I know this is a topic that gets beat to death, but I read so much conflicting information regarding it. I'm not talking about pederasty or prostitution, but actual relationships.

As I understand it, gender wasn't the issue but social status/roles in the sexual act itself (penetrating vs. being penetrated). Theoretically, two adult men wouldn't be in a relationship because it would be shameful for the one being penetrated; shameful because their ultimate loyalty is to the State and the State couldn't benefit through intercourse of two men. That's what I've read elsewhere, anyway.

However, didn't some emperors or even Alexander have same-sex relationships and it not be taboo or no?

It's far from the only one, but to my knowledge is by the best known of them. why?

My impression is that Christianity was slowly crushed (though not outright destroyed) in the first few decades, but during WW2 restrictions were eased for the parts of the Orthodox Church willing to collaborate, though it was still hardly a religiously free society.
Was this mirrored for Islam?

At the recommendation of the good people here, I read David Hackett Fischer‘s Albion’s Seed. I thought it was fantastic and eye-opening, but I don’t know if his argument is generally accepted among historians or if there are equally (or more) strong counter-arguments that I should also read.

Is there a historical consensus on Fischer’s theory? It’s 30 years old at this point (it’s history itself!), does it still hold up? Are there other books I should read on the topic that would provide a different view?

Thank you

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From what I know, most Armed Forces soldiers call eachothers as "comrades", even thought I suspect this was a thing even before Communism appearead, it is still a thing worth asking.

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Hi Historians,

I am making a campaign for a table top RPG and the setting is a small town with a population of between 100 and 200 people set in the foothills area of Colorado in the 1860's. I want to make as authentic a setting as possible and I want to create a map of the town that I can show my players. My question is, what kind of occupations and businesses might I find in such a town and what might those buildings look like? I have a sort of cookie cutter Western movie image in my head but I don't know what sort of unique things there would be that I wouldn't initially think of beyond the classic bar, hotel, brothel, general store. Also, if there is any information on this, what is the scale of these buildings? I imagine most homes didn't have 10ft. vaulted ceilings and most houses were smaller than standard houses of today but I am struggling to find much scale.

Thanks for your help!

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The other day on the train I saw a pretty girl, we began talking and getting along, when oh no!, she tells me that Hitler wasn't bad. feelsbadman.jpg

I tried to understand why she thought this, she told me that the holocaust "wasn't that bad" meaning that much less people had died, and that the holocaust hadn't even been organized by Hitler but by "a shadow government".

She also said that Hitler was very fond of muslims which I didn't believe at first but I looked it up and I guess is kinda true, he mentioned once that he wished germany was a muslim country, but still, that's not something to brag about, and yet that's exactly what she was doing

She also had MANY other strange beliefs, I only saw the top of the iceberg. She hated Florence Nightinvale for some reason, and she told me there were muslims nurses long before her. She told me the history of the muslim golden age was being repressed by "the west", I tried to explain her that I had been taught in school how muslim scholars invented algebra, algorithms, how they preserved greek philosophy and many other things, I agreed that history classes could be too eurocentric sometimes, but she insisted that there was a conspiracy to downright erase the achievements of any muslim ever.

It went on and on, those are just the things that stood out the most to me.

What should I do when I meet someone like this?, I feel bad that I had the chance to help someone but I couldn't.

I have noticed that most of the Italian noble houses from the Middle Ages onwards are descended either from the Lombards or the Franks. What happened to the Roman bureaucrats and aristocrats that they supplanted? Following the Lombard invasion, were they integrated or just removed?

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Once I watched a television program about contraceptives in Ancient Rome and how they used fish intestines as condoms (I think).
What other kinds of contraceptives did ancient romans/greeks/egyptians etc. use? Were they concerned only about pregnancies or did they think about STDs too? How safe were their sexual lives? Did they have some kind of sex ed or something like that?

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The province was the largest in the empire, it was fully romanized by the end of the first century, it was home to a major port (Massalia), and it was fairly close to Rome. How come only one Emperor of Rome was a native of Gaul? this seems puzzling to me especially when you compare it to the large number of emperors from smaller areas like the Balkans. ( More than 10)

Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!

If you are:

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this thread is for you ALL!

Come share the cool stuff you love about the past! Please don’t just write a phrase or a sentence—explain the thing, get us interested in it! Include sources especially if you think other people might be interested in them.

AskHistorians requires that answers be supported by published research. We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Fire in the hole! ...and in the house, castle courtyard, barn loft, cave, wiping out entire cities. What are some of the major flame-related disasters in your era? How did people fight fires?

Next time: ROYALTY

I recently read Susan Buck-Morss's "Hegel and Haiti" (2009). She argues that most Enlightenment philosophers (especially French Enlightenment philosophers) were keenly aware of the Haitian revolution due to newspaper coverage: "The Haitian Revolution was the crucible, the trial by fire for the ideals of the French Enlightenment. And every European who was part of the bourgeois reading public knew it" (42).

Moreover, she argues that black slaves "catching the spirit of liberty" and rising up proved that the spirit of freedom was universal, and thus that progressive history and the French Revolution were "not simply a European phenomenon but world-historical" (39). She further claims Rousseau, Locke, and Hegel understood this implication, but did not pursue it due to racism and material interests (eg the French bourgeois relied more & more heavily on colonial profit). Is this true? How widely publicized was the Haitian Revolution?