Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Day of Reflection. Nobody can read everything that appears here each day, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.
I'm cheating here by including some comments I didn't get around to posting last week, but here's some reading material that will make you smarter:
/u/koine_lingua on How likely is it that Plato or Socrates would've heard about or read the Old Testament?
/u/brigantus on Could stone-age make garlic bread? [sic, although I have to say the caveman phrasing makes this question all the more adorable; I love these off-beat sort of queries.]
/u/jooseman on How far ahead of his time was Isaac Newton?
/u/alotofreading on During Manifest Destiny why did the US not try to annex all of Mexico and the rest of Central and South America?
/u/ahhuatl on Do we know anything about how the Olmec civilization was ruled? [I came into that post all excited to drop knowledge on the Olmecs, only to find the knowledge had already done been dropped.]
/u/Mictlantecuhtli on What is the most accepted theory regarding the location of Aztlan, the place of origin of the Aztecs? [Another question I got scooped on! Also, a big thanks to Mictlantecuhtli for helping put together last Friday's AMA with Dr. Christopher Beekman.]
/u/this_is_a_good_idea on To what extent is the rise of Islamic fundamentalism during the 90s caused by the cold war? [A wild non-flaired user appears!]
/u/Azand and /u/rosemary85 chiming in on the Oracle at Delphi, with a good amount of debunking of common misconceptions. A comment graveyard is also included.
/u/idjet and /u/itsallfolklore have an academic discussion argument about how to define witches, witchcraft, heresy and so on. An interesting read if you want to know what it looks like behind the shiny titles of academia; or if you're simply interested in the history of witchcraft.