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.
August dawns and brings with it the first digest of a shiny new month! As per our usual celebrations, we have compiled a glorious list of incredible answers and write ups for you to peruse. Don’t forget to check out the usual weekly features, enjoy some special ones, and then dive into the rest!
Monday Methods: A Shooting in Sarajevo - The Historiography of the Origins of World War I was a great thread from /u/Starwarsnerd222!
Grab some book ideas from the Thursday Reading and Rec!
We had some good discussion in the Friday Free for All!
There’s still time to show off in the Saturday Showcase!
We had a META from a frustrated user Thinking about unfollowing this subreddit.
That’s a wrap for another week and finishes gathering the contributions from July of 2021! Keep it classy out there history fans, and I’ll see you next week!
From the past month
/u/Aithiopika answered how many women ended up in prostitution in ancient Rome?, and Why did Roman society look down on acting, equating it to prostitution in some sources?, and Ea-Nasir famously tried to sell sub-par copper ingot to Nanni, even though he promised fine quality ones. How would was the quality of copper ingot determined in c. 1750 BC Mesopotamia?
/u/alexistheman answered I am the first son of a landed gentleman in Georgian England and my father has just passed away. When do I kick my widowed mother out of the main bedroom? (Among other questions)
/u/AlexNGU1 answered Who is Hassan i Sabbah ? Was he a real person ? If not who created the myth ?
Don’t forget to show some appreciation for those interesting question that still remain unanswered and cry out for the attention of experts! Feel free to post your own, or others that caught your eye!
/u/Milkhemet_Melekh asked about The Byzantine Empire was big on 'Orientalizing', being closely connected to Persia and later the Islamic world, often moreso than to the West. Was there a difference between the "Greeks" and the "Anatolians" ethnically?
/u/SmokeyChuckMcGill asked What made the Normans so expansionary and powerful? How come poor (?), sparsely populated (?) peripheral Normandy came to be the ground zero for the conquest of England, Sicily, parts of the Middle East, and parts of Iberia?
/u/Sweet_Celebration_90 asked how did comics and mangas effect art style of today's popular animation styles?
Time for another installment of "The Real Questions", where we take a look at the wilder side of r/AskHistorians! Here, I give a shout-out to people asking the more atypical questions on this sub: questions that investigate amusing, unique, bizarre, or less common aspects of history, as well as ones that take us through intriguing adventures of historiography/methodology or niche/overlooked topics and moments in history. It's always a wide (and perhaps confusing) assortment of topics, but at the end of the day, when I see them I think, "Finally, someone is asking the real questions!"
Below are my entries for the week - questions with a link to an older response are marked with ‡. Let me know what you think were the realest questions you saw this week, and be sure to check out my full list of Real Questions.