1.
Newfoundland (island)
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Newfoundland is a large Canadian island off the east coast of the North American mainland, and the most populous part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It has 29 percent of the land area. The island is separated from the Labrador Peninsula by the Strait of Belle Isle and it blocks the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, creating the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the worlds largest estuary. Newfoundlands nearest neighbour is the French overseas community of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, with an area of 108,860 square kilometres, Newfoundland is the worlds 16th-largest island, Canadas fourth-largest island, and the largest Canadian island outside the North. The provincial capital, St. Johns, is located on the southeastern coast of the island, Cape Spear, just south of the capital, is the easternmost point of North America, excluding Greenland. It is common to consider all directly neighbouring islands such as New World, Twillingate, Fogo, by that classification, Newfoundland and its associated small islands have a total area of 111,390 square kilometres. Additionally 6. 1% claimed at least one parent of French ancestry, the islands total population as of the 2006 census was 479,105. Long settled by peoples of the Dorset culture, the island was visited by the Icelandic Viking Leif Eriksson in the 11th century. The next European visitors to Newfoundland were Portuguese, Basque, Spanish, French, the island was visited by the Genoese navigator John Cabot, working under contract to King Henry VII of England on his expedition from Bristol in 1497. In 1501, Portuguese explorers Gaspar Corte-Real and his brother Miguel Corte-Real charted part of the coast of Newfoundland in a attempt to find the Northwest Passage. Newfoundland is considered Britains oldest colony, at the time of English settlement, the Beothuk inhabited the island. While there is evidence of ancient indigenous peoples on the island. LAnse aux Meadows was a Norse settlement near the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, the site is considered the only undisputed evidence of Pre-Columbian contact between the Old and New Worlds, if the Norse-Inuit contact on Greenland is not counted. There is a second suspected Norse site in Point Rosee, the island is a likely location of Vinland, mentioned in the Viking Chronicles, although this has been disputed. The indigenous people on the island at the time of European settlement were the Beothuk, later immigrants developed a variety of dialects associated with settlement on the island, Newfoundland English, Newfoundland French. In the 19th century, it also had a dialect of Irish known as Newfoundland Irish, Scottish Gaelic was spoken on the island during the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in the Codroy Valley area, chiefly by settlers from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The Gaelic names reflected the association with fishing, in Scottish Gaelic, it was called Eilean a Trosg, or literally, similarly, the Irish Gaelic name Talamh an Éisc means Land of the Fish. The first inhabitants of Newfoundland were the Paleo-Eskimo, who have no link to other groups in Newfoundland history
2.
Newfoundland and Labrador
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Newfoundland and Labrador is the most easterly province of Canada. Situated in the countrys Atlantic region, it comprises the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador to the northwest, in 2013, the provinces population was estimated at 526,702. About 92% of the population lives on the island of Newfoundland. The province is Canadas most linguistically homogeneous, with 97. 6% of residents reporting English as their mother tongue in the 2006 census, historically, Newfoundland was also home to unique varieties of French and Irish, as well as the extinct Beothuk language. In Labrador, local dialects of Innu-aimun and Inuktitut are also spoken, Newfoundland and Labradors capital and largest city, St. Johns, is Canadas 20th-largest census metropolitan area and is home to almost 40 percent of the provinces population. St. Johns is the seat of government, home to the House of Assembly of Newfoundland and Labrador and to the highest court in the jurisdiction and it became the tenth province to enter the Canadian Confederation on March 31,1949, as Newfoundland. On December 6,2001, an amendment was made to the Constitution of Canada to change the official name to Newfoundland. The name Newfoundland is a translation of the Portuguese Terra Nova, the influence of early Portuguese exploration is also reflected in the name of Labrador, which derives from the surname of the Portuguese navigator João Fernandes Lavrador. Newfoundland and Labrador is the most easterly province in Canada, and is located at the corner of North America. The Strait of Belle Isle separates the province into two divisions, Labrador, which is a large area of mainland Canada, and Newfoundland. The province also includes over 7,000 tiny islands, each side is about 400 km long, and its area is 108,860 km2. Newfoundland and its small islands have a total area of 111,390 km2. Newfoundland extends between latitudes 46°36′N and 51°38′N, Labrador is an irregular shape, the western part of its border with Quebec is the drainage divide of the Labrador Peninsula. Lands drained by rivers that flow into the Atlantic Ocean are part of Labrador, most of Labradors southern boundary with Quebec follows the 52nd parallel of latitude. Labradors extreme northern tip, at 60°22′N, shares a border with Nunavut. Together, Newfoundland and Labrador make up 4. 06% of Canadas area, Labrador is the easternmost part of the Canadian Shield, a vast area of ancient metamorphic rock comprising much of northeastern North America. Colliding tectonic plates have shaped much of the geology of Newfoundland, gros Morne National Park has a reputation as an outstanding example of tectonics at work, and as such has been designated a World Heritage Site. The Long Range Mountains on Newfoundlands west coast are the northeasternmost extension of the Appalachian Mountains, the north-south extent of the province, prevalent westerly winds, cold ocean currents and local factors such as mountains and coastline combine to create the various climates of the province
3.
