I've been reading up on old deities and previously I was under the impression Inanna and those Sumerian gods in general were the oldest, but now I learned about this Dyeus fella and am wondering if they're part of the same folklore or not ...

Any info on this?

So I've been really interested in the Chinese Warlord Era in these past few months and have been wanting to know more. Are there good sources of info about this time period?

Just one of my passing thoughts from today. Say a member of the Temple committed a crime there in the period before the incident: would the Guyanese police have dealt with them, or did they have some arrangement that let the Temple do their own thing in terms of policing their people?

How much salt was an average Roman soldier paid? Was it daily, just enough to season the evening meal?Did it vary by location depending on the scarcity of salt? Was salt a common means of exchange with merchants of the time?

Was antagonism towards Civil Rights so strong that southerners were willing to elect Republicans who acted against their interests? Or was support for New Deal-type policies already waning by the start of the 60s?

As the United States expansion moved westward from the original colonies, just how lawless was it through the 1700s and 1800s? Once someone set up a homestead in the Midwest, or middle west or West Coast, how common was it for them to be hassled by people looking for theft, rape, or pillaging? Were people always on guard and armed or was it not so dire?

Thx

Slime is one of the most common if not the most common early stage enemy type in a variety of video games/board games (along side with goblin, skeleton etc). Does this just come from later game designers copying the first successful games’ enemy design? Or does slime as an enemy in games have some historical origin?

Hello all.

I’m wondering about the proposed government of the Confederate States of America. Whether you accept the states’ rights or slavery argument, secession from the Union was something deeply favored by Confederates. If they were influenced by the Articles of Confederation, why would they propose their government based on something that essentially failed and had to be replaced by the U.S. Constitution? Perhaps, secession (based on slavery or states’ rights) was the most important issue and the logistics of their proposed government came second. Perhaps, they simply wanted a more powerful state government so the federal government wouldn’t be meddling in state affairs. I really don’t know; let me learn something today!

Thanks!

I have always been curious as to how how Romania retained such strong ties to its Latin roots, especially as it seems to be surrounded on all sides (except Hungary) by Slavic-dominant cultures.

Having read up a bit on Romania's early colonies, it seems they consider their cultural heritage to derive from Daco-Roman cohabitation. However, most other cultures I know which were conquered by the Romans seem to have deprioritized Latin identity at some point in favour of a more regionalized hybrid culture. See Gaul becoming France, Iberia becoming Spain, or the Byzantine empire eventually fracturing into Turkic, Greek, Slavic, etc. cultures. None of these seem to identify as strongly Latin cultures, although some may nod to their Latin roots.

Further, it seems that Romania launched several re-Latinization efforts in the 18th and 19th centuries, several hundred years after the fall of anything which could be construed as the Roman Empire. I'm somewhat familiar with their resistance to Slavic invasions, but what is it about this culture so far removed from Rome - both geographically and historically - which made them so enduringly Latin?

This was, I believe, a post on r/showerthoughts recently, but it got me thinking: when did we define days of the week, and if we were to go back in time one day at a time, would there be a point at which the day would not be just the previous day? Did we ever skip or maybe even lose track completely, perhaps different parts of the world may have had the same weekday on different days at one point?

Sorry if this questions is a bit vague, but in general I'm asking how the days of the week appeared, and how they've been kept track of since. Is there actually now a real definition?

I was reading a book about Thomas Hobbes (1588 -1679) and there was this part:

[...] Hobbes persevered in his studies and gave his [...] political beliefs their most finished statement in his masterpiece, "Leviathan", which he published in 1651. Hardly anyone at the English court in France liked it; it was absolutist enough, but it expressed no particular bias in favour of monarchy. [...] Hobbes appeared to give more comfort to the Puritans than to the Royalists.

Could someone explain what is meant by "English court in France"? Is it like a legal court or more of a government? What people constituted it? Any resources I should read to understand it?

Before the presence of electromagnetism, speculative work was done on the possible mechanics of the hypothesised "elastic ether", believed by some to be the medium of light waves which oscillated elastically.

Philosopher of science Philip Kitcher cites Augustin-Louis Cauchy, George Green, and James MacCullagh as physicists who proposed mathematical models of the elastic ether.

I was wondering if anyone knew of good secondary sources where I can read about their models? I'm looking primarily for secondary sources which couch things in terms which are more familiar to modern physicists/physics students, as I want to be able to have some grip on what's being written and, honestly, I find myself completely lost when reading the firt-hand writings of historical physicists.

Thanks.

I know there were many different eras in different cultures, but I'm specifically interested in the "era" of western culture of today. I doubt it's purely a cultural thing, given that women having longer hair than men is a reoccurring phenomenon across cultures.

Was wondering if there were thieves guilds as portrayed in games present in the actual world ?

Hey, I am doing some research about the 3 kingdom period in China, years 220 AD to 280 AD.

I am interested in finding out about what kind of agriculture they had at the time like what was mainly grown at the time, and what was considered staple food for the commoners?

(I have already done some research around the history of the period, so I am aware of the agricultural colonies in Wei and Wu, and the situation in Shu, but I can't find what exactly was raised there.)

Also, if possible, I'd like to receive some information about how a normal big town would look like at the time and the ranks of nobility as well.

I understand that he somehow wanted to restore the greatness of the Roman empire. It seems that he thought that the compilation was a crucial factor to achieve that, but why?

It is well known that in ancient societies of the middle east like Egypt and Mesopotamia beer was an important commodity and essential part of daily life.

Was there a beer culture in the middle east that was wiped out by the rise of Islam? If it was not for the rise of Islam, is it conceivable that the world's beer Mecca (no pun intended) could be in Egypt or Syria instead of Germany? Certainly people have been brewing beer for WAY longer in the middle east than in Europe, but does this culture still exist or was it lost?

I need some help. You guys know some books in the period of barbarians invasions and the end of roman empire. The beggining of the feudal system, the transformation of a classic culture to a medieval principle. Visigoths, ostrogoths, merovingians, vandals, etc.

And a little question, how was the transition to a roman culture with a germanic cultures? Abrupt, slow transformation, impercetible