Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 March 1

= March 1 =

A Religous Custom from "The Vikings" a series on HISTORY CHAN.
First off I've never used wiki before (it's wonderful!!!)- Now,I found a wealth of info on all religious customs except the one piece I was looking for...Anyway My QUESTION IS-(why do those people who come to"THE SEER"lick the hand of said "SEER" for services rendered??)70.92.175.139 (talk) 03:34, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi. Can you give the specific name of the show and episode?  Do you mean they licked the hand of the seer?  Are you sure they weren't kissing it?  (I have studied shamanism, and licking seems odd, but not impossible.)  I'd like as much information as you can give, and then I'll check various sources I have, including Mircea Eliade. μηδείς (talk) 04:10, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * We have an article on hand-kissing which might shed some light. Licking sounds unlikely; the general rule with hand-kissing is no tongues.--Shantavira|feed me 09:32, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe they were French Vikings :)  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  11:47, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Just to confirm the OP. They licked the hand of the seer on several occasions. Star Lord -  星王 (talk) 13:27, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Come on guys, we have an article Vikings (TV series) that addresses some of the authenticity issues (i.e. not exceedingly) and links to the official website with full episodes. But it would be very helpful if the OP can specify which episode, and give the time in the video when this happens, so that people can view the sequence for themselves. Wnt (talk) 13:56, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

In this interview with Katheryn Winnick, she is asked why she licked the hand, and she says “It wasn’t originally in the script and we just wanted to come up with something unique and different." http://www.postcity.com/Eat-Shop-Do/Do/February-2014/The-beauty-and-the-beheading-Toronto-star-returns-in-new-season-of-Vikings/ Star Lord  -  星王 (talk) 15:44, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Is the source here reliable enough for the article Vikings (TV series)? Very many sites have asked the question, and perhaps this might help to stem the some of the weirder speculations.Star Lord -  星王 (talk) 15:48, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Of course it's reliable for the claim being made. Are you suggesting they fabricated the interview?  The question is resolved.  This is a work of fiction and the actors were improvising, not working from some scholarly source.  μηδείς (talk) 18:50, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * No. I have only just now found out more about the source: Post_City_Magazines and find it to be credible. So I added it. Star Lord -  星王 (talk) 19:37, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Vikings.S01E01 Ragnar licks the hand 31 minutes in. He afterwards puts his head to the hand. Vikings.S01E09 Lagerta licks the hand 10 minutes in. I would clip up those parts to youtube if asked to. Star Lord -  星王 (talk) 15:57, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Situation in the Ukraine
I'm not particularly clear on the situation in Ukraine at the moment. I know that they want greater European integration and that Russia would be opposed to this, presumably because Ukraine has historic ties to the USSR and is economically dependant on Russia(?) I'm not sure how Crimea comes into this - is it a part of Ukraine and why are Russia so interested in the region - natural gas deposits, perhaps? With the mobilisation of Russian troops preparing to enter the Ukraine, does this have the potential to do what the Cold War never did, put the United States and its allies at war with Russia? --Andrew 19:06, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * For the political status of the Crimea, see our article. Beyond that, you are asking for opinions and speculation - which is beyond the scope of this reference desk. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:25, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Well a lot of the questions aren't hypothetical, i.e. asking for context in the Ukraine, why Russia is so interested, etc --Andrew 19:33, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * This was just answered: The Eastern half of what is now Ukraine (see map)was formerly Russian, including the Crimean peninsula, which is a huge sticking point for Russian nationalists. It's no coincidence Yanukhovich fled to eastern Ukraine when he was deposed.  Russia has long had hegemony of Ukraine, so much so that the name itself means borderland. Historically what is now eastern Ukraine was Russian, Cossack, and Ottoman, and the Crimean War was fought by Moscow to wrest the land from the Turks. Even after the 1991 Revolution it was a matter of pride for Russia not to give up the Black Sea port of Sevastopol. No KGB agent in power wants part of his legacy to be the loss of historically Great Russian land to the Little Russians. μηδείς (talk) 00:40, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, in the Crimean War, the Crimea Peninsula itself wasn't being contested with Turkey; it was just chosen as a good place for the anti-Russian coalition (UK, France and Turkey) to temporarily invade and teach the Tsar a lesson. It seemed like a good idea, but events proved otherwise. Alansplodge (talk) 21:06, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * After the break up of the Soviet Union, the Russian Navy negotiated the lease of the Sevastapol naval base for the Black Sea Fleet until 2017. In 2010, that lease was renegotiated by Ukrainian President Yanukovych and Russian President Medvedev, and extended Russia's leasehold until 2042.  The relationship between the two countries has not been that good for quite some time.  In my opinion, Russia is now worried that a newly emboldened (and European facing) Ukraine will try to go back on that renegotiation, or maybe even seize the Black Sea Fleet leaving Russia with little or no naval capability in the region.  Of course, the geopolitics of European gas supplies can also be an issue.  As to whether the USA & EU will go as far as war with Russia, I personally doubt it due to a lack of appetite for war on all sides.  I think a somewhat more likely scenario is a war of words between the west and Russia, and perhaps a protracted civil war in Ukraine leading to the partition of the country.  Astronaut (talk) 19:47, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * On one of the OP's assumptions - there is at most a slight preference for European integration ovr Russian integration, without real majority support for either in the Ukraine. See Ukrainian Democracy: A Barrier to Washington’s Goals for a number of poll results. If European integration means becoming part of the Eurozone, Ukrainians should beware of what they ask for. They might get it.John Z (talk) 19:57, 1 March 2014 (UTC)