Fossil
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Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the fossil record. The study of fossils across geological time, how they were formed, such a preserved specimen is called a fossil if it is older than some minimum age, most often the arbitrary date of 10,000 years. The observation that fossils were associated with certain rock strata led early geologists to recognize a geological timescale in the 19th century. The development of dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed geologists to determine the numerical or absolute age of the various strata. Like extant organisms, fossils vary in size from microscopic, even single bacterial cells one micrometer in diameter, to gigantic, such as dinosaurs, Fossils may also consist of the marks left behind by the organism while it was alive, such as animal tracks or feces. These types of fossil are called trace fossils, as opposed to body fossils, finally, past life leaves some markers that cannot be seen but can be detected in the form of biochemical signals, these are known as chemofossils or biosignatures. The process of fossilization varies according to type and external conditions. Permineralization is a process of fossilization that occurs when an organism is buried, the empty spaces within an organism become filled with mineral-rich groundwater. Minerals precipitate from the groundwater, occupying the empty spaces and this process can occur in very small spaces, such as within the cell wall of a plant cell. Small scale permineralization can produce very detailed fossils, for permineralization to occur, the organism must become covered by sediment soon after death or soon after the initial decay process. The degree to which the remains are decayed when covered determines the later details of the fossil, some fossils consist only of skeletal remains or teeth, other fossils contain traces of skin, feathers or even soft tissues. This is a form of diagenesis, in some cases the original remains of the organism completely dissolve or are otherwise destroyed. The remaining organism-shaped hole in the rock is called an external mold, if this hole is later filled with other minerals, it is a cast. An endocast or internal mold is formed when sediments or minerals fill the cavity of an organism. This is a form of cast and mold formation. If the chemistry is right, the organism can act as a nucleus for the precipitation of minerals such as siderite, if this happens rapidly before significant decay to the organic tissue, very fine three-dimensional morphological detail can be preserved. Nodules from the Carboniferous Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois, USA, are among the best documented examples of such mineralization, replacement occurs when the shell, bone or other tissue is replaced with another mineral
4.
