How much knowledge would have someone during let's say Cleopatra's period have of the earlier period? Was it all myth and legend, or was there historical documents?

What about other civilizations? Were they all like "fuck, Egypt still going strong?"

It's clear that Afrikaners have significant Malay, Indian, and native ancestry, but I haven't been able to distinguish when the split that seems exclusively based on physical appearance happened. I would assume it is something that happened in varying degrees, with some distinction going back to the start of the colony and becoming finalised with apartheid.

From reading some research on a few notable slave women in the 17th century, I presume that what would later become racial status, at least between Europeans and their non-African slaves, was based largely on being Christian, which is similar to European attitudes in the Americas around the same time. I've learned of the changes to British laws in the Caribbean that replaced the language of Christianity with whiteness, did this process occur in a similar way in South Africa? Clearly, it wouldn't be a one-to-one comparison because slavery itself operated vastly differently in the two contexts. Also notable from reading the research previously mentioned, the term halfslag was very much used for the children of Europeans and non-Europeans, but I haven't seen it mentioned at all for grandchildren, and these children would be ancestors to both Afrikaners and Coloureds.

I spent a good afternoon looking at the genealogical data of the 17th century a while back and it looked to me that as long as someone was Christian, they reliably mixed freely with other Christians, regardless of the assumed appearances based on their parents and grandparents. Since the site I was reading only covers up to about 1700, I couldn't find as easily how that trend developed afterward. However, my family tree on the Huguenot side seems to have married exclusively other Huguenots for three generations after arrival in the Cape in 1690-ish, but this is only my ancestry and may not be reflective of the larger society. If I were to make guesses, I would assume that mixed marriages slowed in frequency once there was a large enough population of women of European descent, if I was to assume that the transition from religious identity to something more like racial identity occurred quickly, but that itself is what is unclear to me.

Lastly, I'm aware there are multiple ethnic groups under the umbrella term of Coloured and that my question largely relates to the Cape Coloured people as that history is what I'm most familiar with, but I'm interested in comparing the histories.

Hi, I would like to read a book about Russian colonialism and expansion into Asia. Does anyone have any recommendations for this subject? Thank you.

I saw a couple of overviews of religion in USA. The percentage of people who believe in god (Christianity) are significantly higher in the states with a bigger black population, and hence the states that had a big(ger) part in slavery. How did this come to be?

These states are more religious overall, but the black population seem to stand out even more.

I got to thinking of this question after watching the first episode of Downton Abbey where there is this exchange:

Butler: "I believe the women and children were rescued [from the Titanic]."

Lord: "You mean the women and children in first class? ... God help the devils below decks."

Were there any noteworthy reactions by the wealthy, or any significant aid or welfare given towards the lower classes after the Titanic? Are there any records from the time or studies about changes to class relations afterwards?

Forgive me for what I’m about to say, but I saw this on a random Reddit post and it got me thinking.

The post I’m referring to was giving advice to people about how they shouldn’t compare themselves to others. For example, someone might find success at 25 whereas someone else would find success at 50. That’s the topic being discussed.

One poster claimed that even Julius Caesar doubted himself because he saw that Alexander the Great conquered Asia Minor and parts of Central Asia in his late teens/early twenties (which is an incredible feat for a person at that age).

Does anyone on here recognize this anecdote relating to Julius Caesar? Is it historically accurate, or is there no evidence to back this up?

This could honestly apply to any group of people before more modern infrastructure, but would they just let their long houses and tipis fly away or would they have some way of protecting their stuff?

Did the Vikings have a 'year 0' or an equivalent that they might use. I'm writing something set from the perspective of a Viking from before many converted to Christianity, I.E. when they were still heavily Pagan Norse and trying to find any information on the web has yet to yield any results. So was there a Norse calendar of some sort with a set year? Or was it one of those facts that just didn't really matter. Or perhaps did it vary from region to region?

If they did, how would this compare to our Christian calendar? (For example, the year 900)

My great-great grandfather was born in 1843 in the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement, in what is now Belarus. He was Jewish, and ran a mill on property belonging to nobility (so goes family lore). He emigrated with his many children and grandchildren in the 1890s to Chicago. He lived there for 25 years, and could read/write/speak English according to the census.

Would he have ever eaten a banana? Either in Russia or in Chicago. Follow-up: what about a mango?

I'm taking a course right now on Mexican-American history and we've been discussing ancient Mesoamerica. The professor has been teaching some extremely questionable things with little to no critical thinking involved. One of those things is that the Mayan calendar was more accurate than the one we use today. I feel like that's obviously not right considering we use atomic clocks to measure leap-seconds, but I thought maybe in some specific way or interpretation it could be true. I followed the source given in our textbook and all I could find was more people repeating the factoid with no explanation.

So is there any way that that could be interpreted that's true? How about what I consider the more interesting questions of what made it uniquely accurate at the time, and did Europeans learn anything from the Maya about time keeping?

Particularly the high Middle Ages (1000 - 1350) in England, France, or Europe in general.

Vietnam have often been characterised as a force that were so disgusted by Pol Pot's genocide that they stepped in and toppled the Khmer Rouge.

You can see this in most internet memes that generally go "When your treatment of your people is so horrible that a nation that just spent 30 exhausting years fighting the French, Japanese, Itself, and the United States decide to declare war against you".

How accurate is this? How much did Pol Pot's genocide factor in to Vietnam's decision to invade?

So today in Mass the priest was talking about the original Greek translation of the Bible and how to eat the body and blood of Christ would have meant more like Gnaw the body and Suck the blood . I’ve known for a while the Bible was originally in Greek but never really questioned how we got names like Mary the Mother of God , Peter the First Pope , Joseph the Dad of Jesus . And a buncha other what I could only say are white/ very not Levantine Jewish feeling names .

How did we get those names ? Do we have any idea what Mary’s name would’ve probably originally been or even Jesus ?

When looking at the ruins of ancient cities in many places around the world, but to be simple, specifically Uruk, the “units” which make up people’s houses seems to be bunched together, sharing walls and sometimes having doors between them. How did ownership of these buildings work? We’re there owners for the whole “block” who rented these spaces out, or were they owned like townhouses? If so we’re there any organizations akin to home-owners associates or laws governing where one of these buildings started and where one ended?

And as an tangential question, would “public” buildings like temples and shops be owned by those who worked there, or by the King, or something else?