/u/mythoplokos's posts in /r/AskHistorians

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Is eight-hour sleep a modern phenomenon? Did people of the past really use to sleep in two separate sessions each night?

2205 upvotes

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In the show 'Black Sails', the pirates have laws they quote every now and then when there are disputes. Did the pirates of the Golden Age of piracy really have some sort of shared code of rules for dealing with crime etc. among the crews?

125 upvotes

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How was the status of women rationalized in classic Chinese thought?

58 upvotes

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I've read that in the Punic/Carthagenian/Phoenician tradition, name formulae only included filiation, i.e. Abdmelqart son of Adnibal. But why is then Hannibal known as Hannibal Barca and his family known as the Barcid dynasty?

54 upvotes

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Where does the gesture of placing your index finger against your lips and going 'shhh' as a sign of silence or secret originate from?

54 upvotes

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Dante, writing during the era of Republican city-states, seems to raise Julius Caesar the tyrant above all mortals in his Inferno. Why?

48 upvotes

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What do we know about love and marriage in pre-colonial West-African kingdoms?

22 upvotes

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Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians drank beer daily as it was more nutritious and sanitary thirst quencher than water. But, I never see any mentions of beer in ancient Greek literature. Do we have any evidence that the Greeks were familiar with beer? Why didn't Greeks also adopt beer?

17 upvotes

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How numerate were the populations of the ancient Mesoamerican empires? Could the average Inca, Maya, or Aztec calculate, and how?

17 upvotes

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Were East Germans truly miserable under the communist DDR, or do the Western accounts tend to be overly biased?

12 upvotes

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Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
Is eight-hour sleep a modern phenomenon? Did people of the past really use to sleep in two separate sessions each night?	2205
In the show 'Black Sails', the pirates have laws they quote every now and then when there are disputes. Did the pirates of the Golden Age of piracy really have some sort of shared code of rules for dealing with crime etc. among the crews?	125
How was the status of women rationalized in classic Chinese thought?	58
I've read that in the Punic/Carthagenian/Phoenician tradition, name formulae only included filiation, i.e. Abdmelqart son of Adnibal. But why is then Hannibal known as Hannibal Barca and his family known as the Barcid dynasty?	54
Where does the gesture of placing your index finger against your lips and going 'shhh' as a sign of silence or secret originate from?	54
Dante, writing during the era of Republican city-states, seems to raise Julius Caesar the tyrant above all mortals in his Inferno. Why?	48
What do we know about love and marriage in pre-colonial West-African kingdoms?	22
Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians drank beer daily as it was more nutritious and sanitary thirst quencher than water. But, I never see any mentions of beer in ancient Greek literature. Do we have any evidence that the Greeks were familiar with beer? Why didn't Greeks also adopt beer?	17
How numerate were the populations of the ancient Mesoamerican empires? Could the average Inca, Maya, or Aztec calculate, and how?	17
Were East Germans truly miserable under the communist DDR, or do the Western accounts tend to be overly biased?	12