1.
Aegean Sea tanker oil spill
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The ship had successfully passed all required tests and revisions. The accident occurred during extreme conditions and affected the Galician coast resulting in ecosystem damage, as well as damage to the fishing. The captain and pilot were found to be liable and the shipowner took on much of the monetary liability. After being anchored for a few days off the coast of A Coruña due to weather hazards, due to this, on 3 December 1992, the oil-ore Greek carrier ship Aegean Sea, ran aground off the coast of Galicia at nearly 5 AM. The ship was on its route to A Coruña, Spain, from Sullom Voe, allegedly, a heavy storm managed to push the ship off course and cause her to run aground. A rescue team was sent immediately but failed to keep the ship breaking in half. This caused the cargo of crude oil to be spilled which affected sea life. A temporary evacuation of the city of A Coruña was implemented in order to protect the citizens from the hazards of the oil smoke. Out of the 79,000 tonnes of oil that the ship was carrying,67,000 tonnes managed to be spilled. The salvaged oil was retained through the use of booms, skimmers, since half of the ship was still above water, the rescue team used pumps to drain the still intact tanks. Soon after, the ship caught on fire and continued to burn for a period of five days, the remaining oil drifted with the strong currents produced by the wind, and as much as 300 km of coast line were affected by the spill. As for the crew, a rescue helicopter managed to save all of them. As the vessel prepared to enter the docks of A Coruña, the speed was above 50 kn. Aegean Sea broke up and exploded with 50 m flames near the Tower of Hercules, the two anchors of Aegean Sea were recovered, and are now on display at Aquarium Finisterrae in A Coruña, and at the Philippe Cousteau Museum at Salinas, Asturias. To clean up this disaster, clean-up crews were put forward. Some were in charge of on-shore clean-up, and the others were in charge of off-shore clean-up, as an off-shore median, oil booms were placed around the spill in order to contain the oil. The booms collected around 5,000 cubic meters of oil, on shore,1,200 cubic meters of contaminated sand and debris were treated for oil. Since only the bow of Aegean Sea had sunk, pumps were placed in the stern, the Aegean Sea oil spill affected countless amounts of sea life
2.
Aegean Sea (theme)
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The Theme of the Aegean Sea was a Byzantine province in the northern Aegean Sea, established in the mid-9th century. As one of the Byzantine Empires three dedicated naval themes, it served chiefly to provide ships and troops for the Byzantine navy, but also served as a civil administrative circumscription. The theme has its origins in the late antique province of the Islands. The term Aigaion Pelagos appears for the first time as an administrative circumscription in the early 8th century, militarily, the Aegean islands came under control of the Karabisianoi corps and later of the Cibyrrhaeot Theme during the 7th and 8th centuries. The theme of the Aegean Sea was a theme, subdivided into tourmai and banda and with a full complement of military, civil. A similar procedure existed in the theme of Samos as well and this view is strengthened by the fact that the Opsicians, and especially the Slavs living in the Opsician Theme, are attested serving as marines in the 10th century. According to Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, in the early 10th century the theme included Lesbos, Lemnos, Imbros and Tenedos, Chios, the Sporades, in 911, the forces of the naval theme of the Aegean are recorded as being 2,610 oarsmen and 400 marines. The province survived until the late 10th/early 11th century, when it became progressively split up into smaller commands, by the late 11th century, what remained of the old thematic fleet was subsumed into the unified imperial navy at Constantinople, under the command of the megas doux. The theme ceased to exist after the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire by the Fourth Crusade in 1204
3.
Topographic map
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Traditional definitions require a topographic map to show both natural and man-made features. A topographic map is published as a map series, made up of two or more map sheets that combine to form the whole map. A contour line is a line connecting places of equal elevation, however, in the vernacular and day to day world, the representation of relief is popularly held to define the genre, such that even small-scale maps showing relief are commonly called topographic. The study or discipline of topography is a broader field of study. Topographic maps are based on topographical surveys, performed at large scales, these surveys are called topographical in the old sense of topography, showing a variety of elevations and landforms. This is in contrast to older cadastral surveys, which primarily show property, the first multi-sheet topographic map series of an entire country, the Carte géométrique de la France, was completed in 1789. Topographic surveys were prepared by the military to assist in planning for battle, as such, elevation information was of vital importance. As they evolved, topographic map series became a resource in modern nations in planning infrastructure. Excluding borders, each sheet was 44 cm high and up to 66 cm wide, although the project eventually foundered, it left an indexing system that remains in use. TIGER was developed in the 1980s and used in the 1990, digital elevation models were also compiled, initially from topographic maps and stereographic interpretation of aerial photographs and then from satellite photography and radar data. Since all these were government projects funded with taxes and not classified for security reasons. Initial applications were mostly professionalized forms such as innovative surveying instruments, by the mid-1990s, increasingly user-friendly resources such as online mapping in two and three dimensions, integration of GPS with mobile phones and automotive navigation systems appeared. As of 2011, the future of standardized, centrally printed topographical maps is left somewhat in doubt, the various features shown on the map are represented by conventional signs or symbols. For example, colors can be used to indicate a classification of roads and these signs are usually explained in the margin of the map, or on a separately published characteristic sheet. Topographic maps are commonly called contour maps or topo maps. In the United States, where the national series is organized by a strict 7. 5-minute grid. Topographic maps conventionally show topography, or land contours, by means of contour lines, contour lines are curves that connect contiguous points of the same altitude. In other words, every point on the line of 100 m elevation is 100 m above mean sea level
4.
Bathymetric chart
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A bathymetric chart is the submerged equivalent of an above-water topographic map. Bathymetric charts are designed to present accurate, measurable description and visual presentation of the submerged terrain, in an ideal case, the joining of a bathymetric chart and topographic map of the same scale and projection of the same geographic area would be seamless. The only difference would be that the values begin increasing after crossing the zero at the sea level datum. Thus the topographic maps mountains have the greatest values while the charts greatest depths have the greatest values. Simply put, the chart is intended to show the land if overlying waters were removed in exactly the same manner as the topographic map. A bathymetric chart differs from a chart in that accurate presentation of the underwater features is the goal while safe navigation is the requirement for the hydrographic chart. A hydrographic chart will obscure the actual features to present a simplified version to aid mariners in avoiding underwater hazards, Bathymetric surveys are a subset of the science of hydrography. That chart product is more accurately termed a navigation or hydrographic chart with a bias toward the presentation of essential safety information. Bathymetric surveys and charts are more closely tied to the science of oceanography, particularly marine geology, Bathymetric charts can also be converted to bathymetric profiles. Matthew Fontaine Maury published this map in 1853 in his book Explanations and Sailing Directions to Accompany the Wind, general Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans
5.
Mediterranean Sea
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The sea is sometimes considered a part of the Atlantic Ocean, although it is usually identified as a separate body of water. The name Mediterranean is derived from the Latin mediterraneus, meaning inland or in the middle of land and it covers an approximate area of 2.5 million km2, but its connection to the Atlantic is only 14 km wide. The Strait of Gibraltar is a strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Gibraltar. In oceanography, it is called the Eurafrican Mediterranean Sea or the European Mediterranean Sea to distinguish it from mediterranean seas elsewhere. The Mediterranean Sea has a depth of 1,500 m. The sea is bordered on the north by Europe, the east by Asia and it is located between latitudes 30° and 46° N and longitudes 6° W and 36° E. Its west-east length, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Iskenderun, the seas average north-south length, from Croatia’s southern shore to Libya, is approximately 800 km. The Mediterranean Sea, including the Sea of Marmara, has an area of approximately 2,510,000 square km. The sea was an important route for merchants and travelers of ancient times that allowed for trade, the history of the Mediterranean region is crucial to understanding the origins and development of many modern societies. In addition, the Gaza Strip and the British Overseas Territories of Gibraltar and Akrotiri, the term Mediterranean derives from the Latin word mediterraneus, meaning amid the earth or between land, as it is between the continents of Africa, Asia and Europe. The Ancient Greek name Mesogeios, is similarly from μέσο, between + γη, land, earth) and it can be compared with the Ancient Greek name Mesopotamia, meaning between rivers. The Mediterranean Sea has historically had several names, for example, the Carthaginians called it the Syrian Sea and latter Romans commonly called it Mare Nostrum, and occasionally Mare Internum. Another name was the Sea of the Philistines, from the people inhabiting a large portion of its shores near the Israelites, the sea is also called the Great Sea in the General Prologue by Geoffrey Chaucer. In Ottoman Turkish, it has also been called Bahr-i Sefid, in Modern Hebrew, it has been called HaYam HaTikhon, the Middle Sea, reflecting the Seas name in ancient Greek, Latin, and modern languages in both Europe and the Middle East. Similarly, in Modern Arabic, it is known as al-Baḥr al-Mutawassiṭ, in Turkish, it is known as Akdeniz, the White Sea since among Turks the white colour represents the west. Several ancient civilisations were located around the Mediterranean shores, and were influenced by their proximity to the sea. It provided routes for trade, colonisation, and war, as well as food for numerous communities throughout the ages, due to the shared climate, geology, and access to the sea, cultures centered on the Mediterranean tended to have some extent of intertwined culture and history. Two of the most notable Mediterranean civilisations in classical antiquity were the Greek city states, later, when Augustus founded the Roman Empire, the Romans referred to the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum
6.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
7.
