thinking behind that and do we know if it did work well? ", "Do you think it's realistic that the hoplite phalanx, when engaged in battle, involved a pervasive \"push,\" or ὠθισμός, which required all of the ranks behind the first one to push against the ranks in front of them? The ancient sources seem to take this for granted, but it seems highly implausible to me. It seems like it would result in tripping over each other, getting tangled up in each other's equipment, and, for the front ranks, the risk of falling and getting trampled by those behind you. I know there's been scholarly debate about this, but my sense is that contemporary historians are in a \"trusting\" mood, i.e., very hesitant to second-guess the reports of ancient authors on such matters. What's your take? What's the general consensus among other historians?", "Do we know much about supply lines? How were they armed, clothed, fed, sheltered, entertained?", "This question might be a little off in terms of time period, but I would love some detailed information on ancient ballistas. I've read from limited sources then they could throw stones as large as 250 kg, and there are some drawings I've seen that look almost comically massive. Around when did ballistas start seeing frequent use in warfare, how varied could their size and function be, and could they be have built as ridiculously huge as some pictures that can be found on Google depict. Thanks in advance, and keep being awesome. :)", "Did they really have that many huge stone statues?", "Is there any truth to the idea that the Peloponnesian War was financed by the Persians?\n\nAnd if so, was it a byproduct of Persian fears of a united Greek army being able to waltz through the Persian empire ( after being helpless to stop the 10,000 greek hoplites from marching home in the Anabasis ).\n\n( I guess pretty realistic fears given what Alexander was finally able to accomplish ).\n\nAny merit? Or just an ancient conspiracy theory?", "While Sparta was known for its warriors, I’m curious just how elite Spartan hoplites were. Is there a modern day equivalent to the difference of skill between a spartan and say, an Athenian hoplite?", "I love history just as much as any history fanatic (my area of interest being WW1, WW2, and The American Civil War). I've always loved history in school no matter what era was being talked about. I'm a senior in high school and have no more history classes, unfortunately. Would AC: Odyssey be a good game to learn about the history of this war, as I do want to work my way towards learning about The Greeks and Romans?", "God I love these posts. This one most of all, excellent work OP", "What do you think of the mythical creatures aspect of the game? Sorry if repeat question", "Why is Kassandra better than Alexios ", "Is assasins creed odyssey true in terms of the events that took place?", "Why did Athens in the middle of the war decided to invade Sicily ?", "What did they eat? \n\nHow often did they shower?\n\nWhere did they set up bathrooms?\n\nHow did they entertain the troops to keep up morale?\n\nHow did they spread news about sudden battle plan changes?\n\n", "I'm a simple man, I hear \"Sparta\" and I automatically think \"one of the world's best military nations in all of history. \n\nMy question(s): How far is this from the truth? Were Spartans actually the world's greatest soldiers at the time? ", "Didn’t this war set the stage for Greece to be weakened and for Macedon (Phillip & Alexander) to later come to power and take control of the region?", "Did the Greeks have a gay army, can you dispel or verify the myth of the Greeks having their lovers as fighters as this made them fight harder? ", "I've enjoyed this thread, thanks!", "How is Thucydides viewed in the scholarly community today? He seems to traditionally have had a reputation as an exceptional historian who was ahead of his time; is that still widely believed? ", "Do you think Pericles's strategy was effective and his death was a major blow for Athens? Thucydides seems to very much take this view but Donald Kagan in his lecture series argues the opposite and that Cleon's more aggressive stance was vital to getting to a position where they were offered good terms (though that position was then squandered)", "what do you think about historicality in modern pop culture? as a still studying historian myself, i think its a great and very innovative way to teach history, especially with games and such. sometimes its very difficult to potray the historic events accurate and not make the whole thing very boring. what do you think about the line between historic accuaracy and entertainment?\n\n\nassassins creed is notable one of the well known games to portray historic events, just as an example, but there are much more games/tv-shows and such.", "What book on the subject (which is relatively concise) would you recommend to someone who’s unfamiliar with the period but is interested in learning more, partly at least in the hopes of enjoying A.C. Odyssey more than if they had gone in without any prior knowledge?", "In my Classics classes at school, the war was usually summarised as \"Athens versus Sparta,\" with perhaps an offhand reference to the Sicilian expedition. In undergrad courses, more attention is paid to the various allies and other actors like Corinth and Thebes.\n\nSo having said that: given the war stretched from Sicily to Asia Minor, to what extent should we see the conflict not as a battle between Greek city states but a broader struggle across the central and eastern Mediterranean? \nThat is to say: if I was a Satrap of one of Persia's western provinces, or a merchant out of Tyre, or even an Etruscan or southern Italian nobleman- how aware would I be of this major conflict, and to what extent would it affect my own society?", "Dr Konijnendijk? My physics professor is called Konijnendijk too! ", "I don't know if this has alreasy been answered but can you recommend any good reading material on the period?", "Would it be fair to say that it is dangerous for someone to really enjoy/idolise Spartan culture? Given eugenics and everything else involved?I'm taking ancient Greek history now and honestly can't believe people think Spartans are good guys.", "I've heard unsubstantiated rumors that a lot of battles during this war and earlier wars we're basically yelling matches with a javelin toss at the beginning.\n\nIs there a uniform way that battles proper was carried out?\n\nAnd also, did Spartans really carry all of their wounded/dead on the shields after the battle, or was the just prose from poetry taken literally or a gesture performed before burial?\n\n\nThanks in advance! ", "How relevant is Greek warfare or the Peloponnesian war in your life? I just don't see how anyone can find reason to continue in such a dead field. I understand we need to know history, but was that the only thing going on that week or..?", "I know this is a big question but how did Alexander \"unite\" Sparta and Athens after so much?", "How come the Persians got their asses whooped by Athens and Sparta?", "Did the Spartan mystic actually impact Sparta’s success? ", "Loving this thread so much! Big thanks...\n\n\nHow did the war shape Greece with regards to Alexander's domination, specifically how did it create a situation where Macedonian hegemony was possible?", "How did the Peloponnesian War effect the Olympics and other Panhellenic festivals? I image the rivalry between Sparta and Athens was deep seeded enough to cause a plethora of issues. And to expand on that - do we see any competitions between Spartans and Athenians in the way we would see, say, Rocky Balboa versus that Soviet fellow in the Rocky films. 2 elite competitors, fighting it out for the honor of their polis... The people watching at the edge of their seat... I think you get the point. Anyway, would love to hear about this topic! \n\nThank you! " ] }

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[ "https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/roel-konijnendijk#tab-1" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "d13zlqb" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Roman historians (Polybius, etc.) explained it as offering the Romans a way to fight as they did on land - drop your spiked drawbridge on the enemy ship, then fight hand-to-hand. On the other hand, the Carthaginians came from the very long Phoenician maritime tradition, which would never have given them a reason to even think about fighting in that manner. That Phoenician tradition is also what informed Persian and Greek seamanship, hence why they all had fairly similar approaches to naval warfare. The Romans started with a clean slate, and their very unconventional solution was somewhat successful, at least allowing them to hold firm at sea until they overthrew Carthage by land." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1iqzz1" ], "score": [ 69 ], "text": [ "Warfare is rarely a pleasant time to be a civilian, and medieval western Europe was no exception. Church councils from the high Middle Ages inveigh against the violent and rapacious secular lords who maraude across their own territory and that of others'. More rarely, they will even convict *ecclesiastical* lords of similar crimes. In 1049, the Council of Reims charged Bishop Hugh of Langres with armed action, homicides, extortion, and \"tyranny\" over his clergy. If the Church was charging a Churchman, you know it had to be bad.\n\nThe accusation *tyrannus*, in fact, is all over 11th-12th century sources. Sometimes peasants would even unite to protest against ill treatment by their own lord.\n\nA particularly big fear arising out of petty warfare between nobles was arson. Pope Paschal even went so far as to equate the crime of arson with *sacrilege*--that's how devastating it could be to property, life, and farmfields.\n\nSiege warfare was another area of frequent and utter brutality. Although Christian scholars did not really start theorizing about \"rules of war\" until later in the 14th century, the general principle was that *any* party who remained in a town under siege was automatically an enemy combatant. Even women and children, who were sometimes given the chance to leave the town safely before the siege \"officially\" began, would earn this label if they stayed. Beyond the hardships of being in a besieged town or castle, the outcome if the fortifications fell was almost certainly death for men; potentially death for women, but also the danger of rape and enslavement.\n\nI've talked before on AH about the sexual violence of warfare in the [medieval and early modern world more broadly](_URL_0_), so I'll bring over the relevant parts of that answer to this post as well.\n\nIn a town or fortification facing a siege, women and children were typically given a choice: flee or stay. Many (most?) chose to stay and help defend their town--we know women were crucial in building and repairing fortifications, and running weapons and provisions to men guarding the walls. (In addition to women who fought directly, like the famous Gesche Meiburg).