askhistorians

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Today, we tend to poke fun at the name "Holy Roman Empire". But would the average German living, let's say in the mid-11th Century before the investiture controversy, have seen their society as the legitimate heir to Rome?	1770
Why is Afrikaans considered a language, rather than a dialect of Dutch, when Australian English (which developed under similar circumstances/distances) is just a dialect?	1525
How did the Franks go from axe-hurling, Germanic-speaking pagan tribesmen to the God-fearing, Gallo-Romance speaking knights in shining armor of Charlemagne's time?	726
Did people do anything special to celebrate the year 1000 A.D.?	480
Why have virtually all states in the Italian region stressed an "Italian" over a "Roman" identity for the last 1500 years?	405
The website Geacron, which offers year-by-year maps of the world from 3000 BC to present, shows a massive change in the shape of the Persian Gulf between 609 and 608 BC. Is this at all accurate? And if so, what the heck happened?	386
At what point did speakers of the various Latin dialects stop calling the language they spoke "Latin"?	307
Were early European visitors to the New World puzzled to find familiar species, like bears and wolves, living there?	290
Why do the British Isles have less of a seafood-based culinary tradition than other coastal/island areas like Scandinavia, Japan, Korea, the Northeast American seaboard, and Southeast Asia?	239
I saw on a wine bottle that one of the crimes punishable by transportation to Australia in Victorian England was "Impersonating an Egyptian." Why would someone do this, and why was it such a serious crime?	229

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