How often in Roman works are dates actually mentioned? There certainly are some Greek and Roman ones which give some comparative context, but there are others which are quite vague. We can only date them today because of the other works, or archaeological evidence, which do specify (or we do our best to guess, there's several major events which can't even pinpoint to a year, or even decade). And then there's some which do specify, and often, like Diodorus Sic., that we can look at now and say "well, actually, this dating is really off, these calendars don't sync up."

I find years and dating useful for organising things when first gaining an understanding, but that's because it was the system I grew up learning with. I think that's the point, it's the system I'm familiar with, versus a system they're familiar with, and how it's important to not assume one is superior. Even Romans would have found our modern dating methods odd.

If: you're going to get angry without actually reading the article

Or: if you're going to get angry over different approaches to history

Then: history is the wrong hobby for you. There's a lot of reading, and there's a lot of methodologies and approaches.

Please continue discussion at our previous thread on this, thanks: https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/11fmvx6/new_analysis_of_356_ancient_huntergatherer/

For starters, you need to read Thucydides and Herodotus, definitely all of Thucydides (followed by the start of Xenophon's Hellenica which picks up literally continuing where Thucydides stopped). Herodotus is worth reading the whole thing, but at minimum 1.70 onward from book 1, skip book 2, read book 3, and read Book 5 onward. Any good source is going to discuss these events with the assumption that you've already read Thucydides and Herodotus.

On the Peloponnesian War, Donald Kagan's works are a bit dated, but will be easy enough to get through. For the Persian Wars, give Philip Souza's work a try, The Greek and Persian Wars, 499-386 B.C

For an overview, Hans van Wees' Greek Warfare is a book I will forever recommend. It's something I still will thumb through when working on my own stuff, but will also have students read it because it's written in a style that's really easy to follow even if you don't have a lot of experience or knowledge on the topic.

That will hold you over for awhile, after that try and figure out which bits you want to focus in on and we can recommend some more specific things.

How would you translate this passage without gender?

>ὣς εἰποῦσ’ ὑπὸ ποσσὶν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα . . . βῆ δὲ κατ’ Οὐλύμποιο καρήνων ἀΐξασα, στῆ δ’ Ἰθάκης ἐνὶ δήμωι ἐπὶ προθύροις Ὀδυσῆος, οὐδοῦ ἔπ’ αὐλείου, παλάμηι δ’ ἔχε χάλκεον ἔγχος, εἰδομένη ξείνωι, Ταφίων ἡγήτορι Μέντηι. . . . τὴν δὲ πολὺ πρῶτος ἴδε Τηλέμαχος θεοειδής ...

Insert what beliefs? This is purely a reflection of the actual text that the Greeks and Romans used, and how they wrote. Have her read the article and see what her thoughts are.

That's not really a good example: what gender is κύκνος, ταῦρος, and Ζεύς?

Edit: anyone downvoting want to tell me? Bueller?

Edit 2: Gonna have to explain this. Yes, yes it does have a gender. Everything has a gender in Ancient Greek. The swan, the bull, the Zeus, purple, Greece itself, sandals; it all has gender, and it's all important and vital to constructing a sentence in the language. This is stuff that you'll learn at the very beginning of Greek studies. It doesn't change because those are all three already masculine, the issue occurs when things that aren't already masculine or already feminine mix with those that are, as detailed well in the article.

If that's not understood you might have trouble understanding the article, but it's silly to call it stupid if you don't understand the argument.

This is a problem with the priorities of ancient historians, there aren't a lot of texts dealing with anyone other than men in historical texts, and personal traits are almost never mentioned outside of attacks in court speeches or debates, which are not always the most reliable.

But things like plays often mocked characters, sometimes outright, sometimes a bit more subtitle, and characters outside the Great Men Theory scope would appear in them as well. Therefore, it's necessary to look at cases of fiction to get a better sense of how these things were treated in antiquity.

