Hello all-

As those of you who routinely click on Friday Free-for-All threads know, I've been working on a project called Questions about Ancient Greece and Rome (you were afraid to ask in school).

Every few weeks, I try to post a YouTube video that gives a short (and, at least to my mind, humorous) summary of one of my Questions. The latest video is: "Why didn't the Greeks or Romans wear pants?"

It is, of course, a silly question, and the video is fairly ridiculous. But if nothing else, it provides an entertaining survey of Greco-Roman clothing, and traces the process by which pants became acceptable in Roman society.

Hope you enjoy it - and as always, comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Various Holocaust-associated (at least in public consciousness) marginalia like human lampshades, human soap and shrunken heads are a staple in the Holocaust deniers' Holocaust-discrediting strategy. They argue that if those are false (and they pretend that nowadays these are universally rejected), this casts doubt on the Holocaust.

I've done some research on the basis of archival and secondary sources and a couple of years ago published this article:

Nazi shrunken heads, human skin lampshades, human soap, textiles from human hair? Sorting out the truth from the legends.

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/11/nazi-shrunken-heads-human-skin.html

Tl;dr: some of the claims are outright true, some are probably or partially true but exaggerated, and most of them actually have little to do with the extermination of Jews in the first place. The truth is more complicated than the popular almost legendary picture, but it is also of no help to the deniers.

A lot of comments get deleted. I wonder if there’s a way on Fridays or Saturdays that the Mods could showcase the most ridiculous comments they remove so we could have a bit of a laugh and have some proof to the complainers on why the moderation is so strict.

Edit user names so nobody’s embarrassed or called out but I want to see their dumb comments.

The Karankawa people were known to leave large refuse piles of shells, rocks, and whatever else they had that needed discarding. These piles formed at the edges of their camps, and today can be used to find where they once had been. Hardly a few decades after their extinction as a distinct people, people were already brushing through these piles looking for artifacts, arrowheads or potsherds, whatever material remnants could be found of this people without many lasting things. It is even more of an oddity since eating oysters was a taboo thing, for they attributed their own origin to having come from a giant oyster plopped into the sea by Pichini, the Great Spirit, the Creator. As has been said, "They observed it more in violation than in practice."

But that's not the story I came to tell. When I was visiting Galveston, I heard it said that these rock-hard clumps could even be found sometimes in water, forming artificial reefs. This was, evidently, unfortunate for the Spanish, whose ships were said to have been punctured more than a couple times by accidentally ramming into lumps of piled trash. This, I thought, quite humorous - but sadly could not corroborate with any of the texts I have present. It is a local anecdote, carried perhaps in some obscure journal, perhaps carried by oral tradition alone, but an amusing one enough that I thought the fine folks here would like to hear it.

EDIT: As a side note, shipwrecks were quite frequent along the Karankawa coast, and they were known to scavenge, pillage, or rescue these as appropriate. The thought that they were inadvertently causing them all only makes it funnier.

With all the Viking-romantics insisting on trying to find links between 19th century folklore and customs back to the Viking Age paganism (e.g Yule goat -> Thor's goats) It seems they've really overlooked the same relations that exist for Viking Age Christianity.

Case-in-point: Obviously the early 11th century Saint Sigfrid of Sweden and his three nephews Unaman, Sunaman and Vinaman are the prototype for Donald Duck and his three nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie! (they're both sororial nephews even) Little did I know that watching Disney cartoons was a medieval christian custom!

Most of the books I've read or heard about which use "Atlantic history" as a lens tend to focus exclusively on the early modern period up to the mid-19th century at the latest. Are there books which apply the concept of Atlantic history to the late-19th century or 20th century?

I recently read The Empires of the Near East and India: Source Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities. It's a good read, and i particularly loved Rajeev Kinra's translation of Chandar Bahn, a Mughal gentleman's advice letter to his son.

Most nasihatname i've read (admittedly most Ottoman) are generally from officials/men complaining how things have degenerated from the 'good ol days', while a subgenre called "Mirror of Princes" reads in a commanding and somewhat "dry" tone, since it's a guide for noble princes. This advice letter was a stark contrast to that, it's just reads as a loving father giving his son advice to guide him and his careers for the future. And the advice doesn't far off from something that parents/teachers tell today too. I highly encourage anyone to read it, though not sure if i can post the entire thing here

Hi, so I only just now realized I could make a post here to get more attention on this issue.

There's a Pre-Columbian (Hopewell tradition) earthwork site in Hamilton, Ohio that's at risk of being damaged or destroyed by developers, but the Archaeological Conservancy is raising money to buy the land themselves.

The Fortified Hill Works are the last of six Hopewell earthworks that were situated on the Great Miami River. The site was never excavated, but have for a long time been under private ownership by a local physician who wanted to preserve them. Now that he's passed, his heirs have given it up for auction to the highest bidder, whoever that may be. That includes real estate developers who may likely build or pave over it and make it difficult or impossible to protect and study it.

The Archaeological Conservancy has decided to make a $400,000 bid of its own and they're calling on anyone who wishes to help to make a donation of any amount to help them meet this goal. If you can make a pledge or share this with friends who can donate, it would really help their cause and very potentially help protect a piece of deep American history!

The main Archaeological Conservancy announcement is here for a more detailed explanation, or you can go straight to the donation page to make a pledge.

Thank you for your interest in keeping indigenous history intact!

Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap

Friday, September 13 - Thursday, September 19

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