1.
Birmingham, Alabama
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Birmingham is the most populous city in the U. S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Jefferson County. The citys population was 212,237 in the 2010 United States Census, the Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of about 1,128,047 according to the 2010 Census, which is approximately one quarter of Alabamas population. Birmingham was founded in 1871, during the post-Civil War Reconstruction period and it was named for Birmingham, England, one of the UKs major industrial cities. The Alabama city annexed smaller neighbors and developed as an industrial and railroad center, based on mining, the new iron and steel industry. Most of the settlers who founded Birmingham were of English ancestry. From its founding through the end of the 1960s, Birmingham was an industrial center of the southern United States. Its growth from 1881 through 1920 earned its nicknames as The Magic City and its major industries were iron and steel production, plus a major component of the railroading industry. Rails and railroad cars were manufactured in Birmingham. The two primary hubs of railroading in the Deep South have been nearby Atlanta and Birmingham, since the 1860s, the economy has diversified since industrial restructuring in the latter half of the 20th century. Banking, telecommunications, transportation, electrical transmission, medical care, college education. Except for coal mining, the industry has declined in the Birmingham area, Birmingham ranks as one of the most important business centers in the Southeastern United States and as one of the largest banking centers in the nation. In higher education, Birmingham has been the location of the University of Alabama School of Medicine, since that time it has also gained the University of Alabama at Birmingham, one of three main campuses of the University of Alabama System. It is also home to three institutions, Samford University, Birmingham-Southern College, and Miles College. In total, the Birmingham area has major colleges of medicine, dentistry, optometry, physical therapy, pharmacy, law, engineering, the city has three of the states five law schools, Cumberland School of Law, Birmingham School of Law, and Miles Law School. Birmingham is also the headquarters of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, and Southeastern Conference, Birmingham was founded on June 1,1871, by the Elyton Land Company, whose investors included cotton planters, bankers and railroad entrepreneurs. It sold lots near the crossing of the Alabama & Chattanooga and South & North Alabama railroads. The first business at that crossroads was the trading post and country store operated by Marre, the site of the railroad crossing was notable for its proximity to nearby deposits of iron ore, coal, and limestone – the three main raw materials used in making steel. Birmingham is the only place worldwide where significant amounts of all three minerals can be found in close proximity, from the start the new city was planned as a center of industry
2.
Alabama
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Alabama is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Alabama is the 30th-most extensive and the 24th-most populous of the U. S. states. At nearly 1,500 miles, Alabama has one of the nations longest navigable inland waterways, Alabama is nicknamed the Yellowhammer State, after the state bird. Alabama is also known as the Heart of Dixie and the Cotton State, the state tree is the longleaf pine, and the state flower is the camellia. The largest city by population is Birmingham, which has long been the most industrialized city, the oldest city is Mobile, founded by French colonists in 1702 as the capital of French Louisiana. From the American Civil War until World War II, Alabama, like many states in the southern U. S. suffered economic hardship, like other southern states, Alabama legislators disenfranchised African Americans and many poor whites at the turn of the century. Following World War II, Alabama grew as the economy changed from one primarily based on agriculture to one with diversified interests. The state economy in the 21st century is based on management, automotive, finance, manufacturing, aerospace, mineral extraction, healthcare, education, retail, in the Alabama language, the word for a person of Alabama lineage is Albaamo. The word Alabama is believed to have come from the Alabama language, the words spelling varies significantly among historical sources. As early as 1702, the French called the tribe the Alibamon, other spellings of the name have included Alibamu, Alabamo, Albama, Alebamon, Alibama, Alibamou, Alabamu, Allibamou. Sources disagree on the words meaning, some scholars suggest the word comes from the Choctaw alba and amo. The meaning may have been clearers of the thicket or herb gatherers, the state has numerous place names of Native American origin. However, there are no correspondingly similar words in the Alabama language, an 1842 article in the Jacksonville Republican proposed it meant Here We Rest. This notion was popularized in the 1850s through the writings of Alexander Beaufort Meek, experts in the Muskogean languages have not found any evidence to support such a translation. Indigenous peoples of varying cultures lived in the area for thousands of years before the advent of European colonization, trade with the northeastern tribes by the Ohio River began during the Burial Mound Period and continued until European contact. The agrarian Mississippian culture covered most of the state from 1000 to 1600 AD, with one of its major centers built at what is now the Moundville Archaeological Site in Moundville, Alabama. This is the second-largest complex of the classic Middle Mississippian era, after Cahokia in present-day Illinois, Analysis of artifacts from archaeological excavations at Moundville were the basis of scholars formulating the characteristics of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Contrary to popular belief, the SECC appears to have no links to Mesoamerican culture
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
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
5.
