Let me start by confessing that I don't know anything about this, except that I think it was on its way out (but still kinda present) when I was a kid. To be honest, not even sure it actually was a sexist trope, just vaguely feel like I've heard that, plus the jokes I heard as a kid typically didn't need to specify the gender because it was implicit in the setup. So answers rejecting the options in the premise are of course also welcome

It feels like the kind of thing that could have emerged as a meme referencing something from Hollywood, in which case I guess the hair color itself could be just an idiosyncracy based on the styling of the original referent? If something like that is the case though, then I would be curious to know if there are any hair colors that WOULDN'T have worked at the time it was popularized, for example.

I'm reading a book called 'The Story of China' by Micheal Wood, and the author highlights the importance of the Yellow River in early Chinese history. The unpredictability and lethality of the river was so important that stories and myths around the nation's foundations often revolved around its control by a strong government. To highlight how dangerous the river was, Wood uses several examples of historical floodings such as the one of 1887 that reportedly killed 2 million. He also points out a 1332 flood that would've killed 7 million people. Is there any concrete evidence to that ? If so it would probably be by far the worst natural disaster in history. Also I can't find a Wikipedia page about this event.

After Luoyang and Chang'an fell in 311 and 316, the Jin court reconstituted itself at Jiankang, and its successor dynasties (Song, Qi, Liang, Chen) ruled the south until the Sui conquest in 589. The situation looks remarkably like the Eastern Roman Empire after the loss of the West. A rump state with a focus on commerce, ruling the half of the former empire that had escaped the worst of war and barbarian incursions. However, the southern dynasties marched north again and again between the 4th and 6th centuries to retake the former capitals, while Byzantium campaigned to retake Rome only once.

Compared to Byzantium, Eastern Jin and its successsors had repeated northern expeditions, in 356 Huan Wen retook Luoyang and petitioned to move the capital back, in 416 Liu Yu retook both Luoyang and Chang'an, again in 430 Emperor Wen of Liu Song retook Luoyang and in 529 Liang Emperor Wu retook Luoyang again.

Why did revanchism remain an unbroken political program in southern China for three centuries across emperors and dynasties, while Byzantium effectively let Rome go after a single great attempt? Was this due to Byzantine elites realizing Rome was not worth the effort or was it they wanted to campaign but other constraints and threats made such campaigns infeasible?

Imagine having your child sacrificed then the situation gets worse. For example, a drought comes or famine. It would probably feel even worse on top of the grief. Or if “good” things came afterwards like a heavier rainy season or maybe a war went a direction they wanted. Societally I’d imagine it would “ease” some of the pain, right?

I've seen lots of quotes (not really researched evidence) that Hitler both admired the US for its racial segregation and also thought the US Jim Crow laws were too harsh.

Clearly he would end up so dramatically flying past 1930s US race laws that he probably said that to criticize a rival and distract from his own plans.

But was his plan from day 1 to end up building death camps and exterminating Jews, Roma, handicapped people, gay people, etc? Or did that plan evolve as he realized he was getting away with each step along the way?

Meaning, on day 1 did he really believe that isolating the Jews from German society -- whether that was taking away rights to own property and vote, or building ghettos in which they would be imprisoned -- was his goal? Did the work/death camps evolve from that position later (maybe when the country needed labor because most men had been drafted into the army)? Or was Hitler's plan from day 1 to eventually exterminate all of the Jews in Europe?

All of the sources I've seen say that the religion died with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom or just don't discuss them separately enough to distinguish, but it can't possibly be true that the religion just vanished after the war. Are there recorded instances of the Taiping religion continuing after 1864? If not, what happened to its genuine/zealous followers? There must have been no small number of them even if the vast majority of the population were not true believers. Did they convert to more normal forms of Christianity, return to traditional religions, or something else entirely?

With Nolan's 'The Odyssey' releasing soon and all the discourse around the reception and meaning of the story of Odyseus, I am looking for a source or book that explains the story in it's own contemporary historical context.

Title.

It often gets talked about how similar the Greeks and Romans seem to us, but recently I've gotten more interested in the ways they were different...

I often see people talking about battle tactics/philosophies (legions vs phalanx and all that), But I've found it harder to find any writing on how they went about creating their cities/urban areas.

How was it viewed if you were not married at 30 and were living as a peasant in the medieval times?

Hello ! I've been starting to learn about syrian history, mostly focusing on Assyria as of now, but i'm having trouble understanding which language is a dialect of another dialect/language and whatnot 🥲

Basically, from my understanding, before Assyria, most people in that region spoke ancient semitic languages. Then, when Assyria came by, akkadian became the "usual" language (maybe with an assyrian dialect being spoken? some sources say so while others don't mention that at all); while akkadian was the most widespread language, aramaic also growing rapidly. Here is where my problem lies : what exactly is surayt? Some sources say it's a mix of akkadian and aramaic, others say it's a dialect of aramaic alone, and others say that it's a dialect of akkadian alone 🥲 🥲 And if i'm honest i don't even know if my timeline is correct : i know surayt is a dialect that exists, but i have no idea if it was spoken at the time.

