How long did it take to make the Alhambra.Most of the construction was done over 120 years, from 1238 to 1358; but undoubtedly not continuously or at a steady pace. What was the purpose of the fountain in the Alhambra?It is traditional to have water features like pools and fountains in Islamic architecture. They help […]
I would like to know more about the Great Wall of China and why it was constructed.The Great Wall is the single greatest construction project ever carried out before this century. It runs about 4,500 miles from east to west in northern China. There had been earlier defensive walls, but the Wall became Great when […]
Answers to questions about Hinduism More about Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva Brahma is the creator god who brings into being the original “stuff” on which Shiva operates. Four or five thousand years ago he was widely worshiped, and was incorporated eventually into a supreme trinity of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu; but from the 7th century […]
Note: opinions about religion are naturally controversial. As with the comments above about Judaism, what follows is my survey of various results of modern scholarship with notes on what various more orthodox believers have believed on these issues. There is no claim here to absolute truth. Many of the answers below refer you to the […]
Who didn’t believe in gods and why? In one god or many gods; the reasons why.We don’t know many of these details, but Homer set the example early on of describing gods that many Greeks found implausible. Rather than deny all reality to the gods, they preferred usually to consider such playful tales as exaggerations, […]
By far the most popular questions were about the Greek gods and Greek myths generally.We can’t do much with this topic in this class, unfortunately, but I can make a few comments and direct you to other sources. The Greek gods are important because long after anyone still believed in them, they became personfications of […]
Warning: religion is always a controversial subject, and the information given below will depart in many cases from what believers in particular faiths accept as true; however it is representative of a good deal of nonsectarian modern scholarship. An outline of Jewish history: Would you go over in more detail the periods during which the […]
What the religion of Sumer was called. I mean was there just one religion in that land?I doubt it had a name. There would have been the worship of Ishtar and the worship of Im-Dugud, but otherwise the whole collection of beliefs and rituals was probably just “religion.” In most cultures you can pick and […]
Comments were split between those who said the comparison between hunter-gatherer and agricultural cultures societies was the most important topic and those who said the roles of women were the most important. Although I stressed the latter, for exam purposes it’s more important to know the broader patterns involved in the differences between the two […]