My question is what is the difference, if any, between a culture’s mythology and a culture’s religion as it relates to ancient/past civilizations. Are they the same thing? Are they different concepts that are strongly linked together? I wanted to hear your thoughts.

I feel like not a lot of attention in popular history is given to how people lived in the interwar period in places like Poland or Czechoslovakia. Was it overall a good place to live, or were there problems for people living there?

I’m confused about why the states that seceded from the union, didn’t accept a buy-out from Lincoln...? They didn’t want to lose their slaves because of the economic loss it would cause, but why not just take a huge sum of money when it was offered, then? I’m curious to know if anyone in this situation that was opposed to seceding. Is there any history on anyone’s in specific from the south that was opposed to secession? How did they handle it?...

i know the yellow river ran right through Wei/Cao/Zheng etc, during this period, and perhaps it was splits in the river that made each of these kingdoms reasonably defensible?

Hello,

Some of my family are interested in delving deeper into World History to fill in a lot of basic gaps in their knowledge. Given my undergraduate degree in History and 20 consecutive years of personal pursuit, I offered to put a syllabus together.

But I'm not an expert on everything.

Where I need help: getting good, clear, freely and legally accessible sources for people with access to the internet and public libraries, but no academic resources.

More specifically, I am well versed in Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Europe, European Empires, United States' and Mexican history.

Areas I need especial help finding good sources: (sub-Saharan) African history up until 1700; Mesoamerican societies; pre-colonial Indian subcontinent (especially between Alexander the Great and Portuguese contact); Shang- Ming dynasty China; what is modern Indonesia, and Polynesian history.

My audience: my goal is to make this as relatable as a college World History survey course, so not challenging but broad and with enough depth to encourage independent exploration afterwards.

I'm open to all kinds of sources, so long as they are verifiable. Podcasts, Youtube videos, articles, books they can get from a public library, or legally and freely accessible journal articles. I am introducing some primary texts, but not many (for example I am using Fordham University's Ancient History Sourcebook).

I would also love ideas about smaller, focused enrichment subjects. For example I'm planning to create an "Early Philosophies" section that will fall slightly out of my chronological order, but cover things like Platonism, Roman Stoicism, Confucianism, etc. If you have ideas of similar thematically related topics, I'd be obliged!

Thank you for your help!

I’ve heard that peasants were not allowed to work on specific days (such as the day of a festival) but I have also heard that it was illegal to work on a Sunday. So did the Medieval people call Monday “Monday” or did they call it something different? If they did have different names for the days of the week, what were the names?

"Historically, the city of Babylon was not completely destroyed in 539 B.C or in the centuries that followed. Even at the beginning of the Christian era, Babylon was still an important city with a large populace of Jews. However, the victory of the Medes over Babylon caused the fall of the city as well as the religion and political power of Babylon and instead of a sudden destruction it was gradually destroyed by the forces of nature."

Quoted from (The prophecy knowledge handbook by John Walvoord)

In light of the fact that Erdogan decided to make Hagia Sophia a mosque again and plans on painting over the christian murals inside left behind by the byzantines, how did they originally survive when the ottomans took Constantinopole? I know the basilica was transformed and used as a mosque before becoming a museum but i've seen the main argument for getting rid of the murals is that it can't function as a mosque with them there cause islam forbids it. How come it functioned as a mosque before? Is islam more strict now than it was in the 15th century?

I was unaware of this atrocity until recently (honestly can’t understand why our school systems fail so abysmally at covering such things), and I’m interested in hearing from someone very well versed in the history of soviet ideology and politics. Why was the policy so aggressive, and why such a hate for the kulaks specifically?

I have a vague description of a person who served, and would like to know more about how they served. Here is the info I know (but some of it may be slightly off):

• EU / UK Veteran
• Served around 1955 (possibly 1855)
• Served for possibly 8 years
• Passed away in 1989 (or 1889)
• I believe they were American serving for the
  US

Does this info line up to any specific war or situation? I don’t have much knowledge on this type of history, and wasn’t able to find anything online that I thought was exactly spot on.

Thanks!

I'm sure for people with less money, they could just have it on their person. But what about middle income to the 1%? Would they have basements full of gold? Or was there a bank system where people could put money in vaults and pull it out as necessary?

More accurately, named after a slur for a group they hate.

According to Wikipedia's article on the story The Rats in the Walls:

The name of the cat, "Nigger Man", has often been cited in discussions of Lovecraft's racial attitudes. Lovecraft owned a cat by that name until 1904. The cat had likely been given its name when Lovecraft was about age 9.[20]

Evidently, 9-year-old Lovecraft may not have been the one to name the real cat, but he apparently liked the name enough to reuse it in his fiction. Also, though I haven't seen it discussed anywhere, it also doesn't seem like a coincidence that one of his monsters is named "Shub-Niggurath," though that's not necessarily relevant to the question.

