Why did insurgents try to seize the Grand Mosque in the first place? How did people, both inside and outside of Saudi Arabia, react to this? What impact did it have on Saudi Arabia and the region more broadly?

Dragons come from early humans finding dinosaur bones. Cyclopes come from mammoth skulls. Noah's Flood was the melting of ice after the last ice age. Angels were alien visitors in their UFOs. You know the sort of thing I mean. If you read very old anthropology you'll find this idea too -- stories of a previous generation of gods being killed are really about the indigenous population of an area being wiped out by Indo-European invaders, etc. Yet despite the popularity of this idea, it seems like whenever examined closely, each specific example falls apart.

I've read here on AskHistorians the idea that this concept is itself a bit of modern folklore. That certainly rings true to me, but I wonder whether most historians agree? Has anyone studied this belief?

I'm studying history to become a highschool teacher and made presentation about the Achaemenid Persian empire. When reading, I found that the word Iran, comes from Aran or Aryan, which referred to their greatness. I'm a bit vague on the specifics since it's been a while and I forgot a little, sorry :).

I'm surprised Hitler would refer to a culture so different with such a different ethnicity to his German Aryan golden standard. Does anyone have any idea about this?

As far as I understand, the Mongols frequently employed siege engineers conscripted from subjugated populations during their conquests in Asia and forced them to build ballistas or trebuchets for them. If this is correct, why did, for example, the Hungarians' construction of hundreds of stone castles prove to be such an effective strategy during the second Mongol invasion in the 1280s?

Before the popularity of porter/stout, what styles of beer were popular or traditional in Ireland?

How popular was red ale?

Is Smithick's (red ale) a more authentic Irish beer?

I've heard that bog myrtle was a popular flavouring before hops, what else do we know?

I noticed when looking at medieval art depicting dragons that they seem remarkably small compared to Victorian and especially modern fantasy's artistic depictions.

Does that apparently smaller size in medieval art only reflect medieval artistic conventions (a lot of other things are painted out of proportion, too), or did medieval people believe that dragons were smaller than modern fantasy fans like to imagine them?

(Note: I realized while writing this that the title could be misleading, so I should clarify that I know dragons don't exist.)

My impression has always been that the church was of vital importance during this period, for social and legal reasons as well saving your soul.

Would this mean that I couldn't get married? What would the social structure look like without mass gatherings at the church? Was it followed that closely or were there clergy who continued services? Were there lasting impacts?

I was reading about the Scottish independence during the period of Wallace and Robert the Bruce between 1200-1300.I remember I did read something about a warrior, who would sneak into a fort at night and behead everyone, he was called the english nightmare.Later, however, I tried to search more about that person but I couldn't find absolutely nothing.

I was at an Agile conference today and it made me wonder: do we have any detailed information about how people from way back approached big projects? Did ancient societies and cultures have their own specialised approaches that were recorded and would be recognisable to us today? E.g. were the pyramid's construction planned out like a Waterfall, were anti-corruption campaigns in Han dynasty China done Agile like, did they have proto-Gantt charts for building Roman aqueducts, etc.

I've always been interested in utopian and self-governing communities and I find the Kibbutz movement in Israel and the sort of utopian socialist idealism attached to it as a fascinating contrast to the more hard-headed and religious nature of the modern Israeli state, especially considering the influence the movement had on the politics and military affairs of the 1940-70s era of the countries history.

I've looked around and most books that are widely available seem to be memoirs of growing up in a kibbutz which while interesting is not really what I'm looking for, I'd much rather a history that looks at the ideals and roots of the movement, how it grew and why it petered out.

It's a bit of a niche subject so maybe there is an overall history of Israel that has good coverage of it?

I always see people saying that the Byzantine empire saw themselves as the Roman Empire which implies that other places did not. The Holy Roman Empire was obviously seeing itself as the successor to the Roman Empire (at least by the people who named it) but there was still a Roman emperor. So what did they see the Byzantine emperor as? Was it seen as different because of the split between the west and eastern empires or because of the great schism or because of something else?

Both Vikings and Polynesians are famous for their sailing skills, and I want to compare them somehow, I asked who were the better sailors and it got removed, so I thought maybe this was a better question

The idea is to try to get an insight into how their sailing technologies compared, what they did similarly, and what they did differently

Basically the title. In 1994, the Rwandan genocide scattered the historically powerful Tutsi in favor of the more populous Hutu people. Yet in 1997 in the First Congo War, Rwanda lent support due to its Tutsi dominated government(still new to the subject, correct me if I’m wrong). How is that even possible? Wouldn’t any Tutsi want to steer veryyyy clear of Rwanda after that? How were the Hutu who perpetrated such a genocide lose the reins of power to the very people they targeted in just three years?

I am curious as to where it all comes from. Was there a specific catalyst for the conspiracy taking off?

Disclaimer - the holocaust happened. Not denying it. Just wondering when denial started.

Hello, I enjoy reading about mythologies, ritual customs, and overall how societies treated/expressed religion. I have spent some time reading/watching and learning about norse, hindu, greek, roman, and other more recent mythologies. A lot of these have a collection of bodies that make up a good foundational point. For a famous example greek has the illiad and odyssey. Looking at sumerian mythologies it is seems to be less centralized in form and harder to learn about due to that nature. I have seen a lot of talks of samuel noah kramer and his translations of cuneiform in 1939 being a big source of discovery. The issue is I'm not sure if something like 'sumerian mythologies' by him is a good introduction point? Or would I be better reading translations of the Ras Shamra first? I feel more at a loss here of where to start. I was even getting confused because one wikipedia page said Ugaritic texts is not a part of cannan when another said the texts make up cannanite mythology. I hear mixed things about reading Sanchuniathons works and the accuracy. I just want to make sure my foundation of the understanding isn't grossly wrong, and is something that can be built upon. So I'm wondering what good books/media/anything are good introduction to the beliefs of sumerians, akkadians, hittites, cannanites later on phonecians and if their belief in cannanite religion has changed form. My end goal is to get a very general idea of the known history of Mythology for humans to see how it interacts and develops. I am just struggling going from classical Mythology to Ancient mythology where there less defined centralized books/resources for direct to use as starting points. I understand that the papyrus used by phonecians should have decomposed by now. Is archeological discoveries the best way to find those resources and get into the mythologies? If so what are good resources for tracking old and new archeological discoveries? Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read this, and to anyone willing to help me in my search for learning more. I just want to get a more clear picture of their ancient beliefs and the reflected customs in society. I'm left wondering how the best way to start the journey is for ancient mytholgies without intact surviving religious texts.

Was everything more expensive there? We’re supermarkets vastly different from the rest of wester Berlin (like Frankfurt or Hamburg) ?

Also real estate, given WB was an enclave inside East Germany, that means it wasn’t enable to grow beyond the delimited enclave, unlike other German cities, because outside WB it was East Germany (and the wall). Did that have an impact in housing? One example I can think of is Hong Kong because it cannot grow beyond the HK border and that makes HK housing expensive