So from my understanding of medieval universities, they focused on Law, Theology, and medicine, with different universities specializing in one over the other.

But in the American colonies, did they also focus on these? Was it a place for the elite landowners to speak greek to each other? Or to train bureaucrats and administrators as the colonial governments got more established and needed more educated staff?

I'm curious because if I ran a colony, I feel like my priorities would be administrators, bookkeepers, engineers, and medical; but I don't know their priorities.

Also, how might I travel in this case? By foot, with a group, would I try to find a large caravan high-tailing to another city?

I've heard that the famous British Redcoat came from the New Model Army and was chosen in part because of how cheap the dye was, but I'm also curious about how other nations chose their colours. What drove Napoleon's army to wear blue, Austria's to wear white, and Prussia's to wear grey? Did these colours reflect previous heraldry or national symbols, or were they arbitrary?

I'm assuming the Church at its height dictated every aspect of life and therefore also education and literature. So my questions are:

Considering the Iliad promotes polytheism, did the Church consider the Iliad a forbidden book?

Did the Church allow the Iliad, but with the caveat that polytheism is a product of its time and now superseded by monotheism?

Did the Church allow the Iliad with no restrictions because it was simply such an import book throughout history? If yes, did the Church try to give some kind of convoluted interpretation of the Iliad that would be in line with Church's teachings?

There's some "tricky" stuff in the Iliad, like Achilles and Patroclus being lovers. What stance did the Church take in regards to this? Or, again, did it accept it, while explaining that things were different back then in Greece?

Sweet potatoes are native to South America, yet can be found in the pacific Islands and carbon dated back to 1200AD. Does this prove that they had contact with South American tribes?

Presumably, the tombs of pharaohs and other royals were considered sacred places in the ancient Egyptian religion. Yet, we are told that these tombs were looted frequently in antiquity.

Who was looting these sites? Was it Egyptians who did not believe in the religion, believers who were very desperate in times of disruption, or was it foreigners who were visitors/infiltrators or who were part of an invading force? You always hear that these tombs were looted, but there never seems to be any discussion about who was doing it.

Also, as a follow on if anybody has any information about this, are there any records of people being caught in the act of looting? If so what sorts of punishments did they face?

Hello!

I am writing a story set in Victorian England. I've always been fascinated by the era and thought it would be a good place to set my novel. However, I realized how little I actually knew about the era, and my only experience with it is *Assassin's Creed: Syndicate*. While the project is just for fun (at least right now), I don't want there to be any really obvious things I could miss about the time period that could really screw up my story fundamentally.

I'm just asking about any details about the Victorian era that would be *very* important to include, else my story would suffer. Thank you!

It is known that the native population of the Americas in the post Colombian time of around 1550 were fighting a war for survival, but the biggest enemy was not the Spanish, it was disease. Measles, influenza, typhoid, yellow fever, and especially small pox decimated the population. Why was it though that the “European diseases” won over the local ones. Why didn’t the local germs decimate the conquistadors. Why wasn’t it the other way around? Was it because the population of the Americas had better sanitary practices? They didn’t live so densely packed? But even then, there must has been some endemic diseases the Europeans were not familiar with, why did the Old World diseases prevail agains the New World diseases?

Where might I do some follow up reading?

I’m very aware that the medieval period spans several centuries, and “Europe” is a huge cultural/geographic area, but seeing the differences in answers due to precisely when and where will possibly be quite interesting.

Side question; my grandfather served in the Tank Depot in both WW2 and the Korean War. Unfortunately he passed away, would he also have seen much Klan regalia and Confederate flags in Korea?

According to the Qu'ran, Mohammad (PBUH), communed with Allah and received a set of new commandments, which added to the Bible/Torah's list (if I'm understanding it right), and his father was named Abdallah, which translates to "Servant of Allah", however, my research has ended there for Muhammad's past (PBUH), before he became a Prophet of Allah.

​

As such, was Muhammad (PBUH) part of an Abrahamic religion beforehand, and if not, why would he have communed with a god in which he supposedly did not believe?

​

some background: I'm an atheist 18 year old who wants to know and understand more about this thing called "religion" that dominated humanity's past for more than two thousand years

I’d like to read about how LGBT+phobia has been in the US and how more recent stuff like straight pride and TERFs began to develop. Is there a book or something that talks a lot about this?