In my Human Sexuality class, we are learning about the sexual practices of ancient cultures all over the world. In ancient China, during the Han Dynasty I believe, we learned about the aspect of yin and yang and how it translated to sexuality.

One of my classmates expressed distaste at the "hypocritical" view that men should have multiple partners and women have a more lasting essence yet were still expected to be subservient to one man. Did the women of ancient China feel this to be unfair or was it accepted as the moral and correct lifestyle?

Are there any other examples of women either pointing out inequality or acceptance in heavily male dominated societies?

I know it's not as simple as the Romans copying Greek mythology but the similarities are there nonetheless.

I am aware of the interpretatio graeca and others but that is not so much what I am looking for.

More did other mythologies go through a similar process or do they have an "equivalency" to another culture they came from/were directly influenced by and not just parallels?

I'm reading The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Bede, i.23, Colgrave and Mynors) and Bede says:

"In the year of our Lord 582, Maurice, the fifty-fourth from Augustus, became emperor; he ruled for 21 years."

Does this mean Bede still viewed the Empire as existing at this time but in a smaller form?

Hello. I was curious regarding the process by which men joined holy orders historically.

I am aware of the practice of oblates in medieval Western Europe, where parents would dedicate a child to the monasteries. Regarding the Orthodox world, I have a friend who is a member of their church who told me monks were meant to be elderly widowed priests, however, given that in 1721, Peter the Great's church reforms forbid any man younger than 50 from becoming a monk, seems to imply that it wasn't just elderly widowers joining the monasteries.

I had wondered who generally became priests in the pre-industrial Catholic world (I know in the Orthodox countries the priesthood was somewhat hereditary) and who became monks in both cultures. Was it mostly child-oblates? Old priests like my friend claimed? Or was it a means of social mobility for intellectually inclined members of the non-monied classes?

Thanks

Were there any other “isolated”/“uncontacted” tribes still living traditionally in the US? Or were there other tribes that had been in contact with settlers/gov/pioneers who largely continued the traditional way of life until later on?

I'm curious if any Christian writers from 1500-1900 took Hinduism seriously, or if they simply regarded it as paganism. Did any European writers engage directly with Hindu philosophical texts? Did they make a distinction between different Hindu traditions or lump them all together? Thank you for your answers!

I have a trove of civil war letters. They were all letters home written by a Union soldier from New England. They detail his travels, his work, and his life. Included are dozens of pencil drawings of people and places he saw. There are probably between 50-100 letters.

I have been in contact with a state museum , and a large library from his hometown. How do I make a determination as to who will benefit best from this material?

There are many schools of thought in islam: Hanafi, Zaidi, Hanbali, Maliki, to name just a few

But how were these schools created?

I know that many of them had a founder, Hanbal created the Hanbali school for example, but I still don't know how that works, I have so many questions

For example, let's say you wake up one day and decide to create your own school. Presumably you already belonged to another school, how will those people react to you creating a new one? Then there is the philosophy, these schools have positions on every philosophical and theological debate. Do you need to already have defined your positions on every issue? What if you change your mind? How do people join your school of thought? Was there a formal ceremony? Or did people just say: "Yeah, I agree with this guy." What if your school of thought doesn't get traction?

It seems to me the most logical way to arrange the Quran would have been chronologically. Reading the text in this order helps you understand the Quran as it was revealed or developed

But no, it is ordered by length of the chapters and I cannot come up with an argument as to why. It's not like Muhammad said anything about the order of the chapters

Also, I know there have been a ton of muslim schools of thought over the centuries. Did any of these schools ever propose a different ordering of the chapters? A different reading order?

We have Tsar, Tsarina, and Tsarevich and then Grand Duchess? Why not a feminized version of tsarevich (I don't speak Russian so I have no clue Tsarevichina? Tsarevina? as I said, no clue).

Just for a comparison, England and France both had central governments, the set laws a cross their entire nations.

Prussia was an absolute monarchy (to an extent), that ruled over all of Prussia.

But Austria had a king that was a king of loads of different ethnicities and principalities that had nothing in common.

Could the Austrian king make laws a cross his entire kingdom? Did he have absolute power? Or was austria just a bunch of independent kingdoms swearing fealty to the Austrian Archduke. Could the Archduke do whatever he wanted? Or could the different principalities do what they wanted? How much power did the Austrians have in the Austrian empire?

I'm quite interested in British counter insurgency campaigns in Malaya and Kenya. But I saw an article that mentioned the Aden emergency and wanted to know a bit more on why Britain withdrew from Aden in 1967. Were the British forces poorly organised? Did Egyptian support of the NLF impact the outcome of the emergency? We're there any factors that increased NLF and FLOSY recruitment?

Thank you!

Looking for something accessible but also somewhat academic. I’m an interested amateur. Thanks!

Title says it all.

Rommel was always said to be the most “chivalrous” German General of WWII and was a icon that many in both Nazi Germany and the Allies looked up to.

However, while I did take a course on WWII in comm college, and I know there was no such thing as a “clean Wehrmacht” even in the African campaign, I can’t find any specifics.

So… did Rommel do anything of note in North Africa?

I have read multiple people's opinions that the Hitler and his close aides like Goering, Goebbels, etc. knew that the war was lost in 1942 following some major loss.

How did the war continue with the intensity it did for 3 whole years after that?