AskHistorians

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It's not uncommon for dreamcatchers to be sold as souvenirs to tourists to prevent nightmares. They are marketed as Native American. Did any Native American groups actually use dreamcatchers or are they a misappropriation of NA culture? If legit, what did these objects mean for indigenous people?	3767
DNA indicates that many shrunken heads are fake, but some are real. Have historians or anthropologists reinterpreted, revised, contextualized, and/or obliterated myths about the practice of shrunken heads? If so, how?	1048
What is the history of rock polishing or rock tumbling? How did polished rocks go from religious or precious stone contexts to a commonplace gift shop object in the 20th century?	28
Did the earthquake and tsunami of 1755, known especially for the cataclysmic destruction of Lisbon, affect other places in the Atlantic World? If so, how?	23
In the old cathedrals of Europe, one often finds crypts from the early modern period. Would bodies recently laid to rest in these cathedrals have given off a putrid smell? How were these bodies prepared for burial? Did decomposition or funerary practices have unique meanings?	13
How much influence did Erasmus have in Spain?	6
How and why did Chiapas end up a part of Mexico when it had been a part of Guatemala during the colonial period?	4
How did European advancement into the Southern Hemisphere affect astrology in Early Modern Europe?	4
How and why did the Dutch develop such an influencial luxury cloth industry in the early modern period? How did it come to have such a global reach?	1
Luke 2:7 (NRSV): "And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." What kind of cloth might this have been? How would a poor family have made or acquired this cloth?	0

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