As a kid when I was apparently allergic to pork products (turns out, either outgrew it or wasn't, and they're delicious), I always wondered why if there was fast food breakfast meats, other than egg, it was pork, whether sausage or ground into a patty?
1 Answers 2016-07-17
There seems to be a common belief that a lot of scientific knowledge was gained from the Nazi experiments. However, it seems that the only remotely relevant knowledge gained from these experiments was the information about hypothermia. I was wondering where this belief came from.
1 Answers 2016-07-17
This topic is to ask for submissions for journal articles or book chapters from our community. Anyone can submit, you do not need to have a flair. Please limit one submission per person. And please refrain from submitting entire books as our time frame does not allow it.
Topic
Any submission must be related to history. We have a wide variety of flaired users from fields such as archaeology to linguistics to medicine to music. Let's use it to our advantage. As long as the submission pertains to understanding the past, it is open for the book club. We are trying to broaden our horizons and understanding of the past and that must include seeing the past through a different lens. So do not frett if your submission comes from a medical journal, a music theory journal, or an edited volume by Mesoamerican archaeologists, it's all welcome. If it isn't, someone will kindly let you know. So if you want to submit something on Stonehenge, or changes in letter choice for recording indigenous languages during the colonial period, or advancements in medicine in the late 1700s, or experimental recreation of ancient music, go for it.
Article information
Included in your submission must be the author or authors, the title of the work, the journal/book, year, etc. If using Google Scholar, there is an easy and handy Cite tool which gives a variety of options for citations. You can easily copy/paste that for your submission. My preference is MLA, but it will not be strictly enforced.
Accessible
Any journal article or book chapter must be accessible to the community, preferably through a link. The easiest way that I’ve found to do this is to use Google Scholar. As I’ve shown in this example, when searching for articles there is sometimes a link off to the right in which you can access the article or chapter for free. This is the link you must include in your submission, not a link to the journal page. I will be monitoring submissions to let anyone know if their links fail, but since I am based in the US my access could be biased. If anyone finds a broken link, please let me or the submitter know so that it can be fixed.
Abstract/Summary
Along with the link please include the abstract from the journal article or a written summary for the article/book chapter. This is to give us all an idea of what the article/chapter is about so that we can make a semi-informed vote.
Voting
Voting will run from now until Wednesday morning around 7am EST. Whichever submission has the most votes by that time will be chosen for us to read over the course of the following week.
Using the article from my Scholar example for our format example, the format should be as follows
- Headrick, Annabeth. "The Street of the Dead… It Really Was." Ancient Mesoamerica 10.01 (1999): 69-85.
- The name “Street of the Dead” used to designate Teotihuacan’s main avenue originates from a Nahuatl notation on a sixteenth-century map. Though this “story” is often deemed apocryphal, I argue in this paper that oral tradition preserved conceptual information that may not be archaeologically recoverable. Support for this position comes from comparative cultural analysis of Mesoamerican mortuary bundles as they are expressed in ritual and iconography. Crucial to this argument are the well-known stone masks of Teotihuacan. A case is made that the masks originally served as the faces of oracular mortuary bundles. The likely existence of mortuary bundles at Teotihuacan generates organizational models for the city in which lineage emerges as a fundamental element and suggests new insight into status differentiation and the iconography of power at Teotihuacan.
4 Answers 2016-07-17
Hi all,
I found this image online (in light of the recent Financial Times article about German guest workers) and would appreciate context to it.
Also, any idea why in the mid-20th century, the UK is referred to as "England"?
Thanks
1 Answers 2016-07-17
Please take the 20-year rule into account when answering the question (do not use information more recent than 1996).
2 Answers 2016-07-17
I've heard quite a bit about the Eleusinian Mysteries, wherein the participants would reenact the mythical Rape of Persephone, focused on the eventual salvation by symbolically "emerging from the underworld" and experiencing the move from Winter to Spring. I've read about it a bit in Carl Jung's "Man and His Symbols", so I'm fascinated by it as well, on more than just historical terms. I hear many a Roman, including the handful of Grecophile emperors like Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius would participate in the mysteries.
My question is, were there any other mysteries that we know about? What did they focus on? I just came across the wiki page for the Mithraic Mysteries, focused on the Persian sun god Mithra. In my reading, especially about the Eleusinian Mysteries, they are analyzed to be ancient people's way of "visceral, tangible" worship, where one can individually participate in the themes and morals of the myths, but did ancient people see them that way? Were they taken uber-seriously like they are portrayed, or did people just use them as an excuse to party, get drunk on some wine, and bone one another?
