[deleted]

I studied in Berlin for 3 weeks and spent a weekend in Munich. A few things that I noted about my dining experience:

1. I usually sat myself. As an American this seemed strange as we have hostesses etc.

2. I was charged for water. But I have learned that Germany does not drink tap water as it is thought to not necessarily be as clean.

3. I was also informed that Germans do not tip. However they will round up to the nearest Euro denomination. There was a good question here about the evolution of tipping but I cannot for the life of me use the reddit search function.

4. It was totally fine to just have strangers sit with you at a table.

If anyone can share some insight on this to satisfy my curiosity that would be great!

I was playing the new Total War:Age of Charlemagne and realized that I had only the slightest idea of who any of the major factions in the game were.

Ideally I'd prefer books that are more of an overview; mostly I want to know who the major powers were, what they did, and how it affected the later Middle Ages that I'm more familiar with.

Basically title. I assume that (due to it being referred to as a paradox) the understanding of maths at the time didn't include solutions to geometric progressions, or the general idea of supertasks. Were philosophers able to come up with any explanations, reasonable or otherwise?

We all know why the first bomb was thrown, but why was the second bomb thrown, and so soon after the first one?

Any idea who said this? Is this the right subreddit for this question?

What motivated the change?

From what I've seen Celtic paganism was more rooted in nature with a lot of local spirits etc. But what are the other differences?

He supposedly converted to the heresy and used their theology as a means to consolidate power away from the priesthood. While I see the proto-socialist movement as a threat to any empire, it seems to me that murdering the prophet of your own religion is a major faux-pas. Any insight welcome!

I can certainly see that the Islamic forces would have been highly motivated compared to some of their opponents, but I'm not aware of any obvious military superiority.

The Roman Republic usually had superior organization and equipment. Various steppe peoples exploited mobility and the superiority of the horse archer. The Macedonians had revolutionary tactics, and were professionals facing mainly levies.

What was the Arab advantage over the byzantines, sassanids and others, aside from their former two having worn each other down?

I have never been able to find much on this subject, as most books talk about either American submarines in the Pacific or German submarines in the Atlantic.

Provided I had the money and political power to do such a thing, how would my castle be built? Are there famous castle builders that I can hire? How would I finance such a large project?

Ho ho ho, by request of longtime regular /u/HallenbeckJoe we are re-running a feature thread we did this same time last year. So please use this thread to share your favorite history-themed gift ideas, or request ideas for your most hard-to-shop-for history buffs, and maybe bookmark it for use for birthdays and other gift-giving occasions.

How much do we really know about brehon law and how far ahead of its time was it?

Are there any law systems in existence today that have some similarity to it?

Is there any chance that it could be revived/rewritten and implemented as a new law system/ideology today?

I know that what little of brehon law remains is near untranslatable due to the time in which it was written (the seanchai mor is the second oldest law document in existence, only the sanchrist is older than it). It is estimated that it could be up to 10,000 years old. Came from the ideology of the wise king as opposed to the warrior king and was based upon natural law. Was compensation based as opposed to punishment based. Was unbelievably complex (it took 20 years of college to become a brehon judge)

Most of what I know is based off of primary school history books, some documentaries and a lecture available on YouTube.

Maltese is a Semitic language probably derived from North African Arabic (I understand that there's also a largely discredited theory that it’s a descendant of an ancient Phoenician language). Like neighbouring Sicily and most of Spain, Malta was conquered by the Arabs in the medieval period but Malta is the only one of those places to still speak an Arabic-derived language, despite the period of Arab rule there being relatively brief. Why?

The Romans weren't the only people in Italy; they fought against the Etruscans (who I understand are not considered 'properly 'Italic), Samnites, Sabines, Latins...before actually controlling all - or at least most- of it.

These people seem to have been assimilated, intermarried with 'original' Romans (and I think some eventually got full citisenship) and so on.

What I want to know is - what did the Romans think of these former rivals for control of Italy and, specifically, of Romans who had ancestors from them? Especially for nobles/equites/patricians.

I understand the Romans weren't really racist as a rule (at least, not like we use the word today), but I would expect them to look down on nobles who married foreigners...however, since we are talking about people who were somewhat close geographically if not culturally, how did it work?

The one specific case I can think of is reading that Maecenas - Virgil's patron - prided himself on his noble etruscan ancesty.

I am not surprised by this, as Rome had some Etruscan kings early on and Etruscan civilization seems to have been a MASSIVE influence on Rome (maybe the biggest cultural influence after Greece?), so I guess they had a lot of respect for them.

And I suppose the legend involving the kidnapping of the Sabine women would also make that a 'respected' people (since they are supposed to share ancestry). And speaking of legends, there's also Aenas marrying a Latin princess.

But what about other people from Italy? Are there cases where a Roman noble was insulted or shamed by people bringing up that he had Italian, but non-Roman ancestors? Or, like in Maecenas' case , it was something you didn't have to hide and could even be proud of in some cases?

"Accepted" might mean that nobody cared or thought anything of it. Or maybe it might have been considered taboo, but given a pass because "he's a Duke, are you gonna tell him he can't do that?"