Once I read that the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the most important greek myths all steamed from the time that Paris was the judge in the beauty contest of the goddesses

It said something like that image of that guy and the goddesses was a kind of core, and all these stories arose from trying to explain what happened before and what happened after that moment

I like this idea, it reminds me to the Leaf of Niggle by Tolkien, so I want to know if it is true

Thanks

I've been reading a lot about the fascinating last months of the Romanov dynasty, specifically the "forgotten period" between the family's abdication and their execution. I understand that the Empress was not of Russian descent, but would the family not have spoken Russian on a daily basis, being the language of their father, their peers, and their empire?

Places where people sell food and people dine inside their shops seems like a practice we had for thousands of years but google says otherwise. Can someone clarify?

So in modern times there is many modifications to guns from sights, to grips,to barrel lengths and so on, so i was interested in how did troops in ww2 modify their guns?Did they make any changes apart from the factory made "variants" like maybe filing down their barrels to make the gun lighter?I am interested in both Factory made changes(e.g Kar 98k getting a scope or the Sten getting a suppressor) as well as changes applied by individuals using them,even if these changes were for the worse and regardless of nation.

I tried doing some research on this but all i got is Call of Duty WW2 results :(

It's pretty clear that Istanbul would become a major city in history because of it being a chokepoint for the black and mediterranean seas, and the connection between europe and asia. But in my mind the first thing someone would do would be to try and undercut them by creating another city right around where Çanakkale is, effectively making Istanbul "reduntant"

Why didn't that happen?

Anything seismic or were there mental gymnastics to suggest she was some divine royal exception?

I find it hard to believe that there were no rules regulating this since Mesoamerica loved moderation, but I also understand the game has heavy religious and symbolic meaning that blatantly spells out the only winning move is not to play.

The game is a giant allegory for how one's life can become unbalanced and how unbalance can be destructive with the most dangerous parts of the board being the "spokes" that represent unbalance in one's life causing you to lose the game. Couple this with the fact gambling is considered an unbalanced activity, its an ironic game that extols virtue of denying dangerous vices while also BEING a dangerous vice.

Since this was an era where most human cultures tied "luck" to the favor of the gods than probability, would this also factor in why they seemingly did not regulate the game?

Knowing this, would my hunch of "they allowed it because if you lost this game you deserved to lose not only because the gods willed it, but you ignored the game's warning" be correct?

What I know is that assyrians and babilonians spoke akkadian(at least the elite) so why did the aramaic become so popular in ANE? Did the common people of the empires spoke a west semitic language that facilitated the expansion of aramaic?

Hi! I have what feels like an impossible History assignment and was hoping for some help. My prompt is:
Though often taught as war between religions, the First Crusade is no longer seen as such by historians. Instead, one emphasis is placed on the availability of land and inheritance laws (primogeniture). Discuss how it contributed to the launching of the First Crusade; be sure to support your answer with specific examples from scholarly peer-reviewed sources.

I've been looking for two days and cannot find any "scholarly" resources on this. I can barely find any material on it in general. Could anyone be of assistance? We are not given reading materials for this; we have to go research on our own. We are not permitted to use textbooks, encyclopedias, .com sites, .org sites, or anything that is not peer-reviewed.

Any help would be appreciated!

My initial assumptions are that you're mostly limited to religious positions and trades or professions. I know China had the civil service examinations which provided a way for the common villager to become something more and a few dynasties came directly from peasant revolts, but what was the situation like in Europe, Japan or India? Was it ever possible for a lowborn to enter the ranks of the nobility or at least set up their descendants to do so?

From my brief understanding of Scottish clans, it was divided up into clans where each head of the clan had direct lineage to some common ancestor and the clans were unified through ancestry. Are Scottish and Irish clans related or did they operate completely different with one another with different ancestries and independent customs of government?

Time period I'm seeking an answer to is 100 BC to 200 AD, in Rome itself.

I believe it to be Latin based on the evidence I have seen, but people on this website seem to think differently.

Was Troy a city of the larger Hittite culture? The Hatti people (Hittites) that dominated Anitolia (Turkey) would have been contemporaries of the Trojans. Was Troy a separate people? I know that the Hitties were famous throughout Mesopotamia as horse lords and masters. The idea of the “Trojan Horse” would be a profound symbol and make sense to readers at the time.

There use to be lots of people who died/ were effected by gout, jaundice, leprosy.. etc. It seems like people in the medieval ages were super afraid of lepers but you barely hear about them now. Also lots of people in early modern England were reported to died or suffer from gout and what not but I haven't heard of anyone recently dying or suffering from it.

I recently came across a newspaper clipping about my Grandfather having completed his second tour as an air gunner (rear gunner) in WW2. My original understanding due to such stories like the Memphis Belle is that this was extremely uncommon. I know that his first tour was based at RAF Heliopolis/Almaza with a Wellington Squadron (trying to identify which one). His second was with 431 'Iroquois' Squadron RCAF based at RAF Burn and RAF Croft.