Ediacaran biota
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The Ediacaran biota consisted of enigmatic tubular and frond-shaped, mostly sessile organisms that lived during the Ediacaran Period. Trace fossils of organisms have been found worldwide, and represent the earliest known complex multicellular organisms. The Ediacaran biota radiated in an event called the Avalon explosion,575 million years ago, the biota largely disappeared with the rapid increase in biodiversity known as the Cambrian explosion. Most of the existing body plans of animals first appeared in the fossil record of the Cambrian rather than the Ediacaran. For macroorganisms, the Cambrian biota appears to have replaced the organisms that dominated the Ediacaran fossil record. Multiple hypotheses exist to explain the disappearance of this biota, including bias, a changing environment. The morphology and habit of some taxa suggest relationships to Porifera or Cnidaria, Kimberella may show a similarity to molluscs, and other organisms have been thought to possess bilateral symmetry, although this is controversial. Most macroscopic fossils are morphologically distinct from later life-forms, they resemble discs, tubes, one palaeontologist proposed a separate kingdom level category Vendozoa in the Linnaean hierarchy for the Ediacaran biota. The concept of Ediacaran Biota is, of course, somewhat artificial as it can not be defined geographically, stratigraphically, taphonomically, the first Ediacaran fossils discovered were the disc-shaped Aspidella terranovica in 1868. Their discoverer, Scottish geologist Alexander Murray, found them useful aids for correlating the age of rocks around Newfoundland, instead, they were interpreted as gas escape structures or inorganic concretions. No similar structures elsewhere in the world were known and the one-sided debate soon fell into obscurity. It was not until the British discovery of the iconic Charnia in 1957 that the pre-Cambrian was seriously considered as containing life. This frond-shaped fossil was found in Englands Charnwood Forest, and due to the geological mapping of the British Geological Survey there was no doubt these fossils sat in Precambrian rocks. All specimens discovered until 1967 were in coarse-grained sandstone that prevented preservation of fine details, poor communication, combined with the difficulty in correlating globally distinct formations, led to a plethora of different names for the biota. Ediacaran and Ediacarian were subsequently applied to the epoch or period of geological time, in March 2004, the International Union of Geological Sciences ended the inconsistency by formally naming the terminal period of the Neoproterozoic after the Australian locality. The term Ediacaran biota and similar has, at times, been used in a geographic, stratigraphic, taphonomic, or biological sense. Microbial mats are areas of sediment stabilised by the presence of colonies of microbes that secrete sticky fluids or otherwise bind the sediment particles. They appear to migrate upwards when covered by a layer of sediment but this is an illusion caused by the colonys growth, individuals do not, themselves
5.
Species
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In biology, a species is the basic unit of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is defined as the largest group of organisms in which two individuals can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. While this definition is often adequate, looked at more closely it is problematic, for example, with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, or in a ring species, the boundaries between closely related species become unclear. Other ways of defining species include similarity of DNA, morphology, all species are given a two-part name, a binomial. The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs, the second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet. For example, Boa constrictor is one of four species of the Boa genus, Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed kinds that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped that species could evolve given sufficient time, Charles Darwins 1859 book The Origin of Species explained how species could arise by natural selection. Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal transfer, and species may become extinct for a variety of reasons. In his biology, Aristotle used the term γένος to mean a kind, such as a bird or fish, a kind was distinguished by its attributes, for instance, a bird has feathers, a beak, wings, a hard-shelled egg, and warm blood. A form was distinguished by being shared by all its members, Aristotle believed all kinds and forms to be distinct and unchanging. His approach remained influential until the Renaissance, when observers in the Early Modern period began to develop systems of organization for living things, they placed each kind of animal or plant into a context. Many of these early delineation schemes would now be considered whimsical, animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently, one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa. In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified organisms according to shared physical characteristics and he established the idea of a taxonomic hierarchy of classification based upon observable characteristics and intended to reflect natural relationships. At the time, however, it was widely believed that there was no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appeared. However, whether or not it was supposed to be fixed, by the 19th century, naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, described the transmutation of species, proposing that a species could change over time, in 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided a compelling account of evolution and the formation of new species. Darwin argued that it was populations that evolved, not individuals and this required a new definition of species. Darwin concluded that species are what appear to be, ideas
6.