Albert Bierstadt
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Albert Bierstadt was an American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. To paint the scenes, Bierstadt joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion, though not the first artist to record these sites, Bierstadt was the foremost painter of these scenes for the remainder of the 19th century. Born in Germany, Bierstadt was brought to the United States at the age of one by his parents and he later returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. He became part of the Hudson River School in New York and their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. An important interpreter of the landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School. Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany, the son of Christina M. and Henry Bierstadt, the following year, in 1831, his family moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts. At an early age Bierstadt developed a taste for art and made clever crayon sketches in his youth, in 1851, he began to paint in oils. He returned to Germany in 1853 and studied painting for several years in Düsseldorf with members of its school of painting. After returning to New Bedford in 1857, he taught drawing and painting briefly, in 1858 he exhibited a large painting of a Swiss landscape at the National Academy of Design, which gained him positive critical reception and honorary membership in the Academy. Bierstadt began painting scenes in New England and upstate New York, a group of artists known as the Hudson River School portrayed its majestic landscapes and craggy areas, as well as the light affected by the changing waters. In 1859, Bierstadt traveled westward in the company of Frederick W. Lander and he returned to a studio he had taken at the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York with sketches that resulted in numerous finished paintings. In 1863 he traveled west again, this time in the company of the author Fitz Hugh Ludlow, throughout the 1860s, Bierstadt used studies from this trip as the source for large-scale paintings for exhibition. He continued to visit the American West throughout his career, during the American Civil War, Bierstadt paid for a substitute to serve in his place when he was drafted in 1863. He completed one Civil War painting Guerrilla Warfare, Civil War in 1862, Bierstadts painting was based on a stereoscopic photograph taken by his brother Edward Bierstadt, who operated a photography studio at Langleys Tavern in Virginia. Bierstadts painting received a review when it was exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December 1861. In 1860, he was elected a member of the National Academy, he received medals in Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, in 1867 he traveled to London, where he exhibited two landscape paintings in a private reception with Queen Victoria. He traveled through Europe for two years, cultivating social and business contacts to sustain the market for his work overseas, Bierstadts technical proficiency, earned through his study of European landscape, was crucial to his success as a painter of the American West. It accounted for his popularity in disseminating views of the Rocky Mountains to those who had not seen them, the immense canvases he produced after his trips with Lander and Ludlow established him as the preeminent painter of the western American landscape
6.
Southeastern United States
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The Southeastern United States is the eastern portion of the Southern United States, and the southern portion of the Eastern United States. It comprises 15 states in the southern United States, there is no official Census Bureau definition of the southeastern United States. The OSBO uses the same states, but includes Arkansas and Louisiana, the most populous state in the region is Florida, followed by Georgia, and North Carolina. With tropical air masses influencing the region precipitation is high throughout the year, the tropical air masses do however cause significant hurricanes such as Hurricane Andrew and Hurricane Katrina wreaking havoc and causing significant damage to coastal areas. The winters highly vary depending on latitude and elevation, the Southeast has changed dramatically in the last two generations. Since 1980, there has been a boom in its economy, manufacturing base, high technology industries. Fortune 500 companies having headquarters in the region included 20 in Virginia,16 in Florida,15 in North Carolina and this economic expansion has enabled parts of the South to have of some of the lowest unemployment rates in the United States. In Alabama, there is a manufacturing project owned by the German steel megacorporation Thyssen-Krupp. The Cummings Research Park in the Huntsville, Alabama area is the second largest research complex in the nation, located in Huntsville is the Redstone Arsenal, United States Army Missile Command, the U. S. Space and Rocket Center, NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center and many key government, military. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida is the largest laboratory in the devoted to the study of magnetism. There are a number of universities, with several large research universities which exert influence beyond the region. These include the oldest public universities in the country, the University of Alabama, the region is home to the most historically black colleges and universities in the nation. The three largest in the region are North Carolina A&T University, Florida A&M University, and Jackson State University, on this list New Orleans Refers to the Orleans Parish Population. Therefore the population given is for the entire city excluding other incorporated places lying within the county limits, five Major League Baseball teams play in the Southeast, Washington Nationals, Miami Marlins, Atlanta Braves, Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles. The Braves, Nationals and Marlins play in the NL East,4 Major League Lacrosse teams play in the southeast, Chesapeake Bayhawks, Florida Launch, Charlotte Hounds, and the Atlanta Blaze. Seven National Basketball Association teams play in the Southeast, Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets, Atlanta Hawks, Memphis Grizzlies, Miami Heat, Orlando Magic and New Orleans Pelicans. The Wizards, Heat, Hornets, Magic and Hawks are in the Eastern Conference, the Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Peach Bowl, and Citrus Bowl are notable college football bowls held in Southeastern cities
7.
