askhistorians

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Did the perception that German is an unusually harsh, guttural, and unpleasant language exist before he world wars, or is it an outgrowth of anti-German war propaganda?	2825
Did the ancients have their own archaeologists/antiquities? What would, say, the Romans have known about the people's who inhabited their empire before them?	1985
The given name Adolf, which used to be fairly common among Germanic peoples, seems to have fallen (justifiably) into almost total disuse in the years since WWII. We're there any other times in history when one universally reviled person "ruined" a popular name?	634
How far into North America did the diplomatic/economic sphere of the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican empires extend? For instance, would a Native American living on the Chesapeake have heard of massive, city-building empires to the south?	520
Medieval Venice styled itself "The Most Serene Republic of Venice." What was the significance of the self-proclaimed serenity? Did "serene" have a meaning at he time that has been lost since?	504
Has there ever been a mostly/entirely nocturnal human culture?	459
What did religious thinkers in the Muslim and Eastern Orthodox world's think of the Protestant Reformation?	433
How did head nodding/shaking become accepted ways to express yes and no in the West? Did there used to be other, comparable gestures that died out?	301
Why do some countries (France, Francia, Frankreich) have names that sound pretty much the same in different languages, and some (Germany, Deutschland, Allemagne, Niemcy, Tyskland) don't?	180
Given that the Roman Empire owned Northern Africa and the Middle East for quite a long time, why do those areas today not speak a Romance language like most other former Roman provinces?	120

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