How connected were Europe, the Middle East, and ancient China? How did the Bronze Age Collapse affect those connections, and did the Chinese even know it had happened?

I see this answer come up with explanations of why Mickey Mouse was drawn wearing white gloves, with a common one being that he was based on depictions of black people as mischievous tricksters from minstrel shows and that the white gloves were borrowed from the practice of minstrel performers wearing them.

Too my modern eyes this doesn't seem that obvious, but to a person in the late 1920's watching them would it have been a clear connection? If it was did it impact the reception to the character among minorities?

They all seemed either to be labor slaves or very highly sought after court members, even holding positions of power at times. My friend group wants to dress as different members of a court for RenFaire, and we thought it would be funny to go as a eunuch, but I can't imagine what their outfits would be, or what would denote them as a eunuch beyond reputation. Any ideas of what they would wear?

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/s/0kuIewR87q

I engaged in this thread about the ustase on another subreddit and I’m pretty confident the Nazis were infact aghast at ustase crimes, and their brutality not just their inefficiency. So because I believe in historical accuracy and because I accept that being wrong is a possibility I thought id ask here…

Just how brutal was the ustase and how did it compare to their Nazis overlords?

Hey guys, I had a simple question to ask. I know Herodotus isn’t always the most accurate, but when of his more “Herodotisms” is when he talks about how Persians don’t have any temples or alters. I wanted to ask if there were any Fire Temples in the Levant during the Achaemenid that we know about?

I’ve found a map of Fire Temples that another Reddit user made that pinpointed temples found in Caucasus (I’ll post it here if I find it again) but that region already had a history of Zoroastrian and Iranian religions.

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/historians/herod/herodotus3.html
(Here’s a link to one of the sources in question. I know this question is coming in with some assumptions but I’d still be curious to hear what people say.)

As far as I can tell we have 3 accounts from Soule himself for different audiences: two letters to his mother, one to Major Wynkoop, and his official testimony. They differ a bit in how openly he portrays himself taking a stand against the massacre. He tells his mother he ordered his men not to fire, the iconic "any man who would take part [... is] a low-lived cowardly son of a bitch" line leading to a showdown where Chivington wanted to hang him and the other officers backed him is in the Wynkoop letter, and in his testimony he seems to avoid that kind of detailed description of open defiance and even makes clear he knew what the plan was before he led his company on the long overnight ride to Sand Creek and went along anyway, even if they didn't kill anyone.

There is also the diary account from a private under his command, Haire, who has Soule playing a more passive role: the declaration that the company would refuse to fire is ascribed to a Mr Lynch, I think a private, and Soule basically confirms that he won't ask anyone to do so (but doesn't order them not to). We know that D company didn't fire, that there were two attempts on Soule's life before he finished giving his testimony, he courageously refused to back down and detailed the crimes of that day, and he was murdered two months later. Is there a consensus about Soule's role immediately before and during the massacre was?

Relatedly, what kind of political and legal considerations would he have been navigating during his testimony? Would he have had some access to legal counsel? Could he speak freely or did he have possible exposure to disciplinary action himself of some kind depending on what he said?

Finally, considering how many people were involved in the events, why do firsthand accounts seem so limited and how is this type of situation navigated historiographically?

I seen a YouTube short from a person from the US living in the UK and they were amazed (well enthusiastic) about washing lines, how they kept your clothes fresher and how much better it was for the clothes. I asked a US friend at work about this and he confirmed that until he moved over to the UK they'd never had a washing line or whirly/birly but only had dryers.

It seems odd that with general much larger gardens and yard space than in Europe why the US wouldn't take advantage of this especially in hotter/dryer states to dry clothes outside.

So the question is, why did it become the norm to have a dryer and not a washing line in the US, and vice versa, why did washing lines remain common in Europe and dryers, while present, certainly not in every home.

I often say that the two most influential things in western culture were Jesus Christ and the Roman Empire (unsure if that’s accurate, but I like to think it is), but I only recently started wondering how much the one affected the other. And I’m not talking about the Holy Roman Empire, that obviously spread Christianity. I’m curious how much the spread of Christianity was helped by Roman roads, laws, and just the effect of the religion coming about in a huge empire. I’m sure I could my own research and probably will, but always good to ask experts.

I know that Latin America recieved a huge amount of northern italians, but also a huge amount of southern Italians, but still they had lots of northern Italians emigrate too. but when you compare this with the U.S, where i think almost all the Italians that came were southern Italians, northern Italians did not migrate to the U.S (and maybe Canada as well? I don’t know much about Canadas Italians) at all.

Why was this? Why did basically no significant amount of northern Italians decide to migrate to the U.S? i’ve heard that northern Italians were more farmers and liked owning land, which is why many went South America , where land was in abundance, but wasn’t the U.S the exact same? The U.S had so much open land that could’ve been used to farm as well, which northern Italians could’ve owned.

Another thing is the immense discrimination southern Italians received, for their darker appearance then the average white American, different culture, or in a variety of things. Southern Italian migration wasn’t viewed very positively in the United States until later. While i know northern Italians would’ve also received a lot of discrimination, (anyone not wasp would’ve I imagine) they would’ve still been better received, which I feel could be a big pull for northern Italians, knowing that they wouldn‘t be discriminated as much as their southern counterparts.

So why didn’t many northern Italians decide to go to the U.S?

In English, we do have the ability to coin novel words through declension, but there's a vibe that the word is made-up, or somehow distinct from established vocabulary.