I'm curious about the official genocide classification of the different parts of Spanish conquest of the Americas.

Obviously, the post-conquest actions of the Catholic church destroying relics and forcibly converting the indigenous amount and the enslavement by the Spanish state amount to genocide, so we can skip that part.

However, initially, Cortez and Pizzaro only had a few hundred men with them. And were more interested in gold than wiping out a specific ethnic group or culture the way Genghis Khan, Hitler, or Attaturk was. And the majority of the atrocities were committed by local ethnic groups now having the oppurtunity to settle old grievance i.e. Tlaxcalans and the Mexica.

Is the blood of that genocide considered to be on the hands of the Spanish or the Tlaxcalans (not that they were the only local people settling scores). Is that the correct way to think about it? Why/why not?

And what about the deaths that happened from the accidental introduction of smallpox and other diseases that allegedly killed off 95% of the indigenous population. That same result could have happened because of increased trade between distant populations of humans, like the Justinian Plague.

So is that part considered genocide?

How does genocide get attributed?

Throughout most, if not all, of Anglo-Saxon history the petty kingdoms have been at war and fighting each other or their Britonnic neighbours. This gave rise to a strong warrior class of Thegns with combat experience.

So how come the Vikings were able to raid the British isles with such impunity and were more or less just paid off. Was this due to the Viking raiders having a greater advantage, or the Saxon kingdoms being at a disadvantage?

I’ve been curious about this for a long time, but recently began thinking about it more after watching the movie “Troy.”

Was the Trojan War an actual event? Or is it fictional? I know that in the Iliad, Homer seems to describe the events of the war and the famous figures that took part in it, but were those events and people real, or were they simply invented as part of the Greek mythos?

Also, if the Trojan War did actually happen, how accurate are the works of fiction that portray it? Like, obviously there were no gods involved and there were no invincible Greek warriors like Achilles, but was Achilles based on a real soldier? Did the Greeks actually infiltrate Troy by hiding inside a giant wooden horse (probably not, right)?

Thanks a lot! This is a really cool community and I look forward to hearing back.

-is it true?

-what did that military campaign look like? Number of forces and weapons used?

-were they successful?

-how many buffalo are we talking? What happened to all those buffalo?

-does this meet current standards for a genocide, assuming people died from lack of food?

-why kill the buffalo rather than fight the natives directly?

-was it controversial at the time?

While I know that native Americans didnt understand how purchasing land worked I was wondering how much land was purchased vs stolen?

Hello, I'm an American who has really only seen the photo of the man in front of the tank, but recently I've seen a video that someone posted to Reddit of a British news reporter talking about the military shooting at citizens and killing and injuring them. I had no idea that happened at all and have zero context or any other information about what happened so if I could get a rundown I would really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Popularly, the great famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 is often labeled a genocide and seemingly equivocated to the holocaust in the holodomor naming. When it is not referred to as a genocide it is often called a "man-made" famine. What does it mean for a famine to be "man-made"? I have never heard this language used in reference to any other famine, and I am curious of the significance in this qualifier. Blights, droughts, or floods may not appear to be a man-made occurrence, but they are very often precipitated by unforeseen long term side-effects of particular agricultural practices and it seems to be a meaningless distinction. It's very true that communist nations engaged their farmers in inadvisable mass agricultural experiments which of course failed, but wasn't the intention to produce more food rather than to make a famine?

To prove a non-controversial genocide-famine I'd imagine there would have to be some fully intentional, documented policy of purposeful starvation for a particular region or people that can be disassociated with disruptions in food supply. This would rule out logistical bottlenecks, failures in intelligence or bad analysis by leadership, and so on, but I suppose there is always that grey area for deniable but purposeful inaction.

I have never heard the 'potato famine' in Ireland spoken of as a genocide famine but rather as the unfortunate result of a natural blight. Swift's satiric Modest Proposal, while not contemporary, still portrays a truly hostile British policy towards the Irish, and I have also read that food exports from Ireland in fact increased during the potato famine. However, even the mildest language afforded the Soviets, the "man-made famine," is spared here and the mass death in Ireland is fully naturalized in every source I can remember. Am I reading a bias into holodomor? Is it simply that the liberal mind tends towards naturalization, some invisible hand is responsible, whereas the more positive Marxist point of view gives humanity far more agency?

At least in theory, both UNPROFOR forces were changed with the same mission, presumably with the same or similar command structure, and comparable rules of engagement.
Why were Canadians willing to stand between two fighting sides and engage in whole night of heavy combat, exhibiting high level of combat performance (0 dead on UNPROFOR side, 27 KIA on Croat side) while the Dutchbat was not willing or able to protect civilians?