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.
A few posts I enjoyed this week
Just in time for the Sunday Digest publishing deadline, /u/Cenodoxus comes through with an answer to the question on every Beauty and the Beast fan's mind, How many 16th century French laying hens would be required to feed Gaston his five dozen eggs?
I always get excited when I notice a new face in the comments. Welcome to a new medievalist, /u/Lilac1399! They answered How much say did a noble woman have in the negotiation of her marriage in Medieval Britain or France? and Why were noblewomen inclined to become nuns?
/u/Klesk_vs_Xaero provided some very interesting reading in What are the best first hand accounts of people in countries that would undergo far-right, populist movements (e.g. pre-WWII Germany & Italy)?
I personally enjoyed the answer by /u/mikedash regarding the birdman cult in Easter Island, which is possibly the most fascinating answer I've seen on this subreddit in the years I've lurked here.
It's always difficult to choose which of the many fabulous answers by /u/kieslowskifan is the best, but my pick goes here for the difference between the Cold War portrayal of the Soviet Armed Forces in fiction and the reality.
Thank you both!
Hello there, lovely AskHistorianers and AskHistorianettes, hopefully everyone’s having a great weekend! Here are some of the popular and/or interesting questions from last week, which did not get an answer yet:
/u/GracefulGopher asked about the opinions of adult workers on their child coworkers in the early 20th century coal mines
/u/kuwetka would like to know What was the relationship between Roman and Gallic armies when they fought together as allies under Caesar
/u/LordSomething inquired about the influence of Manicheaism on the beliefs of the White Lotus movement
An outstanding criticism of Hannah Arendt's documentation of anti-Semitism in WWII before WWII by /u/commiespaceinvader.
Better late than never:
/u/bodark43 on "Why didn't the U.S. use lever-action rifles during WWI?"
/u/xenophontheathenian on "What happened to the veteran Roman legions that fought for Julius Caesar during the Gallic Wars & Roman Civil Wars? Did they side with Marc Antony or Octavian?"
/u/lilac1399 answered "How much say did a noble woman have in the negotiation of her marriage in Medieval Britain or France?" and on "Why were noblewomen inclined to become nuns?"
I really enjoyed the discussion spearheded by /u/cptbuck and /u/astrogator about Written History versus the graffiti at Pompeii, which talked a lot about the kind of written sources we have available to us, and even went a little bit into ancients' views of actual writing itself. It was a fascinating thread with some very neat insights in it!