John Cabot
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To mark the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Cabots expedition, both the Canadian and British governments elected Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, as Cabots first landing site. However, alternative theories have also been proposed, Giovanni Caboto was born in Italy, the son of Giulio Caboto and his wife, he had a brother Piero. He is known today as Giovanni Caboto in Italy, in English as John Cabot, in French as Jean Cabot, the non-Italian forms are derived from how his name was recorded in related 15th-century documents. In Venice he signed his names as Zuan Chabotto, Zuan being a form of John typical to Venice and he continued to use this form in England, at least among Italians. He was referred to by his Italian banker in London as Giovanni Chabbote, Gaeta and Castiglione Chiavarese have both been proposed as birthplaces. The main evidence for Gaeta are records of a Caboto family residing there until the mid-15th century, pedro de Ayala, the Spanish envoy and Cabots contemporary in London, described him in a letter to the Spanish Crown in 1498 as another Genoese like Columbus. John Cabots son, Sebastian, said his father came from Genoa. In 1476 Cabot was made a citizen of the Republic of Venice and he may have been born slightly earlier than 1450, which is the approximate date most commonly given for his birth. In 1471 Caboto was accepted into the confraternity of St John the Evangelist. Since this was one of the citys prestigious confraternities, his acceptance suggests that he was already a member of the community. He presumably entered this trade shortly thereafter, a 1483 document refers to his selling a slave in Crete whom he had acquired while in the territories of the Sultan of Egypt, which then comprised most of what is now Israel, Syria and Lebanon. This is not sufficient to prove Cabots later assertion that he had visited Mecca, in this Mediterranean trade, he may have acquired better knowledge of the origins of the oriental merchandise he would have been dealing in than most Europeans at that time. Zuan Cabotto is mentioned in a variety of Venetian records of the 1480s and these indicate that by 1484 he was married to Mattea and already had at least two sons. Cabots sons are Ludovico, Sebastian, and Sancto, the Venetian sources contain references to Cabots being involved in house building in the city. He may have relied on this experience when seeking work later in Spain as a civil engineer, Cabot appears to have got into financial trouble in the late 1480s and left Venice as an insolvent debtor by 5 November 1488. He moved to Valencia, Spain, where his creditors attempted to have him arrested by sending a lettera di raccomandazione a giustizia to the authorities, while in Valencia, John Cabot Montecalunya proposed plans for improvements to the harbour. Early in 1494 he moved on to Seville, where he proposed, was contracted to build and, for five months and this project was abandoned following a decision of the City Council on 24 December 1494. After this Cabot appears to have support in Seville and Lisbon for an Atlantic expedition, before moving to London to seek funding
7.
Maluku Islands
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The Maluku Islands or the Moluccas are an archipelago within Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone, geographically they are located east of Sulawesi, west of New Guinea, and north and east of Timor. The islands were also the core of the Spice Islands known to the Chinese and Europeans. The name was due to the nutmeg, mace and cloves that were originally found there. The Maluku Islands formed a province from Indonesian independence until 1999. A new province, North Maluku, incorporates the area between Morotai and Sula, with the arc of islands from Buru and Seram to Wetar remaining within the existing Maluku Province, North Maluku is predominantly Muslim, and its capital is Sofifi on Halmahera island. Maluku province has a larger Christian population, and its capital is Ambon, though originally Melanesian, many island populations, especially in the Banda Islands, were exterminated in the 17th century during the spice wars. A second influx of Austronesian immigrants began in the twentieth century under the Dutch. Between 1999 and 2002, conflict between Muslims and Christians killed thousands and displaced half a million people, the name Maluku is thought to have been derived from the term used by Arab traders for the region, Jazirat al-Muluk. The Maluku Islands were a single province from Indonesian independence until 1999 when they were split into North Maluku and Maluku, North Maluku province includes Ternate, Tidore, Bacan, Halmahera Morotai, the Obi Islands, and the Sula Islands. Evidence of increasingly long-distance trading relationships and of more frequent occupation of many islands, onyx beads and segments of silver plate used as currency on the Indian subcontinent around 200BC have been unearthed on some of the islands. Arab merchants began to arrive in the 14th century, bringing Islam, peaceful conversion to Islam occurred in many islands, especially in the centres of trade, while aboriginal animism persisted in the hinterlands and more isolated islands. Archaeological evidence here relies largely on the occurrence of pigs teeth, the Portuguese had conquered the city state of Malacca in the early 16th century and their influence was most strongly felt in Maluku and other parts of eastern Indonesia. On the return trip, Francisco Serrão was shipwrecked at Hitu island in 1512, there he established ties with the local ruler who was impressed with his martial skills. The spice trade soon revived but the Portuguese would not be able to fully monopolize nor disrupt this trade, both Serrão and Ferdinand Magellan, however, perished before they could meet one another. The Portuguese first landed in Ambon in 1513, but it became the new centre for their activities in Maluku following the expulsion from Ternate. European power in the region was weak and Ternate became an expanding, fiercely Islamic and anti-European state under the rule of Sultan Baab Ullah and his son Sultan Said. By the 1560s there were 10,000 Catholics in the area, mostly on Ambon, the Pela Gandong community relationship system is between various Christian and Muslim villages throughout the regions
8.