We do get some letters, outside of my scope though, but I know there's some great Byzantine, and some Egyptian stuff, that colleagues have worked on.

Regarding historic texts, the only thing that comes to mind is the case of Teuta in Polybius who still is referred to with the masculine title of Basileus (βασιλεύς) . I don't know if anyone outside of mythology was referred to as Basileia while being the leader of a place before Teuta, but it did become common later, but Polybius uses the term while still making it very clear that she's a woman, and modern translators typically go for "Queen Teuta" when translating this, giving it a feminine spin that isn't actually present in the text. It's something we all have to grapple with when doing translations, how much should we stick to the original text, how much should we add in for our modern understandings of gender both in the literal and grammatical sense, and so on.

Just below the "Subscribe" button is a "Continue Reading" button, kinda hidden but it should allow you to read it without creating an account.

Radical Sisters by Anne Valk might be worthwhile, it's a bit late in the timeframe you presented, but, it presents a very interesting look at the divide and cooperation between feminist groups fighting for equality and black women wanting racial equality as well and how different groups approached this (e.g is it worth fighting for feminism when I can't even be black yet?)

Probably won't give you the answer you're looking for for your activism, but will provide some of the background on how groups wanting similar goals may group them differently in levels of importance. Brian Behnken's Fighting their own battles might be worthwhile too.

This isn't 4chan. Stop with the lazy edgelord trolling

it can be tough, but the first place to start would be in the works of the most recent studies on the topic published for an academic audience. Look for ones that are published by University of _____ Press, and the like. Usually there will be a historiography in the introduction or first chapter. This isn't a universal rule, but it's the quickest way.

Now if you are studying to be a historian, building your own is good practice and a skill you'll need to get down before you get to the postgraduate level. Again, you'd want to start with the most recent academic works published by university presses and the like. Things that are peer-reviewed, and written for an academic audience. See who they keep mentioning, who they keep citing, and note whether it's in agreement, or disagreement. Then trace that back, who are those people citing, who are they discussing, and again their thoughts. What new evidence or approaches are they bringing to the table? Eventually it will become evident who the big dogs are, the most impactful works, study those ones well. Build an annotated bibliography to help keep things sorted (and to remind you of what you've already read and the gist of it) and then once you have that solid foundation it's about then approaching it from the start and showing how the field grew, and changed, over time and what's now missing and how your own research will fit into that gap.

There's a bunch of mailing lists, but it's going to be dependent on what area you're looking for. And of course there's always journals, and conferences too.

It's not lost, it was an allegory. Plato didn't hold knowledge of a lost civilisation that no one else did, but he did create stories to make people think and to prove his point. It would be like if I told you that there was a great land of Reddites where the civilians all paid for products with not money but their words, and the best words gained the best money, so people began to copy each others words word-for-word to try and make the same amount of money they all got, but this just created a world where no one knew how to make an original argument anymore and it descended into madness and fell into itself. In fact, I stole that example from someone else.

But it's a good description. People in antiquity were made fun of for thinking it was a real place. It was only in the last couple hundred or so years that people really started to miss the context of the story and begin to think it was real. Just like if my post about the land of Reddites was found 1000 years later away from all the other context I provided people might think that I was describing a real place. But most people who argue that Atlantis is real can't read Ancient Greek, aren't familiar with Plato, and haven't actually studied the topic well. There's a reason for that.

Are you thinking of Gorgias? We don't have that text anymore, just people discussing it, and there's some debate on whether it was something he believed or if it was just a mind exercise.

You could be thinking of "the only thing I know is that I know nothing" which is commonly believed to have been said by Socrates, but it's really not the case (though a bit complicated) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing

You might have luck at r/askphilosophy/ as well

Well there are a couple of different ways you can have this transfer of power (and this is by no means an exhaustive list).

You can have a complete territorial wipeout/genocide, population exchange, what have you where you're bringing in your own people and the old people are gone from the land. In such a case, you're really only bringing over the problems you already had, but the support as well.

