/u/pakled_guy's posts

Title	Upvotes	Subreddit
If Alexander the Great slept with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow, as according to legend, what would be the physical form of his copy - one compact scroll, a pile of scrolls, something else entirely?	2498	AskHistorians
I've read that the early agricultural societies were considerably worse off hunter-gatherer ones, doing more strenuous work in worse conditions and ending up malnourished and in worse health. If that's true, how on Earth did it become the dominant mode?	80	AskHistorians
Fibonacci is kind of a big deal, certainly a bigger deal than his dad. Why is his name remembered as a contraction of Filius Bonacci - son of Bonacci - rather than his own name of Leonardo?	52	AskHistorians
Why are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey the only surviving parts of the Epic Cycle? Were they much more prominent than the others? Were they the larger and richer works?	51	AskHistorians
How much of a feat of seamanship was the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus? If it hadn't been him, would it have been someone like him a year or 3 later?	43	AskHistorians
I learned of a 4th Century BCE Greek sailor, Pytheas, who sailed past Britain and found a land he called Thule where oceans “congealed” and days were only a few hours long. Where can I learn about his ship /s and crew, what supplies were like, and how something like this would be funded?	32	AskHistorians
The Cyrus Cylinder is an Achaemenid "Cyrus is Awesome" declaration from 2600 years ago. It was a clay cylinder about 9 inches long and almost 4 inches around the middle and closer to 3 at each end. How would this have been displayed or handled at the time?	30	AskHistorians
According to mythology, the Chinese culture hero Suiren ("Flint Man") introduced humans to firemaking and cooking. Why is his name "Flint Man" when the instrument he is traditionally considered to use was a wooden fire drill?	13	AskHistorians
Among Sumerian clay tablet records found in close proximity, have stylometrics been employed to discern the hand of specific scribes or maybe how many were active at a time?	8	AskHistorians
Seventeenth-century instrument maker Ralph Greatorex made some "lamp-glasses" that impressed early microscopist Robert Hook. What were lamp-glasses and how did they work?	6	AskHistorians

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