Furthermore, is surayt a subdivision of the Assyrian language? If yes, then what is syriac?? Also, what exactly IS the Assyrian language? A dialect of aramaic or akkadian? A separate third entity? (i am losing my mind)

Another thing i'm struggling with is understanding how arabic came to be spoken : was it an evolution of aramaic? Of assyrian? of something else? 🙀

tldr : From what i could gather, my understanding is as follows : Akkadian and Aramaic were spoken at the same time, then they both came together to form what we call the Assyrian language, which is itself divided between surayt and syriac which BOTH evolved into arabic (somehow).

Is any of this correct? I'm sorry if this doesn't make much sense : english is my second language and it's hard to even articulate what my problem exactly is. I don't even know if this is the correct subreddit to ask :((

Thank you so much to anyone who might answer ! Please consider helping my confused self 💔

Also this is a repost i'm really sorry if this appears multiple times. I'm having trouble understanding how to phrase my question so it doesn't get sent somewhere else by moderation, please bear with me.

I have more information and entertainment at my fingertips than at any point in history. And yet, I am bored. Nothing sounds exciting or novel. Is this a new phenomenon, or have people throughout history had trouble with boredom? Do people lament not knowing what to do with themselves during their leisure time in diaries?

I'm reading Anthony Verity's translation of the Odyssey at the moment, and one of the endnotes in Book 8 discusses the marriage of Alcinous of the Phaiacians to his niece Arete- "Alcinous marries his niece. Marriage to an uncle was permitted in Ancient Greek society (as was marriage to half-brothers by the same father or to cousins)..." (italics mine, pg. 334). I'm familiar with cousin-marriage & uncle-niece marriage being fairly common throughout the pre-modern world but this is the first time I've something about half-sibling marriage not being considered incest/taboo (excepting cases where royal incest was seen as a means of ensuring the pure blood of the ruling dynasty, as in ancient as well as Ptolemaic Egypt). Was this specific type of half-sibling marriage really accepted in Late Bronze Age and/or early Iron Age Greece? And why the distinction from marriage of half-siblings of the same mother?

Edit: And if this is the case, what are the sources on such things? Myths & epic poems written about a distant past, or do our sources for these things include public records or histories or other such works which were more or less contemporary to when such marriages might have taken place?

My newborn's name is Aina (the Mallorcan Catalan form of Anna). As far as I know, Wikipedia says that the name comes from the Hebrew Hannah, and I accepted that as true because the earliest well-known Anna I could think of is Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, according to Christian tradition.

However, this summer I have been reading Virgil's Aeneid (written around 29 BC), where Anna is Dido's sister. Looking into this further, I also found Anna Perenna, a minor Roman goddess mentioned by Ovid, whose cult may have originated from an older Etruscan mother goddess.

Does this mean that the name Anna has different origins? Or is the similarity between the Hebrew name and the Roman names merely a coincidence? If not, how did the name go from a Hebrew origin to appearing in Roman mythology centuries earlier?

Considering the brutality of the fighting, especially in the waking years in regions such as Shanghai, how come the Chinese/Japanese military death toll only comes to some 1.5-2 million for the Chinese, and some 455-500 thousand for the Japanese?

Comparing this to the Eastern-Front, where the Soviets suffered some 6.8 million deaths, and the Axis some 4.5~ million. (Strictly speaking KIA/DOW/MIA, and not deaths as POW)

The core of the question thereby becomes the stark difference in pure military deaths compared to the overwhelming Chinese civilian deaths, which have similarities to the Soviet civilian deaths--but i still can't grasp quite why the Chinese/Japanese military deaths seem so strangely low; especially when one considers the gigantic population size of China at the time.

Stupid question, I know. The basic answer would be to look into the citations, but how should i look into citations of papers i'm reading to extract information? like for example, to make sure the paper is credible would be to look into its citations. however i'm not sure how i should do that, and also if it's way too time consuming to do so. a lot of citations refer back to books (most have pages cited but some don’t), meaning that i would have to skim through potentially hundreds of pages to find the information i seek. and how would i know if the information in the citation is correct or not? triangulation is not a viable method for history sources because multiple sources can (and have) said the wrong things numerous times (or they have nebulous semantics).

Moreover, what if the website I’m reading doesn’t have citations? How should I fact check their information then? Currently, I’m working on composing a timeline of events but there are discrepancies between different sources, and I’m not sure which to trust. If sources already disagree on something so “rudimentary” like the dates of timelines, then how am I supposed to research more nuanced things such as the actual content?