Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, 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.
The two stand-out answers for me this week are /u/Astrogator on the role of Christianity in the re-modeling of the Roman naming conventions and /u/alriclofgar on 'Was violence a defining characteristic of barbarian societies?'. These two questions are fascinating and are both quite big topics, so I'm very glad that there are people at /r/AskHistorians who can write so knowledgeably about them!
Last week there was a post I enjoyed so much that I actually saved it for this thing.
/u/slendergiantmoray did a great job explaining the relationship between modern Czech identity and Catholicism that I was only vaguely aware of. That's one of the things I love about the sub--that my knowledge of history in broad brush strokes get amendmended and improved by people adding in details.
We've had some good discussions on presentism and morality on the sub before, but u/kghjk asked a rather pertinent question here: Does presentism actually have anything to do with making moral judgements? in which he questions whether the way the term is used in typical internet discussions actually reflects academic usage.
u/Alriclofgar and I have tried to pitch in, but I for one am by no means an expert and the discussion could use some more input, I think.
I absolutely loved this answer by u/cthulushrugged to the question "Since the Allies had a wide variety of slang terms for the Germans and Japanese, what were nicknames for Allied soldiers among the Axis?"
Not particularly overlooked - considering it was viewed by many people on /r/all - but very interesting.
The Run Down:
"Did the Roman military have anything like an R&D department for developing new technology, weapons, or equipment?" got solid responses from both /u/Stormtemplar and /u/elitist_haggis.
/u/EvanRWT on "Why don't the Romani Gypsies practice Hinduism when they retained so much of their culture from India?"
Because it's a topic dear to my heart, I was happy to get to talk about the Milanese Armour Industry and its relationship to municipal trade regulations, trade routes and technological innovations.