 * This situation is basically the Balkans, twenty years latter, and a few miles east. The Crimea and the now eastern provinces of Ukraine were "given to" the Ukraine at the same time the Ruthenian western area of Lviv was annexed.  The effect was to create a state centered on Kiev with a nominally Ukrainian character, but a huge non-Ukrainian speaking minority.  Our article Ukraine currently gives a 17% figure for Russian nationality in the Ukraine.  But if my memory serves right, over 40% spoke Russian as their first tongue at the time of the dissolution of the USSR.


 * The situation is so bizarre, that Rusyn speaking nationalists in the west have been accused by the Ukrainian government of being Muscovite provocateurs, while during the Soviet era the mere existence of the Rusyns was denied as part of Soviet policy. (See various works by Canadian historian Paul R. Magocsi.)


 * All of this can be seen as a result of competing Russian nationalism against the Crimean Turks and the Ukrainians and other nationalities from the 19th Century through WWI and the Russian Revolution. Moscow and the former KGB head haven't forgotten that the Bolshevik Reds were based in St. Petersburg and Moscow, while the White Army was based in the Ukraine and Siberia.  The dynamics parallel the breakup of Yugoslavia, a similarly false nationality created in the aftermath of WWI and dominated until its violent breakup by Serb nationalists backed by Moscow. μηδείς (talk) 21:14, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reference. It seems Paul R. Magocsi is an American, but based in Canada. Bandy boy (talk) 22:46, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * My point in mentioning he's an Americo-Canadian (?) scholar was to hope he lives up to Western academic standards, not nationalist Mitteleuropean ones. μηδείς (talk) 23:06, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Of course. I apologise. Bandy boy (talk) 00:05, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I was only clarifying my own action, not expecting any sort of apology. μηδείς (talk) 00:15, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yugoslavia was dismantled by "Serb nationalists backed by Moscow"? What a strange world you live in. --Ghirla-трёп- 07:18, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you misunderstood Medeis' comment, which was clearly intended to mean Yugoslavia was dominated by Serb nationalists up until its breakup BbBrock (talk) 13:54, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Indeed. --Ghirla-трёп- 21:54, 3 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I was perplexed why those of Russian ethnicity would object to being in a "free Ukraine" until I read in 2014 Crimean crisis that the Ukrainian parliament revoked the Legislation on languages in Ukraine which had assured Russians at least regional use of their own language on February 23. I was actually looking under the assumption that they would have enacted or strengthened such a law as an obvious way to settle discord, but to me this strikes me as the dumbest thing they could possibly do under the circumstances.  It is now far easier to see why Russians might decide that Ukraine, which so far as I know never had a plebiscite when Khrushchev changed Crimea's nationality the first time, was no longer to be trusted with stewardship of the rights of Russian people.  It's a damned shame though!  But I'm sure there are many specific details of the law and politics I don't know which can be used to explain and justify the Ukranian position better, and I'd welcome hearing them. Wnt (talk) 15:46, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * See our Russification of Ukraine article, which may go some way to explain why ethnic Ukrainians have little sympathy for Russians and their language. Alansplodge (talk) 11:24, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * That "ethnic Ukrainians have little sympathy for Russians and their language", is a convenient piece of American propaganda. You probably refer to the inhabitants of Western Ukraine which was part of the Habsburg Empire and then Poland until 1945. Most ethnic Ukrainians elsewhere use a Russo-Ukrainian hybrid rather than Ukrainian. See Ukrainization for balance. --Ghirla-трёп- 21:54, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's useful! I put a link to that in the article I cited above.  