\n\nBut if the town or castle fell, it would be subject to plunder by the enemy soldiers: the seizure of wealth in the churches and monasteries, the execution of men who'd been fighting, the rape and probable execution of the women who stayed. With apologies for straying into early modern, when Protestants captured the town of Pamiers during the French wars of religion, they broke into Catholic families' houses and raped the women they found. The soldiers threw rocks at women and children who fled, trying to stop them.\n\nPlunder was considered the soldiers' right, and this extended to women's bodies. Peter Hagendorf of Bavaria, a rare example of a literate soldier in the earliest modern era, noted in his meticulous diary:\n\n > I took a young girl with me from Pforzheim, too, but I let her go back in again. I was sorry about this because at the time I had no wife.\n\nBut women outside towns and castles under siege might not fare any better. Villagers forced to house higher-ranking soldiers could well find the nobles demanding sex from their daughters. And those women who did choose to leave towns under siege would, of course, be without protection amidst an enemy army.\n\nWarfare was also a prime source of slaves. On this particular subtopic, most research has concentrated on the Crusades. Nobles in particular had hope that they would be ransomed, and there are a few bright spots of ceremonial use of prisoners-of-war like the role that Arab captives played as honored guests/prisoners at the Byzantine court in the pre-crusader era. But civilian populations as well as the \"camp followers\" who trailed an army to help with logistics (like finding food and repairing clothing) could generally expect no such quarter.\n\nChristian and Muslim sources alike note several possible outcomes: everyone slaughtered, the old people slaughtered and the healthy adults enslaved; the men slaughtered and women enslaved \"because they could always be used to turn the hand mills,\" as Fulcher of Chartes says archly.\n\nFurther reading: A provocative take on the violence of high medieval Europe is Thomas Bisson, *The Crisis of the Twelfth Century.*" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4773sy/how_common_was_sexual_violence_against_women/d0aywry" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6fdl82", "d6fpkbg" ], "score": [ 11, 7 ], "text": [ "Islam has (at least) two separate promised figures: the [Mahdi](_URL_0_), \"the guided one, and the [Masih](_URL_2_), the Messiah, who in Islam is Jesus but not the Son of God. Neither have any more to do with Muhammad than Jesus had to do with Moses, that is to say, they're seen as separate figures in the same sacred tradition. Together they will fight the [Al-Masih ad-Dajjal](_URL_1_), Anti-Christ, at the end of times. \n\nSeveral people have claimed to be one or the other of those figures. Here are a few important ones.\n\nThe Bab in 19th century Iran claimed to be the Mahdi, and promised one great than him. Most Babists became Baha'is, when Bahaullah claimed to be the Mesih (and much more--he claimed to be the promised one of essentially all religions). This is the basis of the modern Baha'i Faith, which probably has about six to eight million adherents worldwide. It also has some of the most beautiful sacred architecture in the world. \n\nMirza Ghulam Ahmad apparently claimed to be both the Mahdi and the Masih in 19th century South Asia. His teachings are the basis for the modern Ahmadiyya faith, which may or may not be separate from Islam. There are two main Ahmadi groups. The larger is called Ahmadiyya Muslim Community (sometimes the last word is left untranslated as Jamaat), the smaller called the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement. Both believe he was the Mahdi and Masih, but the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community claims he was a prophet, while the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement explicitly denies that possibility (they claim when Ahmad himself spoke of being a prophet or a messenger, he was speaking metaphorically). Ahmadis are harder to estimate than Baha'is as they are more likely to be in Muslim majority countries and to some degree hidden. There's probably fewer than a million Lahoris (maybe fewer than 100,000) and maybe in excess of ten million mainstream Ahmadis. \n\nThere's apparently another surviving Mahdi-inspired group, the Mahdavia, in South Asia today, following a 15th century Mahdi claimant, but I know little about them. \n\nAnd of course Twelver Shi'a believe that the 12th Imam was the Mahdi, who is not dead, but become \"occulted\" in the 9th century. Oh and the Nation of Islam teaches that Wallace Fard, who disappeared in Detroit in the 1930's, was the Mahdi and Masih. \n\nThere have been movements that didn't survive and eventually disappeared/merged back into mainstream Islam. The most important was Shah Ismail, who conquered Azerbaijan and Iran in the 16th century and founded the Safavid dynasty. He claimed to be the Mahdi (and the reincarnation of Ali for good measure). He used this messianic fervor to fuel his campaigns, but after military defeat he suffered a real crisis of faith. None of the later members of his dynasty treat him as the Mahdi and instead, they bring in Lebanese Shi'a clergy to Iran (which had been, up to that point, Sunni). \n\nIn the 19th century, there was the infamous \"Mahdist War\" in Sudan against British rule that was also defeated militarily (though they were initially one of the most succussful instances of indigenous military to British rule). In the 20th century, the 1979 Seige of the Grand Mosque in Mecca was also initiated by a Mahdi claimant, and there are no followers of this movement as it too was defeated military. \n\nThere have been many, many more. [Wikipedia has a list](_URL_3_). ", "I would actually make a rare point of disagreement with /u/yodatsracist in that to my reading there is a history of such claims of the reincarnation of Muhammad in some of the Ghuluw (i.e. the \"exaggerator\") traditions of Shiite heresies. Other branches, while being less explicit, to my reading in their gnostic and esoteric beliefs imply the return of the Prophet Muhammad, or are at least purported to believe as such by the heresiographers who are our primary sources for the historical beliefs of such groups. \n\nSo you have the \"Mimiyya\" or the \"Muhammadiyya\" who believed:\n\n > In their system (as described by Sa d b. Abd Allah al-Kumml) Muhammad is both the unknown God,and God's only true manifestation on\nearth. God first appeared before mankind as a light,\ncalling upon them to acknowledge his oneness. They\nrefused, and this was apparently the act of rebellion\nthat initiated the fall from heaven. God then appeared\nin human form so that his creatures might trust him\nand not fear him. He appeared (but only to the Arabs,\nit would seem) as successive prophets and messengers:\nAdam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus; to the non-\nArabs he appeared as successive kings and rulers of\nthe world. Mankind still refused to confess his unity,\nand so he appeared in the form of a number of Imams,\nand was then accepted. Of these Imams, only members\nof the ahl al-kisa [q. v.] are mentioned by name. They\nare (in addition to Muhammad) Ali, Fatima(God can assume the form of a woman), al-Hasan and al-Husayn, who together constitute the divine pentad. The Imams are reincarnations of God; as such they are mere illusions or \"names\" concealing the true \"meaning\" (maana) which is Muhammad. A parallel structure incorporates other elect members of the community, all of whom are arranged in a hierarchical fashion. Thus God's only true messenger or \"gate\" (bab) is Salman al-Farisi [ < 7-fl.], who appears with Muhammad before Arabs and non-Arabs; other abwab, who include various leaders of the Kufan ghulat, are reincarnations of Salman. The normal obligations of Islam (prayer, fasting, etc.) were imposed as a punishment on those who deny the truth, and are not incumbent upon believers who have passed the test (mu'min mumtahan). The spirits of those who deny the truth transmigrate through both animate and inanimate bodies (tanasukh), and end up as minerals or stones. The believer who acknowledges the truth, in contrast, passes through seven stages, each lasting 10,000 years, during which he wears seven different bodies like seven garments (akmisa):\nwhen he outgrows one garment, he puts on another.\nAfter 70,000 years he becomes a gnostic (arif) and\nattains knowledge of the ultimate (ma'rifat al-ghaya):\nthe veil is removed and he sees God, that is Muhammad, in his essence and light.\n\nAll of these groups of the \"exagerators\" of the divinity of Muhammad or of Ali are no longer extant, except for the Alawites, historically known as the Nusayris, who have nonetheless, to my understanding, significantly moderated their views and are basically quite close to orthodox Twelverism. Their belief in metempsychosis implies to me at least the reincarnation of Muhammad:\n\nYou can see what I mean about their doctrines from their entry in the *Encyclopaedia of Islam* below:\n\n > As ghulat, the Nusayriyya venerate Ali b. Abi Talib as supreme and eternal God (al-ildh al-azam, al-kadim al-azal). The basis of Nusayri doctrine is a cosmogony of gnostic nature (Sulayman, Bdkura, 59-61; Halm, Gnosis, 298 ff.). In the beginning of time, the souls of the Nusayris were lights, surrounding and praising God; then they rebelled against Him, disputing His divinity. From then onwards, they have been hurled down from the celestial heights and exiled on the earth, where they are enclosed in material bodies and condemned to metempsychosis (temporal nasukhiyya for the elect, eternal nasukhiyya for the damned). During their fall, the supreme God appears to them seven times, calling for their obedience, but they refuse. In each manifestation, God,who is called \"the Essence\" (maana), is accompanied by two subordinate hypostases, \"the Name\" (ism) which is also called \"the Veil\" (hidjab) and the \"Gate\" (bab). In earthly life, this trio is revealed in numerous instances: the maana is incarnated successively in Abel, Seth, Joseph, Joshua, Asaf, St. Peter and Ali b. Ali Talib, then in the imams as far as the eleventh one, al-Hasan al- Askari; all of these are therefore manifestations of divinity. However, their true character is veiled by the presence of the hidjab or ism (Adam, Noah, Jacob, Moses, Solomon, Jesus and Muhammad), each of them is accompanied by a bab. The central trio of the Islamic period is Ali (maana), Muhammad (ism, hidjab) and Salman al-Farisi (bab). The abwab of the eleven imams are the intermediaries between the concealed divinity and initiated believers; for example, the eponym of the Nusayriyya, Muhammad b. Nusayr, was the bab of the eleventh imam al-Hasan al- Askari, whose secret revelations he confided exclusively to the Nusayriyya.