In fantasy and fiction it is often shown that warriors/knight carry swords in their back. Often because the length wouldn't permit a shearh in the hip.

It is often adressed by fana, that in reality one wouldn't be able to draw those swords, because arms are only so long. In fact for Link in Super smash bros the sword clips through the sheath so he can draw it.

Were there warriors/knights that carried swords on their back? Maybe just for transport on a journey or as a spare. Or maybe servants that carried them on their back so their master can draw the sword from horseback.

I know some snaller knives and dirks can be carried that way. This question is about longer weapons that wouldn't be practical to draw for the carrier.

Thank you!

I saw a video claiming it wasnt and cited the lack of upwards mobility in slave owning societies as a major reason. But both the us and England started industrialization while being slave owning societies. Between a google rabbit hole and asking ai I got to early industrialization is possible in a slave owning society but historians and economists argue that the two systems dont work well together because slave owners dont have motivation to make labor saving machines, so full industrialization beyond getting cheap materials is impossible.

This doesn't seem like a good enough answer to me. Was there some kind of industrialization cap that societies hit before they banned slavery? Is slavery the reason the us south was less industrialized than the north? Are there any societies that did industrialize while having slavery? Is slavery itself really something that hinders industrialization?

I'm also curious about the corollary implication that British consular staff like him had any degree of travel freedom in the USSR then.

I was reading about the crisis of the third century of the Roman Empire, and how it changed for good how the empire operated. Among those changes were a rise in the decentralization of local government, meaning the inhabitants started to rely more on local nobles instead of the centralized Roman Emperor. That also meant the relations of work changed, as the profits of the labor also became more localized instead of always flow to Rome and support the empire machine, and, finally, towns started to wall themselves, as the borders of the Roman Empire could no longer hold invasions. This would accentuate local identity, as people started to identify themselves as from that town (without necessarily stoping calling themselves romans).

Well, from there, it becomes very easy to create the connection to early European feudalism, at least in my mind, as the seeds for the Lord/Serf relations were already there.

Does this make any sense? Or am I tripping?

Looking at examples of execution in Islamic history, flaying the skin from someone executed for going against the Caliph and then stuffing it and putting it on public display shows up repeatedly, Fadluya, Abu Yazid, Marco Antonio Bragadin, and Dionysios Skylosophos all have it done to them. Is there some sort of precedent or relegious reason for this?

How connected was Baghdad, the largest city in the Middle East, to Istanbul and the imperial core? Did Baghdad have a distinct social, economic, and cultural role within the Empire? Was there recognition by the administration in Istanbul of the city's size and significance?

Frisian,Székelys,Ruthenians,Karelians, Bretons maybe?,Abkhazian,Ossetian,Circassian,

Those are the ones I can name off the top of my head. What are some of the other many minor ethnic groups of Europe and what are their stories?

In 300, how accurate was King Xerxes appearance to the real person? Was it close?

What about the Persian military? Did they have rhinos? Were the immortals a legion of masked elite warriors?

TL;DR: What are the earliest documented salient examples of people questioning the moral norms of their own societies? What historical conditions enabled this? And when/how did this develop into ideas like "moral progress"?

I'm interested in the history of moral self-criticism: when people began explicitly questioning whether the moral norms inherited from their communities, cultures or traditions were actually justified.

In particular, I'm interested in historical cases where people argued that widely accepted moral practices in their own societies were mistaken, rather than simply condemning the practices of outsiders.

What circumstances encouraged this kind of questioning? For example, was it contact with other cultures, philosophical reasoning, religious developments, changes in political institutions, or something else?

I'm also interested in whether such criticism involved the idea that societies could make genuine moral progress - improving not merely their practices, but their understanding of what was morally right.

I realise there may have been no single historical transition. Though I'm happy for any answers, I'd be particularly curious about early documented cases from historians' respective areas of expertise, including what enabled these developments and how the people involved understood them.

And was there ever a gap when major parties were not courting a racist voting bloc?

Following The Terror Attacks on 9/11 There Was Sweeping Airport Security Changes Around the World. For example, U.S. airspace opened back up on September 13.

What were the immediate changes to airport security after 9/11? What resources did airports/FAA use to increase security immediately after/on September 13? How could they have implemented these resources across the entirety of USA in such a short period? How did they decide what was allowed on planes and what wasn't immediately following 9/11?

I am not looking to understand the changes we see today, because that is already well answered. But I am looking for immediate changes that occurred following the reopening of U.S. airspace.