Body of water
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A body of water or waterbody is any significant accumulation of water, generally on a planets surface. The term most often refers to oceans, seas, and lakes, a body of water does not have to be still or contained, Rivers, streams, canals, and other geographical features where water moves from one place to another are also considered bodies of water. Most are naturally occurring geographical features, but some are artificial, there are types that can be either. For example, most reservoirs are created by engineering dams, similarly, most harbors are naturally occurring bays, but some harbors have been created through construction. Bodies of water that are navigable are known as waterways, some bodies of water collect and move water, such as rivers and streams, and others primarily hold water, such as lakes and oceans. The term body of water can also refer to a reservoir of water held by a plant, note that there are some geographical features involving water that are not bodies of water, for example waterfalls, geysers and rapids. Arm of the sea - also sea arm, used to describe a sea loch, arroyo - a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, or seasonally. Artificial lake or artificial pond - see reservoir or impoundment, barachois - a lagoon separated from the ocean by a sand bar. Bay - an area of water bordered by land on three sides, similar to, but smaller than a gulf, bayou - a slow-moving stream or a marshy lake. Bight - a large and often only slightly receding bay, or a bend in any geographical feature, billabong - see Oxbow lake, a pond or still body of water created when a river changes course and some water becomes trapped. Boil - see Seep Brook - a small stream, canal - an artificial waterway, usually connected to existing lakes, rivers, or oceans. Channel - the physical confine of a river, slough or ocean consisting of a bed. See also stream bed and strait, earth scientists generally use the term to describe a circular or round inlet with a narrow entrance, though colloquially the term is sometimes used to describe any sheltered bay. Basin - a region of land where water from rain or snowmelt drains downhill into another body of water, such as a river, lake, creek - an inlet of the sea, narrower than a cove. Delta - the location where a river flows into an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, distributary or distributary channel - a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. Draw - a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, fjord - a submergent landform which has occurred due to glacial activity. Glacier - a large collection of ice or a river that moves slowly down a mountain. Glacial Pothole - see Kettle Gulf - a part of a lake or ocean that extends so that it is surrounded by land on three sides, similar to, but larger than a bay, headland - an area of water bordered by land on three sides
8.
Sea
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A sea is a large body of salt water that is surrounded in whole or in part by land. More broadly, the sea is the system of Earths salty. The sea moderates Earths climate and has important roles in the cycle, carbon cycle. Although the sea has been traveled and explored since prehistory, the scientific study of the sea—oceanography—dates broadly to the British Challenger expedition of the 1870s. Owing to the present state of continental drift, the Northern Hemisphere is now equally divided between land and sea but the South is overwhelmingly oceanic. Salinity in the ocean is generally in a narrow band around 3. 5% by mass, although this can vary in more landlocked waters, near the mouths of large rivers. About 85% of the solids in the sea are sodium chloride. Deep-sea currents are produced by differences in salinity and temperature, surface currents are formed by the friction of waves produced by the wind and by tides, the changes in local sea level produced by the gravity of the Moon and Sun. The direction of all of these is governed by surface and submarine land masses, former changes in sea levels have left continental shelves, shallow areas in the sea close to land. The most diverse areas surround great tropical coral reefs, whaling in the deep sea was once common but whales dwindling numbers prompted international conservation efforts and finally a moratorium on most commercial hunting. Life may have started there and aquatic microbial mats are generally credited with the oxygenation of Earths atmosphere, the sea is an essential aspect of human trade, travel, mineral extraction, and power generation. It is the scene of activities including swimming, diving, surfing. However, population growth, industrialization, and intensive farming have all contributed to marine pollution. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is being absorbed in increasing amounts, lowering its pH in a known as ocean acidification. The shared nature of the sea has made overfishing an increasing problem, both senses of sea date to Old English, the larger sense has required a definite article since Early Middle English. Seas are generally larger than lakes and contain salt water, while the defining elements of size and being bounded are generally used, there is no formally accepted technical definition of sea among oceanographers. In international law, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea states that all the ocean is the sea. Earth is the known planet with seas of liquid water on its surface, although Mars possesses ice caps
9.
Discharge (hydrology)
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In hydrology, discharge is the volume rate of water flow that is transported through a given cross-sectional area. It includes any suspended solids, dissolved chemicals, or biologic material in addition to the water itself, GH Dury and MJ Bradshaw are two hydrologists who devised the models showing the relationship between discharge and other variables in a river. The units that are used to express discharge include m³/s, ft³/s and/or acre-feet per day. For example, the discharge of the Rhine river in Europe is 2,200 cubic metres per second or 190,000,000 cubic metres per day. A commonly applied methodology for measuring, and estimating, the discharge of a river is based on a form of the continuity equation. In storm hydrology, an important consideration is the streams discharge hydrograph, the stream rises to a peak flow after each precipitation event, then falls in a slow recession. Because the peak flow also corresponds to the water level reached during the event. The amount of precipitation correlates to the volume of water that flows out of the river. The relationship between the discharge in the stream at a given cross-section and the level of the stream is described by a rating curve, average velocities and the cross-sectional area of the stream are measured for a given stream level. The velocity and the give the discharge for that level. After measurements are made for different levels, a rating table or rating curve may be developed. Once rated, the discharge in the stream may be determined by measuring the level, if a continuous level-recording device is located at a rated cross-section, the streams discharge may be continuously determined. Larger flows can transport more sediment and larger particles downstream than smaller flows due to their greater force, larger flows can also erode stream banks and damage public infrastructure
10.
Drainage basin
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A drainage basin or catchment area is any area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. Drainage basins connect into other drainage basins at elevations in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins. Other terms used to describe drainage basins are catchment, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin and water basin. In closed drainage basins the water converges to a point inside the basin, known as a sink, which may be a permanent lake. The drainage basin acts as a funnel by collecting all the water within the covered by the basin. Each drainage basin is separated topographically from adjacent basins by a perimeter, drainage basins are similar but not identical to hydrologic units, which are drainage areas delineated so as to nest into a multi-level hierarchical drainage system. Hydrologic units are defined to allow multiple inlets, outlets, or sinks, in a strict sense, all drainage basins are hydrologic units but not all hydrologic units are drainage basins. Drainage basins of the oceans and seas of the world. Grey areas are endorheic basins that do not drain to the oceans, the following is a list of the major ocean basins, About 48. 7% of the worlds land drains to the Atlantic Ocean. The two major mediterranean seas of the world also flow to the Atlantic, The Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico basin includes most of the U. S. The Mediterranean Sea basin includes much of North Africa, east-central Africa, Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the areas of Israel, Lebanon. Just over 13% of the land in the world drains to the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Oceans drainage basin also comprises about 13% of Earths land. It drains the eastern coast of Africa, the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Burma, antarctica comprises approximately eight percent of the Earths land. The five largest river basins, from largest to smallest, are the basins of the Amazon, the Río de la Plata, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi. The three rivers that drain the most water, from most to least, are the Amazon, Ganga, endorheic drainage basins are inland basins that do not drain to an ocean. Around 18% of all land drains to endorheic lakes or seas or sinks, the largest of these consists of much of the interior of Asia, which drains into the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and numerous smaller lakes. Some of these, such as the Great Basin, are not single drainage basins but collections of separate, in endorheic bodies of standing water where evaporation is the primary means of water loss, the water is typically more saline than the oceans. An extreme example of this is the Dead Sea, drainage basins have been historically important for determining territorial boundaries, particularly in regions where trade by water has been important
11.
Greece
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Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, historically also known as Hellas, is a country in southeastern Europe, with a population of approximately 11 million as of 2015. Athens is the capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. Greece consists of nine regions, Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace, Crete. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a vast number of islands, eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as polis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming a part of the Roman Empire and its successor. The Greek Orthodox Church also shaped modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World, falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence. Greeces rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, among the most in Europe, Greece is a democratic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, and a very high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. Greeces unique cultural heritage, large industry, prominent shipping sector. It is the largest economy in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor, the names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages, locations and cultures. The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, all three stages of the stone age are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries and these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC and this ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, in 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the worlds first democratic system of government in Athens
12.
Turkey
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Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, parliamentary republic with a cultural heritage. The country is encircled by seas on three sides, the Aegean Sea is to the west, the Black Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, Ankara is the capital while Istanbul is the countrys largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Approximately 70-80% of the countrys citizens identify themselves as ethnic Turks, other ethnic groups include legally recognised and unrecognised minorities. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group, making up approximately 20% of the population, the area of Turkey has been inhabited since the Paleolithic by various ancient Anatolian civilisations, as well as Assyrians, Greeks, Thracians, Phrygians, Urartians and Armenians. After Alexander the Greats conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process continued under the Roman Empire. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, the empire reached the peak of its power in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. During the war, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Assyrian, following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states. Turkey is a member of the UN, an early member of NATO. Turkeys growing economy and diplomatic initiatives have led to its recognition as a regional power while her location has given it geopolitical, the name of Turkey is based on the ethnonym Türk. The first recorded use of the term Türk or Türük as an autonym is contained in the Old Turkic inscriptions of the Göktürks of Central Asia, the English name Turkey first appeared in the late 14th century and is derived from Medieval Latin Turchia. Similarly, the medieval Khazar Empire, a Turkic state on the shores of the Black. The medieval Arabs referred to the Mamluk Sultanate as al-Dawla al-Turkiyya, the Ottoman Empire was sometimes referred to as Turkey or the Turkish Empire among its European contemporaries. The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world, various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family, in fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty years ago. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, the settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age
13.
Aegean Islands
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The ancient Greek name of the Aegean Sea, Archipelago was later applied to the islands it contains and is now used more generally, to refer to any island group. The vast majority of the Aegean Islands belong to Greece, being split among nine administrative regions, the only sizable possessions of Turkey in the Aegean Sea are Imbros and Tenedos, in the northeastern part of the Sea. Various smaller islets off Turkeys western coast are also under Turkish sovereignty, most of the islands enjoy warm summer temperatures and cold winter influenced by the Mediterranean climate. In the Treaty of Peace in 1947, these Italian-controlled islands were ceded to Greece, media related to Islands of the Aegean Sea at Wikimedia Commons
14.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
15.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
16.
