His killers seemed to think he was trying to be a king but what did Caesar think he was doing? What did he say he wanted? Was Shakespeare Brutus right in saying that Caesar was ambitions and that was it? He was just a run of the mill power grabber?

I'm now in Mexico and have some people telling me that to this day, the technology to build the pyramids is not known. Also, some of the ancient writings and drawing appear to show things such as airplanes and helicopters, so therefore that is proof of ancient alien visitation.

My guess is slave labor explains much of the way that the pyramids and other huge buildings were built, but perhaps they had advanced (non-alien) construction methods as well. Thank you.

I've been reading Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror," and I recently landed on this footnote:

In one 14th century illuminated manuscript, Pride was a knight on a lion, Envy a monk on a dog, Sloth a peasant on a donkey, Avarice a merchant on a badger, Gluttony a youth on a wolf, Ire a woman on a boar, and Luxury (instead of the standard Lechery) a woman on a goat.

To begin with, if anyone has any leads on which manuscript she might be referring to and whether there are any images available, I'd love to hear - Google isn't turning up anything.

But I'm also interested in these particular animal symbols - some seem conventional and obvious, I guess because they've survived to this day, like Pride and the lion, and I'm aware that the medieval imagination saw many living creatures as theological or moral parables, like the association of the stork with Christ. But how universal was the association between badgers and avarice? Would these animal images have been strictly defined, or might different scribes have interpreted boars and badgers in different ways? And do we know how far these associations actually impacted the way people in the middle ages treated the animals around them?

Sorry for the poorly worded title, I had trouble getting the whole question in with the character limit. I want to know why the European monarchies reacted so harshly to the French Revolution (resulting in the French Revolutionary Wars), but did not have similar reactions to the English Civil War, which seems to have mostly been met with apathy from what I can tell, with the French and Spanish recognising the new republic in 1653.

I've been reading this excellent book on nationalism in modern Japan, and it's rather clear once focused and thinking about all the implications. But the topic of the first assemblies in a somewhat democratic Japan came up and it's got me a bit confused. Aside from the structures varying, the differences look very subtle (at least from what I've seen).

The overall changes of the era must have been difficult to understand for the japanese people, but how much were they concerned with the establishment of assemblies or democratic structures?

So, I recently heard a theory that Medusa was black and her hair was actually dreadlocks but they had never seen dreadlocks before so it was said her hair was snakes. Any historical accuracy to this? Very intrigued to learn more and my google searches found a lot of opinions but not much in what I would consider to be reliable sources.

Hello. I'm staying at a cabin close to a "thunderbirds nest" and have been fascinated to learn more about them through Google but am wondering if I can get anything more detailed through this subreddit. Any history about indigenous peoples in the interlake region of Manitoba, Canada is also welcome.

Thank you.

I know there is a good amount of discussion among many historians and linguists on whether the Indus Valley script is actually a script and not just a bunch of symbols. Assuming they were just symbols, how did the people of the Indus Valley Civilization conduct trade without a reliable script? Wouldn't it be advantageous to adopt the Cuneiform Script since they traded with the Sumerian's?

The title doesn’t do a good job of what I’m asking. Say that I want to read a book on the history of France. Hypothetically, I can read French. Would you say that in general the native language of the country you are trying to read about produces better history books on the nation compared to the anglosphere?

This goes for any language like Spanish, German, italian, etc. I’m curious if the quality of our secondary sources are limited besides subjects on England, the United States, Canada.

While reading on the history of fascism, I noticed that the fasces is a symbol that repeatedly popped up, particularly in Italy under Mussolini.

The symbol intrigued me, and I noticed that it appears in many displays today (Logos of law schools, on the Lincoln memorial, etc.), just like the swastika appears on many ancient East Asian structures.

We all know that the swastika is heavily frowned upon in contemporary social culture and western society in general, so how come the fasces is far less known and scrutinized, if known at all?

Excerpt from the Leaflet II by the White Rose:

We don’t want to write about the Jewish Question in this leaflet, we don’t want to compose a defending speech – no, we just want to mention a fact as a short example, the fact that since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. Here we see the most terrifying crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the entire history of mankind. The Jews, too, are human beings – no matter what position one takes on the Jewish Question – and against human beings a crime of this dimension has been perpetrated. Someone might say that the Jews deserve their fate. This assertion would be a monstrous presumption; but let us assume that someone said this – what position has he then taken on the fact that the entire Polish aristocratic youth has been annihilated (May God grant that this is not yet the case!)? In what way, they would ask, did something like this happen? All male offspring of noble lineage between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labour, and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the brothels of the SS!

Of course, the swastika that symbols good luck and other spiritual meanings is the most famous one. But I just knew that the orange-white-blue tricolour of the Netherlands was also not used because it was used by the nazis in NL. The country now used the current red-white-blue horizontal tricolor flag.

What are other things that they stole that makes it bad but it doesn't have anything to do with nazis?

Sorry for grammatical errors.

So I'm aware that there are a small handful of drifter types that still occupy the territory around Chernobyl, but the area itself is by and large permanently deserted. Why didn't the Japanese avoid repopulating the blast sites of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the aftermath to avoid radiation contamination? Or why didn't people move away permanently?

I know both sides used swords, spears, archers, armor, and cavalry. From what I understand, European warfare actual had very little sword-fighting, despite depictions in film. The infantry was mostly pikes, and the knights were employed in cavalry charges. Archers could have a massive impact in a battle, but weren't always present. So how similar were these tactics to what was going on in Japan? How different were they?

I would be especially interested in any sources if they comment on his character.

A naive understanding of family names (i.e. last names in English) might make you think that the number of unique family names in the world only decreases over time. Children get one of the two last names of their parents, and so no new family names are created and sometimes family names die out.

Of course, there's plenty of reasons the above isn't always true. Every existing family name had to start somewhere, and I know that process didn't end in the modern era. I have friends who have legally adopted entirely novel family names for personal reasons. Immigrants often change their family name, and the same original name may be changed into several variations. And I know from the example of Turkey that some groups of people began the modern era not using inherited family names and then switched to that practice.

I'm not expecting any historians have been keeping a careful count of the global number of family names, but I'm wondering if you can point to the modern-era events/trends that have likely resulted in the biggest change in the number of last names globally.

Am I right in guessing the number of family names has grown rather than shrunk?

Is the cause mostly immigration? Mostly specific last-name-generation events like the Turkish surname law? Or something else I haven't thought of?

Was the growth in the number of family names greatest early in the modern era? Or is it faster today?

The Karnak inscription that records that 6359 uncircumcised phalli were carried off from a battle with the Libyans in 1207 BCE, whereas the Athribis stele records that just 6200 conquered phalli were counted from that battle.

I’ve read that the Egyptians often retained a hand of their victims from battle, for making a body count. Why did they retain penises instead of hands on this occasion?

I have heard that colonial troops were barred from serving on the western front however what about a black man who lived or was maybe born within the United Kingdom at the time? Any answer is appreciated.