I've heard stories about Roman travelers finding gorillas and what not, and how they thought they were more savage humans. Are there any other records like this? How did Africans interact with them?

Please point me in the right direction, thank you!

Sorry if my question is not specific enough for a particular historical period for AskHistorians subreddit as per rule but I would like a reliable answer for my question.

Very often I see arguments all over the Internet on the number of casualties in any conflict as if one side attempts to downplay the horror of events by reducing the number of deaths and the other exaggerates the number to make one side more horrible. While I understand that casualty numbers get politicised (for example the Soviets argued they made more sacrifice due to 20 million casualties during WWII) in academia however, are actual figures really that important? Casualty statistics are just estimates and these estimations are I believe done with as much accuracy as possible despite some inevitable degree of error.

Arguing about 'true' statistics of casualties seems pointless and insensitive to me. Murdering one person is as horrible as killing 6 million Jews or 800,000 or 1.5 million Armenians. When people argue of true numerical values, they seem to forget that these are still human beings.

I wonder if diaries or other personal accounts would include trivial matters such as "today I was really constipated, I should go see a doctor." or if those types of personal accounts don't really exist.

Doing a bible study with a Jehovas witness. Called him out that they could not form doctrine around 607 b.c.e as being the "destruction of Jerusalem". In their literature I was told that both Witnesses and Secular historians agree that the Jews returned in 537 b.c.e. Is this true? Also after the study I was emailed this...

"Cyrus’ Decree for the Return of the Exiles. By his decreeing the end of the Jewish exile, Cyrus fulfilled his commission as Jehovah’s ‘anointed shepherd’ for Israel. (2Ch 36:22, 23; Ezr 1:1-4) The proclamation was made “in the first year of Cyrus the king of Persia,” meaning his first year as ruler toward conquered Babylon. The Bible record at Daniel 9:1 refers to “the first year of Darius,” and this may have intervened between the fall of Babylon and “the first year of Cyrus” over Babylon. If it did, this would mean that the writer was perhaps viewing Cyrus’ first year as having begun late in the year 538 B.C.E. However, if Darius’ rule over Babylon were to be viewed as that of a viceroy, so that his reign ran concurrent with that of Cyrus, Babylonian custom would place Cyrus’ first regnal year as running from Nisan of 538 to Nisan of 537 B.C.E. In view of the Bible record, Cyrus’ decree freeing the Jews to return to Jerusalem likely was made late in the year 538 or early in 537 B.C.E. This would allow time for the Jewish exiles to prepare to move out of Babylon and make the long trek to Judah and Jerusalem (a trip that could take about four months according to Ezr 7:9) and yet be settled “in their cities” in Judah by “the seventh month” (Tishri) of the year 537 B.C.E. (Ezr 3:1, 6) This marked the end of the prophesied 70 years of Judah’s desolation that began in the same month, Tishri, of 607 B.C.E.—2Ki 25:22-26; 2Ch 36:20, 21." Does this hold water?

Lobbies in terms of people or groups who represent an industry.

Did people of high nobility ever use swearing words and profanity? Do we have any record of such? I imagine the lower class people were swearing left and right.

I spout this factoid a lot but I just realized don't have any support for it. :(

Now I know that these are two completely different periods, but I was reading this book on Augustus' reign and it says that he created a sort of secret police to repress dissidents and political enemies, so I wanted to know how true this is and if so how similar this secret police was to the SS.

This was asked in a different subreddit and I was curious to see if anyone on here might shed some light on the topic.

I've read a lot about Punic Italy and the Marian reforms. It always seemed to me that Rome managed to muster armies numbering in the tens of thousands just from the peninsula and were fairly protected in the north by the Alps.

Given the above, even if the later Western Roman Empire was surrounded by "barbarians", could they not hold on to Italy at least, given that's where the martial civilization began?

I hypothesize some political, logistical, or economic problems, but could anyone explain it more in depth?

There's a question that has been bugging me about the plant in Vermonk, Norway that was the focus of the various heavy water operations in WW2. The question is why was the heavy water facility at the plant built when it was ? From the Wikipedia article and other sources I learned that the plant itself made nitrogen for fertilizer production, and the idea for building the facility for heavy water was put forth in 1933, was accepted and it was operational in 1935. The thing I don't understand is why ? Heavy water has pretty much no real uses except as a moderator in some types of reactors. Other uses in chemistry seems to require such minute quantities that an industrial plant of that size seems completely unjustified. The thing is that the very IDEA of nuclear fission was not developed until 1938. In 1934 Fermi was only just trying to see what happened when uranium was hit by neutrons. The first reactor was Pile 1 in Chicago in 1942, seven years later, and the first heavy water reactors was something like fifteen years out. So, why did Norsk Hydro spend the money, time and effort to build the facility to make something on an industrial scale that seemingly had no application at the time ?

I originally asked in ww2, but it was suggested I ask here directly.

Where can I find in ancient texts references or descriptions of the smoothed surface of the ancient pyramids in egypt?

I'm curious. It seems like both of these agreements gave the Republicans some semblance of equality.

Sorry for the short amount of text, I'm about to leave for class. In most historical societies that reject homosexuality that I am familiar with, they tend to reject male homosexuality and mostly ignore female homosexuality because of how certain cultures view what exactly constitutes sex (penetration).

With the Greeks accepting homoerotic love between men, how did they view the opposite side of that coin? Were women refused the ability due to their lower status in society, or was it simply not even a question that was talked about?

Thanks!