I feel like I'm speaking from a position that can't fully flesh out the question, but I think of how Robin Goodfellow is often portrayed as a satyr, or how Midsummer Night's Dream doesn't think twice about introducing characters of Greek myth to an English conception of fairy woods. Fast-forward to today and fantasy literature and fantasy gaming often portray a Fairy world that includes Greek mythic elements as well as British Isles fairy folklore.

Am I seeing something that isn't there or was there some process by which Greek mythic creatures and figures were grandfathered into fairy tails?

Donald Trump and his administration have obviously had plenty of legal action levied against them, but it leaves me wondering if other former presidents have been the target of lawsuits or adjacent action, and if so, have any of these actions ever seen success?

In the past I see many tribes and kingdoms across most of the map of northcentral and northeast Asia, never mind probably thousands of smaller tribes who lived there, all seemingly absorbed by Russia over a few centuries.

Was this Russia's own version of colonialism?

What was the reaction of the other Asian nations? Was this an invasion by Europeans? Was it a unifying point for them? Or was it seen as a taming of land and people who have often plagued the more southerly neighbors?

Is there continuing lingering resentment?

I read somewhere that the oldest oral stories are Australian aboriginal stories from 10 000 years ago or something, which tell of the rise of sea level to turn a peninsula into islands. But even that is kind of short while ago.

Why are there no stories of the wars between humans and neanderthals? Why are there no stories of the great exodus from Africa? Why are there no stories of humans turning from black to white or evolving from ape-humanoids to humans? Why are there no stories of the ancient "humans" swimming huge distances with their animal-like strength to reach new lands? Why are there no stories of the ice age and the climate changing a lot colder? Why are there no stories of super volcano eruptions?

If I think about it, I thought there should be some stories about like a drunk human chieftain having sex with a neanderthal woman, and his homies going daaaaaaaaamn boi. Or some people who immigrated to cold lands (inuits etc), whose ancestors where dark skinned. And then they would notice that their grandparents used to be black, but they are white and coming up with a story about that.

To be clear: the form of the trope that I'm referring to describes a primitive professional police force that would enforce civil and criminal laws. This is usually in concert with jails and a judiciary system. Fairness and corruption vary between settings, but these are the basic considerations I'm thinking of.

I am not a scholar, but to my knowledge, these sorts of things didn't exist at all in the European Middle Ages. Villages had a general tradition called the "hue and cry," where someone in distress would make an undefined call and everyone nearby was duty-bound to respond and deal with the assailant. Cities might have something vaguely similar, but this was mostly to keep violent incidents from escalating and not to enforce common laws. Part of the issue was that there wasn't a defined concept of the rule of law, and most laws were civil (harm against another person) rather than criminal (harm against society in general).

Again, the previous paragraph is based on my limited research; I am very much an amateur.

What I'm wondering is whether the trope described in the first paragraph existed anywhere in the premodern world. The Roman Empire? Han China? The American Empires? There are lots of civilizations that I don't know about, and I wouldn't be surprised if I've missed something.

Thanks in advance!

Things like Christmas, Halloween and Easter. I'm looking for something that explains the origins of various traditions associated with each holiday. A lot of stuff online tends to be pophistory at best and false information at worst

So, if I am not wrong, the Franks were able to subjugate other Germanic polities really fast, over the course of the 5th and the 6th centuries, but more importantly, they were capable to actually hold on theses conquests.

But why ? Why could they do that and, progressively passify the territories of the ancient Germanic limes and beyond if the Romans couldn't ?

I mean, if we were talking about conquest by the Frankish Empire in, I don't know the 9th or 10th centuries, I guess enough time would have passed for things to be so different from the time of the Roman Empire that the answer would be just "Well centuries passed, things just changed"

But in the 5th and 6th centuries we are immediatly after the end of the Western Roman Empire.

If I am not wrong, the Franks were largely a loosely connected pseudo federation of people lagely Romanized if not literally Roman, and ex member of the Roman military, and so with Roman militaries tactics etc.

So why could they do something that the Roman Empire wasn't able to do, if they were largely the same people anyway ?

Whenever we play games that take place in a medieval setting, its a given that there are "shops" around, buildings that you can into to buy all sorts of things, from books to potions. They aren't quite supermarkets, but look a lot like the corner markets from a century ago.
How realistic would it have been to have such a shop in let's say Europe in the middle ages? Would merchants sell their wares on markets exclusively? Would there be buildings in which a shopkeeper would just sit all day waiting for people to enter and buy things? Would it be more common to commissoin something like let's say a book or a set of cups or plates instead of buying some that someone had in stock?

I’ve noticed that there aren’t many monarchs who use Emperor as their main title past the Roman era. The only ones I remember are— The Romanovs (Imperator of Russia), Hohenzollerns (Kaiser of Germany), Habsburgs (Kaiser of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor, Kaiser of Austria-Hungary), and the Bonapartes (Emperor of the French). At first, I thought that you could only create an Imperial title if you had jurisdiction over many kingdoms. But then there’s Spain, which encompasses the kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Navarre, and Aragon (+county of Barcelona). Italy had the kingdoms of Sardinia-Piedmont, Lombardy-Venetia and Two Sicilies.