\n\nI'm not enough of a specialist in these heresies to know where the scholarship stands on this but to my reading at least these suggest the reincarnation of Muhammad.\n\nSource wise, both quotations are from the respective entries on \"Muhammadiyya\" and \"Nusayriyya\" in the *Encyclopaedia of Islam\", the entry on \"Ghuluw\" is also worthwhile.\n\nedit: accidentally left in a bit before I checked the wider entry on Ghuluw, finding the entry on Muhammadiyya." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Masih_ad-Dajjal", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah#Islam", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mahdi_claimants" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbo73a9", "cbpehzv" ], "score": [ 2, 7 ], "text": [ "A lot of it was to do with immigration and White Australia, and the fact that we had a national identity as Australians, yet separate governments...\n\nThe Immigration Restriction act - _URL_0_ - was one of the first pieces of legislation passed by the new government... It was thought to be more effective to handle on a national level, as while all colonies agreed, there were inconsistencies between their policies... Defence was, to a less extent, another reason for Federation... \n\nIts interesting to contrast the swift and mainly agreed upon action on matters thought to be of national importance - such as White Australia and the defence of Australia (firmly within the British Commonwealth - we did not really control our own foreign policy until the Statue of Westminster in '42) - with matters of national co-operation, such as standard gauge rail, which was only achieved in the last decade or so...\n\nAnother reason was taxation on trade between states. States had their own border controls, and were charging tariffs between states, which was hurting the country's economy as a whole...\n\nAlso, if you look at the works of Banjo Paterson, Louisa and Henry Lawson, and Frank the Poet, add into this the Eureka Stockade, and even Ned Kelly there was a strong national identity, a strong sense of place and of what it means to be Australian and to live here, yet we were separated by different governments...", "There are a few reasons that the Australasian colonies decided to federate – and the emphasis will differ depending on which (historical) person you ask. If I may use a modern comparison, there a few reasons that Australia did not become a republic when the referendum was put to the people in 1999: there were various groups and people advocating the “Yes” or “No” positions, and each group/person did so for different reasons. Saying that it was simply that Australians didn’t want to become a republic is simplistic.\n\nSimilarly, we can not point to any single reason and say “That is why the colonies decided to federate!” There were many reasons and motives proposed by many people and organisations over a few decades, and they all contributed to the final outcome.\n\nAs early as 1857, a Select Committee in the recently formed colony of Victoria wrote:\n\n > Your Committe are unanimous in believing that the interest and honor of these growing States would be promoted by the establishment of a system of mutual action and co-operation among them. Their interest suffers, and must continue to suffer, while competing tariffs, naturalization laws, and land systems, rival schemes of immigration, and of ocean postage [...] exist; and the honor and importance which constitute so essential an element of national prosperity, and the absence of which invites aggression from foreign enemies, cannot in this generation belong to any single Colony of the Southern Group; but may, we are persuaded would, be speedily attained by an Australian Federation representing the entire.\n\n > [...] By becoming confederates so early in their career, the Australian Colonies would, we believe, immensely economize their strength and resources. [...] They would not only save time and money, but attain increased vigor and accuracy, by treating the larger questions of public policy at one time and place.\n\n[Report from the Select Committee upon the Federal Union of the Australian Colonies, 1856-7]\n\nNote the various reasons listed for federating: tariffs, citizenships, immigration, postage, defense, efficiency.\n\nIn 1870, Charles Gavan Duffy spoke in the Victorian Parliament about this previous Select Committee report. His main point was that there had been no action on this report for too long. In pushing for action, he said:\n\n > It may be said, no doubt, that England is mistress of the seas, and will be able to protect her commerce and ours. But France and America have been making enormous expenditure and immense exertions for years past to be in a position to compete for this supremacy. Even if it be admitted that England would be able to protect the great highway to Europe by the Cape, will she be able to guard the Northern Pacific, or to save the great Australian cities from fleets stationed at San Francisco or New Caledonia?\n\n > [...] it would put an end to what a Canadian statesman describes as “colonies cutting each others throats with razors called tariffs”. It would create between us an intercourse of mind. [...] It would result in the creation of a national spirit [...] And, finally, it would give Australia complete control of her own resources for the protection of her own interests.\n\nAlfred Deakin, an eyewitness to, and key participant in, the process of federation, wrote in his ‘The Federal Story’ (based on notes he kept during the years that federation was discussed and progressed):\n\n > The Federal impulse of 1880 was in the first place a reaction from the ultra-Protectionist policy [of the Victorian colony] of 1878-9 some of whose imposts, and the Stock Tax in particular, being directly aimed at intercolonial imports, naturally provoked great bitterness on the border.\n\nIn this, he wasn’t far wrong. After the idea of federating had floated in the ether for years and decades, and an abortive start toward Federation was made in 1890, matters finally came to a head in 1893 when people around the Victoria-New South Wales border gathered in a meeting which later became known as “[the Corowa Conference]( _URL_1_)” to push for action on Federation because they were sick and tired of paying customs every time they moved goods across the river.\n\nBack to Deakin’s ‘Federal Story’:\n\n > Dread of German aggression in New Guinea and of a French annexation of the New Hebrides [was among] the chief operating causes of [the Intercolonial Convention of 1883].\n\nDeakin himself said:\n\n > ... that they [the Australasian Colonies] were asked [by the British government] to surrender the New Hebrides as of little commercial value and in the next breath were told that the French set the greatest store by them for commercial development. [The French’s] interest in Australasia were spoken of as large, while ours which were incomparably larger were brushed aside as of no account. [...] We were assured that our alarm as to French intentions was groundless but we should never forget that it was while relying on a similar assurance from the Colonial Office, our trust had been betrayed by a surrender of part of New Guinea to Germany.\n\nSo, intercolonial taxes and mutual defence were two of the main issues. \n\nHenry Parkes, the so-called “Father of Federation” repeatedly stressed the issue of mutual defence, starting with his Tenterfield Oration:\n\n > The Imperial General who inspected the troops of the colony had recommended that the whole of the forces of Australia should be united into one army. It would be pleasing if they could rely on being safe without taking military precautions at all; but as this was impossible, they must take measure to defend themselves\n\nThe Australian Natives’ Association, a mutual society exclusively for Australian-born natives (of British descent, of course!), was strongly in favour of Federation. They were behind the previously mentioned the Corowa Conference. They also believed:\n\n > [...] the future well-being of Australia, its progress and prosperity, and the material wealth of the colonists themselves, depend on its being united.\n\n > [...] the Board of Directors [of the ANA] must organise a crusade throughout the length and breadth of the continent [...] [people] should be aroused to a sense of the possibilities that may follow their co-operating with brother Australians. [...] inasmuch as the Board considers the people of Australia, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Australian Bight, and from Perth to Port Jackson, want to be appealed to, they recommend the [ANA] Conference to instruct the incoming Board to open a vigorous campaign. The time is ripe for an appeal to the whole of Australia. \n\n[Report of the ANA Conference at Warrnambool, Victoria in 1894]\n\nFor the ANA, it was about bringing Australian-born people together in a single Australian nation.\n\nNot everyone was in favour of Federation, of course. Hank Morgan, the editor of [‘The Hummer’, a pro-labour newspaper]( _URL_0_) published in Wagga Wagga, wrote a long diatribe against Federation on 19 March 1892, mostly on the basis that it would be undemocratic. However:\n\n > Some people imagine that if we put off Federation, some disaster may occur, such as a Russian invasion, which will compel us to federate hurriedly [...] I think this idea is made too much of. In the event of any such danger we could come to terms with each other \n\nIt’s worth noting that Mr Morgan and his ilk also believed that Federation was a conservative conspiracy to defeat the growing labour movement.\n\nMore seriously, there was strong resistance in Sydney and New South Wales, because of the expected increase in taxation, the imposition of Australia-wide tariffs on imports to the new country (New South Wales had no such tariffs – one reason it resented Victoria’s tariffs on all imported goods, including those from NSW), the unfairness of its representation in the proposed Commonwealth Parliament, and so on. There was especial opposition to Clause 87 of the proposed Consitution, which allowed the future Commonwealth to keep up to 25% of all revenues it raised (the remainder to be distributed back to the states, to offset their revenue losses due to tariffs no longer being collected by them). New South Wales was adamant that this clause, proposed by Tasmanian Premier Edward Braddon and therefore referred to by them as “the Braddon Blot”, was unfair and took too much revenue from their colony. The NSW Premier, George Reid, even threatened to withdraw from the whole process. A sunset clause was inserted, restricting this clause to only ten years’ operation.