You might chose to enslave the locals, which again, helps your problem of trying to win them over, but you do then risk a revolt.

You could try to intermarry, combine local and introduced populations.

Or, you can simply keep existing power structures in place with a new figurehead at the top. Instead of fighting for Emperor so and so, you now fight for me, when I call for you, you're marching for me. I might make you give up a certain amount of your army, or take some of your sons hostage where they will live in luxury in my home city just so you know there will be strong consequences if you try anything, but overall you get to keep the same local politicians, the same local bankers, businessmen, and the guy who ran the city previously now just listens to me, or maybe another big and respected member of the population who everyone already likes. You maintain your culture, your language, your art, and so forth.

Under the latter system, the common person probably wouldn't notice much of a change, but the more the conquering person interferes, the more effect it will have on you -- but also the greater chance you have of revolt, unless you just kill everyone. But if you kill everyone, you lose people to work the land, businesses that already thrived and could make money for you, specialised military units, and so on and so forth.

Might be a bit later than you're thinking, but The Name of War by Jill Lepore is a must read for historians.

On the one hand, absolutely, there's really no point in doing this if it's just this.

On the other, athletes don't deserve punishment or exclusion from an event like the Olympics, many of which this will be their only shot at ever competing in, just because their leader is a dick.

It would be nice to make some sort of demand that tv broadcasting affiliates never show the combined medal tally for the unaffiliated athletes though. Even though it means absolutely nothing in reality, these sorts of things do matter for propaganda purposes and "unaffiliated Russian athletes" or "Russia" not showing up at all on these leaderboards will sting a bit for Russian politicians, even if they pretend it doesn't.

By area? Population? and how do you define conquered?

There's been a lot of great cities that have been sacked, raided, or completely taken over by a new government, but in many cases the population had greatly dwindled by that time (e.g. Rome in its later years, Constantinople).

Then you have to think about effect and if you're including that. The Fall of Constantinople had a huge effect, as did the conquering of Tenochtitlán, which while not the biggest city to ever exist, did hold a lot of importance to the region and the resistance, and its fall reverberated quite widely.

Not really worried. Even if/when AI Bots start writing history books they still will have to be reviewed. Already today we have humans writing Nazi apologetics and it hasn't changed the scholarly view of Nazism. I do particularly love (odd word choice but I can't think of a better one) the books from the late 40s that have apologies in them that the research was delayed due to the Nazis, imprisonment, being forbidden from working because they were Jewish, fighting a war, etc. it's so casual and yet so impactful.

Our main job as historians is to evaluate evidence, we look at at the sources and don't just repeat what they say but examine it. In my work I go down to the very words they use. I've written ~50 pages on ~50 word passages before. So far what we've seen with AI bots (and spotting them quickly) is some very odd word choice.

So as long as we continue to have historians, and as long as we continue to examine these works -- no matter when, where, by who or what they written, then the field really isn't in danger.

Is there a threat to the general public? Sure. But again, no more than the already available things out there, and the fringe and extremists groups pushing it.

You've ended up in r/History, our purpose is to discuss past events about things that already happened. Which is why there's an article about things from the past discussed here.

We feel that this is an important discussion to be had in regards to history and archaeology.

However, this is not the place to discuss politics, this is not the place to discuss climate change denial, and so forth, and so on. There are a million different places on Reddit to discuss those things, so please keep your comments on topic with regard to the Subreddit's overall purpose.

Someone's going to inevitably mention silphium and it going extinct because of people using it as contraceptive, which is a misunderstood concept, but it does have some basis in reality in that a lot of herbs and such were used in a variety of way to help with contraceptive. Some of these things were taken orally, with the belief that it might help (silphium was mainly used as an herb for food, so if it did have these properties there would be a lot of missing babies throughout the Mediterranean). Others would be made into a paste and put inside the woman to essentially collect the sperm within that paste, or it could be dried and placed inside to have the same effect but a bit less messy -- well at least I'd imagine so.