Geography of Greece
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Greece is a country in Southern Europe, located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The country consists of a mainland and two additional smaller peninsulas projecting from it, the Chalkidice and the Peloponnese, which is separated from the mainland by the Isthmus of Corinth. Greece also features a number of islands, of various sizes, both large ones including Crete, Euboea, Rhodes and Corfu, and groups of smaller ones such as the Dodecanese. According to the CIA World Factbook, Greece has 13,676 kilometres of coastline, Greece is largely mountainous, with its latitude ranging from 35°00′N to 42°00′N and in longitude from 19°00′E to 28°30′E. As a result, the country has considerable climatic variation, Greeces climate is divided into three main classes, A Mediterranean climate features mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Temperatures rarely reach extremes, although snowfalls do occur even in Athens. An alpine climate is primarily in Western Greece. A temperate climate is found in Central and Eastern Macedonia and parts of Thrace, including Komotini, Xanthi and this climate is characterized by cold, damp winters and hot, dry summers. Greeces largest island, Crete, due to its position and vast size. As such, the climate in Crete is primarily temperate, the atmosphere can be quite humid, depending on the proximity to the sea, while winter is fairly mild. Snowfall is common on the mountains between November and May, but rare in low-lying areas, especially near the coast, during the summer, average temperatures may reach the low 30s °C, with maxima touching the mid 40s. The south coast of the island, including the Mesara Plain and Asterousia Mountains, falls in the North African climatic zone, in southern Crete, date palms bear fruit and swallows remain all year round, without migrating to Africa. Greece is located in Southern Europe, bordering the Ionian Sea and it is a peninsular country, possessing an archipelago of about 3,000 islands. It has an area of 131,957 km2, of which land area is 130,647 km2. Land boundaries with Albania, Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey measure approximately 1,110 km in total. Of the countrys territory,83. 33% or 110,496 km2 is mainland territory. Greeces coastline measures 13,676 km. 80% of Greece is mountainous, the Pindus mountain range lies across the center of the country in a northwest-to-southeast direction, with a maximum elevation of 2,637 m. Mount Olympus is the highest point in Greece and the fourth highest in relative prominence in Europe
17.
Anatolia
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Anatolia, in geography known as Asia Minor, Asian Turkey, Anatolian peninsula, or Anatolian plateau, is the westernmost protrusion of Asia, which makes up the majority of modern-day Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Sea of Marmara forms a connection between the Black and Aegean Seas through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits and separates Anatolia from Thrace on the European mainland. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to a line between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Black Sea to the Armenian Highlands, thus, traditionally Anatolia is the territory that comprises approximately the western two-thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. The Turkification of Anatolia began under the Seljuk Empire in the late 11th century, however, various non-Turkic languages continue to be spoken by minorities in Anatolia today, including Kurdish, Assyrian, Armenian, Arabic, Laz, Georgian, and Greek. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to a line running from the Gulf of Alexandretta to the Black Sea. This traditional geographical definition is used, for example, in the latest edition of Merriam-Websters Geographical Dictionary, under this definition, Anatolia is bounded to the east by the Armenian Highlands, and the Euphrates before that river bends to the southeast to enter Mesopotamia. To the southeast, it is bounded by the ranges that separate it from the Orontes valley in Syria, the first name the Greeks used for the Anatolian peninsula was Ἀσία, presumably after the name of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia. As the name of Asia came to be extended to areas east of the Mediterranean. The name Anatolia derives from the Greek ἀνατολή meaning “the East” or more literally “sunrise”, the precise reference of this term has varied over time, perhaps originally referring to the Aeolian, Ionian and Dorian colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor. In the Byzantine Empire, the Anatolic Theme was a theme covering the western, the modern Turkish form of Anatolia is Anadolu, which again derives from the Greek name Aνατολή. The Russian male name Anatoly and the French Anatole share the same linguistic origin, in English the name of Turkey for ancient Anatolia first appeared c. It is derived from the Medieval Latin Turchia, which was used by the Europeans to define the Seljuk controlled parts of Anatolia after the Battle of Manzikert. Human habitation in Anatolia dates back to the Paleolithic, neolithic Anatolia has been proposed as the homeland of the Indo-European language family, although linguists tend to favour a later origin in the steppes north of the Black Sea. However, it is clear that the Anatolian languages, the oldest branch of Indo-European, have spoken in Anatolia since at least the 19th century BC. The earliest historical records of Anatolia stem from the southeast of the region and are from the Mesopotamian-based Akkadian Empire during the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC, scholars generally believe the earliest indigenous populations of Anatolia were the Hattians and Hurrians. The region was famous for exporting raw materials, and areas of Hattian-, one of the numerous cuneiform records dated circa 20th century BC, found in Anatolia at the Assyrian colony of Kanesh, uses an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines. They were speakers of an Indo-European language, the Hittite language, originating from Nesa, they conquered Hattusa in the 18th century BC, imposing themselves over Hattian- and Hurrian-speaking populations. According to the most widely accepted Kurgan theory on the Proto-Indo-European homeland, however, the Hittites adopted the cuneiform script, invented in Mesopotamia
18.
Peninsula
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A peninsula is a piece of land surrounded by water on the majority of its border, while being connected to a mainland from which it extends out. Examples include the upper and lower peninsulas of the state of Michigan, the surrounding water is usually understood to be continuous, though not necessarily named as a single body of water. Peninsulas are not always named as such, one can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point, a point is generally considered a tapering piece of land projecting into a body of water that is less prominent than a cape. A river which courses through a very tight meander is also said to form a peninsula within the loop of water. In English, the plural of peninsula is peninsulas or, less commonly, peninsulas can be found on coastlines and in smaller bodies of water throughout the world, ranging in scale from square meters to millions of square kilometers. Theres the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe, and in Southern Europe theres the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian Peninsula, south America has the Brunswick Peninsula, and Antarctica has the Antarctic Peninsula. In Africa, theres the Horn of Africa, and in Australia, asia has the 3 largest peninsulas in the world, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian Peninsula, and the Indochinese Peninsula
19.
Sea of Marmara
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The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles strait to the Aegean Sea. The former also separates Istanbul into its Asian and European sides, the sea has an area of 11,350 km² with the greatest depth reaching 1,370 m. The sea takes its name from the island of Marmara, which is rich in sources of marble, from the Greek μάρμαρον, marble. The seas ancient Greek name Propontis derives from pro- and pontos, deriving from the fact that the Greeks sailed through it to reach the Black Sea, Pontos. The surface salinity of the sea averages about 22 parts per thousand, which is greater than that of the Black Sea. The water is more saline at the sea bottom, averaging salinities of around 38 parts per thousand. This high-density saline water, like that of the Black Sea, water from the Susurluk, Biga and Gonen Rivers also reduces the salinity of the sea, though with less influence than on the Black Sea. With little land in Thrace draining southward, almost all of these rivers flow from Anatolia, the sea contains the archipelago of the Prince Islands and Marmara Island, Avşa and Paşalimanı. The south coast of the sea is heavily indented, and includes the Gulf of İzmit, the Gulf of Gemlik Gulf of Bandırma and the Gulf of Erdek. During a storm on December 29,1999, the Russian oil tanker Volgoneft broke in two in the Sea of Marmara, and more than 1,500 tonnes of oil were spilled into the water. The North Anatolian Fault, which has triggered many major earthquakes in recent years, such as the August and November 1999 earthquakes in Izmit and Düzce, respectively, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Sea of Marmara as follows, On the West. The Dardanelles limit of the Aegean Sea, a line joining Cape Rumili with Cape Anatoli
20.
Black Sea
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The Black Sea is a body of water between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. It is supplied by a number of rivers, such as the Danube, Dnieper, Rioni, Southern Bug. The Black Sea has an area of 436,400 km2, a depth of 2,212 m. It is constrained by the Pontic Mountains to the south and by the Caucasus Mountains to the east, the longest east-west extent is about 1,175 km. The Black Sea has a water balance, that is, a net outflow of water 300 km3 per year through the Bosphorus. Mediterranean water flows into the Black Sea as part of a two-way hydrological exchange, the Black Sea drains into the Mediterranean Sea and then the Atlantic Ocean, via the Aegean Sea and various straits. The Bosphorus Strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and these waters separate Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The Black Sea is also connected to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch, the water level has varied significantly. Due to these variations in the level in the basin. At certain critical water levels it is possible for connections with surrounding water bodies to become established and it is through the most active of these connective routes, the Turkish Straits, that the Black Sea joins the world ocean. When this hydrological link is not present, the Black Sea is a basin, operating independently of the global ocean system. Currently the Black Sea water level is high, thus water is being exchanged with the Mediterranean. The Turkish Straits connect the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea, and comprise the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Black Sea as follows, On the Southwest. The Northeastern limit of the Sea of Marmara, a line joining Cape Takil and Cape Panaghia. Strabos Geographica reports that in antiquity, the Black Sea was often just called the Sea, for the most part, Graeco-Roman tradition refers to the Black Sea as the Hospitable sea, Εὔξεινος Πόντος Eúxeinos Póntos. This is a euphemism replacing an earlier Inhospitable Sea, Πόντος Ἄξεινος Póntos Áxeinos, strabo thinks that the Black Sea was called inhospitable before Greek colonization because it was difficult to navigate, and because its shores were inhabited by savage tribes. The name was changed to hospitable after the Milesians had colonized the southern shoreline and it is also possible that the epithet Áxeinos arose by popular etymology from a Scythian word axšaina- unlit, dark, the designation Black Sea may thus date from antiquity. A map of Asia dating to 1570, entitled Asiae Nova Descriptio, from Abraham Orteliuss Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, english-language writers of the 18th century often used the name Euxine Sea to refer to the Black Sea
21.
Dardanelles
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Together with the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles forms the Turkish Straits. The English name Dardanelles derives from Dardanus, an ancient city on the Asian shore of the strait which in turn takes its name from Dardanus, the ancient Greek name Ἑλλήσποντος means Sea of Helle, and was the ancient name of the narrow strait. It was variously named in classical literature Hellespontium Pelagus, Rectum Hellesponticum and it was so called from Helle, the daughter of Athamas, who was drowned here in the mythology of the Golden Fleece. The Marmara further connects to the Black Sea via the Bosphorus, the strait is located at approximately 40°13′N 26°26′E. The strait is 61 kilometres long, and 1.2 to 6 kilometres wide, water flows in both directions along the strait, from the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean via a surface current, and in the opposite direction via an undercurrent. The Dardanelles is unique in many respects, the very narrow and winding shape of the strait is more akin to that of a river. It is considered one of the most hazardous, crowded, difficult, the currents produced by the tidal action in the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara are such that ships under sail must await at anchorage for the right conditions before entering the Dardanelles. It is a sea access route for numerous countries, including Russia. The ancient city of Troy was located near the entrance of the strait. Troy was able to control the traffic entering this vital waterway. Herodotus tells us that, circa 482 BC, Xerxes I had two bridges built across the width of the Hellespont at Abydos, in order that his huge army could cross from Persia into Greece. This crossing was named by Aeschylus in his tragedy The Persians as the cause of divine intervention against Xerxes, according to Herodotus, both bridges were destroyed by a storm and Xerxes had those responsible for building the bridges beheaded and the strait itself whipped. The Histories of Herodotus vii. 33–37 and vii. 54–58 give details of building and crossing of Xerxes Pontoon Bridges. Xerxes is then said to have thrown fetters into the strait, Herodotus commented that this was a highly presumptuous way to address the Hellespont but in no way atypical of Xerxes. Harpalus the engineer eventually helped the invading armies to cross by lashing the ships together with their bows facing the current and, so it is said, two additional anchors. From the perspective of ancient Greek mythology, it was said that Helle, the Dardanelles were vital to the defence of Constantinople during the Byzantine period. Also, the Dardanelles was an important source of income for the ruler of the region, at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum a marble plate contains a law by the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I, that regulated fees for passage through the customs office of the Dardanelles. Whoever dares to violate these regulations shall no longer be regarded as a friend, besides, the administrator of the Dardanelles must have the right to receive 50 golden Litrons, so that these rules, which we make out of piety, shall never ever be violated
22.