Granted, some monarchs did have imperial titles beside their royal titles (Empress of India, Emperor of Ethiopia). Is it a diplomatic thing, or does it have something to relate with appearances and not pissing off other royals?

I was reading an old post asking about how the Mycenaean micro-societies collapsed, and the reply from an Ancient Greek historian mentioned a number of theories. One being the Sea Peoples, but they said this was also considered a "historical mess". This is what we just recently learned in our introductory Pre-1500 World History class for the reason why a lot of civilizations collapsed in the Bronze Age going into the Iron age. This also followed another big drought again (which I'm pretty sure this historian also said was another theory). Is it just a historical mess for the Mycenaeans, or is it also a mess for everyone else when considering the fall of the Old Babylonian Kassites (I think that was the last people before the Neo-Assyrians?) and New Kingdom Egypt?

Forgive any incorrect chronology and please correct me on it if so

Hello! I'm currently a sophomore undergraduate history major wanting to study either the ancient Mediterranean world(Egypt, Mesopotamia, Rome) or Mayan and Aztec civilizations for graduate school. Currently I'm a bit lost since there's nobody in the history department who has specialized in these fields since the main ancient history professor retired a few years ago. Nobody has been hired to fill in for the ancient history professor's absence, so I don't have anyone to consult with this at the moment. My minor is in Classics right now but I haven't gotten any exposure to Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Mayan history due to the lack of courses being offered. I wanted to ask if I should double major in anthropology due to the lack of exposure? I feel like I should've double majored in anthropology initially since there's more courses offered related to ancient history than the history department currently offers.

Most of my information on these areas came from studying and reading about them on my own time. I have been self-studying on and off Egyptian hieroglyphics, Aztec hieroglyphics, Akkadian, and Sumerian. Right now I'm taking an online class about Egyptian magic taught by an Egyptologist to compensate for my lack of exposure and opportunities at my university. I intend to teach high school for a bit but my true desire is to teach either ancient Mediterranean or pre-Columbian history at a college level. I'm just looking for advice on how to approach these limited opportunities and what to do so I can set myself up for success with my future studies. I've been really stressed out about this since enrollment is coming up soon and the advisors I've spoken to haven't been the most helpful either, so any advice is heavily appreciated.

Would one way for ancient civilizations to move large stones be to lash hot air devices to them or is that way to advanced and or outlandish?

hey all! I’m wondering if there is some sort of database with names of all those who served and where. my great grandfather served in WWII out of Bedford, VA. I have the name of the regiment and company, but I tried to look online to see if there were any record of him as well as other family. does anyone know of any database or website I could look into

I know there are some technical differences (the dowry wouldn't be paid to the groom per se, but rather given to the entire household). But I think that, largely, the point stands. A dowry would add funds from the bride's family to the household, while a bride price would do the opposite, since the groom's money (which would otherwise go to the household) would have to go to the bride's family instead.

Both customs were common in similar (if not exactly the same) periods and regions, such as large parts of Asia and the Middle East, including cultures which are considered to have relatively similar social customs, family and household structures, religions, economies, etc. Both a dowry and a bride price could be a very significant amount of money, often being the make-or-break in determining whether a marriage would happen or not.)

I understand the value of a dowry in providing a "starting capital" for the family, as well as financial security to the bride in case of abandonment or becoming a widow. Conversely, I also understand the value of a bride price in patriarchal cultures where a daughter would be considered a family "asset" by her parents, in lieu of the work a son could provide instead, to be "cashed in" in marriage. Both financial flows make some sense, but since they're diametrically opposite, I'd imagine that, in similar cultural circumstances, the socioeconomic benefit of one flow would prevail over the other, and become a universally accepted social norm, rather than both coexisting at the same time.

So it's perplexing how this significant amount of money flowed one way in certain situations, and the other way in others.

I just finished watching Planes Trains and Automobiles, which is a fantastic movie from 1987. Near the beginning of the film, we see Steve Martin and John Candy use their credits cards, which are imprinted with an imprinter. I couldn't help but think that credit card fraud would have been a big issue back around this time, especially since most places didn't have cameras in them. If there were any cameras, the video would have been of very poor quality. How much credit card fraud took place from approximately 1960-1992? I imagine a lot of bogus checks were written as well. How long did it take for these imprinter slips to be manually entered and verified with credit card companies before fraud was confirmed?

After the Napoleonic wars, liberal ideals and seeing each other as one Italian populace rather than Tuscan or such was starting to take hold. How did new ideals of the era conflict with the old millennia old-borders set back after Napoleon's defeat? How did new technologies impact life in the Papal State, such as the invention of the railroad/train, the steam engine being used to wide effect, and such?

Does anyone know if when King George VI died in 1952 it was likely that people in the UK would mock him for his stutter? Would it be a common reaction?

I was discussing the idea of drunk food with a friend and whether there is a significant history of drunk food throughout the ages. Of course people always ate more when they were drunk, but were there any middle ages or early modern (or any time Period really) equivalents to something like the modern UK kebab shop: a late night takeaway establishment often with particularly poor standards of food, therefor targeting the more pissed up patrons.

I know basically the bare basics of what's said to have happened about the crucifixion and I don't know how much of it is religious claims and how much is founded in historical truth in general. I tried looking for information on this by myself, but all the information I could find is what various religions had to say about it.