AskHistorians

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Did the Mayans or the Aztecs know the world was round before 1492? How did either civ believe the universe/cosmos was laid out?	24
In one of the Downton Abbey Christmas episodes the "up stairs" characters make reference to a seasonal tradition where they reverse roles and sever the servants. Is that based on anything that actually existed?	24
if I was being hung for murder in 1920s Britain and my neck failed to span, would they try again or just leave to strangle to death?	24
Suppose in 1974 you ask a normal Taiwanese person if they believe normal life is better or worse in mainland China? Suppose you ask a normal Hebei resident if they believe normal life in Taiwan is better or worse than in mainland China? Assuming they were honest what do think each would likely say?	24
suppose you visited ireland in AD35 and 1965BCE. aside from the presence and absence of iron, what differences (if any) would you see?	24
When people saw Shakespeare's Roman plays at the globe would they have understood that the English dialog was intended as a translation rather than how Romans actually spoke?	24
In around 1937 my great-uncle turned down going to university in favour of getting a job in a pottery bank (I'm from Stoke-on-Trent) because he thought Uni was "soft". Was that sort of attitude common among the English lower classes between the wars?	24
When the classical Greeks and Romans traded with northern Europe (the parts of northern Europe they hadn't have direct political control over yet), did they physically go there or work through proxies?	24
In the novel I'm reading one of the characters belongs to family that started out as Gauls (given equestrian status by Caesar), but by the time of the story (259) they've been totally assimilated into the roman nobility. IRL were there many “barbarian” families that managed to make that transition?	24
Someone (possible a TV documentary) once told me that the Minoans were likely less patriarchal than later Greeks because soomd of their surviving art implies they were ruled partially by priestesses of some kind. Is that a reasonable claim?	24

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