Im reading about Heinrich Kramer who wrote "Malleus Maleficarum".

The book was written in Medieval Latin, but Im wondering what he would have grown up speaking being born in Alsace in 1430.

He died in Moravia, so Im also wondering what language(s) he would have had to learn while living there.

Thank you, guys!

Man at arms, or other typical English footsoldiers.

From what I learned recently in history class, the development of beer in ancient Ur progressed their civilization. In a city of roughly 50,000 inhabitants, it made water that was generally bad drinkable, and it helped set the course for the development of writing as well. My question is, on the other side of the globe cut off from knowledge of such things, did they develop for themselves some type of drink that was alcoholic in nature?

Mainly thinking of the 60s through the 80s. Lot of things I was pondering about this. In theory at least, I would assume that there would be travel programs to ensure everyone could take a trip now and then, but I'm sure nothing is that simple, so...

• How was travel for leisure managed and controlled within the Soviet Union? How accessible would it be to just some run of the mill factory worker or farmer?

• Would someone be able to decide to take a vacation at some point, or would the state contact you and say "Comrade Boris, you are scheduled for a vacation next month"?

• Would it be state funded, or did you have to pay for it yourself?

• What sort of destinations were available? What were most popular (I'm assuming Odessa was one of them?)?

• How about international travel? How hard would it be to vacation to a destination within the Iron Curtain? What about something like Yugoslavia? Cuba!?

• And of course, was there any way to take a vacation to "The West", even if you were a well trusted party member who likely wouldn't defect?

I was reading a passage from Attar's Conference of the Birds last time and it struck me how many stories of all sorts were in that work.

How did he come to know about all these ?

1. Did he invented the stories much like we imagine a modern author writing a work of fiction ? was he perceived as an author ? i know that qasidas were signed so the concept of authorship wasn't unknown to them, but in the context of these long poems, he would have been the "author" of what ? just the crafting of the story, its details or even the theme, the "base material" itself ?

2. Did he saw his work as a part of a tradition ? how would he and his contemporaries have conceived this tradition ? was it a kind of "common" shared by both the poet and his audience ? how would this tradition have circulated ? was it an oral tradition (i.e. he would have had heard about these stories) or rather a written tradition (... read about them) ?

3. What was the target audience ? How did the they received this work ? was it supposed to be read ? to be learn and recited ? to be recited and heard ? how did his contemporaries relate to this kind of opus ?

I mean, i can imagine a panegyric qasida being recited at the court of the guy who sponsors the poet; but i'm having trouble imagining anyone reciting sthg like the Conference of the Bird -- it's a bit longish.

I mentionned Saadi's Conference of the Birds but same question goes for basically every longish poem of the same kind (e.g. Rumi's Masnavi). That is, i'm not interested in Attar's case specifically.

Hope i made myself clear enough.

EDIT : as noted below, i wrote saadi instead of attar. Mistake fixed.

They were contemporaries, they were highly influential, they (supposedly) wrote some extremely popular texts, but Confucius, in our opinion, was a real person, and Laozi — we just have several theories about him, and one of them tells us that Laozi is just a myth.

Why?

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Was it real? Did Cicero make the whole thing up?

Why not just have the sound of lightning or the flash of thunder?

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I know that Canada passed laws preventing immigration of Asians, but Britain did not. How much of political independence did Canada have before the 1982 act?

In learning about the conflict in Balkans during World War II, one thing I do not understand is what justification was used by the Croatian Ustaše facists to kill hundreds of thousands of Serbian civilians, most notably in concentration camps such as at Jasenovac? As far as the rationale behind the murder of Jewish civilians in Germany and across Europe, Nazi propaganda is quite clear and overt as far as the reasons behind their hatred and aggressiveness in rounding up and killing Jews; however, what is not so clear or apparent is why did the Croatian fascists feel similarly towards the ethnic Serbians living across the Balkans? I have never seen or heard about any specific reasons or propaganda used to outline what the exact issue was that either the Nazis or NDH Croatians had against the Serbs. How could such a crime of soldiers killing their own countryman be justified to anyone during that time period? Where did this hatred come from that killing Serb civilians could be considered conscionable?

So I have been seeing the Musketeers series from bbc and I have been wondering how realistic the fencing is.

From what I can tell NATO tanks usually tend to have bigger turrets with manual loading while Soviet tanks had smaller turrets with autoloaders.

What were the other differences, and why did both sides design their tanks that way?

What were the advantages and disadvantages to these designs?

I searched the archives, but couldn't find a good answer. I could find information about the development of the diaper (from the clout, etc.), but all those posts were just about "what people did before diapers". I didn't see anything about Native Americans/American Indians specifically.

What did they use as (under)clothing for babies? Did colonists think anything was bizarre in their practices in this regard? How does this compare to other indigenous people around the world?

Were there any particularly well-traveled rulers in the middle ages?

I wonder this sometimes when I realize how privileged I am, middle class, male, white american. I mean, I've been all over the world just vacationing. Living like a king!

Sorry for the convoluted language of the question (I'm slightly delirious right now), but I'm wondering exactly why the current grading system arose, and why it's so prevalent today. It would seem to me that this largely inadequate form of assessment would have been discontinued by now, but it's still the dominant practice in Western culture. Thank you.