Inspired by a conversation I had with a friend. His aunt died from suicide and at the funeral her (very Christian) family dodged any and all acknowledgment of the fact that that was how she died. I know medieval Europe was also very religious, and that suicide was commonly considered a sin. So would bereaved families just ignore that it was suicide, or is that a more modern practice?

I am from Tunisia and I have always been told that ald carthaginians were originally from Phoenicia but looking at it I have never been presented with actual convincing proof about it

I mean what their age was, not how long ago they lived.

My interest especially goes out to determining the age of bodies dating back to before civilisation.

Also, are archeologists the persons who research this? Or is this type of research done by another profession?

If the determination of age is done by looking at teeth for example, how do we know that part of the human body ages in the same way and speed as it does now?

So as a kid I was taught that the greek and roman gods were the same just with different names, but I find that premise difficult to accept now- for a couple of reasons:

The hellenic & Italic branches of the indo-Europeans were separated long enough for the Romans to have developed their own indigenous mythology, sure the borrowing of gods happens- but then which gods from the greeks were direct borrows, which were indigenous, and which were borrowed from other areas?

And if I’m missing valuable context here, and the romans did directly borrow greek gods- is it because it’s an artificial construct of both having parallel gods that were similar enough to each other from the ancestors of both peoples that later authors failed to recognize the distinctions, but instead just viewed it all as greek because they had no knowledge of earlier ancestors ( such as the indo-Europeans?) As the premise of a direct borrow doesn’t make particular sense, gods are borrowed from elites, and greeks were the junior partners to Rome during the Roman era- since they were obviously conquered- so why would an elite borrow gods so heavily from conquered peoples?

Or are their parallel mythologies just an o oversimplification that might have missed out on centuries of syncretic faiths heading in to rome from all across the empire, of which greek was just a large source?

I’m aware that subcultures centered around certain non-dominant fashion/music/literature/etc tastes and “fandoms” have existed in Europe for a long time. Was this a thing in other societies?

I'm just curious if seeing these people and what they were doing in the name of their "race" caused returning soldiers and those at home to feel uncomfortable with the obvious similarities to Jim Crow. I know black soldiers coming back were emboldened to push more for their rights, but how much of an effect was there on the white populace?

Suharto's Indonesia, Marcos's Philippines, the Thai military juntas, South Vietnam before it lost to the North, and even somewhat "milder" authoritarian states like Singapore that relied more on legalistic rather than outright militaristic repression (eg. suing opponents, compliant courts, press censorship, outlawing mass assemblies etc.)…

It seems Cold War Southeast Asia was full of rightwing authoritarian states (predictably backed by the US to varying degrees), and yet unlike in South America, there doesn't seem to be much record of the various Southeast Asian regimes banding together and creating their own version of Operation Condor, the interstate Right-wing state-terrorist campaign to imprison, torture, kill, disappear or otherwise crush and destroy the collective South American Left and resistance. This despite that Condor itself was also inspired largely by Indonesia's lead in massacring its Communists (real or imagined) after Suharto's coup in 1965.

I know Condor's creation of course is as much due to US support as it is to cooperation among the South American states themselves: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, etc., but was either enough US support or enough interstate collaboration absent in the SEA region? Maybe the US's hands were tied in the Vietnam War in a way/to a degree they weren't in Latin America?

Or maybe because there wasn't much movement of a transnational Left within Southeast Asia, in part because unlike the Spanish-speaking vast majority in South America (and Brazilian Portuguese for almost the entire remainder), the SEA states were split among many more languages more evenly, and so it would be harder to move across countries or communicate anyway on a region-wide basis, both for the Left/progressive resistance and for the Right-leaning governments pursuing them? Even English and Chinese I don't think had the same level of penetration in SEA as a whole that Spanish had in South America, so maybe?

Disclaimer: I am NOT saying that Southeast Asia should've created its own Condor equivalent. I'm just curious why one wasn't made given at least some of the circumstances conducive to one were there.

Would it just be mostly guard duty? How would my day-to-day look like?

How much interaction would I have with locals be they former Confederates or ex-slaves?

Would I possibly see some action against former Confederates who were part of the Ku Klux Klan?

Would it be equivalent to being stationed in a "foreign country"?

The poetry and other literary arts of the Tang and Song dynasties is well known, but to the best of my knowledge, all of the famous poets whose work survives to today are men.

However, Bai Juyi, in his 琵琶行 (Song of the Pipa) hints that at least some women were heavily involved in and appreciated the literary and musical arts. The poem describes the life of a singer who lives on a boat and reveals a lot of fascinating details about how she was educated and her life as a performer, but I was particularly fascinated by one line: "莫辞更坐弹一曲，为君翻作琵琶行" (Here, Bai Juyi asks her to play an encore and I believe he offers to write her an ode for her Pipa in exchange, which I suppose became the poem we read today).

How meaningful would such an offer be to a woman in a similar position in the Tang (or later Song) dynasties, such that one who seems to have fallen on some economic and social hard times would accept a piece of art as payment?

What was Robert Oppenheimers final verdict on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? We know from his infamous interview that he seemed rather empty from the incident and thats where his famous quote came from. We also know that he went to Truman to complain about the blood on his hands. Yet despite all this, towards the end of his life he said he would always go back and help contribute to the bomb again. Does that mean he saw the bomb as a necessary evil or did he see himself as fated to contribute to bomb from his Hindu ideals?

I'm reading a book called Peasants in the Middle Ages by Werner Rosener, and he says about the legal rights of settlers to eastern Germany: "in some places there was even explicit mention of a ius flandricum". Neither Google or a JSTOR search tells me what that means.

Today, things such as a literal interpretation of the Bible, young Earth creationism, skepticism over science, and other things like that are largely associated with Christian denominations that originated in America (even if such denominations have gained footholds worldwide). By contrast, denominations such as Catholicism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Methodism, Orthodoxy, etc. that either developed or became more influential in Europe largely did not follow the same path. For example, while there may be pockets of Biblical creationism, denial of climate change, etc. among Catholics or other groups, they tend to be a small if vocal minority. What were the historical and cultural reasons as to why America-originating denominations tend to be more Biblical literalist and science-skeptic compared to their counterparts in Europe?

I have read somewhere before that suggested that one possible factor was that, during the Great Awakenings, the pastors and other religious leaders tended to be less educated and thus less familiar with things like critical analysis of the Bible, things that may have been more familiar to more educated clergy and other religious figures in Europe. Is this theory accurate or could it have just been conjecture?

I've read that the Emperor wanted to surrender even before the atomic bombs and the USSR entering the war, but could not do so without approval from the military. But I've also read that the Japanese constitution at the time gave the Emperor sole authority to declare war and make peace, and also authority over the military.

Is it all down to interpretation/assumptions? (I don't know how else to word this sorry)

China and the west weren't exactly very good friends at the time.