Bosphorus
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The Bosphorus or Bosporus is a narrow, natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in northwestern Turkey. It forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia, and separates Asian Turkey from European Turkey. The worlds narrowest strait used for navigation, the Bosphorus connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and, by extension via the Dardanelles. Most of the shores of the strait are heavily settled, straddled by the city of Istanbuls metropolitan population of 17 million inhabitants extending inland from both coasts, together with the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus forms the Turkish Straits. This folk etymology was canonized by Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound, where Prometheus prophesies to Io that the strait would be named after her, the site where Io supposedly went ashore was near Chrysopolis, and was named Bous the Cow. The same site was known as Damalis, as it was where the Athenian general Chares had erected a monument to his wife Damalis. Historically, the Bosphorus was also known as the Strait of Constantinople, or the Thracian Bosphorus and these are expressed in Herodotus Histories,4.83, as Bosporus Thracius, Bosporus Thraciae, and Βόσπορος Θρᾴκιος, respectively. Other names by which the strait is referenced by Herodotus include Chalcedonian Bosporus, the term eventually came to be used as common noun βόσπορος, meaning a strait, and was also formerly applied to the Hellespont in Classical Greek by Aeschylus and Sophocles. Presently, the waterway is officially referred to as simply Bosphorus, the Marmara further connects to the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas via the Dardanelles. A common mistake made by those who are unfamiliar with the locale is to assume the Bosphorus is a river, when it is, in fact. The exact scientific cause and date of the formation of the Bosphorus remain the subject of debate among geologists, many geologists, however, claim that the strait is much older, even if relatively young on a geologic timescale. The Symplegades were defeated when the lyrical hero Jason obtained successful passage, whereupon the rocks became fixed, between these limits, the strait is 31 km long, with a width of 3,329 m at the northern entrance and 2,826 m at the southern entrance. Its maximum width is 3,420 m between Umuryeri and Büyükdere Limanı, and minimum width 700 m between Kandilli Point and Aşiyan, the depth of the Bosphorus varies from 13 to 110 m in midstream with an average of 65 m. The deepest location is between Kandilli and Bebek with 110 m, the most shallow locations are off Kadıköy İnciburnu on the northward route with 18 m and off Aşiyan Point on the southward route with 13 m. The study of the water and wind erosion of the straits relates to that of its formation, sections of the shore have been reinforced with concrete or rubble and sections of the strait prone to deposition are periodically dredged. These channels are the main pathway for sediments to the deep sea where they form sedimentary deposits. These deposits ultimately hold not only untapped reserves of gas and oil and our initial findings show that the flow in these channels is quite different to the flow in river channels on land. Specifically, as flow moves around a bend it spirals in the direction in the deep sea compared to the spiral found in river channels on land
23.
Crete
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Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, 88th-largest island in the world and the fifth-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete and a number of surrounding islands and islets constitute the region of Crete, the capital and the largest city is Heraklion. As of 2011, the region had a population of 623,065, Crete forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece, while retaining its own local cultural traits. It was once the centre of the Minoan civilization, which is regarded as the earliest recorded civilization in Europe. The island is first referred to as Kaptara in texts from the Syrian city of Mari dating from the 18th century BC, repeated later in Neo-Assyrian records and it was also known in ancient Egyptian as Keftiu, strongly suggesting a similar Minoan name for the island. The current name of Crete is thought to be first attested in Mycenaean Greek texts written in Linear B, through the words
24.
Rhodes
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Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of land area and also the island groups historical capital. Administratively the island forms a municipality within the Rhodes regional unit. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Rhodes, the city of Rhodes had 50,636 inhabitants in 2011. It is located northeast of Crete, southeast of Athens and just off the Anatolian coast of Turkey, Rhodes nickname is The island of the Knights, named after the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who once conquered the land. Historically, Rhodes was famous worldwide for the Colossus of Rhodes, the Medieval Old Town of the City of Rhodes has been declared a World Heritage Site. Today, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe, the island has been known as Ρόδος in Greek throughout its history. In addition, the island has been called Rodi in Italian, Rodos in Turkish, and Rodi or Rodes in Ladino. The island of Rhodes is shaped like a spearhead,79.7 km long and 38 km wide, with an area of approximately 1,400 square kilometres. The city of Rhodes is located at the tip of the island, as well as the site of the ancient. The main air gateway is located 14 km to the southwest of the city in Paradisi, the road network radiates from the city along the east and west coasts. There are mineral-rich spring water used to give medicinal baths and the spa resorts offer various health treatments, Rhodes is situated 363 km east-south-east from the Greek mainland, and 18 km from the southern shore of Turkey. The interior of the island is mountainous, sparsely inhabited and covered with forests of pine, while the shores are rocky, the island has arable strips of land where citrus fruit, wine grapes, vegetables, olives and other crops are grown. The Rhodian population of deer was found to be genetically distinct in 2005. In Petaloudes Valley, large numbers of tiger moths gather during the summer months, mount Attavyros, at 1,216 metres, is the islands highest point of elevation. Earthquakes include the 226 BC earthquake that destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes, one on 3 May 1481 which destroyed much of the city of Rhodes, and one on 26 June 1926. On 15 July 2008, Rhodes was struck by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake causing minor damage to a few old buildings, Rhodes has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. The island was inhabited in the Neolithic period, although remains of this culture. In the 16th century BC, the Minoans came to Rhodes, later Greek mythology recalled a Rhodian race called the Telchines and associated the island of Rhodes with Danaus, it was sometimes nicknamed Telchinis
25.
Archipelago
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An archipelago, sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster or collection of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi-, in Italian, possibly following a tradition of antiquity, the Archipelago was the proper name for the Aegean Sea and, later, usage shifted to refer to the Aegean Islands. It is now used to refer to any group or, sometimes. Archipelagos may be isolated in large amounts of water or neighbouring a large land mass. For example, Scotland has more than 700 islands surrounding its mainland which form an archipelago, archipelagos are often volcanic, forming along island arcs generated by subduction zones or hotspots, but may also be the result of erosion, deposition, and land elevation. Depending on their origin, islands forming archipelagos can be referred to as oceanic islands, continental fragments. Oceanic islands are mainly of volcanic origin, continental fragments correspond to land masses that have separated from a continental mass due to tectonic displacement. Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Maldives, the Bahamas, Greece, Hawaii, the largest archipelagic state in the world by area and population is Indonesia. Island arc List of landforms List of archipelagos by number of islands List of archipelagos List of islands Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Archipelago
26.
Ancient Greek
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Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
27.
Amazons
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In Greek mythology, the Amazons were a tribe of women warriors. The Scythian women may have inspired the myth, apollonius Rhodius, at Argonautica, mention that Amazons were the daughters of Ares and Harmonia. They were brutal and aggressive, and their concern in life was war. Later, he says, they established Mitylene a little way beyond the Caïcus, Aeschylus, at Prometheus Bound, places the original home of the Amazons in the country about Lake Maeotis and they later moved to Themiscyra on the Thermodon. Homer tells that the Amazons were sought and found somewhere near Lycia, Diodorus mention that the Amazons traveled from the Libya under Queen Myrina. Amazon warriors were often depicted in battle with Greek warriors in amazonomachies in classical art, the Amazons have become associated with many historical people throughout the Roman Empire period and Late Antiquity. In Roman historiography, there are accounts of Amazon raids in Anatolia. From the early period, their name has become a term for female warriors in general. Greeks also used epithets for them. Herodotus used the Androktones and Androleteirai, in Iliad they also called Antianeirai and Aeschylus in his work, Prometheus Bound, the origin of the word is uncertain. Πέρσαι», where it appears together with the Indo-Iranian root *kar- make, alternatively, a Greek derivation from *ṇ-mṇ-gw-jon-es manless, without husbands has been proposed, an explanation deemed unlikely by Hjalmar Frisk. 19th century scholarship also connected the term to the ethnonym Amazigh, a further explanation proposes Iranian *ama-janah virility-killing as source. The Hittite researcher Friedrich Cornelius assumes that there had been the land Azzi with the capital Chajasa in the area of the Thermodon-Iris Delta on the coast of the Black Sea and he brings its residents in direct relation to the Amazons, namely based on its name and its customs. The location of land as well as his conclusions are controversial. There is no indication of such a practice in ancient works of art, adrienne Mayor suggests the origin of this myth was due to the words etymology. Herodotus and Strabo placed them on the banks of the Thermodon, later, he says, they established Mitylene a little way beyond the Caïcus. Aeschylus, at Prometheus Bound, places the home of the Amazons in the country about Lake Maeotis. According to Pseudo-Plutarch, the Amazons lived in and about the Tanais river, formerly called the Amazonian or Amazon river, the Amazons later moved to Themiscyra on the River Thermodon
28.