You also had methods we wouldn't recommend in the modern day, when far safer options exist, but in antiquity are not bad, like the pull-out method. Using this method greatly reduces the risk (though still not completely, and you're stuck with hoping the person does this properly).

Well we have this Saturday Questions thread

and a Wednesday Bookclub/Sources thread where people can talk about the books they've been reading

We're definitely wanting to do more for the community, but we do need things to be a bit on topic and about history. If you can think of a way we could do a Mindless Monday or whatever that still has a bit of a history theme I'd be more than happy to talk it over with the other mods and see if we can trial something.

The short version:

The area of Palestine and the areas around it has been occupied, and called home, by many different groups over thousands of years.

Jewish people lived in the region in antiquity, likely having split from an indigenous population (rather than anything like presented in Exodus). However, many groups (including Rome) eventually conquered this region, and overtime there were several Jewish diasporas where Jewish people migrated out of the region.

The origins of the Palestinian people is also a bit complex, with some identifying directly with the indigenous people as well.

Of course some Jewish people continued to live in the region continuously, but a huge factor was the persecution that Jewish people faced in Europe and other areas that they migrated to. In 1492, the Jewish people were forced to leave the Iberian peninsula (the Alhambra Decree). The Ottoman Empire, having flourished in the time in between, offered a home to these fleeing Jewish peoples and they settled in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine.

While we don't want to paint things as perfect relationship between Jewish and Ottoman peoples, there wasn't constant hatred and fighting either. There were some elements of class, which gave benefits but also took away equal opportunities. Such as the rights for more secular courts, but not being allowed the same titles, roles, etc. that Muslims could gain. But there were periods and examples of unity (Michelle Campos' Ottoman Brothers is a great read on this tension).

The Ottoman Empire was badly weakened by a drought which happened to coincide with the First World War, which is some really poor timing. This allowed for groups within the Empire that wanted autonomy to start making moves, which fractured things further (e.g. The Turks). After the War, the Allies took it upon themselves to start policing the region and creating new nations. Based on popular beliefs at the time, and understanding the troubles which led to WWI, they began to separate people into their own groups figuring it would help. One of these areas was Mandatory Palestine.

In M.P the French and the British controlled how things were run, and the British Prime Minister created the Balfour Declaration which supported Zionists which believed that they deserved to reverse the diasporas and return and have their homeland in the region like they had in antiquity. So he promised them that this could be done as part of M.P. Of course, this angered some other groups that the British had screwed over, including the Turks, who felt there was a sense of favourtism and too much Western influence when this was about self-determination and autonomy.

They tried a bunch of different proposals, some taken with actual steps, some just ideas on paper: including only Jewish people zones, and only Arab people zones (population exchanges were an unfortunately popular idea at this time as well). The more and more that the western powers tried to get involve, the more tensions rised. And as one side would grow more extreme, the other would do so in response. By the 1940s things were incredibly heated, and WWII meant there was only so much attention that could be placed here, but also was heightened by the antisemitism which was at the centre stage of Nazism which made Jewish peoples even stronger in their demand for a home of their own under their own control. War would break out in M.P, and the British firmly decided they didn't want to deal with any of this that they helped create, and slowly withdrew.

M.P. ended in 1948 and as soon as it did a group of Arab states declared war and Israel declared in dependence. A full scale war was on. Israel would win this war, and help to cement a fear of their neighbours wanting their destruction, and help cement a fear of Israel trying to take over and conquer the arab people in the region. These tensions have gone in waves and valleys, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Israel

So both continue fighting each other, now in less large scale wars but in smaller fights, and instead of looking for ways to make peace and equal concessions, there's just more finger pointing, and thus continued tensions.

Of course, like I said ,this is the short version and it's almost 5k words. It's a very complicated thing, and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface.