Follow up: Of the Mayan languages today, which most closely resembles the one spoken in the previous ages, and by how much?

Please provide sources if possible

In some reddit circles people suggest that Sebag-Montefiore is overly-relied on to flesh out the theory, and that it's part of an anti-communist project.

Can someone answer the question in such a way so as to maximally address such concerns?

My intuition is that the rejection of the allegation "tankie bs" but I haven't been able to build a case.

Did the great Roman Empire have an anthem, tune or psalm that would be considered their national hymn or song?

Kind of a weird question. We look back at ancient Greeks and Romans as "the first" civilized people, who did they look back to?

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Or did a civilian intelligence agency(like CIA or OSS) exist? Or did Department of State assume the intelligence gathering roles?

What are the main theories about the death of Alexander the great in depth?

I've read about the possibilities such as alcohol poisoning, assasination, illness and stress, but I want to learn more. Any good sites or someone that cares to write a short paragraphs about it?

In medieval battles, spearmen sometimes form circular formations to prevent being flanked e.g. at Falkirk, but I've never heard of this being done by hoplites. If they didn't form hedgehogs, why not?

I always hear him sited as one of the worst presidents in the history of the united states but was he truly a bad president and could of made actions that would of prevented the civil war or was it more or less doomed to happen?

My grand mother told me that after Arabian rule in Valencia and Alicante, they left the cities taking women with them.

She told me that the Spaniards then moved some women from the north to repopulate the cities. This explains why people in Valencia and Alicante have fair eyes.

She's a kind of history nerd and think our family is from there, so I trust her. Still I can't find nothing about it (but I don't know where to find something this specific). Does it rings a bell? Did she mixed it up with another story?

Thanks.

Hello! We are a panel of regular contributors to /r/askhistorians here to discuss and answer questions about Civil Wars. Typically, panel AMA/AUAs tend to try and concentrate on a particular space or time. For this panel, we tried to gather historians with a wide range of specialties in order to probe deeper into the meaning of Civil Wars in history. The concept of a “Civil War” is quite a flexible term, describing events as varied as the Roman Civil War and the American Civil War. The former was more of a contest between factional elites and their retinues, while the latter considered issues of total war, nationalism, and the destruction of an entire economic system in slavery. The thread that connects these two disparate events is the idea that the War was between the citizenry of the same sovereign or state (de Bello Civili).

The idea of a Civil War as a historical term, also frames the way politicians, students, activists, and historians approach the event. For example, the Earl of Clarendon’s History of the Great Rebellion dominated the historiography of the English Civil Wars until the end of the nineteenth century, when the event in question was renamed to the English or Puritan Revolution. Current historians still debate the nature of the conflict, and where to draw its temporal boundaries – were the Civil Wars ended in 1646, and the regicide of 1649 part of the English Revolution? Events like the American Revolution were certainly wars between citizens, but the rebels (typically called Patriots) framed their struggle as a Revolution in government against tyranny, not as a divisive Civil War against the Loyalists and Britain. And if Civil Wars can be wars within an empire, what should we make of the Dutch Revolt (Eighty Years War)? When the Dutch rebelled were they engaging in a conflict among citizens or throwing off the shackles of an oppressive empire? The Dutch anthem Wilhelmus written at the end of the sixteenth century glosses over this problem, stating that William of Orange was "free and fearless" while also honoring the king of Spain. Hopefully through this AMA we can explore some of the politics and historical arguments about Civil Wars as a whole and as historical terms, as well as answer questions about specific conflicts.

The AMA officially starts at 11 am EST (4 pm GMT), and our participants will be dropping by as they are available. The dramatis personae and their relevant field of expertise for this AMA are:

/u/RTArcher - English Civil Wars

/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov - American and Spanish Civil Wars

/u/dandan_noodles - American Civil War (Eastern Theater)

/u/TRB1783 - American Revolution and Civil War (South)

/u/pipkin42 - American Revolution and Civil War

/u/Rhodis - Wars of the Roses

/u/Itsalrightwithme - Rebellions and Wars in the Habsburg Empire (Europe)

/u/HatMaster12 - Roman Civil Wars

/u/TenMinuteHistory - Russian Civil War

/u/Tiako - Roman Civil Wars

EDIT: Thank you everyone who participated in this AMA, and a special thank you to all the volunteers who agreed to join me on the panel. I certainly found this a helpful tool in improving my understanding of "What Makes a Civil War", and I hope you all enjoyed it as well!

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Is there statistical evidence? I'm just curious. My friend's brother is a Holocaust denier and says the number wasn't anywhere near that. I don't agree. Obviously there must be records. Can anyone shed some light on this, just so that if he ever brings it up again, I can actually argue the point and back up what I say?

I understand that the Japanese emperor's speech to the Japanese people announcing the surrender in World War II was delivered in a "courtly" register of Japanese that was difficult for the populace to understand. Was that because the occasion was thought to require that level of formality, or did the Japanese emperor talk that way all of the time?