“Jerusalem syndrome is a mental illness rarely seen in people who visit Jerusalem, manifests itself with obsessive religious thoughts, delusions, psychotic symptoms, and some characteristic features.”

A shoutout to this question for inspiring this one!

What are some good histories of like Bronze Age China? Or anything pre Zhou? Looking for books accessible to laymen, but can be dense or "boring"

Richard Mentor Johnson, the eccentric Vice President of Martin van Buren from 1837 to 1841, was for a long while unpopular and unable to find another elected position after he finished his term in office.

In 1850, he finally did get elected to a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives, but it soon became apparent that he did not have his mental faculties.

On November 9, 1850, after only four days of serving, the Louisville Daily Journal reported: "Col. R. M. Johnson is laboring under an attack of dementia, which renders him totally unfit for business. It is painful to see him on the floor attempting to discharge the duties of a member. He is incapable of properly exercising his physical or mental powers."

He died 10 days after this report on November 19, 1850 of a stroke.

My question is; if he had dementia that was so obvious to the point where the local media of the time was reporting on it, how did he get elected in the first place? I have heard of politicians (Strom Thurmond, Dianne Feinstein) probably having it during the end of long careers, but they were last reelected when they were able to appear more functional. I am assuming Johnson would have appeared significantly more impaired.

What writings are there from other cultures on the Sumerian people? Were there stories that other cultures had about their interactions with them? If there were how long did those stories remain extant?

The 20th century saw several mass explosions and forced population transfers like the populations exchange between Greece and turkey, the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe, the f@#cking partion of India and Pakistan and many many more. Well some of these did result in violence and animosity it seems in general people who where forcibly moved during these populations exchanges and expulsions mostly accepted it and moved on with their lives. Why didn’t this happened with Palestine? Why did Palestinians remained a distinct ethnic group instead of being assimilated into the other Arab nations that they fleed to?

Or maybe the leaders were soft spoken when talking to each other, or what.

Please and thanks.

can be niche or obscure or describing non-western traditions

I have a character I made a while back for AC2 and was struggling to give her a last name within Renaissance naming schemes.

For reference, she was raised by her older brother and the two of them don't know their parents, so I'm not certain how I'd go about family names or if I'd omit them altogether (is that natural?). And they're assassins so that's not really an occupation you'd want to disclose I think. (Especially in your name)

Would it be natural to just make the name Serafina di (place of origin)?

In 283 CE, Emperor Carus successfully invaded the Sasanian Empire and captured Ctesiphon while Bahram II was occupied elsewhere. Ancient sources (like the Historia Augusta, Eutropius) report Carus died suddenly near the city, famously attributed to a lightning strike during a storm, leading his son Numerian to withdraw the army.

From the Sasanian perspective, the invasion, possibly aided by Armenian allies shifting allegiance, could be seen as violating treaties or oaths, offenses against their god Mithra, divinity of covenants.

My question is : Is there any historical or archaeological evidence suggesting that Roman soldiers interpreted Carus's death (specifically the lightning story) as divine punishment connected to oath-breaking or the Persian god Mithra? Could this event have demonstrably reinforced beliefs within the Roman Mithraic cult regarding divine power of Mithra ? can this even be the origin of the cult ?

Previously

Today:

You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.

As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.

Hi I'm new around here and there's something I would like some help with figuring out and understanding.... I'm a huge fan of the Poem Beowulf in fact I have both the Translations from Seamus Heaney and J.R.R Tolkien.... I'm in no way an expert though on the Language but lately I've been doing some research on the story attempting to find out more about the actual tribes mentioned in the story & their armor weapons culture etc especially their language.

The original story is in old English & I've read online that the specific dialect was western Saxon.

However the people's within the story are actually Scandinavian, many being Danish or Swedish.(Beowulf's own tribe the Geats are thought to hail from what is today Southern Sweden and are also referred to as Goths) And the story is thought to be set during 5th & the 6th century maybe around the Migration period or around the same time as the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

That means the Names and languages of the characters in the story if they were real historical people would've been different.

So Beowulf himself would've likely had a different name in his own Language as would the characters of the Danish king Hrothgar, The Danish Queen Wealhtheow, Beowulf's father Ecgtheow, Wiglaf who was Beowulf's last surviving kinsman, Etc . Even characters like Grendel and his mother probably would've had different name equivalents in those Languages.

On doing research trying to discover the Geatish equivalent of Beowulf's Name I couldn't find that much accept some mentions of another Scandinavian hero known as Böðvarr Bjarki who many seem believe is either related to Beowulf in Some way of is his Old Norse counterpart.

Both names meaning "Warlike Little-Bear" in Old Norse for Bjarki & Beowulf's Name in Old English being believed to mean literally "bee-wolf" or "bee-hunter"

while Hrothgar's name was easier to find more equivalents for in old Norse would've been "Hróarr" .

More I found on Hrothgar's name is that the modern Equivalent of it would be Roger From the Germanic name Hrodger meaning "famous spear", derived from the elements hruod "fame" and ger "spear". The Normans brought this name to England, where it replaced the Old English cognate Hroðgar (the name of the Danish king in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf).

https://www.behindthename.com/name/roger

https://www.behindthename.com/name/hroth30gar

So I'm curious how much we actually know about the Gothic tribes of that specific time period, their language and names and whether or not we can discover the equivalents of the names mentioned in Beowulf in western Saxon & link All the characters names to what they likely would've been in their own languages. Notably I'd like to know What Beowulf's Name would've been in Geatish?

If anyone knows more about this let me know down below. Thank you!

