In all sorts of media there's a common trope of a lawless pirate city or village safe from the law filled with brothels and rough-and-tumble bars and such. Has anything like this ever existed historically? If not what's the closest any settlement has come to being a "pirate town"?

I recently finished Netflix's Marco Polo and it was decent piece of entertainment. I however know next to nothing about the era in which it is based, and the show has certainly spurred my interest into finding out more about this time period. From a historical point of view what does it get right, if anything at all? At this point I'm assuming the show is about as historically accurate as Lord of the Rings (the whole Jedi kung-fu masters with added Maori bodyguards element certainly discredits any historical validity :P ).

What was the typical diet of German soldier in 1941 when Nazi Germany was probably at its peak and what was it like after battles like Stalingrad when Germany went on the defensive? I mean in 1941 they had most of the continent of Europe providing them with food and I don't think Nazi high command would have felt confident to launch the largest invasion in history if the troops weren't getting properly fed? Am I wrong?

I read in wikipedia some time ago that the traditional Pagan Lithuanian religion had remained prominent in Lithuania all the way through the 16th century, and there were still sizeable, though comparatively small, populations in Lithuania following Paganism well into the 18th century. I was wondering, in other countries that converted earlier and more willingly, were such practices still common for such a long time after the conversion? In the late middle ages, was it still possible to find entire villages following traditional Norse religion in, say, Sweden?

Not looking to reopen the debate over the veracity of a mass exodus of Semitic people being the forerunner of the early Israelites. Just wanted to know what aspects of the Papyrus itself are viewed as reasons/evidence to not consider it the parallel of the Exodus tale considering that there are quite a few similarities- Nile turning to blood, afflicted cattle, slaves rebelling, death of children of princes, and more.

What number system would have been used in 1st century Israel? As part of the roman empire, I'm guessing they would have used roman numerals, is that a safe guess?

I tried to do a bit of searching into this and it doesn't look like any variation of our modern arabic decimal system had reached the region until centuries later. Is this correct? Were there other number systems at the time to rival the roman numerals?

I'm sure we all know that the Western European aristocrats of the modern period acquired most of their wealth from their land-owning ancestors who had been feudal lords during the Mediaeval period. But where did the power and wealth of the Roman aristocrats (patrician families) come from? Was their origin also in the land ownership of Etruscan families or something of the sort? Or did the Roman aristocrats rather acquire their aristocratic wealth from some other source?

I remember hearing something a long time ago about how in the early days of radio broadcasting, some people believed it was evil, because it used airwaves, while a verse in the bible states: "the devil is the prince of the power of the air". Now that I've been trying to google it, though, I can't find any references to this. Is this one of those things like "in Columbus' time, people thought the earth was flat" that some people like to state even though it's not true, to make people in the past look stupid?

I'm required to write an essay on Spartacus and I just can't find anything to debate/argue about. :/

A response will be most welcoming :)

I've been reading a lot about different species of homo as well as australopithecus that are thought to have been involved, but i am quite confused. Also what evidence is there?

Sorry if this has been asked but I couldn't find anything when searching

Is there any unbiased historical evidence of the person of Jesus (aside from the bible)?

I'm talking roman mentions or references to him or the events of the bible - off the top of my head for example, do we have the execution order for jesus signed by pontius pilate or anything like that?

if no explicit evidence exists, do you think there ought to be? In other words should we expect to have any evidence if indeed he was real but we don't have evidence? also, what is the best indirect evidence we have?

disclaimer: I'm not now nor have I ever been religious

Did they see it as inferior?

Considering they killed most of the Native Americans or drove them out, and they had no problem keeping slaves generally, why did it make more sense to bring them in from halfway around the world?