But I count we now have five kinds of "Russian": Ukrainians who switched to speaking Russian under the Soviet Union, Ukrainians of Russian ethnic descent (how much?), Ukrainians who actually came from or were transferred with parts of Russia, people living in Ukraine who have a Russian passport and citizenship, and Ukrainian citizens of so-called "Russian nationality" as a formal designation of their status within Ukraine.  Which of these statistics is the one reported when people say 60+% of Crimea is Russian? Wnt (talk) 12:36, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing that they're ethnic Russians (see Crimea), as a result of the Crimea changing overnight and for no good reason, from being part of Russia to being part of Ukraine in 1954. I suspect that the change was intended to reduce the proportion of ethnic Ukrainians in the Ukrainian SSR. Alansplodge (talk) 16:36, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Since 1954 and especially since 1991, many Crimean Russians have found it convenient to give their ethnicity as Ukrainian, although virtually no Ukrainian has been spoken on the peninsula. In the Soviet world, such changes of ethnicity from census to census were quite common. --Ghirla-трёп- 21:54, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The Ukrainians east and south of Kiev speak Russian for the same reasons most Irish people speak English. (I don't think there have been attempts to outlaw English in Ireland, by the way). Like most Soviet republics, the Ukraine was artificially created by the Soviets from former Little Russia (the Ukraine proper), the Sloboda Ukraine (which is half Russian), New Russia and Crimea (which was conquered and settled by Russians before the arrival of Ukrainians), Western Ukraine (partly taken from Poland as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), Transcarpathia (taken from Hungary and Czechoslovakia), and several Romanian-speaking areas (Bukovina, Southern Bessarabia). Russian was the only language uniting all these disparate territories until 1991. --Ghirla-трёп- 21:54, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * What I don't get is why Russia had so many troops stationed in Ukraine (an independent state) in the first place, making it so easy for them to invade Crimea. Were they invited to be there by the Ukrainian government? --Viennese Waltz 14:33, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * No, I think it was a condition of gaining independence from the wreckage of the Soviet Union. An analogy might be that Subic Bay Naval Base continued to be used by the US when the Philippines became independent, or the British Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus. Alansplodge (talk) 16:36, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The Crimea was conquered from the Turks with the aim of making it the main base for the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Which it has been ever since. --Ghirla-трёп- 21:54, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

When and how did universal acceptance of the "seven-day week" occur?
Calendars have evolved based upon orbital cycles etc., and months and days derived to provide certain capabilities, but why and when etc. was the seven-day weekly cycle chosen? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coathook2 (talk • contribs) 19:20, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia has an article titled Seven-day week. I'll do you the honor of not copying the text from there to here, so you can read the entire article on your own time.  -- Jayron  32  19:38, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * A search of the archives will provide previous discussion as well. μηδείς (talk) 19:44, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

One semi-surprising fact is that when the seven-day week was spreading through the Roman empire in the first two centuries A.D., it was more due to the influence of an Egyptian adaptation of Babylonian astrology (which is the origin of planetary-based week-day names), rather than due to the influence of Judaism or Christianity... AnonMoos (talk) 13:22, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

