Were they concerned such a move would lead to a losable war with the US? Why were satellite states the better alternative to autonomous republics within the USSR?

So many interesting mythologies craft rich stories to explain the place in the sky of the sun and moon, yet it seems Abrahamic faiths don't put any interest in this, just acknowledging their creation at the dawn of the universe.

Is there a social, historical, or religious reason for this? Were there cultural norms that affected this in the ancient Levant or Sumeria?

I love all the high quality, well researched, and well sourced answers on here. In the spirit of sharing knowledge, I imagine historians that post here wouldn't mind that knowledge being shared with Wikipedia's much wider audience. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem right to blatantly copy others' work and redistribute it even if it was posted to a public forum to begin with.

Of course, anything transferred to Wikipedia would need to adhere to their policies regarding sources, editorial style, neutral voice, etc. A lot of the good answers on here would probably be able to supplement the corresponding Wikipedia articles with only minor editing.

Thoughts?

EDIT: First of all, thank all of you for the discussion. The situation is much more discouraging than I I hoped (although mostly on par with what I feared). I guess I'll just be glad that I know about this awesome subreddit and stick to getting my history fix here.

I found it hard to explain my views on the causes of World War One and I'd like to see what some scholars might say that is short and to the point. Growing up, about the American civil war we learned "States rights, King Cotton, and Slavery". Is there a similar statement about WWI?

I've been lately very interested in early humans and our origins and how technology has developed after watching True Detective and Cosmos. I was hoping someone here might have a good recommendation for a book about how technology developed in early humans, such as fire, language, etc. Maybe this is entirely too broad but I would love to read about this! I appreciate any help!

I've been taking a course on the history of witchcraft in Europe and our professor shows us art from the period to illustrate various aspects of beliefs about witchcraft and the witch hunts. He's mentioned several times before that art featuring the Devil and demons became more and more common in this period as witch hunts also caught on in popularity.

So at the time, for which groups was all this new art being created for? Were rich people commissioning demon paintings for their own interest, or were religious authorities (Catholic or Protestant) having art made as a kind of early PSA message?

EDIT: Just realized that it sounds like I'm only asking about paintings. I'm interested in any sort of demonological art from the period: paintings, woodcuts, prints, etc.

In school we are studying hip hop and what race has to do with it. Wanted to know how the word came to enter the genera and become so mainstream. New York New York by Grandmaster Flash is what i found to be the first instance in hip hop to use nigger (well nigga).

How did his army outgrow the German army? Did the common German people turn their heads at the atrocities being committed?

Doing some research for a story. What would be the ranks of crewmen, specifically gunners, aboard a U.S Army Air Force B-17 flying fortress during world war two?

I've heard many times about the shockingly brief (relative to contemporary standards) lifespans of people living in pre-modern societies. For, example, I understand the average life expectancy in the Roman empire was on the order of 28-30 years. My question is whether people enjoyed a period of senescence as they do today, or whether they were as healthy as everyone else until they simply dropped dead in the field one day? Additionally, were people cared for or venerated as elderly in the same way they are today if they would only ever live to the age of 30?

Was the change in government announced through the provinces? Was it a subtle thing that took place over a year or two or was it a very blunt change? When did the slave/lower class get the news of the government change?

Please help me! I'm a fourth year science student taking an environmental history class. I have to come up with my own topic, and write a paper based on some or all of our readings this term. (I've read diligently and taken notes, attended seminars, 4h a week.) I have no idea how to come up with a topic. Our main theme is "Eating Nature," which is supposed to be about food, but we can use other themes from the class: landscapes, consumption, knowing, identity, transnational.

Readings were about some environmental things I would have expected mass/fast food production, California's agricultural history, national parks, Atlantic cod, but really stuff was focused on the environment's effect on people, not really science and people's effect on the environment. I don't find people interesting as a topic, but I already had to write about them twice for this class.

I don't know how to come up with a proper topic, despite having googled for tips on history essays. I'm not asking for a topic per se, but just how to come up with one. I came up with a couple, but they seem lousy, obvious, pointless. My best idea was "unidirectional" and he said I should also consider the effect of the environment on the people. :(

We're supposed to "take the material where we want to take it, work the material thoroughly, define a theme and work it deliberately in a sophisticated fashion - probably multiple themes." His examples were Food and spatial relationships or food and identity.

Human identities are not interesting to me in the least! I do not care about gender, identity, nationalism. I care about landscapes, fish populations, rivers, and so on. We only read ONE scientific paper, and it's not about food. I hate most of the things we read.

edited: paragraph breaks.

edited2: bolding and list of all readings in order. ** means interesting and about food, * just interesting.

Cronon, William. “Kennecott Journey: The Paths Out of Town.” in Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Past. Eds., Cronon, William, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin. New York. W. W. Norton, 1992: 28-51.

White, Richard. “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?: Work and Nature.” in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. Ed. Cronon, William. New York. W. W. Norton, 1995: 171-85.

Chester, Robert N., Nicolaas Mink, Jane Dusselier, Nancy Shoemaker. “Having Our Cake and Eating It Too: Food’s Place in Environmental History, A Forum.” Environmental History 14 (April 2009): 309-44.

*Carlton, William R. “New England Masts and the King’s Navy.” New England Quarterly 12 (March 1939): 4-18.