Hecatoncheires
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Their name derives from the Greek ἑκατόν and χείρ, each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads. Hesiods Theogony reports that the three Hecatoncheires became the guards of the gates of Tartarus, the Hundred-Handed-Ones are giants of great storms and hurricanes. Other accounts make Briareos one of the assailants of Olympus, after his defeat, he was buried under Mount Aetna. According to Hesiod, the Hecatoncheires were children of Gaia and Uranus and they played no known part in cult. They were, Briareos Strong, also called Aegaeon, spelled in Latin as Briareus, gyges or Gyes, possibly Limb or Curved. Soon after they were born, their father Uranus threw them into the depths of Tartarus because he saw them as hideous monsters. The Hecatoncheires remained there, guarded by the dragon Campe, until Zeus rescued them, advised by Rhea that they would serve as allies against Cronus. During the War of the Titans, the Hecatoncheires fought against the Titans, throwing rocks as big as mountains, one hundred at a time, after this, the Hecatoncheires became the guards of Tartarus. Briareos became the son-in-law of Poseidon, who gave him Kymopoliea his daughter to wed, scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes represent Aegaeon as a son of Gaea and Pontos, the Sea, ruling the fabulous Aegaea in Euboea, an enemy of Poseidon and the inventor of warships. In Ovids Metamorphoses and in Philostratus Life of Apollonius of Tyana he is a marine deity, in the Iliad by Homer, translated by Butler, Achilles asks his mother to appeal to Zeus on account of a previous interaction with Briareus, or Aegaeon. In Gargantua and Pantagruel it is mentioned that a waiter needs as many hands as Briareus, the giant is also mentioned in Cervantes Don Quixote, in the famous episode of the windmills. Briareos is mentioned in Book I of John Miltons Paradise Lost alongside Typhon as an analogue to the fallen Satan, Briareos is mentioned in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding, in a conversation between Tom Jones and Mr. Partridge. In Don Juan, Byron makes a crude joke, musing whether enviable Briareus. Hadst all things multiplied in proportion, in the Magic, The Gathering expansion Theros, based on Greek mythology, there is a card named Hundred-Handed One, a reference to the Hecatonkheires. Kottos, styled as Cottus is mentioned in John Keats Hyperion as a deity in the aftermath of the Titanomachy. Asura Greek mythology in popular culture Hesiods Theogony, 147ff, bibliotheca I.1.1 Ovid, Fasti iv.593 Horace Carminae II.17.14, III.4.69 Karl Kerenyi, Gods of the Greeks, London, Thames and Hudson,1951
29.
Aegeus
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In Greek mythology, Aegeus or Aegeas, was an archaic figure in the founding myth of Athens. The goat-man who gave his name to the Aegean Sea was, next to Poseidon, the father of Theseus, the founder of Athenian institutions and one of the kings of Athens. Upon the death of the king, Pandion II, Aegeus and his three brothers, Pallas, Nisos, and Lykos, took control of Athens from Metion and they divided the government in four and Aegeus became king. Aegeus first wife was Meta, and his wife was Chalciope. Still without a heir, Aegeus asked the oracle at Delphi for advice. Her cryptic words were Do not loosen the bulging mouth of the wineskin until you have reached the height of Athens, Aegeus did not understand the prophecy and was disappointed. This puzzling oracle forced Aegeus to visit Pittheus, king of Troezen, Pittheus understood the prophecy and introduced Aegeus to his daughter, Aethra, when Aegeus was drunk. They lay with other, and then in some versions, Aethra waded to the island of Sphairia. When Aethra became pregnant, Aegeus decided to return to Athens, upon his return to Athens, Aegeus married Medea, who had fled from Corinth and the wrath of Jason. Aegeus and Medea had one son named Medus, while visiting in Athens, King Minos son, Androgeus managed to defeat Aegeus in every contest during the Panathenaic Games. Out of jealousy, Aegeus sent him to conquer the Marathonian Bull, Minos was angry and declared war on Athens. He offered the Athenians peace, however, under the condition that Athens would send seven men and seven young women every nine years to Crete to be fed to the Minotaur. This continued until Theseus killed the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne, in Troezen, Theseus grew up and became a brave young man. He managed to move the rock and took his fathers weapons and his mother then told him the identity of his father and that he should take the weapons back to him at Athens and be acknowledged. Theseus decided to go to Athens and had the choice of going by sea, young, brave and ambitious, Theseus decided to go to Athens by land. When Theseus arrived, he did not reveal his true identity and he was welcomed by Aegeus, who was suspicious about the stranger who came to Athens. Medea tried to have Theseus killed by encouraging Aegeus to ask him to capture the Marathonian Bull and she tried to poison him, but at the last second, Aegeus recognized his son and knocked the poisoned cup out of Theseus hand. Father and son were reunited, and Medea was sent away to Asia
30.
Theseus
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Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were identified with an archaic religious and social order. As Heracles was the Dorian hero, Theseus was a hero, considered by Athenians as their own great reformer, his name comes from the same root as θεσμός. The myths surrounding Theseus—his journeys, exploits, and family—have provided material for fiction throughout the ages, Theseus was responsible for the synoikismos —the political unification of Attica under Athens, represented emblematically in his journey of labours, subduing ogres and monstrous beasts. Because he was the king, Theseus built and occupied a palace on the fortress of the Acropolis that may have been similar to the palace that was excavated in Mycenae. Pausanias reports that after the synoikismos, Theseus established a cult of Aphrodite Pandemos, Plutarchs vita of Theseus makes use of varying accounts of the death of the Minotaur, Theseus escape, and the love of Ariadne for Theseus. Plutarchs sources, not all of whose texts have survived independently, included Pherecydes, Demon, Philochorus, Aegeus, one of the primordial kings of Athens, was childless. Desiring an heir, he asked the oracle at Delphi for advice and her cryptic words were Do not loosen the bulging mouth of the wineskin until you have reached the height of Athens, lest you die of grief. Aegeus did not understand the prophecy and was disappointed and he asked the advice of his host Pittheus, king of Troezen. Pittheus understood the prophecy, got Aegeus drunk, and gave Aegeus his daughter Aethra, but following the instructions of Athena in a dream, Aethra left the sleeping Aegeus and waded across to the island of Sphairia that lay close to Troezens shore. There she poured a libation to Sphairos and Poseidon, and was possessed by the sea god in the night. The mix gave Theseus a combination of divine as well as mortal characteristics in his nature, such double paternity, with one immortal, after Aethra became pregnant, Aegeus decided to return to Athens. In Athens, Aegeus was joined by Medea, who had left Corinth after slaughtering the children she had borne, priestess and consort together represented the old order in Athens. Thus Theseus was raised in his mothers land, when Theseus grew up and became a brave young man, he moved the rock and recovered his fathers tokens. His mother then told him the truth about his fathers identity, young, brave, and ambitious, Theseus decided to go alone by the land route and defeated a great many bandits along the way. At the Isthmian entrance to the Underworld was a robber named Sinis and he would capture travelers, tie them between two pine trees that were bent down to the ground, and then let the trees go, tearing his victims apart. Theseus killed him by his own method and he then became intimate with Siniss daughter, Perigune, fathering the child Melanippus. In another deed north of the Isthmus, at a place called Crommyon, he killed an enormous pig, some versions name the sow herself as Phaea. The Bibliotheca described the Crommyonian Sow as an offspring of Typhon, near Megara, an elderly robber named Sciron forced travellers along the narrow cliff-face pathway to wash his feet
31.
Hesychius of Alexandria
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Hesychius is important, not only for Greek philology, but also for studying lost languages and obscure dialects and in reconstructing Proto-Indo-European. Many of the words that are included in this work are not found in surviving ancient Greek texts, hesychius explanations of many epithets and phrases also reveal many important facts about the religion and social life of the ancients. Hesychius was probably not a Christian, explanations of words from Gregory Nazianzus and other Christian writers are later interpolations. The lexicon survives in one deeply corrupt 15th-century manuscript, which is preserved in the library of San Marco at Venice. The best edition is by Moriz Wilhelm Constantin Schmidt, but no complete edition of the manuscript has been published since it was first printed by Marcus Musurus in Venice,1514. A modern edition has been published under the auspices of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, begun by Kurt Latte and completed by Peter Allan Hansen, harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities,1898. Hesychii glossographi discipulus et epiglōssistēs russus in ipsa Constantinopoli, sec
32.
Republic of Venice
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It was based in the lagoon communities of the historically prosperous city of Venice. It was a leading European economic and trading power during the Middle Ages, the Venetian city state was founded as a safe haven for people escaping persecution in mainland Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. In its early years, it prospered on the salt trade, in subsequent centuries, the city state established a thalassocracy. It dominated trade on the Mediterranean Sea, including commerce between Asia, Europe and North Africa, the Venetian navy was used in the Crusades. Venice achieved territorial conquests along the Adriatic Sea, the city became home to an extremely wealthy merchant class, who patronized renowned art and architecture along the citys lagoons. Venetian merchants were influential financiers in Europe, the city was also the birthplace of great European explorers, including Marco Polo, as well as the classical music composer Vivaldi. The republic was ruled by the Doge, who was elected by members of the Great Council of Venice, the ruling class was an oligarchy of merchants and aristocrats. Venice and other Italian maritime republics played a key role in fostering capitalism, Venetian citizens generally supported the system of governance. The city-state enforced strict laws and employed ruthless tactics in its prisons, the opening of new trade routes to the Americas and the East Indies via the Atlantic Ocean marked the beginning of Venices decline as a maritime republic. The city state suffered defeats from the navy of the Ottoman Empire, in 1797, the country was colonized by Austria and France, following an invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte. Venice became a part of a unified Italy in the 19th century and it was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in reference to its title as one of the Most Serene Republics. He was the first historical Doge of Venice, whichever the case, the first doges had their power base in Heraclea. Ursuss successor, Deusdedit, moved his seat from Heraclea to Malamocco in the 740s and he was the son of Ursus and represented the attempt of his father to establish a dynasty. Such attempts were more commonplace among the doges of the first few centuries of Venetian history. They desired to remain well-connected to the Empire, another faction, republican in nature, believed in continuing along a course towards practical independence. The other main faction was pro-Frankish, supported mostly by clergy, they looked towards the new Carolingian king of the Franks, Pepin the Short, as the best provider of defence against the Lombards. A minor, pro-Lombard faction was opposed to close ties with any of these further-off powers, the successors of Obelerio inherited a united Venice. By the Pax Nicephori, the two emperors had recognised that Venice belonged to the Byzantine sphere of influence, many centuries later, the Venetians claimed that the treaty had recognised Venetian de facto independence, but the truth of this claim is doubted by modern scholars
33.