\n\nAnd, the Western Australian Premier had to be blackmailed by a large chunk of his own citizens [who threatened to secede from his colony in order to join this upcoming Federation]( _URL_2_)!\n\nBut, the main two reasons for federating were to remove intercolonial taxes and mutual defence.\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Restriction_Act_1901" ], [ "http://asslh.org.au/hummer/no-10/humming/", "http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/explore/federation/constitution-website/stories/quick-steps/pods/corowa-conference-1893/media/cover-of-official-report-of/index.html", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17u5qj/as_a_descendant_of_the_first_fleet_i_would_like/c89cdmg?context=3" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fgjrt8h" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Location is important: city vs rural. I will assume an urban environment. \n\nFor the average plebeian in the middle of the 1st century CE, the diet is dominated by bread (either emmer or wheat loaf), olive oil, fish sauce (*garum*), vegetables, and wine. The wine was typically what we moderns would consider extremely cheap and foul, more on the scale towards vinegar than modern wine. Meat was not every day but also not as rare as it is sometimes made out to be. More on meat below. \n\nMany of Rome's hundreds of thousands lived in *insulae*, apartment buildings, and elaborate cooking ventures were not the best idea. Still, small open hearths or little ceramic stoves were very common and frequently caused fires. Some storage of food stuffs was possible, unrefrigerated of course, but not strictly necessary. All the daily needs of an urban dweller were immediately available every day from local sellers down on the street. There were large \"farmers' market\" style areas throughout the city, like the meat markets and the vegetable markets, and then from there foods were distributed (and the price hiked) to smaller neighborhood places. The situation was virtually identical to the little corner markets you can find in any dense urban environment today, from modern Rome to Paris to Manhattan. \n\nBread was ubiquitous, and bakeries were everywhere. The white breads we know today, like sourdough, were expensive; the lower classes got cheaper, \"darker\" breads. Olive oil too was everywhere, for everyone, with variations in quality. Olive oil was a major source of calories for virtually all denizens of the Mediterranean basin. It was absolutely essential and would have been present at virtually any meal for any person, rich and poor. I mentioned fish sauce, which was also very important. It was the Roman condiment par excellence, equivalent to the roles of ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, and soy sauce all in one product. There were huge variations in quality in price, from the very fancy stuff all the way down to the very cheap stuff. I once spent an entire semester at university studying Roman fish sauce and I'd like to forget it. Also, most westerners would find an average Roman fish sauce to be incredibly vile and nearly inedible. \n\nVegetables were everywhere for everyone. Cabbage was common, as was garlic and an ancient form of broccoli. Onions, turnips, beets, carrots, radishes, peas and beans of many sorts, lentils, pulses, leafy greens like kale, chard, lettuce. Spinach was not around back then, nor was corn. From the New World come potatoes, tomatoes, and many peppers (I'm not sure which are from the Americas and which from East Asia), which are now essentials to Italian cooking. They did not exist in the ancient Med world.\n\nMeat: the common line is that the plebs never ate meat except at public festivals (when it was provided as part of the party), but a lot of garbage heap evidence is these days seen to refute that notion. A Roman pleb had about the same purchasing power as an average American History grad student (which is to say, not much), but they could get meat on their own when they wanted it, maybe just not fillet mignon every day. The common meats of the Roman world: beef, of course, including the good stuff like tongue and liver and such; pork; chickens and other birds, like pheasant and duck; venison; goat and mutton seems to have been less common; and Romans, like most ancient societies, did not eat horse flesh except in dire circumstances. Fish availability and price was regional, but the ancient seas abounded in fish resources. In Diocletian's Edit of Prices (late Empire, not early), sea fish seem to be expensive, twice as much as an equivalent weight of pork, but river fish are half as much as pork. Those are the maximums, anyway. I don't actually know if Romans drank milk, but butter existed, and was fairly expensive.\n\nSomeone recently asked me if pasta is ancient, and I don't have an answer for that. The Romans had *lagana* (perhaps ancestor to modern lasagna), but it was really just sheets of dough. I think modern pasta as we imagine (linguine, rotini, farfalle, etc) are from the Medieval period. I admit my pasta knowledge is substandard for this subreddit." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e1hkqo8" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Transatlantic journeys were mostly by ship. When Churchill, Roosevelt or other VIPs travelled by sea their main protection was speed; ships used by Churchill included RMS Queen Mary, holder of the Blue Riband at the time, and fast battleships such as HMS Duke of York, capable of maintaining 20+ knots on their journey with a zig-zag course. A Type VII U-boat had a maximum speed of around 18 knots on the surface, 8 knots submerged; their main prey was slow merchant convoys. Depending on the exact point of the war Allied intelligence might have a broad idea of U-boat locations thanks to radio direction finding or Ultra intelligence, and long-range air patrols with ASV radar could scout much of the route.\n\nIt was therefore incredibly unlikely, albeit not completely impossible, for a ship carrying e.g. Churchill to stumble across a U-boat; had the worst happened battleships had defences against torpedoes and even the Queen Mary had numerous watertight compartments to protect against collision and grounding, but of course it was still a concern. Harry Morton accompanied Churchill on his 1941 trip for the Atlantic Conference and wrote of the return journey \"Some thought U-boats would lay in wait for us; others thought long-range bombers; a few enthusiasts thought U-boats and long-range bombers, and I was inclined to throw the Tirpitz and a few cruisers in as well.\" On a 1943 trip on Queen Mary Churchill woke Averell Harriman when there were reports of a U-boat crossing their path, telling Harriman of his orders to have a machine gun in his lifeboat as \"I won't be captured. The finest way to die is in the excitement of fighting the enemy.\" Harriman protested that Churchill had told him that the worst a torpedo could do was knock out one engine room; Churchill responded \"Ah, but they might put two torpedoes in us.\"\n\nTransatlantic air travel was in its infancy in 1939, though both [Churchill] (_URL_4_) and [Roosevelt] (_URL_2_) used Clipper flying boats on occasion; aircraft were mostly used for shorter trips.\n\nLooking specifically at the Second Moscow Conference of 1942, the first meeting of Churchill and Stalin, Churchill flew from Britain to Moscow via Egypt, stopping in North Africa for a week or so. He used a modified B-24 Liberator [named \"Commando\"] (_URL_8_), subject of [an article on the Smithsonian website] (_URL_6_). The long range of the B-24 was important, as the usual route for Allied aircraft to the North African theatre (and the original route proposed for Churchill) started from Takoradi in Ghana (the Gold Coast, as was) and took five or six days travelling across central Africa before heading north to Cairo (as illustrated on [this map] (_URL_5_)). The B-24 could fly directly from Gibraltar to Cairo.\n\nThe first leg of the journey was Lyneham to Gibraltar, arriving the morning August 3rd, which Churchill describes as uneventful in *The Hinge of Fate*. That evening they took off at 6pm, cutting across Spanish and Vichy territory with an escort of four Beaufighters, flying across North Africa largely in darkness, seeing \"in the pale, glimmering dawn the endless winding silver ribbon of the Nile\" on the morning of August 4th. Churchill visited the Alamein positions on the 5th, and appointed General Gott to command the Eighth Army. On August 10th Churchill departed Cairo for Tehran, then on to Moscow, arriving on the 12th. The conference lasted until the 17th, the return journey followed the same route in reverse, again including some time on the desert front.\n\nBy the time of the Tehran conference in 1943 the Axis had been pushed out of North Africa and Italy had surrendered making the journey slightly less risky; on that occasion Churchill sailed from Plymouth to Alexandria on the battlecruiser HMS *Renown* via Gibraltar, Algiers and Malta, then flew from Alexandria to Tehran via Cairo in an Avro York transport aircraft named *Ascalon*. Roosevelt travelled across the Atlantic on the USS *Iowa*, avoiding a friendly torpedo on the way, as detailed by u/nate077 in [this post] (_URL_9_).\n\nStalin only flew once, to Tehran; he refused after that on grounds of \"health\", so the next major conference was at Yalta in 1945. Churchill and Roosevelt travelled by sea to Malta, then flew on to Yalta escorted by the First Fighter Wing of the USAAF, though there was minimal risk from the Luftwaffe. By this time they were both using C-54 Skymaster aircraft; Churchill in an RAF aircraft fitted out with bedroom, conference room and galley facilities as detailed in [an article in the November 1945 issue of Flight magazine] (_URL_0_), Roosevelt's (*Sacred Cow*) now on display at the [National Museum of the US Air Force] (_URL_3_).\n\nIn general there was little risk of coincidental interception for aircraft avoiding combat zones, especially at night; integrated air defences, radar and night fighters were concentrated in the UK and Germany, and to a lesser extent other active theatres. Air travel always carried an element of risk, though; on August 7th 1942 the newly appointed Gott was flying in to Cairo, on a similar route to the one taken by Churchill on the 5th, when his aircraft was shot down and strafed on the ground, killing most of the passengers (somewhat ironic, given Gott's nickname of \"Strafer\"); this resulted in Montgomery being appointed to command the Eighth Army. Air accidents were the main danger, more high ranking officers were lost in air crashes (e.g. Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Lieutenant General Frank Andrews, Major-General Orde Wingate etc.) than shot down by enemy activity.\n\n*Churchill Goes to War: Winston's Wartime Journeys* by Brian Lavery is an excellent source for Churchill's travels, there are also shorter articles in several issues of *[Finest Hour] (_URL_1_)*. There's also [another question from a while back] (_URL_7_) where /u/DBHT14 chips in with some further detail on the naval side of things." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1945/1945%20-%202348.html", "https://www.winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour", "http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/the-first-presidential-flight-2901615/", "http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/195813/douglas-vc-54c-sacred-cow/", "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/britain-at-war/9385972/Pictured-Winston-Churchill-at-the-controls-of-the-most-dangerous-flight-of-the-second-world-war.html", "http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/I/maps/AAF-I-10.jpg", "http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/travels-with-churchill-136166507/?all", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6xn4qp/during_wwii_how_did_allied_leaderssenior_military/", "http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205189669", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/50vdhb/how_did_the_big_three_travel_during_wwii/d77qnta/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dr3ws82", "dr4okm6" ], "score": [ 3, 4 ], "text": [ "Czechia, although used in the past as shorthand English version of Czech lands, has just been adopted as the official English name for the Czech Republic. Adding the suffix -ia to a country, or place, etc. has its origins in Latin and can be seen all across the globe. Historically it is the lands of the Ethnic Czech Peoples, so adding an -ia gives the land a feminine ending (very common to have the country be feminine). \n\nIn Regards to your second question- Czech lands are divided into three historical regions; Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Although Bohemia (North-Northwest) and Moravia (South-Southeast) make up the vast majority of the country. So I'm not sure what you mean by connection between Czechia and Bohemia. Bohemia is a region of Czech Republic (Czechia) and Czechia is now one of the official names, although Czech Republic is still a recognized and official name of the country. Similar to Slovakia can also be referred to the Slovak Republic (As it is also an official name).\n\nRemember these are only changes to the English name. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n", "You may find the following thread useful, it covers the origin of 'Bohemia' and 'Czech(ia)' and their relation/distinction.\n\n* /u/mousefire55 in [*At what point did Bohemians stop referring to themselves as Bohemians and start referring to themselves as Czechs?*](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/whats-in-a-name-czech-republic-mulls-shock-rebranding-as-czechia-8874839.html", "http://www.dictionary.com/browse/-ia" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7e8zp1/at_what_point_did_bohemians_stop_referring_to/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f1i141x" ], "score": [ 20 ], "text": [ "An interesting question, to be sure — but one that would be better asked at the height of the Principate than the period you are referencing. \n\nWhile you are correct to note that Julian had gone to extraordinary lengths to muster his force — he concentrated at least a large part of the field armies of Gaul and Illyria both, along with the usual army of the Orient and Praesental guards) it is important to keep in mind that the mid fourth century empire was experiencing a deep crisis of military recruitment. While this was not on the scale of what Honorius’ desperate regime faced during the fifth century, it was nonetheless becoming a massive problem for imperial statesmen. \n\nJulian’s invasion force was estimated to be around 60,000 men — perhaps even less. This is surely a large force, but the Republic of Rome, controlling only parts of Italy, mustered 80,000 men at Cannae against Hannibal. When that force was annihilated, they experienced little difficulty in replacing it. Every one of Julian’s soldiers was a superlatively expensive professional warrior — and while I am not of the school that disparages the capability of the late antique Comitatenses, there is no doubting that the Empire’s ability to muster armies was declining.\n\nThis was a solvable problem, but the Dominate lacked the political will to face it down — it would have required a pay raise for the army to make it an attractive career once more, and doing that would have necessitated breaking the grip of the landed elite over state finances. It is worth noting that the post-476 eastern Romans under Anastasius solved this problem with alacrity. While they did face revolts and opposition drawing on disgruntled elites, it is stunning to think that a state controlling half the territory of Julian’s empire was able to muster armies of comparable size with greater ease than the 4th century Dominate. \n\nSo now that we have that in perspective, let us consider Shapur and his state. While Shapur did maintain a force of superlative professional regiments, and his royal guard was a powerful unit in its own right, Sassanid Persia’s army shared several characteristics with Republican Rome — insofar as when the Shahanshah raised the flag, noble and peasant levies would be summoned to his position. These men were not long service professionals; many brought their own weapons and armor, and while this meant that the Sassanid infantry was nowhere near the skill and equipment of the late Roman soldier (excepting the elite Daylami foot), they were numerous and often brave. The provincial noble cavalry, however, were every bit as skilled as any Roman — and in some cases, more so. \n\nSo Shapur’s military system was more decentralized, and while this posed problems of its own it did mean that the Persians could raise numerous forces without the headache of maintaining a long-service standing army.\n\nI will make one final point — many scholars believe Julian should NOT, under any circumstances, have concentrated that many men in one place. While some (Goldsworthy, i’m looking at you) despise the late Roman capability in pitched battles, I do not — but it is certainly true that the field armies worked best on a smaller scale. None of Julian’s commanders nor Julian himself had any experience commanding a force of this size, and it showed. Julian was a good general, but he was a good general in a late antique context.\n\nIn conclusion, let us remember that by Hellenistic standards Julian’s force was commonplace — it was huge only in the context of late antique Rome.\n\nSources:\n\nAdrian Goldsworthy’s How Rome Fell, and Peter Heather’s books The Fall of Rome and the Restoration of Rome." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dkki8ko", "dkkisfq" ], "score": [ 16, 18 ], "text": [ "Balderdash. Poppycock. Nonsense. Malarkey. Which is to say, complete and utter fucking horseshit. I have no particular interest in combing through the texts looking for the origins of such absurdities as apid vibrators, but luckily for me /u/cleopatra_philopater has done a [perfectly good job](_URL_0_) in a recent /r/badhistory post, if I may link to that and not get smacked by moderation. Besides what is stated there, I think I can offer some commentary on what the texts actually *do* say. There's very little in any texts about Cleopatra's sexual deviancy, real or imagined. In fact, our texts try even not to mention Cleopatra by name. Plutarch presents her as fabulously wealthy, and what's more ostentatious with her wealth, such that he inserts a comment about how the Donations of Alexandria were so expensive that it was hard to believe what their actual triumphal procession would have looked like. Plutarch describes Cleopatra as having a taste for the extravagant, filling the city with banquets as word arrived that Octavian's fleet was bearing down on a now undefended Egypt, and that she and Antony had founded a sort of sympotic society called the ἀμιμητόβιοι, or \"unmatched ones,\" which spent its time drinking and banqueting. Plutarch also notes that Cleopatra was very charming and very learned, both in books and flattery, and that she had something of a playful streak--he describes Cleopatra as dressing like a slave girl to attend Antony's nighttime harangues of the Alexandrian poor. She, says Plutarch, matched Antony in drink, played dice with him, hunted with him, attended him when he exercised, etc. \n\nThis is all relatively normal for Roman or Roman Period descriptions of Hellenistic kingship, going back to stories of Alexander's excess. But there's the point: *kingship*. Cleopatra was a queen, and one who had firmly secured her own possession of the throne by her own hand and who doggedly maintained an independence of will and action even as she gathered powerful allies in Caesar and Antony. Roman sensibilities were often offended enough by the lavish nature of Hellenistic monarchy when held by men; in the hands of a woman the same actions were simply unacceptable. When Antony broke definitively from Octavian, Octavian responded by launching a campaign of rhetoric and literature intended to turn Italy, which still remembered Antony as a great leader and benefactor, against Roman citizens. It's quite clear from Augustan literature that Octavian went to great lengths to show that he was fighting a *foreign* war, not a civil war. The latter would have been exceedingly damaging to his reputation, but at least the claim to the former was ordinary and natural. As such, Octavian directed his attentions not against Antony, the Roman citizen and Caesarian, but against Cleopatra, the eastern queen. Augustan literature does not even refer to Cleopatra by name at all, Augustan authors simply call her *femina*, \"the woman,\" or sometimes *regina*, \"the queen.\" In the same way that there was only one *urbs*, city (Rome, of course, unless you're a New Yorker like me), there was only one \"woman\" in Augustan verse. And *regina* should be clear enough, the Roman hatred and fear of *rex* turned feminine. Her femininity was both her weapon and her crime. She used it to ensnare Antony, who was absolved in Augustan literature of the crime of civil conflict due to his complete slavery to Cleopatra. Indeed, this view of Antony became so pervasive that as Antony's reputation became rehabilitated by later emperors, who were related to Antony, it became dominant--Plutarch presents Antony as a doomed, tragic hero, heroic in all aspects, but much like Heracles unable to resist his emotions and desires, and easy prey for the uppity Egyptian queen. As for the criminal nature of her femininity that much is obvious: the Roman (and, even more so, Greek) mind demanded that Cleopatra, as a woman, stay in her place. \n\nThe closest thing you'll get to a description of Cleopatra's supposed sexual depravity is in Propertius. Propertius 3.11 has a very brief line in which he describes Cleopatra as *famulos inter femina trita suos*, \"that woman exhausted [literally worn away] by her own slave attendants.