askhistorians

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Okinawan Shisa statues represent guardian spirits based on lions. But they only kinda look like lions. Is this because no one on Okinawa had seen lions when the trend caught on, and they were hearing descriptions second or third hand?	12
What did the Aztec economy look like? Was it a free market? Heavily regulated? Totally planned like the Incas to the South?	12
How did Aramaic, a language originating in Syria, become the lingua franca of a vast territory stretching all the way to India and Mongolia? Was it spoken in all these far-flung areas, or only used for record-keeping by scribes?	12
How young was the boy Autolykos in Xenophon's Symposium? Are we supposed to think it would be awkward that the rich party host, Callias, admits to feeling physical lust for Autolykos in front of the boy's father?	12
Oxford Social anthropologist J.D. Unwin studied 5,000 years of history and claimed he found a correlation between the cultural achievement of a people and the sexual restraint they observed. Was his understanding of history accurate?	12
We keep improving firearms and making newer models, but how are modern firearms better than WWII-era guns beyond carrying more bullets and shooting faster?	12
The Roman Plebian Council was an assembly of common people, but they routinely voted in patricians (noblemen) to be Tribunes of the plebs, a position that existed to protect their rights. Why did they do this?	12
Montaigne is credited with inventing the essay, but Seneca seemed to do almost the same thing a thousand years before. What's so special about Montaigne's writing style?	12
George Washington authored a book, "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation," when he was in school, largely copying the rules from a French manual. How did it become published, and what was the impact?	12
The British Empire controlled a vast 4,500-mile contiguous swath of territory from Egypt to South Africa. Did the British build roads or railroads to allow people and freight to travel by land from one end to the other? Was that something they considered desirable?	12

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