Additionally how aggressively did law enforcement investigate and prosecute? What were the penalties?

More broadly, what were general or typical reactions of polytheists to the Abrahamic religions?

There are many examples in various media of things that are white, or light referring to the good, and the protagonists of a story. And that things that are black, or dark refer to the evil antagonist.

As a simple example most will recognise, in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf the White represents the 'good', and The Dark Lord, Sauron, represents the bad.

I'm interested in where this originated. Was this symbolism used in various religions from centuries ago? Does it have any sort of racial connotations within it?

Thanks.

Hearing about the amazing city designs, culture and governing systems in ancient Greece and Roman empire it has lead me to believe that it was better for the average citizen than in medieval, but it's hard to interpret the facts and look at all aspects, are there any good answers?

The Americas notably lack native large domesticated animals to the extent that Afro-Eurasia possesses. One available large species that humans did rely on as a food source was bison. Why didn't they domesticate bison the way others domesticated aurochs?

The skull of a prominent Wampanoag Indian whose father was a dignitary in the eyes of the earliest British settlers was on display at a Plymouth fort for decades. A reenactment showed lovely colonial women going about their gardening with the head on a post nearby, while the narrator said they took it as a sign that God was taking care of them. So my question is this: how does a supposedly civilized culture treat the grotesque and brutal as normal and even positive? I'm specifically curious about the "fairer sex," as I can't imagine something as serene as garden work juxtaposed with horror for the non-war-waging gender.

I'll be the one ducking in the corner to avoid shots fired over my sexism while one or more of you great historians gives an answer.

Who knows, maybe it's relevant given the current ISIS problem.

Thank you!

By the beginning of the sound-on-film era (starting in 1928), there would have been many people in their 70s, 80s and 90s who would have lived through the Civil War and other major historical events. Are their any interviews of these people's stories bearing witness on film? If not, why on earth not?!

Edit: I've been made aware of the former slave recordings, but nothing on film. This notion occurred to me while watching old early 1930's films. Seeing the older actors perform made me stop and think: This person was alive during the Civil War. I wonder what their memories of the 1800's were like?

Surely historians the world over - especially those with government backing - would have scrambled to get documentary interviews of this generation on film once that technology became available! Alas, it seems almost all of our early sound film was relegated to current events and entertainment...

How did the Chinese Communist party react to the end of the cold war? What kind of debates were going on within the party? Where there any policy adjustments that can be traced to this event ?

I've seen movies of people being taken hostage in Africa, then just sold, Im not sure what other sources for slaves were but my question is how did these processes gained "legitimacy"? At what point a man was officially recognized as a slave?

I have been reading about his conquests, successes and failures lately and this is a comment I come across often.

I believe that these remarkable people of history are often established to an extent by their birth, such as Alexander's father Phillip having begun to already unify Greece, or Julius Caesar being born to a position where he could join the senate.

Still, some feel that Alexander was lucky in far more regards than most. Perhaps a more intelligent question would be "how lucky was Alexander?"

so I learned in school that Morocco was the first country to recognize the USA as an independent nation, this kind of legitimized it. so my question is, why didn't France do that? they helped the US get free from England.

At several points in the interbellum I have seen the White Russians and Soviet cooperation against a common enemy. The first example is the battle of Baku and the second is at the Kumul Rebellion in 1934. This seems very odd to me, after all, these were two very hostile parties and I wouldn't expect them to have all to many common interests. Could anyone explain this cooperation to me?

Besides that I also find it somewhat odd that the Whites were even involved in the Kumul Rebellion. Weren't they pretty much a spent force after the Russian civil war? What sort of forces did they have left after this and how could they possibly sustain them?

Doing a civil war reenactment in may. Fighting as arkansas militia, what facial hair would be the most historically accurate?

PS Are there any subreddits for civil war reenactments?

Hi all,

I hope this question is appropriate. I had a quick search of /r/AskHistorians but couldn't find the exact question and answer. I also asked this question in /r/askscience but haven't received a response (or it has been filtered out).

I'm aware that one of the first recorded instances of a supernova was around 185AD by some Chinese, but when was events such as Supernovae linked to the life-cycle of stars? Who proposed that stars are not eternal?

As far as I'm aware, Aristotle had the view that stars are permanent, and eternal, and this view was held by the majority of Europe for a long time.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

I've been wondering recently about the differences in experience between Indigenous people in Australia and New Zealand in the colonial period.

In Australia from my understanding they were generally viewed as pests, given no rights or consideration when it came to land or anything else and in some cases completely eradicated (e.g. Tasmanian Aboriginals).

In contrast Maori's seem to have fared a bit better. They were still obviously examples of poorly treated in many cases, but just for example the British at least held them in high enough esteem to warrant a signing treaty for their land.

This difference is still evident today where Indigenous Australians make up just 2.5% of the population whereas in NZ it's 6 times that amount. So why, under the same coloniser (Britain), in the same region and time frame did one group get it so much worse than the other?

If it was Piedmont-Sardinia that unified the Kingdom of Italy how come standard Italian has more to do with Florence (by my best reckoning) than Turin?

Explaining a bit more, one reference that comes to my mind is that of the Japhetic race in the Bible.

If there's something in the Bible which is more of a Near East product of non-IE culture, surely there must be something in the larger IE tradition.