Asia
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Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometres, about 30% of Earths total land area and 8. 7% of the Earths total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Asia is notable for not only its large size and population. In general terms, Asia is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean, the western boundary with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. The most commonly accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal, the Ural River, and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains, China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 A. D. The accidental discovery of America by Columbus in search for India demonstrates this deep fascination, the Silk Road became the main East-West trading route in the Asian hitherland while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may actually have more to do with human geography than physical geography. Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties, the boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Suez Canal. This makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Asia, the border between Asia and Europe was historically defined by European academics. In Sweden, five years after Peters death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Urals as the border of Asia, the Russians were enthusiastic about the concept, which allowed them to keep their European identity in geography. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg, the latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century, the border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, the border between Asia and the loosely defined region of Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Malay Archipelago. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Malay Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the possessions of the various empires there. Lewis and Wigen assert, The narrowing of Southeast Asia to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process, Asia is larger and more culturally diverse than Europe. It does not exactly correspond to the borders of its various types of constituents. From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system on the grounds there is no or is no substantial physical separation between them
8.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
9.
Americas
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The Americas, also collectively called America, encompass the totality of the continents of North America and South America. Together they make up most of the land in Earths western hemisphere, along with their associated islands, they cover 8% of Earths total surface area and 28. 4% of its land area. The topography is dominated by the American Cordillera, a chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast. The flatter eastern side of the Americas is dominated by river basins, such as the Amazon, St. Lawrence River / Great Lakes basin, Mississippi. Humans first settled the Americas from Asia between 42,000 and 17,000 years ago, a second migration of Na-Dene speakers followed later from Asia. The subsequent migration of the Inuit into the neoarctic around 3500 BCE completed what is regarded as the settlement by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The first known European settlement in the Americas was by the Norse explorer Leif Ericson, however, the colonization never became permanent and was later abandoned. The voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1502 resulted in permanent contact with European powers, diseases introduced from Europe and Africa devastated the indigenous peoples, and the European powers colonized the Americas. Mass emigration from Europe, including numbers of indentured servants. Decolonization of the Americas began with the American Revolution in 1776, the population is over 1 billion, with over 65% of them living in one of the three most populous countries. As of the beginning of the 2010s, the most populous urban agglomerations are Mexico City, New York, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, all of them megacities. The name America was first recorded in 1507 in the Cosmographiae Introductio, apparently written by Matthias Ringmann and it first applied to both North and South America by Gerardus Mercator in 1538. Amerigen means land of Amerigo and derives from Amerigo and gen, America accorded with the feminine names of Asia, Africa, and Europa. When conceived as a continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America. In some countries of the world, America is considered a continent encompassing the North America and South America subcontinents, the first inhabitants migrated into the Americas from Asia. Habitation sites are known in Alaska and the Yukon from at least 20,000 years ago, beyond that, the specifics of the Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. Widespread habitation of the Americas occurred during the glacial maximum
10.