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore
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George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore was an English politician and coloniser. He achieved domestic success as a Member of Parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I. He lost much of his power after his support for a failed marriage alliance between Prince Charles and the Spanish House of Habsburg royal family. Rather than continue in politics, he resigned all of his offices in 1625 except for his position on the Privy Council. He was created Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage upon his resignation, Baltimore Manor was located in County Longford, Ireland. The name Baltimore is an Anglicisation of the Irish Baile an Tí Mhóir, Calvert took an interest in the British colonization of the Americas, at first for commercial reasons and later to create a refuge for English Catholics. He became the proprietor of Avalon, the first sustained English settlement on the peninsula on the island of Newfoundland. Calvert died five weeks before the new Charter was sealed, leaving the settlement of the Maryland colony to his son Cecil and his second son Leonard Calvert, was the first colonial governor of the Province of Maryland. Little is known of the ancestry of the Yorkshire branch of the Calverts, at George Calverts knighting, it was claimed that his family originally came from Flanders. He established his family on the estate of the later-built Kiplin Hall, near Catterick in Richmondshire, George Calvert was born at Kiplin in late 1579. His mother Alicia/Alice died on 28 November 1587, when he was fifteen years old and his father then married Grace Crossland, Alicias first cousin. Acts mandating compulsory religious uniformity were enacted by Parliament and enforced through penal laws, the Acts of Supremacy and the Uniformity Act of 1559 also included an oath of allegiance to the Queen and an implicit denial of the Popes authority over the English Church. This oath was required of any subject, who wished to hold high office, attend university. The Calvert household suffered the intrusion of the Elizabethan-era religious laws, as a result, the boys were sent to a Protestant tutor called Mr. Fowberry at Bilton. George Calvert went up to Trinity College, at Oxford University matriculating in 1593/94, as the oath of allegiance was compulsory after the age of sixteen, he would almost certainly have pledged conformity while at Oxford. The same pattern of conformity, whether pretended or sincere, continued through Calverts early life, after Oxford, he moved to London in 1598, where he studied municipal law at Lincolns Inn for three years. In November 1604, he married Anne Mynne in a Protestant, Church of England ceremony at St Peters, Cornhill and his children, including his eldest son and heir, Cecil, who was born in the winter of 1605–06, were all baptised as Christian Protestants. When Anne died on 8 August 1622, she was buried at Calverts local Protestant parish church, St Martin in the Fields
9.
Ferryland
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Ferryland is a town in Newfoundland and Labrador on the Avalon Peninsula. According to the 2011 Statistics Canada census, its population is 465, Ferryland was originally established as a station for migratory fishermen in the late 16th century but had earlier been used by the French, Spanish, and Portuguese. By the 1590s it was one of the most popular fishing harbours in Newfoundland, Ferryland was called Farilham by the Portuguese fishermen and Forillon by the French—it later became anglicized to its current name Ferryland. In 1620 the territory was granted to George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore who had obtained the holdings from William Vaughan, Calvert appointed Edward Wynne to establish a colony which became the first successful permanent colony in Newfoundland growing to a population of 100 by 1625. In 1623, Calverts grant was confirmed and expanded, the Charter of Avalon was granted to Lord Baltimore by James I. Dated 7 April 1623 it created the Province of Avalon on the island of Newfoundland and that same year Baltimore chose Ferryland as the principal area of settlement. In the 1660s, the colony was attacked by Dutchmen, the town was destroyed by New France in the Avalon Peninsula Campaign. Virtually forgotten for centuries, excavations of the settlement began in earnest in the late 1980s. The site of the 17th-century Colony of Avalon was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1953 and it was also designated a Municipal Heritage District in 1998. The Historic Ferryland Museum was designated a Municipal Heritage Site in 2006
10.
