askhistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
Who were the Livonians, and why were they depicted by Dürer as wearing such distinctive clothing?	64
I am a woman with malignant cancer living in New Kingdom-era Ancient Egypt. What are my treatment options and would any of them have been successful?	61
I found an image online of what appears to be a (satirical?) woodcut depicting different religious sects in Elizabethan/Jacobean England. What are these sects and what is the background of this image?	61
Why did “Indianized” SEA kingdoms such as the Khmer empire, Siamese, Burmese and Lao kingdoms adopt Theravada Buddhism instead of remaining Hindu?	58
What is the significance and origin of the iconography of Robin Hood’s distinctive garb, namely his bycocket hat and green felt clothing? Where these articles always part of the Robin Hood mythos or did they originate in 19th and 20th Century portrayals of the merry man from Sherwood?	57
Did the infamous 14th Century emir Timur (also known colloquially as Tamerlane) really build towers of human skulls during his brutal conquest of Central and South Asia?	53
What are some historical “blind spots”? As in, which historical subjects, eras or events are still largely unexplored or lacking substantive scholarship by academia?	53
The card-based method of divination now known as tarot was popular amongst the elite in late-Medieval and Renaissance-era Italy; what was the Church’s official stance on tarot as well as numerology, astrology and other practices related to the occult?	52
Did the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls in 1996/1997, respectively - negatively impact the American public’s perception of hip hop as a musical genre or as a cultural movement?	52
Between fainting couches, the rise of health spas & the treatment of “hysteria” - why is it that the popular conception of women during the Victorian Era was that they had delicate, even feeble constitutions? Why is the stereotypical image of a Victorian woman in media is a sickly, consumptive waif?	46

« < > »