I mean, if I was making a statue of Zeus, I wouldn’t give him four inches.

Edit: I see.

Did the common person have any say on the election/appointment of officials (Doge or otherwise) or in the policies of the republic?

I am from India. World history is a foreign concept to me, a perfunctory piece of knowledge that I never needed to know (the schools didn't require it). My interest was recently sparked with a few documentaries on netflix.

I had no idea that the Japanese fought Germany in WW1 nor the intricate details of hatred between the Japaneese, Chineese and Koreans. I heard someone say that even European history is very involved. For instance someone told me that spain had civil wars within civil wars.

I am now immensely interested but can not ask anyone around me. When I went to the nearest library, the books on Indian history itself were too big for my bag.

Is there a book series that tells the history of a region in an easy narrative style?

Thank you.

I've recently read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and there was a chapter about the patriarchy in which he said that there are many theories, but no real consent amongst historians and anthropologists on why all cultures independently from another developed a patriarchal structure after going from nomadism to agriculture.

Is that true? Are there really no plausible explanations for this?

The region has post-Islamic remnants in general. But there are also remains of nabataean kingdom. Does this indicate that there was an advanced civilization in the region in the pre-Islamic period? Also, what was the place of women in the society of that period?

and how many to feed a family?

It's this big random chunk of worthless taiga that for some reason is carved off the mainland and assigned to the island of Newfoundland. Hardly anybody lives there, there isn't much in the way of natural resources, the climate is not conducive to settlement, so why would it be a separate place?

Furthermore, as I was reading through to see if this question was answered before, I read that there was apparently a spat with Quebec over where the border is. Who cares??? I feel like other times when there have been borders between friendly polities that ran through wasteland, eg the border between Saudi Arabia and Oman in the Empty Quarter, they're happy to leave it Undefined until they had to define it.

So why would Labrador be a thing, much less a thing whose borders anybody cares about?

I of course know that James Bond 007 is a fictional character, however he was inspired by a number of real secret agents Ian Fleming met during his life, like the members of the 30 Assault Unit.

Now, with Daniel Craig's retirement from the role, there is talk of the next bond, and some have been saying that Idris Elba would be a good fit for the character. Many people (including my dad, which is why i'm posting this) claim that Bond shouldn't be black, because it does not fit the character of a british spy from the 40s/50s.

So, to reiterate my question: What was the racial composition of the British Secret Services in the 40s and 50s, and could a "real" James Bond have been black?

So I've recently been reading into the history of the American West (mainly due to playing Red Dead Redemption 2 😅), and I began to wonder about this. The classic Hollywood trope was always that the Cowboys and Native Americans were constantly at each others throats, but even my basic level of research (and common sense) would suggest that any such fighting would have occured between the indigenous peoples and the US government, who were actively engaged in the genocide of Native Americans. Now I appreciate that the concept of a cowboy as depicted in movies/media etc. is very romanticised as is, but I'm wondering if there was ever anything which could even be vaguely described as fitting a "Cowboys vs Indians" type of conflict, or if, as I suspect, any conflict would have been between Native Americans and the US Government and its allies. Thanks :)

I have searched on the internet about this but haven’t found a real answer. All I found said that the King wanted people to move north to the new mine, but it never said anything about the Sami.

For example, in that article, author cites 13th century English chronicler that tried to justify the massacre on Scandinavians in England:

The Danes made themselves too acceptable to English women by their elegant manners and their care of their person. They combed their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, and even changed their garments often. They set off their persons by many such frivolous devices. In this manner, they laid siege to the virtue of the married women and persuaded the daughters, even of the nobles, to be their concubines. (135).

Or another quote from it:

After the Viking sack of the monastery of Lindisfarne in 793, the scholar Alcuin (d. c. 804) wrote a number of letters to English kings denouncing those Christians who had begun dressing and caring for themselves as the pagan Vikings did since this had obviously incurred God’s wrath. The Viking raids in Britain*, he claimed, were a punishment from God for the people’s sin of self-care apparent in their emulation of the Vikings:*

Consider the dress, the way of wearing the hair, the luxurious habits of the princes and people. Look at your trimming of the beard and hair, in which you have wished to resemble the pagans. Are you not menaced by terror of them whose fashion you wished to follow? (Somerville & McDonald, 187)

Is it true?

Snopes says incident is true because both of them have corroborated it. A simple google search leads to many links that were published recently. What I would like to see is original articles or comments that criticized her to understand 1) If it was prevalent in all of America or only certain parts of the country and 2) What was the tone and justification used for criticizing a simple act of inviting a black performer on her show?

I could have just asked a specific question as to what the original criticism was but I often feel like reading more from those times whenever I see a similar article, so I would appreciate if you guys could help in how a normal person would go about finding such things.

(Or “industry” for that matter. Is it just basically a specialized craftsman, or a team working in a cottage industry with maybe a water wheel or bellows?)

So in the American school system the idea of Mercantilism as a cause for the Revolution is drilled into you. Although Mercantilism has a couple features, one is that the “colonies supply raw resources for manufactured goods.”

But Britain circa 1700 is pre-Industrial Revolution. What constitutes “manufactured goods” that is produced on a non-artisanal scale? And what would the production of something like clothing or metal tools look like?

During the 14th-17th Century Europe when Witch trials and Witch hysteria was common, were there any sceptics who did not believe in witch craft or witches? Surely there would have been? I tried doing my own research on this, but could not find much. I assume they would have kept quiet in fear of being executed themselves.

Let's say I'm an English knight in the employ of Henry of Grosmont, duke of Lancaster. The figure who's surrendered to me is a French count. How does the ransom process work? Do I negotiate the French lord's ransom directly with him? Or do I surrender him to my lord Lancaster for a "finders fee?"

Obviously yes, a broad question and it depends on when and during which wars. But on average, was it something soldiers expected to achieve? Or was it a long shot?