Time to once again recognize a few of the contributions to the subreddit in the past month.

Vote for the answer(s) that you enjoyed the most, or if that one isn't here, feel free to submit it (April Fools answers from the 31st are NOT ELIGIBLE though).

Hello, I'm reading Jordanes' Getica, and in part one while going over Roman geography he mentions thule, citing a 'Mantuan Bard'. He places the quote "And Farthest Thule shall serve thee" then moves on to describing Britain. Are there any scholarly consensuses on the identity of this person?

I stumbled across something saying that scholars debate that there ever was a Median Empire and that its existence has more to do with Herodotus's need for a narrative of successive empires. I'm wondering what the latest scholarship says on this.

1. Was there a Median Empire?

2. If not, who were the Medes and how do they relate to the later Persian Empire and the earlier Elamite, Assyrian, and Babylonian Empires, polities, cultures, etc.?

3. What do non-Greek sources say about the Medes?

When I looked for defining boundaries or ideas of the modern world, they varied between the 1800s until the contemporary society, so I wanted to hear the opinion of professionals!

By time period, I mean 1850s or 1900s. By ideas, I mean democracy or capitalism or sorts.

My second post in reddit, hope I did it right!

I know there were two chariot racing teams, the blues and the greens, and that got me wondering how the hell chariot racing worked. I can't think of any other kind of racing that includes teams, unless you consider roller derby racing.

I'm more looking at the home nations and not their respective colonies.

While reading about the Winter War between Finland and the USSR in 1939, I came to the battle of Kollaa and an engagement referred to as "The Battle of Killer Hill" where a single platoon of 32 Finns successfully held off a reported 4,000 soviet troops for several days before the USSR gave up on the hill.

Needless to say I wanted to know more about such an incredible defense, but my Google-fu only turned up a handful of results, none of which were from reputable sources and one was flatly asking if the battle actually did happen.

My question here is two fold. First, was there actually such an engagement as the Battle of Killer Hill? As second, does anyone have or know of a more in depth account of the battle if it did happen?

When did official banks become common and was anybody allowed to use them or was it solely restricted by a person's social status, wealth or class?

Forgive me for not knowing the correct terms, but in "historical"/Fantasy movies and video games we often see people buying goods with gold coins? Is that accurate? Would the coins be actual gold if so when did start to see denominations of coins?

Of course I am just looking for a general answer as I am aware how vast the medieval period spans and the many different countries/Kingdoms etc

Are there any good books or sources about Banking/General economy during these periods?

Every time I read up on the inter-war period in Germany I always hear about all the great things Hitler did for the economy which helped his popularity. My question is, are there any political movements that represent the same economic principles but without the murderous nationalism Nazi Germany came to harbour? If so, what are those movements and how are they similar/different?

The question is the title, but in general touches on how much Indian states invested and pursued africa.

WW2 gives the earliest examples that I can think of, of section and platoon level tactics that are more or less the same as how we still do it now. Modern Infantry Soldiers and Marines are trained to do the job "1 up", ie if our immediate commander is killed, we can take over and do his job. We are trained on multiple weapon systems, comms, language, low level tactics, and physical fitness to a high level. Given how similar WW2 tactics were, was the training to a similar level or were soldiers trained to a basic level and thrown into combat? I'm wondering about American, British and German forces mostly as I sort of assume Soviet soldiers got very little formal training (happy to be corrected though).

Right now I'm in Phnom Pen and I'm trying to get some sense into this. What was the idea of a country that the khmer rouge had? I heard they where inspired in some maoist theories about communism but which ones? What did they thought they where gonna archive? Because to me it seems completely out of sense to just kill everyone that has some education, stop education altogether and just send everyone to the fields to do force labour unless what you are trying to do is to openly have a country of slaves to cater your needs. But I'm guessing that maybe this was not the initial idea they had but more what it became over time, but I'm completely clueless. What where they trying to do in Cambodia?

So many unique cultures have foregone their clothing to adopt Western-style clothing (jeans, tshirts, suits, etc.). How did this happen and what made the world forget about their clothing?

Welcome to Monday Methods!

In line with our April's Fools theme, today's topic is historical fiction. Questions for discussion in the comments are: What kind of challenges does writing histroical fiction pose? Does it have to be super accurate? What makes historical fiction enjoyable to you as a reader? And what kind of methodological things are to be taken into account?

The mughal empire seems to have been relatively stable previously so what changed?

I'm aware the Greco-Persian wars endured for half a century, and I'm currently reading Adolf Holmes; The History of Greece, but just how did the Greeks, though united as they were, defeat a much larger force as the Persians?

How did people live both in and outside of the city? How did they get food or build homes? What kind of tools did they have?

As far as I can tell from a Google search and from Wikipedia, ozone depletion, especially in the southern hemisphere, was discovered in the 70s.

Was there a skeptic reaction to the evidence, e.g. whether the changes were caused by man, and what the consequences of the depletion of ozone would be?

Was there a difference in reaction between the Soviet union states and the west?

So, I was trying to remember something I think read a while ago. From my memory, there was a father and a son. One converted to Islam and was with Muhammad, while the other did not, and thus they fought on opposite sides during the conflict with the Quraish. Later they spoke and the originally Muslim declared that he would have attacked his kin if he had met him in the battlefield. I've been trying to track where I heard this down, and came across Abu Ubaidah who killed his father during a battle, so I may be misremembering details, but I was wondering if anything that fits my memory better exists.

White or Caucasian. Black, Negro, or African. Yellow, Oriental, or Asian. Red, Indian, or Native American.

What historical reasons are there behind the different naming schemes for different groups of people? For some groups a color is completely normal (white/black) but for others it is extremely offensive (yellow/red). Why is this?

Did it exist in older cultures? Ancient ones? How was it done?

Some bands have piano, and Billy Joel has harmonica, but for the most part, rock = guitars. Why is this so? Why didn't Metallica have a trumpet player, for example? What was it that led to the guitar becoming dominant over all other instruments?