A socialist christmas market in East Germany, 1980

The Government was unable to stop the celebration of christmas, but the economy was not prepared to handle the increased demand that unexpectedly occured every december, in every year.

A tale of a centrally-planned holiday In a planned economy, production is not tied to demand, and so the politbureau now suddenly became responsible for supplying 17 million people with enough christmas trees, cookies and toys, even if they preferred not to think about the topic.
Say hello to them:

THE FRISIANS AND THEIR FREEDOM

Autonomous Villages, sending elected delegates and Germanic tribal confederations in the High Middle Ages.

A story of Anachronisms, Autonomy and a battle against the Ocean itself

Image provided by @hall_sloan Who are the Frisians?

The Frisii were initially just one of many Germanic tribes, living somewhat further west, along the coast.

Romans described them as living in villages, with weak political structures and ruled by elected kings only "as far as the Germans are under kings"

Who were the Saxons?

Many of you are probably very familiar with the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, but what about their more obscure neighbors, the Old-Saxons? Deep forests, strange gods but a familiar people.

“The appearance of the country differs considerably in different parts; but in general it is covered either by bristling forests or by foul swamps.” – Tacitus

Such was the Roman view of Germania, which also applied to Saxony.

Thread with excerpts from "Life and Society in the Hittite World" by Trevor Bryce The Hittites were a indo-european people who formed an empire in Bronze-age Anatolia.
Their culture was a unique blend of indo-eruopean and mesopotamian and egyptian, as well as hurrian and native anatolian traditions.

THREAD:
The evolution of Greek vase painting, and why it suddenly disapeared

https://twitter.com/Dokk_Draws/status/1454426398978891781

You will see some similarities in style&influence in contemporary statues.
Once again, we begin with the Cycladic culture.

This early bronze-age culture seemingly preferred simpler styles, with lines and plain geometry.
The color changes are accidental.

A Short Thread/History about Byzantine Iconoclasm in the 700s and how it affected their relation to the west.

https://twitter.com/Dokk_Draws/status/1506364401158348800

The starting situation:

The 600s were a very hard time for the East-Romans.
A 30 year long war against the Sassanids,followed by a swift and overwhelming Arabic Conquest of the Levant and wealthy Egypt, their former breadbasket
In the North, invading Steppe people caused trouble

The Early Umayyad dynasty had some coins partially inspired by the neighboring byzantines That practice stopped abruptly when one Byzantine Emperor put a full-faced image of Christ on the obverse of his gold coins, cuaisng the ummayads to adopt "aniconic" coins, with only lettering, no graven images of living people or animals, holy or profane.

The Ummayyad caliphate was greatly destabilized by their unwillingness to treat non-arab converts like arabs, as their empire was reliant on the Jizya tax (which converts had to keep paying) Converts were not allowed to enter government, dress arabic or marray arabic women, the arabic language was however encouraged/enforced in some regions especially Iran.

THREAD:

The complete evolution of greek sculptures and their influence from and on foreign cultures. The journey starts with the Cycladic culture, located in the middle of the Aegean Islands, they flourished from 3000BC to the end of the bronze age, most of their art came from before 2000 BC however.

Bronze Age Military Thread:

I originally intendted to make a thread about which state had the first "professional army" but during my research found out that this topic is much more expansive than i thought, so I will show the evolution of major pre-hellenic militaries. Starting with the Egyptians.
Not much is really confirmed about the early egyptian armies, it appears that during the initial unification of it, (around 3200 BC) most of the statelets fought with poorly trained militias and untrained levies,this seems to be the "default"