I remember learning in a lecture during my Undergrad that after Sassanian Persia fell to Muslim armies some nobles fled to China and their descendants still live there today. As far as I know they no longer practice Zoroastrianism and are linguistically and culturally Han. Do we know how long this process of assimilation took and did some aspects survive longer than others?

I’ve read reports of Civil War Battlefield surgeons not cleaning their tools with a disinfectant after operating on wounded soldiers, leading to infected wounds that potentially killed.

Here is the excerpt I read from another AskHistorians post about ancient Roman battlefield surgeon practices:

“Hence, upon every wound there is to be applied, first a sponge squeezed out of vinegar; or out of wine if the patient cannot bear the strength of vinegar. A slight wound is even benefited if a sponge is applied wrung out of cold water.”

It makes me wonder about how much technology was lost and gained over the ages.

Everything I’ve read about him would indicate the later but in 63 BC he was elected to the office of Tribune of the Plebs.

When Clodious , who was from a minor patrician family, was elected to that position only 4 years later, he had to renounce his status and be adopted by a pleb family in a ceremony headed by good ol’ J.C. (Pontifex Maximus).

I have not read anything to indicate that Cato did the same nor have I ever seen anyone bring this point up but it’s been bugging me a lot. I mean Cato is pretty much a paragon of what a patrician should be. Am I missing something here or was Cato just an extremely lucky and privileged pleb?

Pls help

I was curious as it is widely known that epidemic disease greatly assisted the Spanish in their conquest of the Americas, but I couldn’t find anything on whether or not the same happened in their conquest of the Philippines.

Also, were any unit formations (details, even task forces) on either side created specifically for the purpose of recovering their own slain soldiers? Especially after a territory was lost and but later regained?

The Soviet Union continued to build monuments to Lenin, seemingly even after his death, right up until Gorbachev's time as leader. Typically, you'd expect the country to start building statues of all its leaders, holding them all in a similar reverence, but Lenin reigned supreme it seems.

Did later soviet leaders struggle to live upto the peoples praise of Lenin? Did they have to endure regular comparisons, or did the iron fist of leadership prevent anyone speaking out entirely?

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I believe many cave paintings are deep inside the caves where no natural light can penetrate. How did the artists manage to keep a bright enough light source that they could easily carry and then have it be stable enough to work on their art? Maybe some kind of animal fat lamp?

Also, why did South Korea become Christian?

Indochina meaning Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia.

I was thinking maybe the threat of Athens before the war, but during what stopped members of the Delian League from leaving as they saw Athens turning the League into their empire?

Ideally a book covering most of its history, being easy to read for a non-historian, while being historically accurate! Books in the recommendation list of the subreddit seem to rather target scholars or historians. Any recommendation ?

In Judaism, the Sh'ma states "The Lord is our God; the Lord is one." In Islam, the Shahada states "There is no God but Allah and Muhammed is His Prophet." Both of these religions go out of their way to explicitly state that the God they worship is the only real one. The thing is, one might expect that to be a given -- it seems like any religion would deny the existence of other gods. But this rejection is extremely important to both religions (the Sh'ma and the Shahada are very important prayers and the idea is found in other places as well). It makes me wonder if, for example, the Hittites thought the Egyptian gods probably existed but chose not to worship them, and monotheistic traditions like Judaism and Islam reject other gods' existence so explicitly because it was not the norm for religions to do so when they were founded. Is this true at all? If not, why is it so prominent in Judaism and Islam and not in other modern religions?

Of course, Islam and Judaism were formed centuries apart and in vastly different cultural contexts (not least because Christianity came about some time in between). I'd welcome an answer on either one, both, or even just on various ancient religions' beliefs about each other (e.g. Greeks and Persians or Romans and Gauls).

This is probably super obvious or has been asked a million times but did the Athenians (Around the time of the peloponnesian war) Actually use blue plumes in their helments?

I guess the title says it all.

Recently, I found a citation to "DIO 38.6 (2)" in a text. I know Dio as both a JoJo villain and the author of "Roman History", however I do not understand what specifically the citation means. Is the 38 the volume, the .6 the page, and (2) the line number?

The specific text I'm referring to is "Caesar paid little attention and fixed a day for the passage of the law."

Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'm curious and thought you may know about this.

As you may now, several regions of Italy have their own languages, like venetian or sicilian. Considering that in the Middle Ages and Early Modern era Italy was divided into several city-states with their own diplomacy and foreign affairs policies, it seems logical to assume that each state had its own language and it wasn't until unification that standard italian became, well, the standard, even if most media doesn't reflect that.

How true would be that assumption? Was language enough of an issue that interpreters were necessary when conducting diplomacy? Was there any sort of lingua franca shared between the "italian" nobility? Other than the different italian languages or dialects, were there any other languages external to the peninsula, like the catalan language in Sardinia?

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After Pearl Harbor, what did the US uses ship wise for fighting in the Pacific Theatre?

In popular media depictions, whenever blood is required for a ritual, pact, or spell, the “donor“ always seems to slice themselves across the palm of the hand.

When it comes to living life AFTER the ritual, this would seem an extremely inconvenient place to suffer a wound – but it’s nearly universal.

My question: are there historical/cultural models for this choice, or is it purely for dramatic “Hollywood” effect?