\" Note again that Propertius never refers to her by name: he calls her (and his own girlfriend Cynthia) *femina* at the beginning of the poem as well, when he asks *Quid mirare, meam si versat femina vitam et trahit addictum sub sua iura virum*, \"why do you marvel if a woman twists up my life and drags a man surrendered to her under her rule?\" Propertius also calls in the same poem Cleopatra *incesti meretrix regina Canopi*, \"the whore queen of incestuous Canopus\" who would dare to conquer Rome and make it her court--to my knowledge, the only accusation even in Augustan literature that Cleopatra intended to bring the war into Italy! But, like much of Propertius' verse, there's a subtle barb in the poem. Propertius ends the poem with a sideways jab of sorts at Octavian, noting *at tu, sive petes portus seu, navita, linques, Caesaris in toto sis memor Ionio*, \"but you, sailor, whether you seek a port or leave one, take heed of Caesar in the whole Ionian Sea.\" Propertius simultaneously reminds us of Octavian's victory at Actium, which saved the city from the supposed horrors and depravities he describes, and also implies that it is *Octavian* that the Mediterranean world must fear, not some foreign queenlet. Likewise, Horace Odes 1.37 (the famous *nunc est bibendum*) begins with a panegyric of the victory at Actium, and describes Cleopatra rather unflatteringly as a drunken woman crazed by wine, planning to destroy the Roman state, taken away with vain hope (*quidlibet inpotens sperare*), attended by *contaminato cum grege turpium morbo virorum*, \"a disgusting herd of men contaminated by disease.\" This and the Propertius comment above are about as naughty as anything Cleopatra was accused of doing, sexual, get. And they're quite indirect, neither poet actually explicitly states what he's imagining. Moreover, these sorts of servile harems were a not-uncommon feature of descriptions of Hellenistic courts and decadent easterners, which offended Roman sensibilities to begin with--how much worse to invert the concept and place a *woman* in charge! But again, as with Propertius, the Augustan program against Cleopatra was not entirely convincing, though it worked well enough to get Italy behind the war. Though Horace begins with praise of Octavian and hatred of Cleopatra, he ends with praise of Cleopatra's bravery and leadership, and concludes the poem with one of the most famous lines of Latin verse, praising her pride and steadfastness in death: *non humilis mulier triumpho*, \"not as a pathetic little woman [would she be led] in the triumph.\" \n\nAugustan literature, then, combined the prejudice of the Roman mind against eastern kingship with a fair dose of misogyny to produce the image of what Horace calls *fatale monstrum*, the fatal (or ill-omened) monster. Cleopatra was depicted not merely as a political enemy, but as the manipulator of Antony and morally a crime in and of herself. But note that sexual depravity plays a relatively little part. Cleopatra's insolence in behaving like a man and her flattering of Antony are more important--there's far more in Augustan and post-Augustan literature on her appetite for wine than there is on her sexual inclinations. Some of her eastern ostentation and luxury is to be seen in the preservation in the popular imagination of stories like Cleopatra's pearls, but overall in the modern imagination the misogyny of Augustan polemic has taken over. While the Augustan author only needed to imply general depravity--in wine, money, and the bedroom--and was more horrified by the queen's...queenishness...the modern popular imagination must bring Cleopatra's sexuality to the front by inventing episodes not in the texts. A certain amount of Augustan \"propaganda\" is at fault for this, in that pretty much all our surviving descriptions of the last Hellenistic queen are to act, at least in part, as justifications of the War of Actium. But the modern imagination has run wild with it, selecting elements of the depiction which *it* finds important but were relatively unimportant slanders in Augustus' time, and not only bringing them to the fore but even exaggerating them such that every other aspect of the queen's supposedly un-Roman nature is ignored and forgotten. Cleopatra VII was certainly a powerful individual who, in an almost *Realpolitik* way, broke and reforged alliances and political relations at will, even manipulating supposedly more powerful Romans (if we accept the Augustan view on Antony's role in the War of Actium, which is hard to swallow). That alone was remarkable to the Romans, and Octavian successfully associated it with various Hellenistic vices, some rather minor in men but of horrific proportions when applied to a woman. But it is *we*, not the Romans, who want to interpret this as sexual depravity first and foremost. It is *we* who say what is not in the texts and invent various ingenious and impossible sexual feats. It is probably better suited to a student of modern psychology to take the next step and explain why that is, but I can find little possible explanation beyond the assumption that something in modern society, enlisting all its remaining misogyny, *expects* that a woman depicted as immoral enough to turn with the political wind *must* have been up to no good in bed.", "Good question, /u/XenophonTheAthenian already gave an excellent rundown on the myths but I want to give you an idea of how it started. Although Cleopatra's image as a seductive or sexually attractive monarch has its roots in Roman historical and poetic traditions, the development of her image as a sexually debauched or famously promiscuous individual in modern Western film and literature is much more difficult to trace. To begin with, the only biographical accounts of Cleopatra are Roman, there is no getting around that and although we can look at archaeological evidence from Egypt to assess her reign we are pretty much stuck with a handful of Roman sources when it comes to assessing her personal life. *But* before we even attempt to broach the question about how to interpret Roman accounts, many of the popular myths about Cleopatra date from the Renaissance to the 20th Century! To begin with a reddit popular myth, the earliest known mention of Cleopatra's invention of a vibrator by placing bees into a hollow gourd or carved phallus dates from Brenda Love's 1992 [The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices](_URL_0_). Nothing remotely similar to this appears in any ancient accounts or historical works and it is also seemingly impractical, I do not know if anyone has attempted to contact Love over this claim but it is either a mistake on her part if you want to be generous or she made up an outrageous sounding practice because filling an encyclopedia is hard, and in any case she provides no source for where she got this from.\n\nThe idea that she engaged in orgies is also a modern one but I am less certain where exactly it originated, however it likely emerged in the Renaissance and the earliest example that I know of is in a series of (poorly) forged letters supposedly between Cleopatra, Marc Antony and Soranus the physician. These \"Soranian Letters\" are believed to have been written in the late 16th Century by a Swiss scholar. The problem with these is that Soranus here is a conflation of a Roman gynaecologist and the physician to Hadrian both of whom were named Soranus and both of whom lived about 2 centuries after Antony and Cleopatra, they are also littered with anachronisms that are somewhat humourous in their execution and were supposedly found at the undiscovered tomb of Antony and Cleopatra. This correspondence is something of a pastiche of historical fiction and erotic fiction which happens to borrow heavily from Juvenal and the more scandalous accounts of the Empresses Messalina and Theodora, namely Pliny's accounts of how Messalina engaged in night long orgies and Procopius' *Secret History* which is by no means historically accurate given its claim that Justinian was a supernatural demon but which portrays Theodora as sexually promiscuous and insatiable, both empresses were sometimes accused of frequenting brothels. Much like the erotically charged writings from Rome, these new stories about Cleopatra were popularised because of the taboo nature of their sexuality although they continued to be cited by a few scholars until the 19th Century. That story about 100 Romans? Yeah, it comes from here\n > Letter of G(aius) Antonius, / Consul, to Q(uintus) Soranus concerning the unbridled/ lust of Queen Cleopatra Antonius, consul for the third time, gives greetings to Q(uintus) Soranus. Mindful of our friendship of old and likewise pleased with the manly excellence of your wisdomand the constancy of your good faith, I am compelled to declare to you now a certainprivate misfortune, promising myself hope on account of your extraordinary faithful-ness to me and the fact that you will keep this request of mine secret, as helper both in its alleviation and in its management. If you can do this, you will prove a devoted friend.I was seized with love for Cleopatra and unduly delighted with the beauty of her body beyond what is fitting for the male mind. I was softened by her blandishments and nevertheless relaxed for her the restraints of marriage. **The result was that she, despis-ing me and my fear of the law, stained herself with adultery, and by no means moder-ately. Rather, after her woman’s mind had set aside its modesty, to such an extent did she burst forth into shameful actions, that, in one night, having donned her cloak to go out, she then slept with 106 men, a prostitute in the brothel. As she confessed, she had been so aroused in the tumescence of her rigid organ that she even left the brothel still unsatisfied.** Although this was done most covertly, it did not escape my notice.When I finally learned of this wicked deed of hers by threatening her life, I discovered her inability to endure this double heat and fervidness. Moreover, I learned that there were in fact certain men experienced in philosophy who say that the nature of some women is so fervent that, if they are without almost constant sex and continual male embrace, within the thirteenth day they begin to perish and are indeed unable to live.us, I even took care lest, if her shameful conduct became widely known, it would redound on me as an injury of everlasting damage to my reputation. I confess it. I even pretended not to notice, all the while taking pity on the charm of her beauty, the flower of her youth, the condition of her nature, and the modesty of her natural character, in which she was superior to many women, except that she struggled with this single vice.Indeed, I would have threatened death, except that she lacked any other vice. For her part, she was terrified by fear and began to control herself and so she fell into a serious malady. Doctors were called in and they despaired of her life, unless she satisfied her nature with repeated copulation.