Hey,

I'm working on a writing project which is set in early mediaeval Britain and Ireland. More specifically northern Ireland and Western Scotland in Dumbarton and the surrounding area in the year 870, during the siege of Dùn Breatainn.

As part of this I'm trying to better understand the religious landscape of the areas, in particular the schools of Christianity that would have been practiced and taught at the time.

So in 870 Ireland and Scotland what schools of Christianity would have existed and who were there major influencing figures?

Here's an example from a wikipedia article:

"The work was probably carried out beginning in the early 860s and completed around 866–67. This is based on a dedication in the book identifying as frater (brother) Wulfad, who was made a bishop in 866, making it unlikely that Eriugena would have used so casual a reference after that elevation."

What do you call this part of history, or what would be a search term for this, and what resources exist as an overview of this topic?

I had read recently that Wyatt Earp did not become famous until many years after the events in Tombstone Arizona . once the biography of him was written amd it got me thinking .

Who enjoyed legendary status in the wild west? From what research I've done , Jesse James and Wild Bill hickok seemed to enjoy a kind of celebrity in their day. But what about people we now consider synonymous with the Old West? Was Billy the kid a house hold name in New York city? Was john Wesley harding famous in France? Was the cowardice of Robert Ford known the world over? Of was it just local news , not particularly interesting to outsiders?

My great grandfather was an immigrant from Ireland who left as a child. He died in the 1970s. My general understanding of things via my grandmother (who knew him well and was in her 30s when he died) has been that he immigrated with his family, his parents took sick and died soon after immigration to New York when he was a child, and that he was adopted by an American family. I've always understood it that he was born in the 1870s, but I have done some digging and found a few of his census records from 1920, 1930, and 1940. Most of his information is consistent (first language written as Irish, years working, etc). However, he gives different years of birth on each of them, with a wide variance of over a decade. He also gives consistently different years of immigration to the US as well as his naturalization as an American citizen. The latest one he gave was 1900 for immigration. For the 1920 census, he even wrote 1919 as his year of naturalization as a citizen, a full decade or two later than I would have assumed.

What would possess someone to give such widely divergent information on the census? He was a lifelong manual laborer, so I have heard that possibly lying to look younger for work reasons may have been it, but that still seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

After the anschluss he certainly had the power to take revenge on the director or the entire establishment. So I was wandering if he did or did he just let it go?

I’ve been trying to find the cliff notes of “Jews and their lies”. I found lots of articles on the subject but none that spoke about WHY he had this gripe. Most stuff only covers what he was suggesting they do about it (get rid of the Jews if they don’t convert). Even the Wikipedia doesn’t mention any of the content of his argument. Also some stuff on if he always hated them vs only did later in life.

So, I ended up biting the bullet and speed reading through the essay. I’m hoping somebody else who has read it with a more thorough eye can confirm my fast interpretation...

He disliked them because

1. Jews view themselves as gods chosen people which went against his theories that everyone was equally loved by god

2. Less so, he didn’t like they, allegedly, all made their money from lending/usury and this gave them political power locally/otherwise

He goes over a bunch of bible stuff and things like circumscition and “Jews vs Goyim” ideas but all of that seemed to be “evidence” in arguing how they aren’t actually gods chosen people (vs arguments themselves).

Is this a correct understanding of his essay?

If so, he seemed to get angrier at Jews than Christians (who also sometimes had views that contradicted his views on god)

When you consider that they took forever to reload, we’re inaccurate, and probably terribly expensive, why would someone want that as opposed to a crossbow?

It took entire firing squads to stand in front of each other to reliably hit a target, when as far as I’m aware a bowman could be anywhere on the battlefield.

It seems to me like having a bow and arrow or a crossbow is more effective, so besides maybe cannons why were early guns so quickly able to replace arrow based projectiles

I'm making a scale model bust of a Roman legionary that took part in the battle of Teutoburg forest in 9 A.D. I would like to engrave a plate with his name and his army affiliation (Leg. XVII Coh. V for example) and I'm looking for advice on the correct naming convention.

Thank you

I am reading a novel now 'Alias Grace' based on the true story of Grace Marks. Grace comes from Ulster (present day Northern Ireland). Her father was English and her mother a local Ulster Protestant. Clearly the family must speak in English as her father came over from England and there is no mention of him having to learn to speak Irish.

Where most people in Ulster at this time Irish speakers, English speakers or bilingual?

In other places of the world it seems that one culture would develop writing and then it would spread all over the place, like the sumerians in the middle east, the chinese in asia, the sanskirts in india, and so on

In Mexico the Mayans developed writing, they wrote many books, they had orthographical reforms... and yet other nearby cultures didn't adopt it.

For example, when Teotihuacan became the dominant city in the region and it conquered the Mayan city states they wrote about it and that's why we call that ruler of Teotihuacan Spearthrowing Owl, but the Teotihucans themselves never wrote down anything, despite seeing the mayans do it

I don't understand how was it possible that so many cultures for such a long time interacted with people who knew writing and yet never decided to do that themselves

edit:

Also, I understand that Mayan was very different from other languages in the region, for example, Purepechan is an isolate, and nahuatl has a completely different phonology, and that would have meant that adapting their system to other languages wouldn't be easy, but that didn't stop other people from adopting writing systems made for completely different languages in other regions of the world, like the greeks modifying the Phoenician abjad

The Bering Strait (the body of water separating Russia from Alaska) is only 55 miles across, so it seems like Russians were better poised to discover the Americas than Spain or the Vikings were. Is it just that no one ever thought to venture deep into the northern Pacific Ocean, or did people discover Alaska/Canada early on but colonization wasn’t worth the effort?

Was it originally Italian/European or was it actually brought over by Marco Polo or was it brought from Asia before Polo?