Before the rise of the Safavid dynasty in the early 16th century, what were the religious affiliations of the populations in, Azerbaijan, iran and surrounding regions? 1. What sect of Islam did the majority of Iranians,azeris follow before the Safavids? Was it Sunni or Shia, and which madhab was most commonly adhered to? 2. What about Azerbaijan? Was the population predominantly Sunni or Shia before the Safavid conversion? And how did the rise of the Safavids affect the religious makeup of the region? 3. Were there any notable Shia communities before the Safavids? If so, where were they located, and what sect of Shia Islam did they follow? 4. How did the Safavids make it into shia majority when for long time originally it wasn’t?

Image problem in the sense of saying that the movement has bad PR or that it's not communicating its message to the public correctly

Did abolitionists try to frame slavery abolition in a way that was agreeable to either the general public or to anti-abolitonists? Did it work in any instance?

I come across multiple pop history books at my local Barnes & Noble that catch my eye, but I'm fsirly new to reading history as a hobby, and I don't know many of the better regarded historians and authors.

Thus far, my only real metric has been checking the author's bio to see if they belong to a respected organization (if they're professors or fellows or some such of a given university).

But I would like to know which books are worthwhile, and which ones have a distinct bias or interpretation (such as applying the rules of the modern day to Ancient Greece, for instance, or drawing constant parallela between an old civilization and a modern one that is unrelated).

I don't mind authors spoon-feeding me information, or even a small degree of repetition, at least at first. I want to build a good foundation on a few topics (lile Ancient Greece, as I mentiomed above) so that I can then dig deeper and learn more in depth from more scholarly works.

What's the best way to find the "right" books (or at least the "appropriate" books), so that my view of history won't be skewed by some inapplicable perspective?

I teach in the History of Science program at Harvard. My research and teaching focus on the intersections between various forms of expertise and alleged expertise (especially psychology and economics) and the ways that all of us make sense of our day-to-day lives. My new book, which you can order here and elsewhere, is about how Americans came to view "entrepreneurship" as the pinnacle of the good life, and what I see as the pernicious consequences of that development. I recently wrote for the New York Times on how this history can help us understand why Elon Musk is such a psychopath.

I also help edit a magazine about politics and culture called The Drift, and I've written essays for a public audience in a wide range of outlets on subjects ranging from the films of David Lynch to the exploitative labor practices of Amy's Kitchen.

So my thesis is on how the historiography of a certain topic has changed throughout time. Specially moving AWAY from ground up research. does anyone have any good books on historiography in general ? maybe the changes it’s underwent through time? or any books discussing the movement from ground up history. or just ground up history in general. Right now i have Staughton Lynd Doing History from the Bottom Up with howard zinn but would like more !

Was fruits less tastier 2000 years ago? Because humans have been selectively breed a lot of fruit to taste better im sure a lot of the fruits in the past did not taste as yummy. But is this true for all fruits and are there even fruits that would be more tasty in the past compared to today?

Edit: What would happen if he left, ceased all communication, and it was unclear whether he was alive or dead.

So, I was checking out the Wikipedia article on the longest-reigning monarchs because I had a CK3 character that lived for an outrageous amount of time, and I noticed something I never had before: in the top twenty list, basically every single monarch lived during the last five hundred years (James I of Aragorn excluded because he was a beast apparently), except for these four random Meso-American kings (listed at bottom of text) who lived in the 7th and 8th centuries CE. Now, this struck me, because not only had I never heard of any of these guys before, but it seems exceedingly interesting that twenty percent of the longest reigning monarchs in history, including two in the top ten and one in the top five, are so different in time and place from the others, and I was wondering if there is some explanation for this. Did it have to do with the succession traditions at the time making very young children monarchs? Or maybe is it because the Meso-Americans had better calendar systems and so we can accurately date their reigns better than contemporary Chinese and European monarchs? Or is it some other reason, like they ate a bunch of fish and therefore got to live forever? And, depending on what the reason might be, is there also a reason why there stopped being long-lived Meso-American kings after the 700's?

The kings I'm talking about, as listed by Wikipedia:
-K'inch Janaab Pakal I (603-683, r. 615-683 (68 years, 33 days), Palenque (Mexico), 5th Longest Reign)
-Chan Imix K'awil (604-695, r. 628-695 (67 years, 130 days), Chopan (Honduras), 7th Longest Reign)
-Itzamnaaj Bahlam III (647-742, r. 681-742 (60 years, 238 days), Yaxchilan (Mexico), 14th Longest Reign)
-K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat (c. 690-785, r. 724-785 (60 years, 210 days), Quirigua (Guatemala), 15th Longest Reign)

As the title suggests...

It's my belief that the expression "no taxation without representation" would suggest that they were ok with taxes, they just wanted representation as well.

Or were there all in on no tax?

Been seeing alot of videos on youtube talking about historical failures.

Here's some negative examples from a youtube video I just watched... Title: "This Stock Market Crash Is MUCH BIGGER Than it Seems - Something Secretly MASSIVE Is Happening..."

So he claims,

1)British Empire did it and it lead to war with the Dutch and the American Revolution

2)Otto Von Bismark did it and it lead to Russia allying with Britain and France and then world war 1

3)USA did it and it lead to the Great Depression.

Not sure how true any of those claims are. But surely there are examples where it worked without any consequences since countries are still using tarrifs today. If it never worked why would any country still be using them?

I’m playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, set in Ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War, and the main character Kassandra describes Corinth as “a city of poets and prostitutes, and not much else”. Did Corinth really have this reputation in the Classical period, and if so, why?