Royal charter
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A royal charter is a formal document issued by a monarch as letters patent, granting a right or power to an individual or a body corporate. They were, and are still, used to establish significant organisations such as cities or universities, Charters should be distinguished from warrants and letters of appointment, as they have perpetual effect. Typically, a Royal Charter is produced as a high-quality work of calligraphy on vellum, the British monarchy has issued over 980 royal charters. Of these about 750 remain in existence, the earliest was to the town of Tain in 1066, making it the oldest Royal Burgh in Scotland, followed by the University of Cambridge in 1231. Charters continue to be issued by the British Crown, a recent example being that awarded to the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity, Charters have been used in Europe since medieval times to create cities. The date that such a charter is granted is considered to be when a city is founded, at one time, a royal charter was the sole means by which an incorporated body could be formed, but other means are generally used nowadays instead. In the period before 1958,32 higher education institutes had been created by royal charter and these were typically engineering or technical institutions rather than universities. Royal decrees can therefore no longer grant higher education status or university status. A Royal Charter is granted by Order in Council, either creating an incorporated body and this is an exercise of the Royal Prerogative, and, in Canada, there are hundreds of organisations under Royal Charters. Such organisations include charities, businesses, colleges, universities, today, it is mostly charities and professional institutions who receive Royal Charters. Application for a charter is a petition to the Queen-in-Council, however, meeting these benchmarks does not guarantee the issuance of a Royal Charter. Companies, corporations, and societies in Canada founded under or augmented by a Royal Charter include, Royal Charter was issued in August 1826 to purchase and develop lands. Purchased the Crown Reserve of 1,384,413 acres, cities under Royal Charter are not subject to municipal Acts of Parliament applied generally to other municipalities, and instead are governed by legislation applicable to each city individually. The Royal Charter codifies the laws applied to the particular city, the Universitys Pontifical Charter was granted by Pope Leo XIII in 1889. Several Canadian private schools were founded or reconstituted under Royal Charter, the Royal Gibraltar Post Office was granted Royal Charter in 2005. The Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club obtained Royal Charter in 1959 and it is one of the three banknote-issuing banks in Hong Kong. The Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch Chartered originally in 1847, disbanded 1859, the Institution of Engineers was incorporated by royal charter in 1935. A number of Irish institutions retain the Royal prefix, even though Republic of Ireland severed all remaining connections between the state and the British monarch in 1949, the University of South Africa received a Royal Charter in 1877
11.
Avalon
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Avalon is a legendary island featured in the Arthurian legend. Avalon was associated from a date with mystical practices and people such as Morgan le Fay. Geoffrey of Monmouth referred to it in Latin as Insula Avallonis in the Historia, in the later Vita Merlini he called it Insula Pomorum the isle of fruit trees. The name is considered to be of Welsh origin, derived from Old Welsh, Old Cornish, or Old Breton aball or avallen, apple tree. Welsh, Cornish and Breton tradition claimed that Arthur had never really died, the Historia also states that Avalon is where his sword Excalibur was forged. Geoffrey dealt with Avalon in more detail in Vita Merlini, in which he describes for the first time in Arthurian legend the enchantress Morgan le Fay as the chief of nine sisters who live on Avalon. Geoffreys description of the island indicates a sea voyage was needed to get there, of its own accord it produces grain and grapes, and apple trees grow in its woods from the close-clipped grass. The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, there nine sisters rule by a pleasing set of laws those who come to them from our country. Hence the mistake of pagans and the poems by worldly poets and they are situated in the Ocean, against the left side of Mauretania, closest to where the sun sets, and they are separated from each other by the intervening sea. In medieval geographies, Isidores Fortunate Islands were identified with the Canaries, around 1190, Avalon became associated with Glastonbury, when monks at Glastonbury Abbey claimed to have discovered the bones of Arthur and his queen. The works of Gerald of Wales make the first known connection, What is now known as Glastonbury was, in ancient times and it is virtually an island, for it is completely surrounded by marshlands. In Welsh it is called Ynys Afallach, which means the Island of Apples, years ago the district had also been called Ynys Gutrin in Welsh, that is the Island of Glass, and from these words the invading Saxons later coined the place-name Glastingebury. Though no longer an island in the century, the high conical bulk of Glastonbury Tor had been surrounded by marsh before the surrounding fenland in the Somerset Levels was drained. In ancient times, Ponters Ball Dyke would have guarded the entrance to the island. The Romans eventually built another road to the island, Gerald wrote that Glastonburys earliest name in Welsh was Ineswitrin, the Isle of glass, a name noted by earlier historians which suggests that the location was at one point seen as an island. At a depth of 5 m the monks were said to have discovered a massive treetrunk coffin, accounts of the exact inscription vary, with five different versions existing. The earliest is by Gerald in Liber de Principis instructione c,1193, who wrote that he viewed the cross in person and traced the lettering. His transcript reads, Here lies buried the famous King Arthur with Guinevere his second wife in the isle of Avalon, inside the coffin were two bodies, who Giraldus refers to as Arthur and his queen, the bones of the male body were described as being gigantic
12.
