> You do not have the knowledge to decide what is a fringe hypothesis and what is a sound claim when ancient texts are involved.

Seeing as I am an actual academic working at an actual university in the field of antiquity, it actually seems like I do.

Well, you can see if you can find one at /r/AskHistorians

This is not the place to test out fringe hypotheses and conspiracy theories.

>They contain textual evidence proving the existence of the practice of operating human breeding grounds.

Our rules forbid fringe hypotheses.

If you want to play academic you need to actually follow the system and publish in a peer-reviewed journal. Because otherwise you're just blogging nonsense.

Your own papers are not "published articles"

Academia has peer-reviewed journals, if you have evidence publish in them.

So in general when starting off an assignment that you know nothing about, start first by looking at what those who do know have said. Go to your school library, or city library, or even a local university library if you're not yet at university, and search to see what's available -- feel comfortable asking one of the librarians for help if you don't know how to do that.

You can also use things like Wikipedia, many pages on there have the bibliography broken down into primary and secondary sources.

But it is good to find something written recently, it will give you the best insight into the current field, what academics are saying about it. You want it to be a book by an academic too. Things like "Published by University of X Press" are a good sign, but when in doubt you can google the publisher and the author and see if they're legit or not.

Within that they'll either discuss primary evidence directly "in a letter written to X, Y wrote that.." that letter is a piece of primary evidence. See if you can find it and study it directly, or you can use that historians translation -- just make sure you credit them. A lot of stuff will be translated already in an area like that, but yes it can be an issue for other fields. So if you do plan on sticking around this topic, you're going to want to start learning the necessary languages.

You can also just google and see what primary sources are mentioned by others online. Not good things to cite, but can lead you towards something helpful.

Herodotus' main goal was to collect knowledge through inquiry (ἱστορία, historia) . He didn't always have the means to really examine it, though he would sometimes demonstrate a preference when given more than one option. Some of this would come from works written by others before him, local knowledge (e.g. "the people of this specific place say..."), common knowledge (e.g. "the Greeks say..."), speaking with other people he considered to be holders of knowledge (e.g. priestly class), and access to people who either lived during/through events or knew those who did. There's not always a clear indication of why he chose to discuss certain things and why he leaves some things out (sometimes painfully so), but sometimes those alternatives survive through other sources and he does occassionally note that something is already known in an essentially "so why would I bother to tell you?" sort of way.

While it has become less popular to do so, there were attempts in modern history (and some in antiquity) to dismiss what he did because of a lack of critical evaluation, but considering what was available to him, when he wrote it, and the scope of the writing it's a monumental and greatly important work.

Anecdotally, but: Aotearoa is used more commonly than "New Zealand" when talking to people in the country that live here, generally. It's fairly common in NZ English to use te Reo Maori words in place of English ones, and it's growing more and more popular to use Aotearoa in this sense.

No one will get at you for using "New Zealand" though. I think even the people who are pro "Aotearoa" mainly would like the country to be called "Aotearoa - New Zealand"

Surprised to not pick that up myself. Was expecting æblet but then told myself æ wouldn't be used in Swedish and never continued the thought to what should be used. But I guess I assumed the authors would have already done that work.

Edit: Would the umlaut have been used in the 17th century? Vowel shift perhaps?

There are replicas designs based off of real finds that you can buy online fairly easily.

Not my area so I'm going based on a quick search and am happy to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable in the field, but looking at this article it says >"Peter Pentz forklarer, at der kendes omtrent 1000 af de små torshammere fra vikingetiden

rough and quick translation:

>Peter Pentz explains that there are around 1000 known examples of the small (amulet) Thor's hammers from the Viking Ages.

And while I imagine he was pulling a number from estimation rather than something precise, that does seem fairly small for a time period with such association with this, and if that number is correct it is a pretty awesome find to build the collection

If anyone knows a good website that turns multiple page articles into one page we'll link to it here.

>The Latin alphabet was developed from the Etruscan alphabet at some time before 600 BCE, it can be traced through Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician scripts to the North Semitic alphabet used in Syria and Palestine about 1100 BCE

That's well written, too well written.

> Developed from the Etruscan alphabet at some time before 600 BC, it can be traced through Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician scripts to the North Semitic alphabet used in the Middle East about 1100 BC.

http://kurdishacademy.org/?p=2570

If you're going to start off your argument with plagiarism it doesn't really give me much confidence for the rest of the thing.

And here's the rest https://www.wondriumdaily.com/echoes-of-rome-roman-influences-in-everyday-modern-lives/

>One of the most overt ways in which Rome has shaped the modern world is in the area of politics and government. The United States was founded and designed as a deliberate imitation of the Roman Republic. This is why it possesses such features and vocabulary such as a senate, three branches of government, a system of checks and balances, and vetoes, all of which were components of the Roman Republic.

>The emphasis on citizenship and the participatory role of citizens are based on a Roman paradigm, exemplified by the legendary Roman citizen, Cincinnatus. The Founding Fathers were steeped in classical ideas, and self-consciously set out to fashion a new Rome.

>The instigators of the French Revolution were similarly inspired by an idealized notion of the Roman Republic, and both countries adopted much of their symbolism and terminology from Rome.

>In general, Roman history and the Latin language have given rise to a surprising number of terms for absolute rulers, including ‘prince’ from princeps; ‘duke’ from dux; ‘Tsar’ and ‘Kaiser’ from Caesar; and, of course, the word “dictator” itself.