\n\nNow no ancient historian would ever cite this literature as a source but plausibility is not the only factor which can influence a legend's longevity, although this much like the use of bees for masturbation is quite absurd it attracts attention because of the sheer scandalousness of it and no doubt because of a prurient interest on the part of the audience (you dirty puppies are part of the problem). \n\nPrior to the revival of interest in Classical themes and the enlightenment with its more overt interest in sexual plots, Medieval literature does not feature this trope prominently in any way, and works of literature which portray her such as Geoffrey Chaucer's *The Good Women*, tend to show her as a tragic queen of stereotypical womanly virtues but no mention is made of any orgies or bees doing anything they should not be. The only notable invention here is the idea that an asp bit her on the breast rather than the arm as in Roman accounts.\nWe then have to look a little closer to the modern period to track the full development of Cleopatra's promiscuous reputation.\n\nThe french poet Théophile Gautier's *Une nuit de Cléopâtre* is set in an anachronistically timeless Egypt and centers around the handsome and divinely heroic lionhunter Meïamoun, son of Mandouschopsh who is infatuated with the queen and risks his life to meet her in person. For her part Cleopatra is exceedingly hedonistic and much like the queen from Roman texts is constantly searching for some new diversion as a passage from the second chapter sums up\n > She prayed for a new pleasure, for some fresh sensation. As she languidly reclined upon her couch she thought to herself that the number of the senses was sadly limited, that the most exquisite refinements of delight soon yielded to satiety, and that it was really no small task for a queen to find means of occupying her time. To test new poisons upon slaves; to make men fight with tigers, or gladiators with each other; to drink pearls dissolved; to swallow the wealth of a whole province all these things had become commonplace! and insipid.\n\nMeïamoun's devotion pays off and she agrees a spend a night in revelry with him on the sole condition that he die at the end of it. Although she at first attempts to prevent from drinking the fatal poison at the appointed time, the horns announcing the return of Mark Anthony persuade her to let him die and when Anthony asks why there is a dead guy on the floor while she is apparently having a feast she tells him that she was testing out poisons in case she has to commit suicide. It is implied that she frequently has affairs as she believes it is the only thing which can distract her, free her from Egypt's oppressive atmosphere of death and mummification, although they may not all end as grimly. While Gautier is a solid poet, this work is quite anachronistic but this is notable for an early example of Cleopatra's erotic adventures in Western literature.\n\n\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/6nu62d/askreddit_shares_some_xrated_history_facts_which/" ], [ "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MfmNPwAACAAJ&amp;dq=editions:uJIH-gD3-b4C&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiR45OD2ZDVAhWGL1AKHf8dA-EQ6AEIOzAF" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c89erek", "c89ii18" ], "score": [ 16, 4 ], "text": [ "I can answer for Sweden in medieval times. \n\nThe King would appoint a tax collector (fogde) who would collect taxes - often as part of the harvest or produce of the land. Using records they took out a tax on each man, regardless of the size or fertility of his land or the quality of the harvest. It was a kind of property tax.\n\nCraftsmen were usually taxed at 1/10 of their produce, or the value of it. The King could command extra taxes in time of crisis, and the tax collector could try to press extra taxes from the peasants and craftsmen and pocket the money himself - however, both were dangerous undertakings, as the peasants were well-armed and organised and could either just kill the tax collector, or rise in revolt.\n\nDuring the late 1300s, labour was also owed to the local tax collector (24 days. quite a hefty amount) and the rulers tried to limit the amount of land anyone could purchase, since the tax was based on the household, not the amount of land it commanded. Quite a few peasants sold their land to noblemen, as the tenant fee usually was far lower than the tax required by the state.\n\nIn the few cities, tolls and taxes on buildings were collected. \n\nI have little information on the moment what would be done to someone who could not pay - I will need to check a bit further. ", "In England, at one time, the land was divided into shires, each shire had a reeve. The shire reeve or sheriff, collected taxes. \n\nThings were different in different places and different times.\n\n _URL_0_\n\nEpisode 31a" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://podbay.fm/show/412308812" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dbthp2h" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "You might have more responses in r/whatisthisthing, which is astonishingly good at it." ] }

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[ "https://postimg.org/image/7kglnfloj/db80f1f4/" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "coaeujg" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I think this is still an open question. Probably all of what you suggest happened at some point, but it doesn't appear that men could handle hours and hours of sustained fighting. So men wouldn't have been hacking at each other all day without rest. The Iliad seems to suggest warriors might fight for a time, then hop back on their chariot to ride away and rest. [Here is a show](_URL_2_) that tests the ability to fight in plate armor. So it doesn't look like warriors would be in the melee all day long. As to how exactly the knights were given a chance to rest, I don't know. Probably a lot of that depends on how they were organized. \n\nYou might check out the story of [Titus Pullo](_URL_0_) and [Lucius Vorenus](_URL_1_) for how soldiers switch of attacking. But take what Julius Caesar says with a grain of salt. " ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Pullo", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Vorenus", "http://youtu.be/ogxTTVSJ3Pg?t=37m27s" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdyz5it" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The [Piri Reis](_URL_0_) map answers both your questions on at least a cartographic level.\n\nOne of the most famous maritime explorers of history is Ibn Battuta. He was a Berber explorer known for extensive traveling of the old world.\n\nAnd although they are fringe theories at best, there are some speculated Andalusian maritime explorers said to have discovered the Americas before Columbus. Muhammad al-Idrisi and Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad are two names I could find after a short search. However, I don't think fringe theories are encouraged material for AskHistorians." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis_map" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cuz95fo", "cuza8wg", "cuzb5a4", "cuzl7ma" ], "score": [ 2, 17, 49, 7 ], "text": [ "I hope I can provide a beginning of an answer as a political/moral phiosopher. I'd be curious what there is to say for Mussolini or Stalin from an historian's perspective though. That being said, most historians from my experience are still avoiding the moral judgement toward figures like Stalin or Hitler. They seek to analyse and understand. Rarely you read historians write \"Stalin was immoral\" but more so that Stalin's regime was violent and oppressive. And there is a huge difference here! \n\nViolence can be observed; I can say something is violent without attaching moral judgement to it. Many actions deemed violent can even be seen as good. It is only your moral preconception and life experiences that bring you to look at violence under a certain moral light. The line is EXTREMELY thin. But people at different times or even under circumstances can look at violence differently. You can even hear examples nowadays when discussing the topic of criminal justice: violence toward certain groups is socially acceptable. Surely you have heard many people have no issues with pedophiles receiving less-than-stellar treatment by fellow inmates. Part of the craft of an historian or any academic either in political science, philosophy or sociology and others is to know how to navigate those issues that could otherwise be easily crossed and damage the craft.\n\nIn regard to the past, even if ideas regarding slavery were debated and people spoke up against colonisation, it was still debatable. It was not a clear case; it was discussed, argued and politicians of the time would sometimes align themselves according to those moral positions. But see here: you look at slavery with hindsight. For you or most people today, slavery is non-negotiable: it's not okay. Back then, it was. It was a moral struggle, something humanity had to face as a question. Although we know what prevailed in the West, to judge people in the past about it is to do with the eyes of the \"victor\" and not with the appropriate moral and historical context. \n\nYou say people back then just \"didn't listen\" but that's really the wrong way to approach it. You make the fallacy of saying that because it prevails today it is right and those who did not listen in the past are just stubborn or other reason that wouldn't make them change their mind; as if for them there was not good arguments given the context to allow a certain order of things to occur. \n\nMorality is not like science. There is not a True answer that becomes apparent with evience (empirical, mathematical or other). From a philosophical standpoint, it is simply not possible to look at the past and expect them to come to a conclusion as if someone had showed them a mathematical proof. Arguments have different level of convincing, various things are at stake and most of the time the best they have are the arguments of intelligent people --who are on both the side of an issue-- not something hard and cold that cannot be denied.\n\nIt is even more difficult if you consider something like racism. Any belief such as some groups being inferior were not really in a position to be proven as false. It was up to people's experience and most of the moral debates opposed different experiences and arguments.