Africa
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Africa is the worlds second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At about 30.3 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earths total surface area and 20.4 % of its land area. With 1.2 billion people as of 2016, it accounts for about 16% of the human population. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos and it contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states, nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Africas population is the youngest amongst all the continents, the age in 2012 was 19.7. Algeria is Africas largest country by area, and Nigeria by population, afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster – with the earliest Homo sapiens found in Ethiopia being dated to circa 200,000 years ago. Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas, it is the continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones. Africa hosts a diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. In the late 19th century European countries colonized most of Africa, Africa also varies greatly with regard to environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. However, most present states in Africa originate from a process of decolonization in the 20th century, afri was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of Africa, which in its widest sense referred to all lands south of the Mediterranean. This name seems to have referred to a native Libyan tribe. The name is connected with Hebrew or Phoenician ʿafar dust. The same word may be found in the name of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of the province of Africa Proconsularis, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix -ica can sometimes be used to denote a land, the later Muslim kingdom of Ifriqiya, modern-day Tunisia, also preserved a form of the name. According to the Romans, Africa lay to the west of Egypt, while Asia was used to refer to Anatolia, as Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge. 25,4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya, isidore of Seville in Etymologiae XIV.5.2. Suggests Africa comes from the Latin aprica, meaning sunny, massey, in 1881, stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, meaning to turn toward the opening of the Ka. The Ka is the double of every person and the opening of the Ka refers to a womb or birthplace
11.
Pre-Columbian era
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For this reason the alternative terms of Precontact Americas, Pre-Colonial Americas or Prehistoric Americas are also in use. In areas of Latin America the term used is Pre-Hispanic. Other civilizations were contemporary with the period and were described in European historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya civilization, had their own written records, because many Christian Europeans of the time viewed such texts as heretical, men like Diego de Landa destroyed many texts in pyres, even while seeking to preserve native histories. Only a few documents have survived in their original languages, while others were transcribed or dictated into Spanish, giving modern historians glimpses of ancient culture. Indigenous American cultures continue to evolve after the pre-Columbian era, many of these peoples and their descendants continue traditional practices, while evolving and adapting new cultural practices and technologies into their lives. Now, the study of pre-Columbian cultures is most often based on scientific. Asian nomads are thought to have entered the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge, now the Bering Strait, genetic evidence found in Amerindians maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA supports the theory of multiple genetic populations migrating from Asia. Over the course of millennia, Paleo-Indians spread throughout North and South America, exactly when the first group of people migrated into the Americas is the subject of much debate. One of the earliest identifiable cultures was the Clovis culture, with sites dating from some 13,000 years ago, however, older sites dating back to 20,000 years ago have been claimed. Some genetic studies estimate the colonization of the Americas dates from between 40,000 and 13,000 years ago, the chronology of migration models is currently divided into two general approaches. The first is the short chronology theory with the first movement beyond Alaska into the New World occurring no earlier than 14, 000–17,000 years ago, followed by successive waves of immigrants. The second belief is the long chronology theory, which proposes that the first group of people entered the hemisphere at an earlier date, possibly 50. In that case, the Eskimo peoples would have arrived separately and at a later date, probably no more than 2,000 years ago. The North American climate was unstable as the ice age receded and it finally stabilized by about 10,000 years ago, climatic conditions were then very similar to todays. Within this timeframe, roughly pertaining to the Archaic Period, numerous archaeological cultures have been identified, the unstable climate led to widespread migration, with early Paleo-Indians soon spreading throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct tribes. The paleo-indians were hunter-gatherers, likely characterized by small, mobile bands consisting of approximately 20 to 50 members of an extended family and these groups moved from place to place as preferred resources were depleted and new supplies were sought. During much of the Paleo-Indian period, bands are thought to have subsisted primarily through hunting now-extinct giant land animals such as mastodon, Paleo-Indian groups carried a variety of tools
12.
