I recently discovered the artwork of Emmanuel Valtierra, whose focus is on re-imagining pop culture in the style of Aztec codices. I thought this might amuse some of the Mesoamericanists here as well. This one is my favorite. A shiny upvote for whoever figures out the reference.

In all of your research have any historians here stumbled upon a figure that they think may be a time traveler or have some supernatural knowledge? I'm sure everyone has thought about what they would do if they magically went back in time a la the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court. So are there any figures that seem to do amazingly well for themselves and invent a ton of stuff that seems downright amazing? This question probably wouldn't be allowed on the normal sub but I figure a free for all should be just that.

A bit of a self-centered post but I received my first (of what will hopefully prove to be one of many) acceptance into a graduate program this week! I'm pretty chuffed, and just wanted to extend a thank you to everyone in this sub for their enthusiasm and passion towards history and their subject of study. It has helped keep me going when I was feeling down or struggling.

I haven't written a post today, because I had midterms all this week. Whoo!

Finally finished Gone from the Promised Land, currently reading White Night. You can immediately tell that the latter book was an "instant history" book (i.e. from 1979), because the book focuses on sensationalist details, claims that Jones was simply a cynical, power-hungry cult leader who led puppets to go die in the jungle, and makes assertions that don't follow from modern scholarship (e.g. taking the claims from the Concerned Relatives at face value without questioning their own motives). It's jarring.

Ahhh well. Still a useful read for the historiography.

I took my delayed day at the University of Cape Town special collections today. After all the protests, the researchers were clearly all spooked off by it, and I had only one other researcher for company in the whole Jagger Library. Amazing. I saw what I wanted to see (odds and ends mostly), including something I may share tomorrow, but it was creepy like Harvard on the mountain after the bombs. [It didn't help that, as I was there, the mountains' signature tablecloth and descending clouds formed, and the wind picked up. I loved it, but it was desolate, like some kind of New Vegas DLC setting. Yes, I'm a nerd.]

I put up a blog post this morning the stranger-than-fiction New York Times reporter that General Groves had embedded in the Manhattan Project, one of my favorite "characters" in the history of nuclear secrecy: The improbable William Laurence.

A question about the origin of religion came up in /r/askanthropologists, and I took a stab at answering it, but it made me stop and realize how little I know about how you pre-historic dirt-diggers think about the origin of religion. I know what some of the theories are out there, but how are they received?

So what say ye, archeologists, what do you think of Schmidt's claims about Göbekli Tepe? Do you think agriculture-->complex religion or do you buy Schmidt's complex religion-->agriculture? Or do you think there's some other preferable casual sequencing or non-causal way of thinking about this? Or is this a ten-foot pole question, and you'd be much happier sticking with your Aztec-Roman-Viking sites because there are enough questions there without trying to speculate about all of humanity, please and thank you?

Just a quick question for any of the WWII experts on the board: Is Richard Evans Third Reich series my best bet for a comprehensive look at the ETO through the lens of Nazi Germany? If not, what would be the better bet?

What would be the comparable, if there is one, series for the USSR?

Why did Titus destroyed the Temple but not the Western Wall? Is it particularly hard due to its construction, or did he just thought that since he destroyed most of the place, leaving that piece of wall over there wouldn't matter?

Why does "Carthago delenda est" get translated into English as "Carthage must be destroyed" when est is in the present tense not the future tense?

How did the commoners of periods with extremely brutal public execution/torture techniques feel about it? I don't have any particular period in mind, I'm just trying to imagine the mindset of somebody going to watch or hearing about people getting publicly flayed or disemboweled or something like that.

Edit: also, if you have any good suggestions of not-too-heavy sources of reading on the topic of torture/execution, let me know! It's a strange fascination I'm sure many of you share with me.

Just a thought, but I'm always very conflicted whenever there are drama/movie adaptations of historical periods (especially for Chinese productions). On one hand, I would love for more people to become interested in history and visual adaptations are far more attractive a medium as compared to books. On the other hand, the sheer number of people who take artistic license to be fact is daunting, and I shudder in cold sweat for every person who takes Lv Bu to be a dumb killing machine and Guan Yu to be the god of war.