\n\nPeople are telling other people that they are wrong all the time. But in questions of morality, there is not a smoking gun. And to expect them to come to a certain conclusion is simply disingenuous and in the case of an historian would fail to take into account something central to the craft: the context.", "There's a difference between excusing and not criticizing. Just because we aren't actively criticizing something doesn't mean we think it was moral. One of the goals of historians, archaeologist, and other students of the past is to understand how historical people viewed the world. As an archaeologist, we talk a lot about \"ascribing significance.\" We must always be careful to only ascribe significance where it is due. If we want to describe the cultural connotations of the positions in which people were buried, we must first determine that that position was intentional and regular. If we find a bunch of pottery with squiggly lines on it, we can't go calling it \"aquatic imagery\" until we find something that suggests it's not just some simple everyday decoration. We may think it's special because we see it on many pieces, but that specialiness only exists through our present lens, our sample size.\n\nThe same goes with actions of historical figures.\n\nMost historical figures likely engaged in many activities we would consider outrageously sexist or racist. George Washington had many outstanding qualities; George Washington also owned slaves. I will never say that that was okay. It was morally wrong. Yet I will not criticize him for it or single him out as a wrongdoer. It was not noteworthy that a man in his situation should own slaves. Drawing attention to his slavery as something special contributes nothing to our understanding of him or his place in history. **His actions are only notable in light of present understandings.** Any significance we ascribe to Washington's practice only exists for us and reflects our worldview alone. It's much more fruitful to focus on why the institution was accepted, how it changed to be repulsive, and how slaveholders responded to opponents, rather than to just point fingers.\n\nSuppose 200 years in the future the US has overthrown its oppressive Chinese invaders who outlawed American entertainment, so pirating digital music or video becomes despicable. Current 20-somethings will be the next century's great figures, and a good number of them have illegally downloaded media. Imagine the clickbait \"news,\" then about the 56th US president who downloaded terabytes of hit movies and music without giving anything back to the honest American producers and artists. \"That's disgusting! How could they show so little respect to the inherent value of music! It's American culture, it's priceless!\" That looks a little silly to us now. So many people pirate media that such a reaction is entirely unmerited: yeah, so what.... everyone does that. The fact that PotUS 56 pirated all those Weezer reunion tour albums is only interesting on its own because by 2215 that practice is ostracized. These future historians will need to look beyond the moralizing and accept that it was a common practice, because that will tell them so much more about the present era. What is it exactly that makes pirating such an overlooked crime? What does that tell us about sub-cultures relations to \"popular\" culture?", "It comes down to the question of why we study history. Is it to find moral lessons? To decide whether people in the past were good or bad people? Or to gain a deeper understanding of how and why people make the choices they do by looking at the lives of people who came before us?\n\nIt would be easy to write a long rant about, for a random example, what a terrible person Teddy Roosevelt was and how he set our country up for a century of murderous colonialism. This rant could be very useful, because recognizing the historical roots of current moral issues in American foreign policy (Iraq, etc) is important. And this should probably be done.\n\nBut if we jump straight to moral judgment before trying to understand people in the past in their own contexts, we end up limiting our perspective to a simple morality tale, ie '5 Ways Teddy Roosevelt was a Horrible Human Being'. There's nothing wrong with morality tales per se, but if that's all we get out of the past, we're not actually understanding anything but our own present hopes and fears. And that, ultimately, is very limiting.\n\nUnderstanding past horrors on their own terms allows us to understand not only *that* people in the past did terrible things but, more importantly, *what kinds of circumstances* could cause people to make these decisions. If instead of just calling Teddy an imperialist asshole for storming the beaches of Puerto Rico, we contextualize his actions within the context of Victorian insecurities of masculine identity, colonialism, scientific racism, and white supremacy, we can begin to see that Teddy is merely the tip of a much more complex, interesting, and ultimately more important iceberg of ideas, social systems, and institutions that made American imperial expansion seem like a good idea in the late 19th century. That background is crucial for understanding how and why people like Teddy made the choices they did, and it allows us to do something much more important (I would argue) than simply judge people in the past for the things they did. It allows us to understand *why* they did them. And that understanding allows us to much more critically evaluate our own world than a simple moral lesson ('Don't be bad like Teddy!') ever could.\n\nIf we jump straight to judgment and condemn individuals in the past for being awful people, we risk missing the larger, much more important lessons the past can teach us: that horrors result from systems of knowledge, social pressures, and institutions as well as from individual people, and hence correcting horrors in our present day will require more than trying to be better people, it will require thinking critically about our own assumptions, ideas, and institutions.\n\nJudging people in the past is, in the end, too easy. They can't defend or explain themselves, and it ultimately doesn't have much payoff because calling out a dead guy for being racist doesn't add to the sum of our knowledge. Understanding why people chose to be racist, how those choices built entire empires of racism, and how those empires shaped the world we live in today? That's a much more valuable moral lesson.", "Coming from a background in anthropology (like many US archaeologists) the central tenet of anthropological research is \"cultural relativism\", a variation on \"presentism\" that works both in studying the present and past. Cultural relativism gets a bad rap by people who don't understand the point of it, that cultural relativism means we should tolerate all morally unacceptable acts as long as they are morally just within their particular cultural context. \n\nThis is really misunderstanding the point of anthropological research (including history and archaeology). The point of most modern historical and anthropological research is not to judge past people (or different cultures), but rather to *understand* them. \n\nI come from a worldview that most people are not mustache-twirling villains: they don't act in ways they see as morally despicable, or at the least, they are conflicted about what is or is not moral. These people in the past (or people from other cultures in the present) are more often than not acting in a manner consistent with their cultural conceptions of morality. Criticizing them for acting in a way consistent with their culturally specific worldview (and historical circumstances) doesn't end up helping us understand *why* they did what they did. At the end of the day, history is about the *why* and leveling moral critiques of people in the past usually doesn't help us achieve that end goal. \n\nThat isn't to say that people in the past get a free pass for what we (in the present) consider morally unacceptable actions. It just means that we have to put aside our moral judgement *as researchers* in order to understand why they did what they did. As an individual I will certainly condemn plantation slavery as a moral evil, but as a researcher it doesn't help me perform my duties. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbabf4s" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I study that period but in Newfoundland. So while there were a number of similarities i don't know if i could give you the level of detail you are looking for. Generally though on the profession level there would have been a lot of fishermen and farmers with an assortment of military, religious, and government peoples. \n\nIf you are not adverse to doing some archival research i'd suggest looking at the [Peabody Essex Museaum](_URL_0_) they have an excellent library and collection on the 17th century. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e0knjw0" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Well most of these stories come straight from Diogenes Laertius (180-240 AD, while Diogenes of Sinope died 323 BC), Vitae et sententiae philosophorum. He was an historian and bibliographer, he collected all the facts and tales about every ancient philosopher he knew about for basically his whole life. The most reliable tales are the ones that contain quotations he made from books or other philosophers; even though he used books as he had access to a huge library, it's really hard to find the actual source when he is not quoting someone else. Sometimes he just says \"it is said that...\". In these cases you can consider that as \"gossip\". \nI'd say most of the stories are just legendary, their purpose is to preserve and hand down his thought for posterity. I wouldn't say they are completely false though, but we cannot verify them with certainty because of the lack of reliable and contemporary sources. Anyway I suggest you to read the actual chapter of that book about Diogenes, it is really interesting and fun, also very short.\nYou can find the whole book in Greek and Italian if you google \"daphnet Diogene laerzio \" and click the \"ancient philosophy\" link there.\nApart from that, the sources about Diogenes are very few and scarce. None of his works ever survived as most of the cynical school of thought." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dydr9t2" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "It was rather common for sharpshooters to prefer the springfield over the M1 Garand due to the accuracy of the Springfield. There were also issues with the M1c variant of the Garand. The main issue was the placement of the telescopic sight, because it could not go directly over the reciever due to the way the M1 Garand needs to be loaded from the top.\n\nFor the most part, it was snipers who would prefer the springfield. From an autobiography, *Shots Fired in Anger*, the author mentions that during the battle of Guadalcanal, nearly everyone would have preferred to use the M1 Garand if they were using the Springfield without a scope.\n\nSo did regular troops prefer the Springfield? According to that autobiography, no. " ] }

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