I know very little about the Vikings and I was hoping this would be the perfect place to change it. My knowledge on the topic includes pretty much what they have in the show on the history channel and a small report I did on Regnar Lothbrok. I hope this isn't too vague and I do realize learning history from that show is the equivalent to learning about Spartans by watching the movie 300

So I have a friend who studies classical music, and she told me how much of beautiful music pieces were created by the Greeks, except that the Romans destroyed majority of them and led to musical dark age. Is her description accurate?

Their cultures were heavily dyed with Indian culture and religion from trade relations. They even built huge temple complexes so why did they readily accept Islam and how this affect the West and East trade?

Switzerland is a country with one of the highest standards of living in the world. How did a landlocked country with almost no natural resources become so wealthy? Is it purely due not being involved in any wars during the 20th century? And what is true of the Swiss "stealing" gold after WW2 by not returning it to the (family of) rightful owners?

Given that there were many German settlers and others from countries where the 24th is the primary day of celebration. Is it possibly due to the influence of British governance over the Thirteen Colonies?

edit: I'd like to add that I'm interested in the cultural differences between the east and west. I'm well aware that the divide within the empire was due to many more factors than culture. It's just peculiar that there would be such a divide culturally that one side was identified as roman and the other greek, at least contemporarily. I find it peculiar because we often think of greek and roman as having more in common than not.

Lots of Roman stuff is said to have come from other cultures. How was a lot of this change, especially religious, introduced to the people of Rome?

Was it a case of "We've found Jupiter in Greece, -and he's the head of the pantheon" or did they pretend he was around all along?...

I am interested in the validity of the assertions that Dr. Bill Warner makes in his video, the golden age of islam is not so golden. The following is a summary of the main assertions he makes:

1. The idea of a golden age came from Europeans who were critical of the catholic church, like Voltaire. Dr. Warner says that this was done to point to the dark ages as being so terrible compared to Islam, as an attack against the Catholic church.

2. He goes on to ask rhetorically "what wonderful novel have you read by a Muslim?" to make the point that Islam does not give us much creativity but it can do routine work. He also mentions that there are very few muslim Nobel laureates in muslims lands.

3. Islam was constantly attacking Europe during the golden age.

4. Muslims captured over a million European slaves during the golden age.

5. One of the reasons there was a golden age is that Islam was conquering a lot of territory and as a result brought in a lot of intellectuals from all different cultures, by force.

6. Muslims only preserved the parts of Greek and Roman work that was useful for them and as a result did not preserve any of the literature or art, and destroyed 90% of what they found.

7. The rest of the doctrine by the Greeks and Romans made its way to Europe only when Islam defeated the Byzantine Empire, and scholars from Constantinople escaped to Europe.

8. Muslims did well in geography, star maps and mathematics, but their achievements were very limited.

9. One of the dominant philosophies from the golden age (dominant because he later uses it as reason for why not many noble laureates are Muslim) is that there is no cause and effect and no natural law.

10. Regarding the golden age, whatever golden flecks (i.e. achievements) that came were brought by the non Muslims.

I realise that the language Dr. Bill Warner uses is a bit biased in many occasions (like saying Muslims crushing Constantinople, instead of conquering for example), but I am more interested in the validity of the points he is making.

Thank you

Edits: (1) by mod request, I removed link to video, however main assertions are summarised here anyway. (2) made multiple edits to improve readability taking into consideration that the post is now meant to be read without watching the video.

Which is the first domesticated plant? Are there plants regularly grown before being domesticated?

Hello, I would like to state that I am French so I don't have much personal bias to view the Brits favourably.

My question is why do we view them so favourably?

The Empire they had wasn't evil but they did some bad things occasionally. The starvation of Indians during WW2, the slave trade.

How come despite events like that when we view films such as Zulu, The Longest Day etc, we get this feeling of yay the British are here we are safe now. It doesn't apply to Americans (Too gung-ho), Australians (Too crazy) or Canadians (who?) Even on games like Total War it feels like the Brits are the proper and light side factions.

Is this a literature and media bias (The clumsy but well meaning and successful 'tommy' we see a lot, soldiers featured in Shakespeare) or is it a matter of their historical contributions (Saving freedom in both world wars, fighting the slave trade first)?

Tldr; why do we view the British as the good team?

could somebody maybe identify it? Or put me in the right direction of somebody that could? It has been in the garage for about 40 - 50 years and it came with the house. I'm in the UK BTW. Thanks in advance

[deleted]

I'm a fairly rational person, and I'm not particularly religious. I'm mostly interested in Judaism because of cultural heritage. I know I ran across somewhere something about 'semitic cultures' and 'semitic languages', but I'm not super familiar with them. I mostly grew up thinking that the Jews were the only Semites in the world, but a recent reflection tells me that this was likely not the case. Were other cultures, such as the Canaanites and the Babylonians also considered Semites? Or were they something different?

I've been studying the Mycenaeans for a while and came across references (on wikipedia) to founder myth for Argos. In this myth, Danaus, a king of Egypt, is ultimately responsible for founding Argos (and by extension Mycenae), after he takes it by force from the current "Pelasgian" ruler. Surprisingly, I have never come across this story in any other context.

So my question is what is the historical significance of this story? We know that the Mycenaeans had decent trading relationships with Egypt and were probably visited by them at least once. Does it really insinuate that an Egyptian ruler played a part in founding Mycenaean civilisation, or is it something essentially fabricated by later Greeks as a result of their relationship with Egypt?

Polynesia seems relatively culturally homogeneous, shares similar languages and has a defined area. Why haven't they ever united into one nation?