Somerset
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Somerset is a county in South West England which borders Gloucestershire and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east and Devon to the south-west. It is bounded to the north and west by the Severn Estuary and its traditional border with Gloucestershire is the River Avon. Somerset is a county of rolling hills such as the Blackdown Hills, Mendip Hills, Quantock Hills and Exmoor National Park. There is evidence of occupation from Paleolithic times, and of subsequent settlement in the Roman. The county played a significant part in the consolidation of power and rise of King Alfred the Great, and later in the English Civil War, the city of Bath is famous for its substantial Georgian architecture and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Somersets name derives from Old English Sumorsǣte, short for Sumortūnsǣte, an alternative suggestion is the name derives from Seo-mere-saetan meaning settlers by the sea lakes. The Old English name is used in the motto of the county, Sumorsǣte ealle, adopted as the motto in 1911, the phrase is taken from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Somerset settlement names are mostly Anglo-Saxon in origin, but some hill names include Brittonic Celtic elements, for example, an Anglo-Saxon charter of 682 refers to Creechborough Hill as the hill the British call Cructan and we call Crychbeorh. Some modern names are Brythonic in origin, such as Tarnock, the caves of the Mendip Hills were settled during the Palaeolithic period, and contain extensive archaeological sites such as those at Cheddar Gorge. Bones from Goughs Cave have been dated to 12,000 BC, examples of cave art have been found in Avelines Hole. Some caves continued to be occupied until modern times, including Wookey Hole, the Somerset Levels—specifically dry points at Glastonbury and Brent Knoll— also have a long history of settlement, and are known to have been settled by Mesolithic hunters. Travel in the area was facilitated by the construction of one of the worlds oldest known engineered roadways, the Sweet Track, the exact age of the henge monument at Stanton Drew stone circles is unknown, but it is believed to be Neolithic. There are numerous Iron Age hill forts, some of which, like Cadbury Castle, on the authority of the future emperor Vespasian, as part of the ongoing expansion of the Roman presence in Britain, the Second Legion Augusta invaded Somerset from the south-east in AD47. The county remained part of the Roman Empire until around AD409, a variety of Roman remains have been found, including Pagans Hill Roman temple in Chew Stoke, Low Ham Roman Villa and the Roman Baths that gave their name to the city of Bath. After the Romans left, Britain was invaded by Anglo-Saxon peoples, by AD600 they had established control over much of what is now England, but Somerset was still in native British hands. The Saxon royal palace in Cheddar was used several times in the 10th century to host the Witenagemot. After the Norman Conquest, the county was divided into 700 fiefs, Somerset contains HM Prison Shepton Mallet, which was Englands oldest prison still in use prior to its closure in 2013, having opened in 1610. In the English Civil War Somerset was largely Parliamentarian, with key engagements being the Sieges of Taunton, in 1685 the Monmouth Rebellion was played out in Somerset and neighbouring Dorset
