When and how did Salt and Pepper become the 2 staple seasonings that are so ubiqitous in western cuisine? Are they as ubiquitous in other cuisines?

I can see how salt can become a staple, given its role as a preservative and its availability.... but why pepper? Is it a native European plant? Was it traded for? When did it become so widespread that 'season with salt and pepper' became a thing? What is the earliest recipe that has both of them?

My main query is regarding western cuisine since I am Mediterranean and that is what I cook, but if anyone can answer the above with regards to other cuisines, I would be just as interested!

I was reading about Julius Caesars limited time in Britain during his conquests in Germania. I was very intrigued by the large cooperation mounted by the gallic tribes in order to resist roman occupation. Simultaneously, I noticed it's mentioned that Briton was still kind of this "mythical land" to the romans, even if they generally were well aware of Gallic Germania. So it led me to think, did mainland Gaul's know of Celtic Britons and if so to what extent?

Did they trade with each other? Did they intermingle, merry, go to war, or share tribal identification over the channel? Did they see each other as both sharing a similar identity? Did they share a common language or religion? How much did the English channel separate the two groups of people?

If there's any links on further reading regarding this I would also love to read any! Thanks for your time, I'm looking forward to the responses!

It seems that previous Italian governments also had tried a very heavy-handed approach to fighting the Mafia, but only seemed to entrench it more. Why did Mussolini far so much better and severely weakened the Mafia during the fascist rule of Italy?

I've been living in Cambodia for the last couple years and have heard a number of things regarding Cambodian cuisine that I was hoping for some more information about.

Most tourists will know two dishes: Lok Lak and Amok.

Lok Lak, I've been told, is actually a dish invented by the Vietnamese for the French colonists in Indochina. Cambodians revived the dish in the 1990s when the UN arrived to help them rebuild, knowing it's something foreigners ate. It's not a dish that Cambodian would generally make for themselves.

The second thing I've heard is that, before the 1960s, Cambodia had a much more complex and diverse cuisine, including Amok but, after the horrors they went through, the knowledge about these dishes were lost as many common ingredients were considered 'luxuries' under Pol Pot's regime and weren't available. A generation didn't get the chance to pass on all of their cuisine to the next as they had to learn to make use of whatever was easily available and that had a big influence on what they eat today. For example, Amok (so I've heard) is a dish that refugees kept alive while living abroad and it was only re-imported back to Cambodia recently. Again, it's not something Cambodians would typically make at home.

I was just hoping someone might expand on how Cambodian cuisine has changed over the last 60 years and how (or if) the era of the Khmer Rouge affected their cuisine.

What do you wish you would have known before going to school? Do you enjoy the work you do now and what is that work specifically?

Edit: for clarification sake, let’s narrow it down to the Great Plains region of the US, about 2,000 years ago

In short: why should I believe anything on this subreddit, or anything taught in a modern university course or published in a modern journal, more than someone like Thomas Carlyle, whose work always comes with the addendum that they believed some things that are considered disreputable or outright false today? Is everything written here someday going to get the same treatment?

I wish I could find a more solid source, I have to speculate with bit and pieces: Merovingians invested precaria of counties and duchies to the nobles (who had warbands of their own), but these were not hereditary or even lifetime grants, but time capped, many of the counts only lasting only a few years (thus preventing accumulation of power).

Meanwhile, beginning with Charles Martel, the Carolingians invested a lifetime grant (which quickly became de facto hereditary, until being formalized during the 10th century).

Does that sound about right or am I'm completely off the mark?

My understanding is that Hawaii was settled in one or two waves from Polynesia, and after that basically became it’s own little ecosystem until Captain Cook arrived.

Between the original settlement and contact with Europeans, did Hawaiians still have a cultural memory of places like Asia and Polynesia? Or was this lost and they believed that Hawaii was the whole world?

The 16th-century split between Catholics and Protestants was a source of vicious animosity among Christians and fueled major conflicts in early modern Europe — persecution, rebellion, assassinations, massacres and of course the exceptionally destructive Wars of Religion.

From what I can tell, evidence of a continuing Catholic-Protestant divide survived well into the 20th-century. Maurras listed Protestants as one of the four pillars of anti-French subversion. Ownership of a Protestant Bible was illegal in Francoist Spain. It was frequent for Catholic and Protestant children to attend different schools in Canada. Catholics were officially barred from public employment in Sweden and Norway until the '50s.

Still, that's a long shot from the St. Bartholomew. And nowadays, Catholic-Protestant conflicts are largely a forgotten thing of the past in Europe — with the complicated exception of Northern Ireland. Europeans identifying as Catholics or Protestants generally see each other as fellow Christians, not as traitorous hellspawns... at least as far as I can tell.

What, exactly, caused the century-long enmity between European Catholics and Protestants to fade over time and eventually to largely disappear? Did key events cause a dramatic decrease in conflict, or was it more gradual and haphazard a development? Did the emergence of the modern nation-state create an incentive to move beyond Catholic-Protestant enmity, at least wherever they shared a territory?

Note: I am focusing on Europe explicitly because I understand that while anti-Catholicism is nowhere near as hegemonic and aggressive as it used to be not so long ago in the US, it is still very much a somewhat marginal phenomenon. Though interestingly enough, it was abandoned by one of its historical standard-bearer, the Ku Klux Klan, in favor non-sectarian white supremacy.

I read it somewhere and I thought it makes sense.

Italian dialects, especially Sardinian and Barinese, are different from the base/Etruscan Italian that they can be considered different languages. I understand that they are not considered as a result of Italian nation-building. 'Abbiamo fatto l’Italia, ora dobbiamo fare gli Italiani'.

But were they always considered the same language? Would an Etruscan from 15th century consider Sardianian or Barinese or Sicilian etc. to be the dialects of his own language?

I’m currently studying the French Revolution as one of my history modules in school. My textbook describes the Civil Constitution of the clergy as “one of the defining moments of the revolution” without offering much of an in-depth explanation as to why. Some insight would be appreciated.

I think this sounds like a stupid question but I think my perspective is blunted because of the sheer info I've read on it already.

For example, the CIA produced hundreds of radio stations, magazine publications and propaganda leaflets denouncing leftist groups in 1970s Chile. Did any ordinary Chileans question this sudden uptick in anticommunist propaganda in their daily life? Did they know the CIA specifically was behind them? Same applies to Argentina, Nicaragua, etc.

Additionally, were ordinary Americans generally aware of their country's role in the abuses of authoritarian Latin American regimes during those times? Or were the Archives of Terror and the declassification of Operation Condor documents in 1999 a genuine shock to the American public?

(‚Black‘ as in skin color That Americans would consider as black)

I was listening to a podcast about Yelena Khanga, and she was adamant that she herself never experienced this growing up in the Soviet Union (ie wasn’t discriminated against when looking for a job, an Apartment, etc.)

Just how accurate would this assertion be? I’m aware that many different ethnicities did experience what we would call institutional racism, especially within the Red Army, but how was skin color treated? Did her status as a descendant of an American expat meant that her case was the exception rather than the rule?

In most of the world it’s believed that the Wright brothers are the inventors of the airplane, but in Brazil that credit goes to Santos Dumont. What arguments can be made for these two possibilities? In Brazil it’s argued that what the Wright brothers created couldn’t fly by itself and needed a “catapult” to fly. Is there any truth to that argument?