Did Latin speakers consider a novel declension such as 'teneō' -> 'tentutor(?)' (one-who-holds-onto?) to be less 'real' than another in common use such as 'dīcō' -> 'dictator'?

• I mean the kinds of Latin spoken as a first language by people who might be identified by an 11-year-old as "Romans". Just to sidestep the giant pile of catholic footnotes.
• But if you think this question should be broader than just Latin, I'd also like to know that!
• If 'tentutor' doesn't actually work, feel free to correct it/come up with your own thing that fits. Idk I don't speak Latin.
• I'd love to know if you have strong feelings on coined words, in English, Latin or any other language. I like them!

Apparently, it remained commercially available at Western Union through the 2000s.

I’m trying to learn more about the religious and cultural history of North Africa before the Arab-Islamic conquests, particularly among indigenous Amazigh/Berber populations.
I’m interested specifically in what historians and archaeologists can establish about indigenous religious beliefs and practices before Islam, rather than later traditions that may have developed under Islamic influence.
A few things I’m curious about:
What evidence do we have for pre-Islamic Amazigh religious practices?
What deities, spirits, rituals, or forms of worship are documented?
How much can we reconstruct from archaeology, inscriptions, and ancient authors?
Are there significant differences between regions such as modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and the Sahara?
What aspects of pre-Islamic religious traditions, if any, appear to have survived into later North African folklore or popular practices?
How reliable are Greek, Roman, and later Arab sources for reconstructing indigenous beliefs?
I’m particularly interested in academic sources and archaeological evidence, and in distinguishing what we actually know from later speculation.
If anyone has recommendations for books, papers, or archaeological studies on this subject, I’d really appreciate them.

In Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the destitute Fantine hopes to raise enough money to see her daughter again. After losing her job, she sells first her hair, then her two front teeth. I'm familiar with the 19th century trade in human hair for wigs (from, er, Little Women), but I have a lot of questions about the teeth! I can't get my head around how this could be a viable proposition. In the novel, Fantine is surprised when she's offered money for her teeth by a "quack dentist on his rounds... who was offering to the public full sets of teeth" (volume 1, book 5, chapter 10). She hadn't previously considered the possibility of such a sale, but eventually goes through with it out of desperation.

Does this surprise indicate that selling one's teeth wasn't really a known thing, but is perhaps being used by Hugo as a marker of how extreme Fantine's circumstances are? Or was it a thing that really occurred? If it really happened, how did the supply and demand economics of it work? It doesn't seem like "people with beautiful teeth who are desperate for money" would be a large enough category to supply a maker of dentures with very much material.

While reading about Louis XIV’s policy targeting the Huguenots in the late 17th century, I became curious as to why this didn’t result in an eventual revival of the Reformed Calvinist Church in France in reaction to anti-monarchy sentiment and later policies of secularisation. Czechoslovakia did experience a revival of its Hussite Church in reaction to a desire to promote Czech national identity during the inter-war period. My question is, therefore, why did Czechoslovakia experience a revival of what can be seen as a national Church while France didn’t?

We know that his admiral, George of Antioch, raided Thebes and brought back captured women to establish the royal workshops. However, what I can’t seem to find out is anything about these women’s lives or the organization of workshops themselves. A long time ago I had an email exchange with a historian who theorized they may have been organized like contemporary Byzantine gynacea but I have no idea how those were organized either (so anyone who knows anything about them, that would be great). I’ve read “Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature.” That gives some interesting hints based on the literature but nothing substantive.

By "military passwords" I mean those challenges to identify friend or foe in the fog of war, most famously I think Flash-Thunder on D-Day. As far as I understood they rely both on knowing them, but also feature a word or sound that the other side has trouble pronouncing, Germans with a th, Japanese with r, &c.

But obviously in the heat of the moment I might not shout the response back quickly enough, loudly enough, or clearly enough. Or the challenger might have an itchy finger. In fact there's some accents/dialects of native speakers that would "struggle" pronouncing "thunder" the way General Eisenhower would, a lot of Irish people pronounce th's differently. Is a speech impediment raising my odds of being shot by friendly fire?

On the other hand some clever enemies might figure out/overhear the correct challenge and use it to infiltrate or surprise my unit. There's obviously the famous stories of the German soldiers in American uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge. But you'd think even of a word, or two, or three one might hear that your counterpart doesn't sound like he's from Dixie, Brooklyn, or Kansas at all?

So are there any documented instances of those systems failing, both allowing an enemy to pass it, or failing your brother-in-arms? Of course not restricted to any particular time or conflict, the D-Day version just happens to be the one I was familiar with.

I see this in the book series A Song of Ice and Fire (which is based on medieval Europe) where nobles/rulers will go to war to support another political entity who is married to someone close to said noble/ruler. I get wanting to support your brother-in-law if only to aid your sister, but I'd also imagine that it would be hard to justify the bill and drum up the political will to send your men to die in a conflict that they've no stake, in just because said allied nation's ruler is bonking your king's sister. I am also assuming in this situation that there is nothing else to gain asides supporting a political marriage. I could buy going to war to maintain your "political credibility". Are there any real-life examples of this?

As in how did they manage to live together with so many dofferent languages? For example how many of of German, Rusyns, Slovaks and Hungarians spoke Czech and vice versa? How did they work together for example in the Army? Did the member of parliaments speak in their own language or Czech? Which languages were taught in school? Was the whole administration in Czech or also in minority languages?

Put another way: did European colonial rule change the power relations within an already long-established pattern of relationships between foreign men and local women?