None of this is your own thoughts.

>I can go on and on, but its to much for this subreddit.

But you can't. You've just copied and pasted what others have said and have misconstrued their arguments to try and fit yours.

> you're writing the question using the Latin alphabet

Rome didn't invent the Latin alphabet.

> in a language that is heavily influenced by Latin

Calling English "heavily influenced by Latin is a very big stretch.

>if you speak Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, or Portugese, you are speaking a language directly related to Latin.

All languages are related to others, this doesn't really tell us much.

>which spread Christianity

But did not create Christianity. Wouldn't this go against your own argument? Their own gods were supplanted by a foreign one.

>If you are Jewish and not living in Israel, it is because the Romans expelled the Jews from Judea, and your ancestors were forced to move elsewhere.

That's a pretty huge stretch, but which empires didn't cause populations to move?

>Geopolitically, a lot of the crimes committed against the Jews over the millennia can be traced to the expulsion of the Jews.

You're really going to have to provide a citation on that one.

>You could argue that the conflict in the Middle East is due to the area being under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire, and then the Ottoman Empire (it's successor empire), for two thousand years

You really couldn't.

> which lead peoples of various cultures, languages, and religions it intermingle in ways that didn't happen in other places

Where are their homogenous societies still existing? Not many. And every empire included mixtures of cultures, languages, and religions intermingling. That's a defining feature, but this is the norm in modern society.

The issues come more from the attempts to divide the intermingled peoples, and trying to force population exchanges and identity borders. See in particular Campos' Ottoman Brothers and the mandate system as a whole.

>and as a result, the nation-state as a political entity has mostly failed there

The notion of Nation States is a modern one entirely, trying to tie Nationalism with Rome is once again a stretch.

>derive from the Roman legal system.

Have some basis in, perhaps, but Rome did not create a unique legal system, they also found inspiration from other places to help create theirs, this is how all systems work throughout history. Rome is not unique in this.

>Trade routes between the various countries of Europe, particularly Western Europe, were affected by Roman occupation

Again, which empires did this not occur with?

>and in many cases, created by the Romans.

Such as?

>Oh, and the whole concept of the Senate, which we use in the U.S. as one of our two houses of Congress, is based on the Roman Senate.

Outside of the name the systems don't really match up that well.

I think you have this very strong view of an idealised Rome that has left you a bit biased. And as mentioned above, that's why no historian would try and list a greatest empire ever, or anything like the sort -- there's no scientific way to come up with such an answer. It's all bias.

>if questions are only for r/askhistorians

You're literally in a thread designed for questions, so no, questions aren't only for askhistorians.

> then why is the main page always full of well questions?

It's not? (edit: went back, over the past 50 submissions allowed on the page only 5 of them are questions/discussions) There can be questions in the main page IF they follow the rules, these are much stricter than the ones allowed here, namely that they have to show prior research, an understanding of the historiography, a substantial write-up, and have a question capable of generating discussion. We require that because 99% of the time questions asked can be answered with a bit of research, and a bit of time.

Edit: I will add that sometimes we do send detailed questions to other subs because they are more likely to have the base of users that will be best to answer it. If you, for example, post here with a detailed question trying to understand a passage of ancient Greek text we'll suggest you take it to /r/AncientGreek because 99% of our users don't know any Greek and the comment thread will just be full of 300 quotes.

And unlike the movie, the Battle of Stirling Bridge did actually involve a bridge.

Up to the fall of Western Rome, so everything that happened before then is definitely ancient, including the historical events of the Bible.

Same!

Good question. I often see people saying "but that's not ancient, ancient refers to (usually the fall of Western Rome, or something like it)" which is partially true within a certain context. But the word can be used in other areas -- including histories -- in different contexts. For example, you might describe an Atari as an ancient video game system (to use a very extreme example) because in comparison to the PS5 it is. But you could not refer to an Atari videogame as an ancient game, because games themselves do go back into antiquity (note the usage there).

And while it's less common in modern scholarship, you can find works describing the ancient history of places like New Zealand, covering periods around 1300 CE because that's when we're getting the earliest human activity there. the Ancient Art sub had to try and figure out cut-off dates, and while I'm sure there's some work that could be done on it, they decided that this would depend on geographical location. https://www.reddit.com/r/ancient_art/comments/k62ml1/ancient_art_timelines_and_rules/

But with antiquity there's less wiggle room. When used on its own it usually refers to the regions around the Mediterranean up to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. You can use it in other specific examples, but you would need to be specific on where if you wanted to be understood. But it would stick out like a sore thumb if you used it to describe video games from antiquity, or claim that the Maori tribe had existed since antiquity. This even gets carried over in terms like antiquities, which have a fairly time sensitive meaning, or at least a stronger cut-off.

So while neither ancient nor antiquity are older, the term ancient has a much longer span and can be used in more contexts than antiquity. Hopefully I've made sense.

A quick reminder to our users to make sure they are familiar with our rules, especially rule 2: no current politics/soapboxing, and rule 5: keep discussions to events that happened over 20 years ago.

The article additionally mentions some recent events, but this subreddit isn't the place to discuss those. Reach us through modmail if you have any questions. - Mod Team

She had made several solo trips prior to this, which may be the reason you're mixing things up. When she went on the trip around the world she needed a navigator as there's a lot more to figure out with the larger amount of territory to cover.

So he should change his name to Dhrools?