High Middle Ages
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The High Middle Ages or High Medieval Period was the period of European history around the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, by 1250 the robust population increase greatly benefited the European economy, reaching levels that would not be seen again in some areas until the 19th century. This trend was checked in the Late Middle Ages by a series of calamities, notably the Black Death but also including numerous wars, from about the year 780 onwards, Europe saw the last of the barbarian invasions and became more socially and politically organized. The Carolingian Renaissance led to scientific and philosophical revival of Europe, the first universities were established in Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Modena. The Vikings had settled in the British Isles, France and elsewhere, the Magyars had ceased their expansion in the 10th century, and by the year 1000, a Christian Kingdom of Hungary was recognized in Central Europe, forming alliances with regional powers. With the brief exception of the Mongol invasions in the 13th century, in the 11th century, populations north of the Alps began to settle new lands, some of which had reverted to wilderness after the end of the Roman Empire. In what is known as the clearances, vast forests. At the same time settlements moved beyond the boundaries of the Frankish Empire to new frontiers in Europe, beyond the Elbe River. The High Middle Ages produced many different forms of intellectual, spiritual, the rediscovery of the works of Aristotle led Thomas Aquinas and other thinkers of the period to develop Scholasticism, a combination of Catholicism and ancient philosophy. For much of the time period Constantinople remained Europes most populous city, in architecture, many of the most notable Gothic cathedrals were built or completed during this era. The Crisis of the Late Middle Ages, beginning at the start of the 14th century, in England, the Norman Conquest of 1066 resulted in a kingdom ruled by a Francophone nobility. The Normans invaded Ireland by force in 1169 and soon established throughout most of the country. Likewise, Scotland and Wales were subdued to vassalage at about the same time, the Exchequer was founded in the 12th century under King Henry I, and the first parliaments were convened. In 1215, after the loss of Normandy, King John signed the Magna Carta into law, from the mid-tenth to the mid-11th centuries, the Scandinavian kingdoms were unified and Christianized, resulting in an end of Viking raids, and greater involvement in European politics. King Cnut of Denmark ruled over both England and Norway, after Cnuts death in 1035, England and Norway were lost, and with the defeat of Valdemar II in 1227, Danish predominance in the region came to an end. Meanwhile, Norway extended its Atlantic possessions, ranging from Greenland to the Isle of Man, while Sweden, under Birger Jarl, however, the Norwegian influence started to decline already in the same period, marked by the Treaty of Perth of 1266. Also, civil wars raged in Norway between 1130 and 1240, by the time of the High Middle Ages, the Carolingian Empire had been divided and replaced by separate successor kingdoms called France and Germany, although not with their modern boundaries. Germany was under the banner of the Holy Roman Empire, which reached its mark of unity
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Late Middle Ages
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The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history generally comprising the 14th and 15th centuries. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the modern era. Around 1300, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt, a series of famines and plagues, including the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, reduced the population to around half of what it was before the calamities. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare, France and England experienced serious peasant uprisings, such as the Jacquerie and the Peasants Revolt, as well as over a century of intermittent conflict in the Hundred Years War. To add to the problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was shattered by the Western Schism. Collectively these events are called the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages. Despite these crises, the 14th century was also a time of progress in the arts. Following a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman texts that took root in the High Middle Ages, combined with this influx of classical ideas was the invention of printing, which facilitated dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. These two things would lead to the Protestant Reformation. Toward the end of the period, the Age of Discovery began, the rise of the Ottoman Empire, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, eroded the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire and cut off trading possibilities with the east. Europeans were forced to seek new trading routes, leading to the expedition of Columbus to the Americas in 1492 and their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations. The changes brought about by these developments have led scholars to view this period as the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of modern history. However, the division is artificial, since ancient learning was never entirely absent from European society. As a result there was continuity between the ancient age and the modern age. Some historians, particularly in Italy, prefer not to speak of the Late Middle Ages at all, but rather see the period of the Middle Ages transitioning to the Renaissance. The term Late Middle Ages refers to one of the three periods of the Middle Ages, along with the Early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his History of the Florentine People. Flavio Biondo used a framework in Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire. Tripartite periodization became standard after the German historian Christoph Cellarius published Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, for 18th-century historians studying the 14th and 15th centuries, the central theme was the Renaissance, with its rediscovery of ancient learning and the emergence of an individual spirit
35.
Kythira
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Kythira is an island in Greece lying opposite the south-eastern tip of the Peloponnese peninsula. It is traditionally listed as one of the seven main Ionian Islands, administratively, it belongs to the Islands regional unit, which is part of the Attica region. The island is located between the Greek mainland and Crete, and from ancient times until the mid 19th century was a crossroads of merchants, sailors. As such, it has had a long and varied history and has influenced by many civilisations. This is reflected in its architecture, as well as the traditions and customs, influenced by centuries of coexistence of the Greek, Venetian, and Ottoman cultures. Kythira and the island of Antikythira were separate municipalities until they were merged at the 2011 local government reform. The municipality has an area of 300.023 km2, the municipal unit 279.593 km2, the province of Kythira was one of the provinces of the Piraeus Prefecture. It had the territory as the present municipality Kythira. There are archaeological remains from the Helladic period, contemporary with the Minoans, there is archaeological evidence of Kythiran trade as far as Egypt and Mesopotamia. Kythira had a Phoenician colony in the archaic age, the sea-snail which produces Tyrian purple is native to the island. Xenophon refers to a Phoenician Bay in Kythira, the archaic Greek city of Kythira was at Scandea on Avlemonas, its ruins have been excavated. Its acropolis, now Palicastro, has the temple of Aphrodite Ourania, in classical times, Kythira was part of the territory of several larger city-states. Kythira was independent, and issued her own coins, in 195, in Augustus time, it was again subject to Sparta, being the property of Gaius Julius Eurycles, who was both a Spartan magnate and a Roman citizen. By this time, the Greek cities were in practice subject to the Roman Empire, Kythira continued to exist under the Roman Empire and its Byzantine successor state for centuries. Christianity is attested from the fourth century AD, the time of Constantine, according to her legend, archaeological evidence suggests the island was abandoned about 700 AD. When Saint Theodore of Cythera led a resettlement after the Byzantine reconquest of Crete in 962 and he established a great monastery at Paliochora, a town grew up around it, largely populated from Laconia. When the Byzantine Empire was divided among the conquerors of the Fourth Crusade, during the Venetian domination the island was known as Cerigo. Ottomans called this island Chuha Island, kythirans still talk about the destruction and looting of Paliochora by Barbarossa, it has become an intrinsic part of the Kytherian folklore
36.
Antikythera
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Antikythera or Anticythera is a Greek island lying on the edge of the Aegean Sea, between Crete and Peloponnese. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality of Kythera island, Antikythera may also refer to the Antikythera Strait, through which modified Mediterranean water enters the Sea of Crete. Its land area is 20.43 square kilometres, and it lies 38 kilometres south-east of Kythira and it is the most distant part of the Attica region from its heart in the Athens metropolitan area. It is lozenge-shaped,10.5 km NNW to SSE by 3.4 km ENE to WSW and it is notable for being the location of the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism and for the historical Antikythera wreck. Its main settlement and port is Potamós, the only other settlements are Galanianá, and Charchalianá. Antikythera is sporadically visited by the LANE Lines ferry Vitsentzos Kornaros on its route between Piraeus and Kissamos-Kastelli on Crete, the earliest known inhabitants were likely seasonal hunters who traveled there to exploit the presence of migratory birds. The population of the island changed frequently as it was settled and abandoned several times. In antiquity, the island of Antikythera was known as Aigila or Ogylos, between the 4th and 1st centuries BC, it was used as a base by a group of Cilician pirates until their destruction by Pompey the Great. Their fort can still be seen atop a cliff to the northeast of the island, the archaeology of the island has been thoroughly surveyed and the data made openly available for further study. Antikythera is most famous for being the location of the 1900 discovery of the Antikythera wreck, from which the Antikythera Ephebe, the Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical calculator designed to calculate astronomical positions which has been dated to about 205 BC. Technological artifacts of similar complexity did not appear until a thousand years later, Antikythera is a very important stop-over site for migratory birds during their seasonal movements, due to its geographical position and certain features. Furthermore, the hosts the largest breeding colony of Eleonoras falcon in the world. The importance of Antikythira for studying bird migration led to the creation of Antikythera Bird Observatory by the Hellenic Ornithological Society, the island also has a large population of wild goats
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Kasos
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Kasos is a Greek island municipality in the Dodecanese. It is the southernmost island in the Aegean Sea, and is part of the Karpathos regional unit, as of 2011, its population was 1,084. The island has also known in Italian as Caso. Kasos lies SW of Karpathos, between this island and Crete, adjacent to the island is the Strait of Kasos, through which some of the Modified Atlantic Water enters the Sea of Crete. Its shape is elliptic and resembles that of Rhodes, the main island has a surface of 49 square kilometres, and it is 17 km long and 6 km wide. It is very mountainous, its highest mount being Mt. Prionas, there is fresh water on the island. The municipality of Kasos includes several uninhabited islands, the largest of which are Armathia. Its total land area is 69.464 square kilometres and it has five villages, Fry, Agia Marina, Panagia, Poli, and Arvanitochori. Fry is the capital and home to the harbor, Agia Marina is most populous village. The airport is located close to Fry and is big enough for an ATR42 to land, Kasos is notable for its lack of large scale tourism, the quality of its fish, cheeses, and other culinary specialties, and its hospitality toward visitors. In ancient times, Kasos was used as a safe harbor by the Philistines, the first known settlements are Minoan and Mycenaean in origin. According to Homer, Kasos contributed ships toward the Trojan War, during Classical Antiquity it closely followed the history of nearby Karpathos. It remained for over a thousand years within the predominately Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, through late antiquity, along with Karpathos, it was subjected from 1306 until 1537 to the Venetian Cornaro family. Thereafter Kasos was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, Kasos had been the first island to declare independence during the Greek Revolution and supported the cause with its fleet of ships. In 1824, Mehmet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, furious with the Kasiots, the Egyptian armada burned the entire island and killed most of the population. The islands population recovered as did its economy, still based on shipping. The introduction of ships made Kasos shipyard redundant and its economy suffered accordingly. Beginning in the half of the 19th century, many emigrated from Kasos, initially to Egypt, then to Istanbul, Greece, USA
38.
