thank you, I am curious to know if it has always been common practice in europe or if it spread from a certain time period, did the normans pierce their ears? the anglo-saxons? the scandinavians? I have no idea, but the thought that it was a non-gendered practice is very interesting from a modern perspective

How true is the below answer? (seen on Quora)

How did George III react to news of America declaring independence?

"The Colonies declaring independence was not a big deal, they weren't profitable anyway.

What angered him was the personal attack on him in the Declaration of Independence. Without it, the British wouldn’t have given a flying f***.

But insulting a King’s Honour was something that could not go unpunished."

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It's not completely inconceivable that Poland and Germany would have allied, during WWII Germany was allied with "Slavic" nations like Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Poland even partook in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938, annexing parts of it. I think a bigger stumbling block was that Hitler viewed the parts of Poland Germany lost after WWI as rightfully German territory, something that can't be said of e.g. Romania.

I wonder what it would have done to the Nazi war buildup if in 1938 Czechoslovakia decided to fight for the Sudetenland, despite being abandoned by France and Britain at the Munich conference. Instead of getting the entire Czech arsenal intact, much if not most of it would have been lost to combat or sabotage. Add to that the materiel and manpower losses on the German side, how long would it take for Hitler to be ready to invade Poland?

I read that prior to the beginning of WW2, Germany attempted to bring Poland into the anti-communist defense act along with Japan but Poland refused because it was attempting to keep friendly relations with both the USSR and Germany. Was it a realistic scenario at one point for Poland to join the Axis powers or was Hitler’s plan always to invade Poland and subjugate it due to Poland being controlled by the Slavic people who Germany saw as beneath them?

Not original commenter (and long read in the source) but:

“In the 1920s, in order to save money on importing coca leaf from South America, Japan’s pharmaceutical companies determined to set up coca plantations in Taiwan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and also purchased from Dutch growers in Java, who had been cultivating coca there since the 1850s (Karch 1999, 147, 156).

Company and Taiwan Shoyaku companies, on a combined 694 acres of land in the Taiwanese interior, produced a total of 700,814 kilograms of coca leaf between 1927 and 1931, about one- fifth of which was transferred to Japan for processing; the rest was processed into crude cocaine by those companies’ factories in Taiwan.18 Karch calculates the total production of coca leaf in Taiwan during these years at around 150,000 tons per year, which, once processed into cocaine, would have yielded around seven tons per year (1999, 155–156).”

Source

While I am a fan of humans, nothing illustrates our folly like the centuries it took for us to figure out what to do with our waste. Why did it take so long to bring the toilet to every home? We built thousands of awesome weapons during those ages, but 100 years ago many people were still pooping in buckets. My theory is that the Church had something to do with it.

Morphine was never developed, and it's impossible morphine is "harder" than opium, the reason opium gets you high is because of the morphine naturally in it mainly.

Heroin also has an extremely short half life and turns into morphine in the body extremely fast, so I wouldn't characterize it as harder than morphine either.

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Bronze tools weren't the only tools they used. You can also vary the strength of bronze in various ways. Much of the stone worked was softer than the bronze and where it was harder, they would use other methods including abrasion and stone tools.

Ear piercing is one if the oldest forms of body modification. They were common in Minoan civilization, and even King Tut had his ears pierced. I'm not exactly sure about European women specifically, but I'd assume both genders had similar amounts of piercing.

Same, this is 11,000 years before when we are now. We live in the year 2022, for context going the other direction this would be like the year 13,022. 😳😳 It’s the only way I can wrap my brain around this, utterly incredible to know humanity has been around that long in some way/shape/form!!

Previously I think the oldest one was the Uruk Vase from like 3k BC iirc

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These days we can be warned off using kohl as unlike what was used by Ancient Egyptians some commercial brands in use today contain lead https://www.therevisionist.org/reviews/guide-to-apply-ithmid-kohl-checking-its-quality/

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Cannabis was sold in potato like sacks at the convenience store, along with the vegetables and other merchandise.

How did the Ancient Egyptians work stone to the degree that they did with only bronze tools?

That’s the part I love the most. New evidence to shake up old, dusty ideas of history.

Very interesting that we're finding so many sites that seem older than our current understanding of human development allows. I hope further study can reveal more about these sites and what the implications are.

I always wondered when did european women start piercing their ears for the use of earrings. Wasn't it a dangerous practice given that it could easily become infected?

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