AskHistorians

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During the Sixties Scoop, were social workers required to provide any reason for taking a child away, or was their race the only reason required?	25
I visited Ightham Mote, a medieval manor house in England, and saw these above the fireplace. The guide said they were to ward off witches. Can anyone give me some more details?	24
Where did Bronze Age and Iron Age people think their language came from? And when they spoke a different language from their neighbours, how did they explain it?	19
How would the average non-elite Frankish family have celebrated Christmas around 800 AD?	19
Did any large groups successfully resist the Mongols during Genghis Khan’s reign?	18
The book Sapiens makes the point that villages kept hitting an upper limit on size until written language developed. What exactly did writing enable?	16
I understand that the advent of horse mounted combat meant that you had to own a lot of equipment to fight in the Middle Ages, leading to a warrior class. But what direction was this? Did rich people become warriors? Or did Warriors become rich?	15
The book Sapiens says that there is evidence of long distance trade predating the agricultural revolution. How could trade be possible if traders didn’t have a set location to return to (ie if their people weren’t sedentary and so had moved around during their time away)?	14
I have an idea of what modern “Celtic music” sounds like. Does it have any relation to the music of Celts in Gaul?	14
It seems like authorities in the Middle Ages went to extreme lengths to kill people in cruel and inventive ways. Was this simply for the sake of deterrence, or was there some other motive?	14

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