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One way to fix the problem is to go to war and kill off the extra men.

Or, they could just adapt some aspects of ancient Greek culture. The Chinese leaders are pretty good and implementing cultural revolutions, after all.

Uh huh? Keep in mind that, well, to the west and south of those, some people came up with the steam engine, circumnavigated Africa a couple of years before the Portugese eventually did, identified that earth was round, and said pretty much everything that needed to be said about democracy and politics.

But yeah, they're all idiots... Maybe.

I see your Sahih Bukhari and raise you Herodotos. The following is my paraphrase of the story of a man who peeped and ... became king. I reckon Herodotos trumps the Sahih al-Bukhari -- Turkey is a secular state, after all, while Herodotos was Anatolian, and writing about an episode in Anatolian history!

King Kandaules of Lydia had a particular favourite, a man named Gyges, and boasted to him of his wife's beauty. "You don't believe me?" said the king. "Well, here's a royal command: hide in my wife's bedroom behind the door and watch her as she undresses. Then you'll see her naked, and then you'll have to believe me."

Gyges was unwilling, but had to do as the king commanded. He hid as ordered and saw the queen naked. Then he tried to sneak out quietly without being seen. Unfortunately the queen noticed him departing, and began to make plans of her own.

The next morning Gyges was summoned to attend on the queen. "I saw you last night, Gyges," she said, "and you have two choices before you. Either die for having committed the crime of spying on me; or join with me, slay the king, and seize the throne yourself." So Gyges made his choice. At night he followed the queen into the king's bedroom, took the knife she gave him, and murdered the king.

In this way Gyges usurped the throne and married the queen.

and what do we do with all those old greek vases. Or some of the books of anais nin? Are we doing the 1950s all over again, or what?

Well, I'm not a historian, just some guy who likes history, so take it with a grain of salt. Don't think me as some kind of authority by any kind of reckoning.

That said, probably you can just start with their own authors, for example some are on Project Gutenberg. (It's all out of copyright by now ;)

E.g., since the gallic wars have popped up in this thread, Caesar's "De Bello Gallico" is in there, so you can hear it from the man himself how that went. (They have the latin version too, if you're crazy enough.)

Polybius is a good source for the punic wars. It doesn't seem to be on Gutenberg, but you can find it and a bunch of other stuff for example on Livius.org.

Far the actual imperial era, hmm, Ammianus Marcellinus is a good start, though half the books have been lost. A quick googling yields this: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ as the first one which isn't in latin.

And so on.

You have to bear in mind that more modern authors start from the ancient historians too, although some do add actual research into, say, exactly what was the geography of the terrain in a certain battle and where the heck _did_ that Goth cavalry come from. Still, you can't go _too_ wrong with starting at the source, IMHO.

I do not know how randy Archimedes himself was, but:
ancient Greek sexuality is disturbing.

I really wonder if the book in the last link can really be legal.

In a tower, increasing the height makes no difference to the ground area (and, thus, the number of exits). Increasing the height of a pyramid increases the ground area...

You are assuming that when they increase the height, they keep the slope the same. This pyramid is much steeper than this one

There are many ancient sources on the career of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great: the Library of world history of Diodorus of Sicily, Quintus Curtius Rufus' History of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, a Life of Alexander by Plutarch of Chaeronea and the Anabasis by Arrian of Nicomedia are the best-known. All these authors lived more than three centuries after the events they described, but they used older, nearly contemporary sources, that are now lost.

Zoroaster and Zarathustra are alternative spellings of the name of the same person -- a Persian philosopher who founded the religion known as Zoroastrianism. Quote from that link:

"The Persian religion was founded by a legendary sage named Zarathustra, who had taught that there was a supreme god, the wise lord Ahuramazda, who was opposed by the forces of evil, which were under command of Angra Mainyu. (Since only Ahuramazda was to be venerated, the exiled Jews in Babylonia considered Cyrus a monotheist like themselves.) All other gods were regarded as mere good spirits or demons. The most remarkable aspects of this religion were the radical dualism and the presence of an ethical message: no other pagan religion had postulated a dichotomy between good and evil, light and dark, truth and lies."

If I'm not mistaken car maker Mazda is named after that religions's god.

More at http://members.tripod.com/historel/orient/08perse. htm.

Try here for example...

a better search would probably be "phoenix from the flames mythology" or "phoenix from the flames greek"