I've been doing a lot of reading on Homeric myth and was struck by something. Plenty of Greek kings claimed descent from Greek heroes, such as Achille's son Neoptolemus. The myths explicitly tie the fate of these characters to the Greek cities they returned to or established. But those character already survived the Trojan War, so tying their fates into your history wouldn't be too hard. In the case of Aeneas, however, I was bit confused. There's not much reason to write about a guy escaping Troy unless you have a story to tell involving what happens next, and no one in Greece would've cared enough about Rome at the time to say that Aeneas founded it. So where did the ideas that Aeneas escaped Troy and eventually founded Rome come from? Did Virgil just make it all up or was it already somewhat established?

I realize this might be a question for a language sub but thought I'd start here.

Non-Korean who speaks/reads a smattering. Korean homophones have always fascinated me: eg, according to my dictionary 무 ("mu") can mean 1) a radish, 2), military affairs, or 3) nothing. Although spelled the same way in Hangul and (to the best of my knowledge) pronounced the same way, they have distinct hanja.

Prior to the invention of Hangul, would these have been pronounced differently? Was there more variation to phonemes in Korean prior to the 15th century?

I apologize of the "why" is a bit leading, but given the differences of treatment between the two countries I'm kind of wondering if there was a specific reason.

A story I heard in a documentary claimed that when x-rays became common doctors were puzzled by some children who had far more healed fractures than most. Sometimes dozens. After several years of searching for the medical condition that caused these kids to have fragile bones the doctors came to the sickening realization that there was no medical condition. Just abusive parents.

Is there truth to that story? Can anyone fill in more details?

Hello, historians. Pretty much what it says in the title. Why do we view the second Sino-Japanese War as a conflict separate from World War 2?
When I read history or discuss it with academics/historians/fanboys like me, I pretty much hear the same perspective - that the kick-off for WW2 was the invasion of Poland. Why not the Battle of Lugou Bridge? Or the Battle of Shanghai? Or even the invasion of Manchuria by Imperial Japan? The Second Sino-Japanese war precedes then runs concurrent with World War, has most of the same nations involved (Aside from Nazi Germany) and terminates with the same event.

I remember hearing when I was young something about Native Americans not viewing theft as wrong unless caught. I understand that using the term Native American is extremely broad, but if you have any information on the topic or could refer me to some sources that talk about this, that would be greatly appreciated.

How did the British empire rise? I don’t understand with what they started. Maybe someone here can explain it to me

Around the world, duels had different traditions. Sometimes it was sword fighting, sometimes it was taking a few paces back and firing rounds, and so on. So I imagine it would've been easy to see how a medical condition could complicate matters. It would be unfair, for example, if someone with a limp was challenged to a duel and it came time to walk ten paces in a certain direction. Were people with disabilities accommodated during the duel? And since duels were almost always between citizens of equal hierarchal standing and spoke for this equal standing, how did this issue always coming up, however often it did, not have a bearing on how people thought of people with medical conditions in relation to societal standing?

I just learned from a Native influencer that the colonizing Europeans had poor hygiene and the Natives were appalled by it, and I found it interesting (and kinda funny to be honest. Edit: because the Natives would throw flowers and incense on the colonizers to mask their smell, which they thought it was the natives way of praising them.) And that's kinda funny to imagine.

I tried Googling this information and haven't found any texts that has the accounts of Native peoples (Aztecs or far Northern/Southern people) descriptions of the Europeans and would like a link to it.

I heard it was mainly the English and Spanish that had poor hygiene. Why?

Please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.

Writing a book, wanna make a believeable population of a Viking age village in the Iceland - area

We know that consuming alcohol while pregnant can lead to alcohol related birth defects. I have read that physicians in Ancient/Medieval times were somewhat aware of these effects, but why do we not hear of more cases attributed to alcohol related birth defects? Also, alcohol was still consumed by many pregnant woman during these times, why do we not have more accounts of child defects/abnormalities?

The 'Argive' shield seems to dominate popular perceptions of Ancient Greek arms and armour when it comes to shields. However, the description of Agamemnon's shield (Iliad 11.32-37) mentions there being ten knobs of tin (Lattimore's translation, meaning shield bosses perhaps?) around the rim, while various other shields are described as being made of layers of hide, with a bronze facing. What evidence do we have from the late-Geometric period and the early to middle Archaic period of Greece of shields having bosses, whether that be archaeological finds or depictions on vases?

Thank you.

Apologies if there's a better place for this.

I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole and I noticed what seems to be a big parralel between the 5 Ages of Man presented by Hesiod in roughly 700 BC and the story of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in The Book of Daniel II. Both presenting ideas of successive developments in mankind from a "Golden Age" to Iron/Clay (with Daniel's interpretation ending with the collapse of the system represented by a statue of layered components to be replaced by the kingdom of heaven) .

Is there any direct connection to these ideas or did they grow independently of each other? If the Book of Daniel was a collection of Jewish Folklore that overlapped with the Hellenistic period, could these themes have been inspired from the Greek text?

Thank you in advance.

I heard that we used to sleep together in large wide beds. Families could stay together, young & old. Why did we stop?

We can still see the evolutionary tendency as children like to snug in a pile, feeling insecure in solitary. Might be an instinct carried over from our animalistic heritage. Could we them assume that our sleep might be better had we brought the tradition over to today? We only think it’s weird as we grew up differently today, but I think not had we been brought up in the past.