Karpathos
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Karpathos is the second largest of the Greek Dodecanese islands, in the southeastern Aegean Sea. Together with the neighboring smaller Saria Island it forms the municipality of Karpathos, because of its remote location, Karpathos has preserved many peculiarities of dress, customs and dialect, the last resembling those of Crete and Cyprus. The island has also been called Carpathus in Latin, Scarpanto in Italian, the island is located about 47 kilometres southwest of Rhodes, in the part of the Mediterranean which is called the Carpathian Sea. The Sea of Crete, a sub-basin of the Mediterranean Sea, has its eastern limit defined by the island of Karpathos, Karpathos highest point is Mt. Lastos, at 1,215 metres. Pigadia, the capital and main port of the island, is located in the southeast of the island, the capital is surrounded by the villages of Menetes, Arkasa, Aperi, Volada, Othos, and Pyles. In the north Mesochori, Spoa and Olympos, there are two ports, in Karpathos and in the north of the island next to Olympos named Diafani. The island Saria was once united with Karpathos, but an earthquake divided them, the weather station of Karpathos alongside Ierapetra holds Greeces highest annual mean temperature,20.1 °C.800 km2, the municipal unit 219.924 km2. The island of Karpathos was in ancient and medieval times closely connected with Rhodes. Its current name is mentioned, with a shift of one letter. Apollonius of Rhodes, in his epic Argonautica, made it a port of call for the Argonauts travelling between Libya and Crete, the island is also mentioned by Virgil, Pliny the Elder, and Strabo. The Karpathians sided with Sparta in the Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE, in 42 BCE, the island fell to Rome. After the division of the Roman Empire in 395 CE, the became part of the Eastern Roman Empire. Of its Christian bishops, the names are known of Olympius, who was a supporter of Nestorius, Zoticus, Mennas, Ioannes, Leo, in the 14th century, the island was a see of the Latin Church, four of whose bishops bore the name Nicolaus. No longer a residential bishopric, Karpathos is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see. In 1304, Karpathos was given as fief to the Genoese corsairs Andrea and Lodovico Moresco, but in 1306 it fell to Andrea Cornaro, the Cornaro controlled Karpathos until 1538, when it passed into the possession of the Ottoman Turks. During the Greek War of Independence from 1821 to 1822, the island rebelled, but afterwards it fell again under the Ottoman rule. In 1835, Sultan Mahmud II conceded to the island the privilege of the Maktu tax system, that is, the tax was calculated as a lump sum. The Ottoman rule ended on 12 May 1912, when the Italians occupied the island, together with the whole Dodecanese, on that day, sailors from the Regia Marina ship Vittorio Emanuele and the destroyer Alpino landed in Karpathos
39.
Thracian Sea
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The Thracian Sea is a sea that is part of the Aegean Sea and forms the northernmost point of the sea. Regions surrounding the sea are Macedonia and Thrace as well as northwestern Turkey, the entire stretch of the sea lies north of the 40th parallel. Islands includes Thasos and Samothrace in Greece and Gökçeada and Bozcaada in Turkey, the bays and gulfs includes the Ierissian Gulf to the southwest, the Strymonian Gulf where the Strymon River empties, the Kavala Gulf and the Saros Gulf in Turkey. Rivers emptying into this portion of the include the Nestos. The famous thermal springs are Loutra Eleftheron in Kavala, amfipoli Kavala Alexandroupoli Thasos Samothrace Tenedos, Turkey
40.
Euboea
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Euboea or Evia is the second-largest Greek island in area and population, after Crete. The narrow Euripus Strait separates it from Boeotia in mainland Greece, in general outline it is a long and narrow, seahorse-shaped island, it is about 180 kilometres long, and varies in breadth from 50 kilometres to 6 kilometres. It forms most of the unit of Euboea, which also includes Skyros. Its ancient and current name, Εὔβοια, derives from the words εὖ good, the phrase στὸν Εὔριπον to Evripos, rebracketed as στὸ Νεὔριπον to Nevripos, became Negroponte in Italian by folk etymology, the ponte bridge being interpreted as the bridge of Chalcis. That name entered common use in the West in the 13th century, with variants being Egripons, Negripo. Under Ottoman rule, the island and its capital were known as Eğriboz or Ağriboz, Euboea was believed to have originally formed part of the mainland, and to have been separated from it by an earthquake. This is fairly probable, because it lies in the neighbourhood of a fault line, in the neighbourhood of Chalcis, both to the north and the south, the bays are so confined as to make plausible the story of Agamemnons fleet having been detained there by contrary winds. At Chalcis itself, where the strait is narrowest at only 40 m, the extraordinary changes of tide that take place in this passage have been a subject of note since classical times. At one moment the current runs like a river in one direction, a bridge was first constructed here in the twenty-first year of the Peloponnesian War. Geography and nature divide the island itself into three parts, the fertile and forested north, the mountainous centre, with agriculture limited to the coastal valleys. The main mountains include Dirfi, Pyxaria in the northeast and Ochi, the neighboring gulfs are the Pagasetic Gulf in the north, Malian Gulf, North Euboean Gulf in the west, the Euboic Sea and the Petalion Gulf. At the 2001 census the island had a population of 198,130, the history of the island of Euboea is largely that of its two principal cities, Chalcis and Eretria, both mentioned in the Catalogue of Ships. Both cities were settled by Ionian Greeks from Attica, and would eventually settle numerous colonies in Magna Graecia and Sicily, such as Cumae and Rhegium and this opened new trade routes to the Greeks, and extended the reach of western civilization. The classicist Barry B. Powell has proposed that Euboea may have been where the Greek alphabet was first employed, 775-750 BC, and that Homer may have spent part of his life on the island. Chalcis and Eretria were rival cities, and appear to have been equally powerful for a while, one of the earliest major military conflicts in Greek history took place between them, known as the Lelantine War, in which many other Greek city-states also took part. Following the infamous battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium, Persian forces captured and sacked Athens, and also took Euboea, Boeotia, in 490 BC, Eretria was utterly ruined and its inhabitants were transported to Persia. Though it was restored nearby its original site after the Battle of Marathon, both cities gradually lost influence to Athens, which saw Euboea as a strategic territory. Euboea was an important source of grain and cattle, and controlling the island meant Athens could prevent invasion, Athens invaded Chalcis in 506 BC and settled 4,000 Attic Greeks on their lands
41.
Sporades
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The Sporades are an archipelago along the east coast of Greece, northeast of the island of Euboea, in the Aegean Sea. They consists of 24 islands, four of which are permanently inhabited and they may also be referred to as the Thessalian Sporades. Sporades means those scattered, and was used from Classical Antiquity to refer to the Aegean island groups outside the archipelago of the Cyclades. In modern geographical parlance, there are five different Sporades groups, as a part of the 2011 Kallikratis government reform, the regional unit Sporades was created out of part of the former Magnesia Prefecture, region of Thessaly. The regional unit is subdivided into 3 municipalities and these are, Skiathos Skopelos Alonnisos The island of Skyros with a few uninhabited islets of its area is part of the regional unit of Euboea and the administrative region of Central Greece. Skyros – Britannica Concise, Britannica Concise,2006, webpage, Skiathos Villas Sporades The Official website of the Greek National Tourism Organisation Skopelosweb. gr Since 1999 Alonnisos. net VivaSporades. com Love skiathos
42.
