In Robert Harris’ “Lustrum” the body of a sacrificed slave is found in Rome. In the novel the sacrifice was said to have been made to hold the conspirators to a vow of secrecy. Do our ancient sources have anything to say about Cataline’s use of human sacrifice or is this an embellishment on the author’s part?

I’m fascinated by the history of the Mongol conquests. I believe their language spread into mainland China. Are these two words just different versions of the same word? Are people speaking Mandarin really speaking Mongolian?

I mostly hear about the violence and unrest in Northern Ireland, but was there similar violence in southern parts? How much did the southern Irish know about the Troubles? What did they think?

Thank you!!!

Sub-Saharan Africa had an extensive ironworking economy before extended European contact, were traders like the British and Dutch iron exporters or importers? How did this trade contact effect the local African iron industries?

After Spartas independence ends what happens to the Helot slaves? Are they allowed to remain slaves or are they freed?

This is one of those where the wikipedia says "historians aren't really sure". Thus I'd like a bit more of a historian's view.

While reading Pepys diary, he mentions on a trip to Kent visiting a part of the navel fleet then going on to see what he describes as "The Saxon Stone near Aylesbury, a stone disc supported on two columns". Does anyone have any information on this and does it still exist?

I've been thinking about this lately with Brexit looming. It's difficult for me to imagine modern Europeans dying to keep the UK in the EU, although I also know it's also foolish to try and compare the two situations. But especially considering how badly the Eastern theater had gone for the North in the first two years, it's difficult for my modern mind to comprehend the motivation of troops to die for what seems like an abstract concept. Additionally, I had a history teacher tangentially explain to me that originally Northern troops fought to preserve the union, but as they entered the south and saw plantations, they began to see first-hand how bad slavery was and their motivations changed to include freeing the slaves as well. If this is the case I was hoping their would be some soldiers' letters where we could see these changes.

So after fighting the long Vietnam war. N Vietnam (now I guess just Vietnam) invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. From my point of view, I see them as rather heroic in ending a genocide. Did they invade to end the atrocities? Seems like the rest of the world condemned the invasion, even though the Khmer Rouge are about as close to evil as you can get. What was their reasoning for the invasion, and why didn't the west support it?

I just recently finished writing my senior capstone paper for my university. My thesis was that the Tokyo Trials were ultimately a failure in it's purpose to bring the people responsible for involvement in the war to justice: because the U.S. used the trials for their own good.

At the end of 1937 and at the beginning of 1938, the Japanese imperial army took over the city of Nanking, and over about a 6 week period - the Japanese Imperial Army killed and raped many of the civilians, giving life to the name "The Rape of Nanking".

This post isn't about the atrocities that happened during the invasion, but rather the fact that the prosecutors during the Trial were highlighting the terrible things that happened in Nanking and hanging/executing the people involved, rather than the people who actually did damage to the overall involvement to the war.

The U.S. didn't really get involved in the war until Pearl Harbor, the U.S. using nuclear weapons against Japan was a test of their strength everyone knows this, but during the Trials - the main focus was what the Japanese Imeprial Army did during their conquest of East Asia. They let many of the important players in Japan go on account that they give up their knowledge.

An example of this is the Commander of unit 731. The unit was a human experimentation facility that was responsible for holding prisoners of war - where biological and chemical warfare research and development took place. Shiro Ishii, a Japanese microbiologist and army medical officer, and Director of Unit 731, was completely voided of all charges during the Tokyo Trials. The suspected reason was that General Douglas MacArthur and others realized they could take their research and use it to their advantage.

My question isn't if the U.S. did a lot of shady shit, cause I already know that. I just wanna hear from others what else they've heard that the U.S. has hid from the public during the war and the Tokyo Trials.

P.S.: English isn't my first language so I apologize for any corrections that need to be made to my post. Thank you.

In many religions there seem to be quite strict rules around their sacred texts (e.g. not touching Torah scrolls with bare hands in Judaism, making formal ablutions before touching the Qur'an in Islam, etc.) and images (e.g. not worshipping images of the Gurus in Sikhism, or forbidding images of Muhammad in Islam).

In modern Christianity (here in the West at least) I'm not aware of any such rules. Has it always been this way? Or did Christians once have stricter rules about these kinds of things? And what factors led Christianity to take this more relaxed approach to their texts and iconography, where other religions don't?

Who was the first known Goverment outside Spain to discover what Columbus did, how long did it take and what do we know of what they made of it initially?

I've tried reading Wikipiedia and other sites and i just can't seem to understand what they actually do and why they even banded together in the first place.

Were they a secret organisation? What work did they do? did they have a philosophy?

If someone can explain that would be nice.

For warriors or laborers, I can imagine breaks were fairly common — as they are today. What kind of understanding of the body did they have in practical situations? Did they heal effectively and return to their normal lives?

Breaky breaky, what do?

Was he and his theories like Permanent Revolution still viewed with open hostility? With Stalim out of the picture, why was Trotsky not recuperated in the former USSR?

The history of computing in the United States is well documented and known throughout the world. For a majority of the Cold War the Soviet Union and the United States were neck and neck in terms of technology. With computers being such a critical part of technology development, the Soviet Union must have possessed an impressive amount of computing power or did they? How did Soviet computing compare to the US in terms of sophistication, research, and availability?

I recently read that after William the Conqueror's conquest of England many Anglo-Saxons sailed to Constantinople and after serving the Emperor they were granted lands owned by the Pechenegs. Is this real? if so what happened to those Anglo-Saxons and their settlements?