During Constantine's time art and architecture were still recognisably Roman as we know it, with realistic sculptures and classical style buildings. Yet barely 2 centuries later, Justinian's famous portrait in gold mosaics looks like a bloody anime figure with unrealistically big eyes. Gone are the grandiose buildings decked out in marble, replaced by buildings like the Hagia Sofia and the San Vitale Church that don't look all that Roman even before the minarets. Renaissance art meanwhile obviously has its roots in classical antiquity. While I can appreciate it on its own, how did Byzantine art culture stray so far from its Roman roots?

Also I have zero academic background in either history or art so please feel free to correct me.

It appears as though the vast majority of historians agree that 3 - 4 million people died as a direct result of colonial policy. If this is so, why has the event been almost entirely forgotten in the west? Whereas the holodomer is justly seen as one of the worst genocides in human history, compared to the holocaust, and even considered worse than the holocaust by some, the famine in 1943 Bengal isn't even considered important enough to get a full paragraph in most history books on The Pacific War.

Having read a bit about the US involvement in regime change over the years, primarily deposing left wing political leaders, I've seen it mentioned how a lot of the time the countries seemed to be worse off after US involvement. (Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong here or provide example to the contrary, I am keen to learn more)

I realise in some cases there wasn't enough time for significant economic change to happen but I was wondering how these coups affected GDP, currency value and imports and exports and whether there were any times where a positive economic change could justify the other negative effects, or whether it just served to maintain the status quo with the money going back to US corporations and banks.

Thanks in advance!

I can't find much pre-Norman information about what a hide actually was besides a reference to "space for a family" and it being roughly 120 acres. This seems like a lot of land for a mother, father and even several children to subsist on so I was wondering if a hide housed an extended family of a patriach and several grown sons with their families?

How would so-called cottage industries have worked during this era? Would several hides have had each one of them doing their own blacksmithery, tanning, milling and spinning or would there have been experts that serviced all of them? Would houses have been in the middle of their fields or would they have been on the edge alongside a few other hides forming a natural village?

What would have been farmed, I assume it would have been a subsistence polyculture with a few livestock, some form of legume, a vegetable garden and either one grain (wheat) or several taking up the lion's share of the fields?

I have been watching a free online course from Harvard about the Giza plateau excavation and thought about something I had never considered. While I’m guessing hieroglyphic style changed over time, would hieroglyphics from the same period but different areas or person writing it have been exactly the same,more like fonts or would it be more like handwriting, where the basic shapes are similar but the style varies wildly based on the person making them? And in a related question-when we see hieroglyphics on things like tomb and temple walls, would it have been made by literate scribe/artisans with distinct styles or copied by workmen who wouldn’t have been able to understand what was being written? Edit: My phone hates me. I swear I know the difference between “Were” and “We’re” but I can’t edit the title that I can figure out.

Like, the answers always seem to have Mesoamerica and the Andes in mind, but forget they were the only regions in Latin America that had advanced urban civilizations. Places like the Venezuelan lowlands, Chile, Argentina, and most importantly the entirety of Brazil (half of South America) didn't have urban civilizations, and the colonizers intermix there just like they did in Mexico and Peru (ps: I'm not romanticizing these relations). So.. is there a reason why the English were more "secluded" compared to the Iberians?

I know it's hard to give a tangible answer to this, but when you see in history Mother's losing many children due to illness and not living past childhood, as well as the low mortality rate in general, were people less affected by death at all?

Out of Henry VIII’s six wives, four were subjects in England. I had always heard there was a great advantage to marrying royalty from other countries. Were there political reasons for seeking brides from England?

To me the figure seems mind boggling to say the least. Is this so?

And if $45 trillion was taken then where did it all go?

Roman history tends to fascinate me. There is just this amazing idea behind it because it is something physical in our world. It is there, and it used to flourish. It lasted for so long that no one is sure how it was founded and instead we have the legend of Romulus and Remus. Anyways, let me get to the point of my question. I do not know the exact number of the population of Rome after they were invaded by the Visigoths, but I know for certain they had at least a million citizens. After Rome was Sacked what happened to them? What did the poor commoners do? Did they just go to some other city-state on the Italian Peninsula? How about the wealthy Romans that have their roots among the first families of Rome? I get that they were invaded, but does that mean suddenly all economic activity of Rome halted? The businesses were still there... did any of them continue to function? To sum up my question in a single sentence, I’m asking what did Roman citizens who were alive during its fall, and had lived in Rome all of their lives before hand, do after it fell?

I heard some things about Korean history, and I heard that many years ago South Korea had a dictator like North Korea, and was very poor. Today it is a very progressive country with a strong economy and a better government. How did it climb up?

I’ve seen this theory in a few places recently, and it seems like a real stretch based on what I can find. Is there anything more to the idea that Alexander Pushkin is/was Alexandre Dumas than similarities in their portraits and a coincidence in timing? Do any credible folks find this one convincing?

I have seen things ranging from Beria outright admitting it to other party members, to early drafts of the autopsy and medical records indicating poisoning. Is assassination considered plausible by historians or is this a debunked conspiracy theory?

I've been playing a lot of games lately and watching shows that feature the "Wild West" that took over the Western United States after the Civil War. I know from history classes that it was partly romanticized, but to what extent? Did this "Wild West" actually have some basis in truth (eg, cowboys and bank-robbing gangs, etc) or was it almost all just a romanticization after the fact? If it was mostly just romanticized, where did this popular idea of the "Wild West" come from?

When I look throughout Japanese history, nearly everyone serves or is under the emperor. Even under Daimyos or Shoguns, they all seem to fight each other but not against the emperor himself.

The Japanese have had an emperor for nearly or literally all of their entire history.

Has, let's say, Japanese Christians revolted? Shintoism seems to have the emperor as a divine figure, but Christianity thinks otherwise.

The emperor bloodline has existed for centuries, did anyone in Japan think "Hey why is this dude ruling!?" Or "This guy isn't that great!" and started a revolution?

I know Shoguns were thrown around, but what about Emperors?

I just recently saw the trailer for the new Assassin's Creed game, which features vikings in leather armor, braids, guyliner, and face paint, a very similar visual style to the one we see in television shows such as History Channel's Vikings. While my knowledge on the subject of what the Norsemen wore and looked like is very limited, as far as I understand, they didn't look like that at all. Just like the operas of the 19th century romanticized vikings with horned helmets (which were inspired by bronze age ceremonial headgear), it seems to be a modern invention. Where then, does this unique look come from?

What did the translators think of the Apocrypha? How were the translations influenced by Sephardim in France (as opposed to the Ashkenazim in Germany)? This is just speculation, I don't know -- the question here is really whether the original text in France was the same as was used by Martin Luther or the translators of the KJV, and their use of the Masoretic text (or not) versus the Septuagint or Vulgate. Where would they have learned to read Aramaic?

How did the Huguenot translation(s) compete with that of other French Protestants?

I ask specifically about Huguenots in exile because I'm curious how the text was carried away from France and how it influenced the French spoken by colonists born overseas. Also, "early 17th century exile" more specifically means "before 1643".

Just off the top of my head (maybe not all technically colonies, but some type of rule): USA, Canada, India, parts of Africa, parts of South America, Australia, Burma, Hong Kong, etc... pretty sure there's a few more.

So, I could understand losing a colony here and there, but seriously.... after you lose like 6 in a row, don't you take a hard look in the mirror and ask why none of these places want to stay with you?

Please break it down for a layman if you would.