*Shaw, Karena. “The Global/Local Politics of the Great Bear Rainforest.” Environmental Politics 13 (March 2004): 373-92.

**Tyrrell, Ian. “Peripheral Visions: Californian-Australian Environmental Contacts, c.1850s-1910.” Journal of World History 8 (Fall 1997): 275-302.

Wolmer, William. “Transboundary Conservation: The Politics of Ecological Integrity in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.” Journal of Southern African Studies 29 (March 2003): 261-78.

**Kurlansky, Mark. Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. London. Jonathon Cape, 1998.

Mintz, Sidney. “Time, Sugar, & Sweetness.” Marxist Perspectives 2 (Winter 1979-1980): 56-73.

Sackman, Douglas C. “Putting Gender on the Table: Food and the Family Life of Nature.” in Seeing Nature Through Gender. Ed. Scharff, Virginia J. Lawrence. University Press of Kansas, 2003: 169-93.

Parenteau, William. “‘Care, Control and Supervision’: Native People in the Canadian Atlantic Salmon Fishery, 1867-1900.” Canadian Historical Review 79 (March 1998): 1-35.

Stroud, Ellen Francis. “Troubled Waters in Ecotopia: Environmental Racism in Portland, Oregon.” Radical History Review 74 (Spring 1999): 65-95.

Raviv, Yael. “Falafel: A National Icon.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture. 3 (Summer 2003): 20-25.

Lacombe, Michael A. Political Gastronomy: Food and Authority in the English Atlantic World. Philadelphia. University of Penssylvania Press, 2012.

*Nash, Linda. Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge. Berkeley. University of California Press, 2006.

Klingle, Matthew. “Spaces of Consumption in Environmental History.” History & Theory 42 (December 2003): 94-110.

*Binnema, Theodore and Melanie Niemi. “‘Let the Line Be Drawn Now’: Wilderness, Conservation, and the Exclusion of Aboriginal People from Banff National Park in Canada.” Environmental History 11 (October 2006): 724-51.

McCarthy, James. “Rural Geography: Alternative Rural Economies—The Search for Alterity in Forests, Fisheries, Food, and Fair Trade.” Progress in Human Geography 30 (December 2006):803-11.

Rollins, William. “Reflections on a Spare Tire: SUVs and the Postmodern Environmental Consciousness.” Environmental History 11 (October 2006): 684-723.

**Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York. Harper, 2002.

*Ellis, Bonnie K., et al. “Long-Term Trophic Cascade in a Large Lake Ecosystem.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (18 January 2011): 1070-75.

not read yet:

Carney, Judith. “Landscapes of Technology Transfer: Rice Cultivation and African Continuities,” Technology and Culture 37 (January 1996): 5-35.

Flores, Dan. “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1825 to 1850.” Journal of American History 78 (September 1991): 465-85.

Raup, Hugh Miller. “The View from John Sanderson’s Farm: A Perspective for the Use of the Land.” Journal of Forest History 10 (April 1966): 2-11.

Donahue, Brian. “Another Look at John Sanderson’s Farm: A Perspective on New England

Guthman, Julie. Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California. Berkeley. University of California Press, 2004.

*We also saw some great films that are not about food - "Winged Migration," "Blue Vinyl," and "Manufactured Landscapes." There are a few other film pieces such as one about Columbia River salmon people, and one about panamerican migratory bird conservation, which has a food aspect relating to duck hunting.

In using ancient beer, I mean what was made in ~2000 BC Egypt and/or Sumeria. Also, if possible, how would it compare to modern beer?

I assume the arch-nemesis of the Greeks are addressed in some way in Greek mythology. Any Greek myths that relate to Persia or Persians directly?

To be clear, I'm curious about Persia's/Persians place in Greek mythology rather than just "through Zeus' help the brave Greeks crushed their enemies the Persians" mentions in myths.

The ends of other European empires marked hard times for the core territory. The city of Rome fell a long way and stayed a backwater for centuries. Spain fell behind the other European powers after the Bolivarian and Mexican independence movements. Even modern Russia which held onto a greater percentage of her land suffered after losing the other Soviet states.

England, on the other hand, lost whole continents but never seems to have had the hangover that other former imperial masters experienced. Am I wrong about post-imperial experiences, or was something different about the structure and fall of the British empire?

How would Athena expect Medusa to have avoided being raped, and by a deity no less?

Does Poseidon warrant no blame in the eyes of the ancient Greeks? What about in Athena's eyes?

Is it being raped in her temple that angers Athena, or is it simply having intercourse there (ie. would consensual sex between Medusa and Poseidon have warranted punishment)?

How was the myth of Medusa's rape and subsequent punishment viewed by the Romans? Did they also agree that Medusa was to blame?

I assume the answer lies somewhere in Greek notions of sexuality and gender roles, but it seems like a grave injustice, like punishing someone for falling down a flight of stairs or for getting wet in a rainstorm (ie. for circumstances beyond your control). Any insight would be appreciated!

I am teaching ancient civilizations class to middle school students and I've reached the part of the curriculum of ancient India. It is among my favorite units that we cover because I find it interesting because I'm still learning about it. Ancient India was completely ignored during my k-12 education and I only took a couple classes in college that touched upon it. The Aryans introduced iron, horses, and chariots to India but where did they get the iron? They were still basically nomadic, how did they forge it? What advantages does iron or metal working in general give? Why was it easier to forge copper/bronze than iron?