I've hit the wall in terms of the internet.

Hello everyone,

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I am looking for clues for some papers I need to write.

Here is my question : Who were the wizards and the wiches in ancient Europe ; what was their fonction ?

I have heard they used to be fringe elements of society - I am actually thinking about the homosexuals. Seiðr practitioners were indeed called "ergi" in Old Norse, which was an insult "denoting effeminacy or other unmanly behavior" according to Wikipedia .

So I think magicians might had been a way to give them a fonction into european society though they were kept out to.

Any ideas or suggestion to pursue this path ? that might help me.

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I've been studying the Second Anglo-Boer War for a while now for school and since then I've become more and more interested in South African history as a whole.

One thing I don't understand however is why former Boer leaders like Louis Botha and Jan Smuts were allowed to be elected as leaders of the Union of South Africa after only fighting a brutal war against those same people not even a decade before. Wouldn't precautions have been put in place by the British to make sure they wouldn't be allowed to run?

I was wondering whether there was a motivation, beyond the plain moral question, of abolishing slavery? Was it pure partisanship? Did industrialists have something to gain from disrupting the Southern agrarian economy?

I know this might be a controversial question and I hope that the forum recognizes it as a question meant to pursue historical truth rather than to stoke racial or political animus. I am absolutely not looking for some means to justify slavery or the Confederacy. I guess I'm just getting cynical about political motivations lately.

If a modern office-lady in Osaka slipped back thru time, how far back could she go and still make ordinary conversation?

I'm used to the idea of Japanese requiring knowing several sets of vocabulary and when which of them are appropriate. Would any of these help our time traveller? Are some areas of Japanese older than others?

Would an acquaintance with kabuki or noh help her out? Or is 'Shibaraku' weird language even for its own time?

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I'm fascinated different choices in costuming personified concept characters. The most ready example for me is Revenge in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, but I'm sure there are other examples. How have directors and costume designers depicted these abstract characters? We're other mechanisms used to set them apart/define them on stage, like music or lighting?

Thanks in advance!

I hope my question makes sense. Someone living in say, 372 BC for example. If they died in 347 BC how were the years of their existence recorded? They of course had no knowledge that modern recorded dates would begin at Christ's death (AD).

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There are a lot of answers about medieval/reunification period, but I am interested specifically about the Roman period.

Roman identity had existed for over one thousand years when the Empire collapsed in the 5th century. However, in only circa 200 years there seems to be almost nobody left in Italy still using Roman naming traditions, recording their gens and identifying as roman.

I was wondering why this was the case since there are many people that retained their cultural identity after being conquered, having seen their homeland shatter or even migrated.

I’ve read that Italy was very depopulated but was it to the point that the migrating Germanic peoples outnumbered the former Roman population in Italy?

Edit: grammar

Obviously the treatment didn’t work, but I’m just absolutely puzzled as to how they came up with the idea of it in the first place: Because let’s be serious, how do you go from “incessant diarrhea” to “clearly we need to wash it out with paint thinner”?

• It's my understanding that the meaning of "holocaust" in the bible is a religious animal sacrifice, burnt to a crisp.
• Leads me to wonder if the word holocaust was originally used in a negative way by bad people.
• So, who began referring to the slaughter of the jews as the holocaust?

Suit jacket or blazer, matching trousers, pressed button-up shirt with collar, tie, belt, city shoes.......

I've seen at least one photo from TIME Magazine of a American woman looking at a skull that her US soldier boyfriend sent from New Guinea. But how widespread was the practise of turning Japanese body parts into trophies among US soldiers or even Allied soldiers in general?

examples

• Haiti, the poorest state in North America
• Syria, one of the most bloody countries in the world
• Niger, home to the lowest HDI in the world
• Chad, among the most corrupt countries in the world
• Republic of the Congo (the smaller one), one of the few countries with a shrinking economy
• Lebanon, divided among religion and home to Hezbollah
• Cambodia, where the third most violent genocide occured
• CAR, which has the second lowest HDI and is currently in a civil war

The only successful French colonies I can think of is Quebec or Louisiana, but they're not even countries. Is there a correlation between being a French colony and not being successful?