Cyclades
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The Cyclades are an island group in the Aegean Sea, southeast of mainland Greece and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The name refers to the islands around the island of Delos. The Cyclades is where the native Greek breed of cat originated, the largest island of the Cyclades is Naxos. Interest lagged, then picked up in the century, as collectors competed for the modern-looking figures that seemed so similar to sculpture by Jean Arp or Constantin Brâncuși. Sites were looted and a trade in forgeries arose. The context for many of these Cycladic figurines has been mostly destroyed, another intriguing and mysterious object is that of the Cycladic frying pans. More accurate archaeology has revealed the outlines of a farming and seafaring culture that had immigrated from Anatolia c.5000 BCE. Early Cycladic culture evolved in three phases, between c.3300 –2000 BCE, when it was swamped in the rising influence of Minoan Crete. The culture of mainland Greece contemporary with Cycladic culture is known as the Helladic period, in recent decades the Cyclades have become popular with European and other tourists, and as a result there have been problems with erosion, pollution, and water shortages. There are also many islands including Donousa, Eschati, Gyaros, Irakleia, Koufonisia, Makronisos. The name Cyclades refers to the forming a circle around the sacred island of Delos. Most of the islands are uninhabited. Ermoupoli on Syros is the town and administrative center of the former prefecture. The islands are peaks of a mountainous terrain, with the exception of two volcanic islands, Milos and Santorini. The climate is dry and mild, but with the exception of Naxos the soil is not very fertile, agricultural produce includes wine, fruit, wheat, olive oil. Cooler temperatures are in higher elevations and mainly do not receive wintry weather, the Cyclades are bounded to the south by the Sea of Crete. The Cyclades Prefecture was one of the prefectures of Greece and these have been reorganised at the 2011 Kallikratis reform as well
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Dodecanese
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The Dodecanese are a group of 15 larger plus 150 smaller Greek islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea, off the coast of Asia Minor, of which 26 are inhabited. Τhis island group generally defines the limit of the Sea of Crete. They belong to the wider Southern Sporades island group, the most historically important and well-known is Rhodes, which has been the areas dominant island since Antiquity. Of the others, Kos and Patmos are historically the more important, the nine are Agathonisi, Astypalaia, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kasos, Leipsoi, Leros, Nisyros, Symi, Tilos. Other islands in the chain include Alimia, Arkoi, Chalki, Farmakonisi, Gyali, Kinaros, Levitha, Marathos, Nimos, Pserimos, Saria, Strongyli, Syrna, since Antiquity, these islands formed part of the group known as the Southern Sporades. The name Dōdekanēsos first appears in Byzantine sources in the 8th century, however it was not applied to the current island group, but to the twelve Cyclades islands clustered around Delos. The name may indeed be of far earlier date, and modern historians suggest that a list of 12 islands given by Strabo was the origin of the term. The term remained in use throughout the period and was still used for the Cyclades in both colloquial usage and scholarly Greek-language literature until the 18th century. The transfer of the name to the present-day Dodecanese has its roots in the Ottoman period, the place of the latter two was taken by Kos and Rhodes, bringing the number of the major islands under Italian rule back to twelve. Thus, when the Greek press began agitating for the cession of the islands to Greece in 1913, the islands joined Greece in 1947 as the Governorate-General of the Dodecanese, since 1955 the Dodecanese Prefecture. The Dodecanese have been inhabited since prehistoric times, in the Neopalatial period on Crete, the islands were heavily Minoanized. Following the downfall of the Minoans, the islands were ruled by the Mycenaean Greeks from circa 1400 BC and it is in the Dorian period that they began to prosper as an independent entity, developing a thriving economy and culture through the following centuries. By the early Archaic Period Rhodes and Kos emerged as the islands in the group. Together with the island of Kos and the cities of Knidos and Halicarnassos on the mainland of Asia Minor and this development was interrupted around 499 BC by the Persian Wars, during which the islands were captured by the Persians for a brief period. Following the defeat of the Persians by the Athenians in 478 BC, when the Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 BC, they remained largely neutral although they were still members of the League. By the time the Peloponnesian War ended in 404 BC, the Dodecanese were mostly removed from the larger Aegean conflicts, and had begun a period of relative quiet and prosperity. Other islands in the Dodecanese also developed into significant economic and cultural centers, most notably, however, the Peloponnesian War had so weakened the entire Greek civilizations military strength that it lay open to invasion. In 357 BC, the islands were conquered by the king Mausolus of Caria, following the death of Alexander, the islands, and even Rhodes itself, were split up among the many generals who contended to succeed him
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Kastellorizo
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Kastellorizo or Castellorizo is a Greek island and municipality located in the southeastern Mediterranean. It lies roughly 2 kilometres off the south coast of Turkey, about 570 km southeast of Athens and 125 km east of Rhodes, Kastellorizo is part of the Rhodes regional unit. The islands official name, Megisti means biggest or greatest, but at only 11.98 km2 in area, the name, however, refers to the fact that it is the largest of the small archipelago. This name was used in antiquity, but is now used in Greek. There are several hypotheses about the origin of this name, kastello derives from the Italian word castello, meaning castle. There is some argument on the part of the name. Rizo being a corruption of the word Rhoge, one of the ancient appellations of the island of Ro. If this is correct, the modern name is actually an amalgam of the separate island names Castello. Rizo being the actual Greek word rizon meaning root, as researched by Greek Historian I. M. Hatzifotis, Kastellorizo is the easternmost Greek island and is situated in the Eastern Mediterranean. It lies about 2 km from the Anatolian coastal town of Kaş, Cyprus is about 280 km to the south-east. It is six kilometres long and three wide, with a surface of 9.2 square kilometres. It has a shape, and is oriented from NE to SW. The island features three capes, Agios Stefanos, Nifti and Pounenti, between the first two there is a wide and accommodating bay, the main harbor, where one finds the only town on the island. Cape Agios Stefanos, the nearest to Anatolia, is 2250m south of the modern Turkish town of Kaş, cape Nifti lies some greater distance from the Anatolian coast. The island is mountainous, with high and steep coastlines, which become difficult to access moving west. The soil is composed of limestone, and produces small amounts of olives, grapes. On the island there is no source of drinking water, the Municipality of Megísti includes the offshore islands of Ro and Strongyli as well as several smaller islets. It has a land area of 11.978 square kilometres
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Chios
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Chios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea,7 kilometres off the Anatolian coast. The island is separated from Turkey by the Çeşme Strait, Chios is notable for its exports of mastic gum and its nickname is the Mastic Island. Tourist attractions include its medieval villages and the 11th-century monastery of Nea Moni, administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Chios regional unit, which is part of the North Aegean region. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Chios town, locals refer to Chios town as Chora. Chios island is crescent or kidney shaped,50 kilometres long north to south,29 kilometres at its widest. The terrain is mountainous and arid, with a ridge of mountains running the length of the island, the two largest of these mountains, Pelineon and Epos, are situated in the north of the island. The center of the island is divided between east and west by a range of peaks, known as Provatas. Chios can be divided into five regions, Midway up the east coast lie the main centers, the main town of Chios. Chios Town, with a population of 32,400, is built around the main harbour. The town was damaged by an earthquake in 1881. North of Chios Town lies the suburb of Vrontados, which claims to be the birthplace of Homer. The suburb lies in the Omiroupoli municipality, and its connection to the poet is supported by a site known traditionally as Teachers Rock. The villages, built between the 14th and 16th centuries, have a carefully designed layout with fortified gates and narrow streets to protect against the frequent raids by marauding pirates. Between Chios Town and the Mastichochoria lie a number of historic villages including Armolia, Myrmighi. Along the east coast are the villages of Kataraktis and to the south Nenita. Directly in the centre of the island, between the villages of Avgonyma to the west and Karyes to the east, is the 11th century monastery of Nea Moni, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The monastery was built with funds given by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX, the monastery had substantial estates attached, with a thriving community until the massacre of 1822. It was further damaged during the 1881 earthquake, in 1952, due to the shortage of monks, Nea Moni was converted to a convent
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Samos
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It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. In ancient times Samos was a rich and powerful city-state, particularly known for its vineyards. It is home to Pythagoreion and the Heraion of Samos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that includes the Eupalinian aqueduct, Samian wine was well known in antiquity, and is still produced on the island. The island was governed by the semi-autonomous Principality of Samos under Ottoman suzerainty from 1835 until it joined Greece in 1912, the area of the island is 477.395 km2, and it is 43 km long and 13 km wide. It is separated from Anatolia by the approximately 1-mile-wide Mycale Strait, while largely mountainous, Samos has several relatively large and fertile plains. A great portion of the island is covered with vineyards, from which wine is made. The most important plains except the capital, Vathy, in the northeast, are that of Karlovasi, in the northwest, Pythagoreio, in the southeast, the islands population is 33,814, which is the 9th most populous of the Greek islands. The Samian climate is typically Mediterranean, with rainy winters. Samos relief is dominated by two mountains, Ampelos and Kerkis. The Ampelos massif is the larger of the two and occupies the center of the island, rising to 1,095 metres. Mt. Kerkis, though smaller in area is the taller of the two and its summit is the islands highest point, at 1,434 metres, the mountains are a continuation of the Mycale range on the Anatolian mainland. According to Strabo, the name Samos is from Phoenician meaning rise by the shore, Samos is home to many surprising species including the golden jackal, stone marten, wild boar, flamingos and monk seal. Samos is one of the sunniest places in Europe with almost 3300 hours of sunshine annually or 74% of the time and its climate is mild and wet in winter and dry in summer. In classical antiquity the island was a center of Ionian culture and luxury, renowned for its Samian wines and its most famous building was the Ionic order archaic Temple of goddess Hera—the Heraion. Concerning the earliest history of Samos, literary tradition is singularly defective, at the time of the great migrations it received an Ionian population which traced its origin to Epidaurus in Argolis, Samos became one of the twelve members of the Ionian League. By the 7th century BC it had one of the leading commercial centers of Greece. They helped to open up trade with the population lived around the Black Sea as well as with Egypt, Cyrene, Corinth. This caused them to become rivals with Miletus
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Peloponnese
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The Peloponnese or Peloponnesus is a peninsula and geographic region in southern Greece. It is separated from the part of the country by the Gulf of Corinth. During the late Middle Ages and the Ottoman era, the peninsula was known as the Morea, the peninsula is divided among three administrative regions, most belongs to the Peloponnese region, with smaller parts belonging to the West Greece and Attica regions. In 2016, Lonely Planet voted the Peloponnese the top spot of their Best in Europe list, the Peloponnese is a peninsula that covers an area of some 21,549.6 square kilometres and constitutes the southernmost part of mainland Greece. It has two connections with the rest of Greece, a natural one at the Isthmus of Corinth. The peninsula has an interior and deeply indented coasts. The Peloponnese possesses four south-pointing peninsulas, the Messenian, the Mani, the Cape Malea, mount Taygetus in the south is the highest mountain in the Peloponnese, at 2,407 metres. Οther important mountains include Cyllene in the northeast, Aroania in the north, Erymanthos and Panachaikon in the northwest, Mainalon in the center, the entire peninsula is earthquake prone and has been the site of many earthquakes in the past. The longest river is the Alfeios in the west, followed by the Evrotas in the south, extensive lowlands are found only in the west, with the exception of the Evrotas valley in the south and in the Argolid in the northeast. The Peloponnese is home to spectacular beaches, which are a major tourist draw. Two groups of islands lie off the Peloponnesian coast, the Argo-Saronic Islands to the east, the island of Kythera, off the Epidaurus Limera peninsula to the south of the Peloponnese, is considered to be part of the Ionian Islands. The island of Elafonissos used to be part of the peninsula but was separated following the quake of 365 AD. Since antiquity, and continuing to the present day, the Peloponnese has been divided into seven regions, Achaia, Corinthia, Argolid, Arcadia, Laconia, Messinia. Each of these regions is headed by a city, the largest city is Patras in Achaia, followed by Kalamata in Messinia. The peninsula has been inhabited since prehistoric times and its modern name derives from ancient Greek mythology, specifically the legend of the hero Pelops, who was said to have conquered the entire region. The name Peloponnesos means Island of Pelops, the Mycenaean civilization, mainland Greeces first major civilization, dominated the Peloponnese in the Bronze Age from its stronghold at Mycenae in the north-east of the peninsula. The Mycenean civilization collapsed suddenly at the end of the 2nd millennium BC, archeological research has found that many of its cities and palaces show signs of destruction. The subsequent period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, is marked by an absence of written records
listen); Turkish: Ege Denizi Turkish pronunciation: [eɟe denizi])[stress?] is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the Greek and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosphorus. The Aegean Islands are within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes.