But mainly, I'd just love to know about any other mystery. I'm trying to compile a list for myself.
4 Answers 2016-07-17
I've recently become enamoured with this series, and I am fascinated with the workings of the Chinese Imperial Court during the Qing dynasty. However, I had a few questions:
What benefits would a concubine receive from being elevated to various ranks (First Attendant, Lady, Noble Consort etc)? Is it only for prestige, or were there practical benefits as well?
Multiple times in the series, characters were ordered to take their own lives rather than be killed via capital punishment. Why? What's the logic/reason behind this?
Herbalism is a strong theme throughout the series. Is there historical evidence of concubines or other Imperial members using herbs, remedies, poisons etc against one another, or is this pure fiction? For instance, one concubine laces another's ointment with musk in order to induce a miscarriage.
At one point, a concubine is burning offerings for her dead brother, and her servant cautions that doing so within the palace walls is forbidden. Why is this?
Thank you so much in advance for any answers to any of these questions!
1 Answers 2016-07-17
It seems like it's straightforward to retain power and wealth once your family is already accepted as royalty or aristocracy, but how did Europe's royal families get there in the first place?
Was it petty fiefdoms that eventually coalesced after power struggles? How long did it take for e.g. the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons to cement their powerbase?
What was the process for being accepted and regarded as a 'king' and not some local warlord?
1 Answers 2016-07-17
Could Hitlers mentality been a result of stress from fighting in World War I? Or at the very least his radical thoughts had been intensified from his experiences?
1 Answers 2016-07-17
Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.
5 Answers 2016-07-17
I know that Italy contributeed to escalating international political tensions during the interwar period, but their military record during the war itself seems lackluster. What determines whether a country is attributed "Great Power" status by historians and contemporaries, and did WW2 italy meet those criteria?
1 Answers 2016-07-17
So my Dad found this in his garden at Sledmere, Yorkshire, UK. We think it might be roman because he said there have been a few other roman things found there.
After some research we think the stones might be radiated quartz.
Anything is appreciated, cheers
5 Answers 2016-07-17
The picture, maybe it's fake, any ideas?
2 Answers 2016-07-17
I've been curious to the reasons why he deemed noodles to be "worthy" to bring back to Italy. Also interested to why noodles ended up being so popular in Italy, and to how the Italians began creating different variations of pasta
1 Answers 2016-07-17
Many nations in Europe like Britain, France, The Netherlands and Portugal and even nations like Japan and Belgium began pursuing empires overseas in continents like Africa, Asia and Oceania. Why did seemingly advanced nations like Norway and Sweden not attempt something similar to these empires?
4 Answers 2016-07-17
1 Answers 2016-07-17
1 Answers 2016-07-17
Is there a Greek word for the concept of working out your problems by walking and thinking?
1 Answers 2016-07-17
I'm a singer, and have recently been learning several arias from Mozart's 'The Barber of Seville' and 'The Marriage of Figaro.' This had me thinking: After Mozart composed these operas, what was their performance history? Would he have to pitch the opera to an operatic production company, for instance? And how would a play like 'The Marriage of Figaro' make its way around Europe in this period? Were there travelling operatic groups, for instance, or would copies of the score be sent by mail to other conductors and composers?
Many thanks!
1 Answers 2016-07-17
I'm mainly joking, but it is frustrating to see a posts with tons of upvotes and many comments on a topic that interests me, only to find that when I click, not a single comment has survived. Happens here more than any other subreddit I frequent. (I do understand how this subreddit's high standards are part of why I like coming here, and how those standards lead to these comment graveyards.)
2 Answers 2016-07-17
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1 Answers 2016-07-17
Did the allies ever have a mission where they had to destroy a tower on foot? I read a little about how one flak tower(dont know which one sorry) obtained an internal explosion but there wasnt any info about how it received the damaged.
*oops medal... my bad
1 Answers 2016-07-17
I was talking with a coworker and he claimed that the Japanese planned on invading the west coast eventually specifically by using the Aleutian Islands as a base and coming down the coastline through Canada from there. From what I understand the Japanese hoped the USA would sue for a quick peace after Pearl Harbor and when that didn't happen basically just fought a defensive war with no real hope of seriously harming the US homeland. Now I know there was fighting on the Aleutians but was the invasion of the USA really the end goal of the Japanese fighting there?
1 Answers 2016-07-17