US, Russia and Ukraine
How is the US reacting to the cisis in Ukraine? Are they deploying fleet forces th the Black Sea now, or will they do that? I don't know where to look for information on this. Bandy boy (talk) 22:33, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The proper venue for a question like this is Google news or the like. We specialize in secondary and tertiary sources, not news reports.  Look at the debate at WP:ITN over this.  I am not saying no one here will have anything useful to say, but you will be better off googling the news if this is a pressing matter for you. μηδείς (talk) 23:10, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but that is exactly what I have been trying to do before I asked my question here. Bandy boy (talk) 00:03, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The simplest method for NATO to extend airpower into Ukraine would simply be to use NATO aircraft already deployed in Eastern European countries near there. (Various agreements whereby NATO aircraft provide air cover, on a very limited basis such as two combat aircraft available at a time, for newly joined nations, are viewable on the web and perhaps Wikipedia.) The Bosphorus does not admit the passage of proper aircraft carriers like what the Americans have. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:26, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * To add, U.S. deployment of the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit means that it would be a short trip for such bombers based in the UK (or even the USA) to bomb any target in Ukraine. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:29, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It would be an even shorter trip for the Russian bombers based in the Far East to bomb any target in California. --Ghirla-трёп- 06:54, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

For the moment, at least, the US is reacting to the crisis through diplomatic channels and not militarily. whether that will change as events unfold we have no way to know. Blueboar (talk) 12:42, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * As Demiurge notes, the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits - archaic-sounding, but still in force - means that the US is unlikely to deploy aircraft carriers in the Black Sea without itself causing a diplomatic crisis; it's not as though they can just casually drift into the area as would be the case elsewhere. Andrew Gray (talk) 14:57, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Hmmmm, the article says it limits the tonnage but not the purpose. Would it be possible for the U.S. to take through a few small ships, then have them extend a deck linking them together on which aircraft could land and take off?  And if it's possible, there must be contingency plans for it on both sides... Wnt (talk) 16:33, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

There's been a highly-photographed phone call between Barack and Vlad, with Barack saying Vlad's doing something wrong, and Vlad, saying he's defending his ethnic people in Crimea. The thought of US military escalation and/or intervention and/or even sabre rattling is an horrific one, Russian navy has mobilised. Let's leave it until further facts are published. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:49, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Putin says he just wants to ensure the safety of ethnic Russians in Crimea and has no further territorial ambitions. Perhaps if NATO does nothing but complain he will be appeased, and there will be peace in our time. How did that work out in previous similar forcible annexations? See  Bloomberg's take on the new anschluss, DailyKos. Maybe instead of the US trying to extend its forces to Crimea. a tit for tat would be to assist Cuban exiles in invading Cuba again. Perhaps there is some other vulnerable Russian client area the loss of which would hurt them more financially, since Cuba was historically an economic burden on the USSR in the old days. The Russian navy is mostly rusting away in Russian ports. Edison (talk) 22:00, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't think Cuba is relevant any more. Cuba is Communist, on best terms with various other Latin American countries, but Russia hasn't subsidized their sugar in what, 20 years, more?  Russia is a mafia state with extreme income inequality.  I bet Fidel Castro could do a thing or two to put Putin's house in order, but he wouldn't like it. :) Wnt (talk) 00:23, 3 March 2014 (UTC)


 * It should be noted that Russia still has a shitload of nuclear missiles, so going to war over Ukraine is not an option regardless of what happens. Sabre-rattling is useless if your opposite number knows perfectly well that in the end you are not going to strike. Looie496 (talk) 22:39, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Not quite. While the prospect of a nuclear exchange is frightening, as you say it's pretty unlikely. That does not exclude actual military force being deployed to the area, or even an actual shooting war. &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 16:09, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
 * That's highly unlikely. Since 1945, the United States have never waged a war against a country that could strike back, let alone destroy their continent. The same goes for Britain. Non-Anglo-Saxon countries are considerably less belligerent, for quite obvious reasons. --Ghirla-трёп- 07:44, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

If this escalates, the West will most likely end up fighting an economic war with Russia using sanctions. Both sides have certain strengths and weaknesses. Obviously, the West is overall a lot stronger on the economic front, but Europe does depend on energy from Russia. Also, Russia may default on loans from vulnerable US banks trying to cause those banks to become insolvent. Count Iblis (talk) 17:13, 4 March 2014 (UTC)