askhistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
It seems like in ancient societies sex between adults and children wasn't as taboo or prohibited as it is today. What were the first societies that started putting laws on how old someone had to be to consent to sex, and what prompted this change?	8
Was there any controversy around the naming of New Mexico? Did "old" Mexico voice any complaints?	7
In what ways did British treatment of native peoples vary across the span of their Empire?	7
Besides the well known examples, what else has been translated from the Dead Sea Scrolls in way of non-canonical texts and fragments?	7
Was there ever a time in the West when the names of Monarchs were written with Hindu-Arabic numerals instead of Roman numerals, or has it always been this way? (e.g. Henry 8 vs Henry VIII)	6
Are all people who have names related to British nobility (i.e. Lancaster, Windsor, Murray) actually distantly related to those families, or did some peasants occasionally adopt more prestigious surnames in later centuries?	6
Hitler never restored the Monarchy after the end of the Weimer Republic. But many who believed the "stabbed in the back" myth implicated Republicans as well as Jews and Communists. Were any high ranking Nazis disillusioned by Hitler's Republicanism/lack of support for the Monarchy?	5
Americans were using African slaves while also displacing Native Americans. Why didn't the Europeans just enslave the Native Americans?	5
It's 1939/1940, and I'm living in far north Finland in a small isolated settlement. How does the Soviet invasion of Finland affect me? Would I even know it was going on?	5
Did ancient civilisations have any theories as to what would happen if you hypothetically went to the bottom of the spherical earth? Without our understanding of gravity, did they think you'd just fall off the south pole?	5

« < > »