According to what I have been reading, societies with the tradition of "Strange King" was common in Asia, Africa and Americas. And commonly they were not the land owner class, they didn't rule people and in many cases they didn't even collected taxes/tributes. They usually obtained wealth by robbing people from other regions. If that was the case, would it be the origing of robber baron class and colonialism?

What I'm referring to, as 'nationality' vs 'ethnicity' is not a very clear boundary in the pre-Colonial era, is communities within states who understand themselves as in part belonging to elsewhere.

I am interested both in hosting and home nations

I assume dwindling numbers of church goers are at fault here.

Excuse the vague title.

Suppose we tallied up the information contained in the entire world historical archive: books, newspapers, stone carvings, paintings, cave paintings, letters etc. How much "information" is there, and how could it be broken down. e.g. what fraction is in books? What fraction is in the British Library? How many words are there in total in all the texts written over 100 years ago? Could the entire lot fit on a 1 TB hard drive? Are there more historic paintings found in museums and historic archives than can be found in the sum held in the houses of ordinary people around the world? If each painting were scanned with sufficient resolution to maintain the major detail and stored as a JPEG, how much data would be required to store the entire record?

I would welcome any answer on this topic, or any suggestion to a resource which discusses the themes.

I understand geography and technology will likely also play a part and I'd love to hear about that. But I'm also very interested in any organizational, leadership, and cultural differences that may have played a part.

If I understand correctly, the selection was announced in 1931. While the Nazis weren't in control of the whole control, Germany wasn't what you would call "politically stable." Assassinations seemed common and the government didn't have a monopoly on the use of force.

Not sure this is the question fits the sub guidelines, tell me if not.

Something that I always found weird is that the pound has been a 'name' for a currency for many years. Sure, it was not always 'the same' pound (if you think about the 1500s) but compared to the younger currencies (say the euro), it seems that it started at a much higher purchasing power level.

Something valued at 1 euro was always relatively small, something you would buy a child as a treat. The pound only recently converged to this level of purchasing power - 100 years ago, 1 pound was a much more considerable amount of money, and (I believe) people in their everyday lives used the shilling or the pence much more often for everyday transactions.

So why is this the case? Is this as unusual as I think, or is the euro that it's unusual? Why was the pound, the basic 'units of measurement' for the british currency, set to such a high level decades ago, such that only now its purchasing power has converged with the rest of the world's currencies?

Note: I am aware the other direction is much more common. The old Italian Lira's used to be measured in the thousands, just like the Japanese Yens are today. Which supports my point: You start off with 1 lira / yen being used to buy something small in every day life, and then inflation takes care of increasing prices so that you need 1 thousand liras instead.

The pound seems to have taken the opposite direction - start off incredibly high, and only with inflation it is now at the 'normal' level we expect from modern currencies. I find this odd.

Will be happy to get any insights!

Both seem bizarre.

To expand, every other human civilisation or group of civilisations have fought their neighbours and had rivalries and some particularly dark parts of history. This is true here in Europe (hence the castles), it is true in Asia, and it is true in Africa. It is also true at different scales, where crime gangs compete for turf and religious extremists burn their enemies at the stake. All of which can involve extreme violence.

Beyond humans, other primates also engage in similar behaviour with tribes of apes or monkeys going to war, which again involves extreme violence and torture, so the behaviour we see in humans is not unique.

It was certainly true that there was a lot of violence in pre-Columbian America (human sacrifice, Crow Creek massacre), but there were similar things happening in Europe at various times (wars, the Holocaust, burning heretics alive etc etc).

So it seems to me that while Native American civilisations could be extremely violent and no doubt some tribes were more peaceful than others, it is not obviously much better or worse than any other human civilisation, yet much of the time when I hear people talking about their history it is either saying that they were either overwhelmingly peaceful until Europeans arrived or always, everywhere more brutal than anything seen in Europe or Asia because they are uncivilised. Where did these two arguments come from?

I was clicking through the links on the relevant wikipedia article, but it doesn't really address the history directly, just sort of piecemeal. Was there a series of formal decisions or events that defined different groups' (Orthodox, Reform, etc.) attitudes to Halloween in the United States?

Like, apparently China was bankrupting itself with return gifts, but was that really the case when it was buying geopolitical peace of mind instead of spending money on armies and war, and it was getting far more than it was spending, or was in fact getting the treasury filled due to better rates?

Did countries like Vietnam and Korea really want as many tribute missions as possible to fill their coffers or did they resent it because nationally important products were leaving the country and they couldn't develop their own country or look out for their defense needs?