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
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The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas and their descendants. The term Amerindian is used in Quebec, the Guianas, Indigenous peoples of the United States are commonly known as Native Americans or American Indians, and Alaska Natives. Application of the term Indian originated with Christopher Columbus, who, in his search for Asia, eventually, the Americas came to be known as the West Indies, a name still used to refer to the islands of the Caribbean Sea. This led to the blanket term Indies and Indians for the indigenous inhabitants, although some indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers—and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are—many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture. The impact of their agricultural endowment to the world is a testament to their time, although some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions the indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, chiefdoms, states, and empires. Many parts of the Americas are still populated by peoples, some countries have sizable populations, especially Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Greenland, Guatemala, Mexico. At least a different indigenous languages are spoken in the Americas. Some, such as the Quechuan languages, Aymara, Guaraní, Mayan languages, many also maintain aspects of indigenous cultural practices to varying degrees, including religion, social organization, and subsistence practices. Like most cultures, over time, cultures specific to many indigenous peoples have evolved to incorporate traditional aspects, some indigenous peoples still live in relative isolation from Western culture and a few are still counted as uncontacted peoples. The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the dates and routes traveled, are the subject of ongoing research. According to archaeological and genetic evidence, North and South America were the last continents in the world with human habitation. During the Wisconsin glaciation, 50–17,000 years ago, falling sea levels allowed people to move across the bridge of Beringia that joined Siberia to northwest North America. Alaska was a glacial refugium because it had low snowfall, allowing a small population to exist, the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered most of North America, blocking nomadic inhabitants and confining them to Alaska for thousands of years. Indigenous genetic studies suggest that the first inhabitants of the Americas share a single population, one that developed in isolation. The isolation of these peoples in Beringia might have lasted 10–20,000 years, around 16,500 years ago, the glaciers began melting, allowing people to move south and east into Canada and beyond. These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran Ice Sheets. Another route proposed involves migration - either on foot or using primitive boats - along the Pacific Northwest coast to the south, archeological evidence of the latter would have been covered by the sea level rise of more than 120 meters since the last ice age
13.
Samuel Henry Kress
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Samuel Henry Kress was a businessman and philanthropist, founder of the S. H. Kress & Co. five and ten cent store chain. With his fortune, Kress amassed one of the most significant collections of Italian Renaissance, in the 1950s and 1960s, a foundation established by Kress would donate 776 works of art from the Kress collection to 18 regional art museums in the United States. Kress was born in the village of Cherryville, near Allentown, Pennsylvania and his father was a retail merchant. His siblings were Mary Conner Kress, Jennie Weston Kress, Palmer John Kress, Claude Washington Kress, another sibling, Elmer Kress, died ten days after birth. Kress never married or had children, young Kress worked in the stone quarries. Intelligent, energetic and precocious, he earned his credentials by the age of 17. His first position was instructor for a class of 80 students and he walked 3 miles each way to the schoolhouse. In 1887, Kress opened a stationery and notions store in Nanticoke, as the business prospered he used his profits to open additional stores, naming his chain S. H. Kress & Co. These eventually would become known as the Kress Five and Dime stores. Unlike many businessmen of his day who only opened their stores in urban areas. These stores became the jewel of many of cities, which only had a dry goods or general store until then. By the mid-1920s, he was living in a penthouse at 1020 Fifth Avenue in New York City, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and he was a major art collector, and created a foundation to hold and dispose of his vast art collection. Kress died in 1955 and is interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, S. H. Kress & Co. a chain of five and dime retail department stores, was started in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, by Samuel H. Kress in 1896. Eventually expanding to over 200 locations nationwide, Kress stores were long a familiar sight in many cities, the Kress chain was known for the fine architecture of the stores, with a number of locations being hailed by architects for their design. A number of former Kress stores, now put to uses, are ranked as landmarks. Some of the most well-known Kress locations included New York Citys Fifth Avenue, Canal Street, New Orleans, in 1964 ownership of Kress was acquired by Genesco, Inc. The company abandoned its center-city stores and moved to the shopping malls, Genesco began liquidating Kress and closing down the Kress stores in 1980. Kress was founder and president of the eponymous Samuel H. Kress Foundation, an avid art lover, he acquired, through art dealer Joseph Duveen, a collection of paintings and sculpture, primarily of the Italian Baroque school
14.
Renaissance
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The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
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Baroque
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The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories
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Decorative arts
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The decorative arts are arts or crafts concerned with the design and manufacture of beautiful objects that are also functional. It includes interior design, but not usually architecture, the decorative arts are often categorized in opposition to the fine arts, namely, painting, drawing, photography, and large-scale sculpture, which generally have no function other than to be seen. The distinction between the decorative and the arts has essentially arisen from the post-Renaissance art of the West. This distinction is less meaningful when considering the art of other cultures and periods. For example, Islamic art in many periods and places consists entirely of the arts, often using geometric and plant forms. The distinction between decorative and fine arts is not very useful for appreciating Chinese art, and neither is it for understanding Early Medieval art in Europe, large-scale wall-paintings were much less regarded, crudely executed, and rarely mentioned in contemporary sources. They were probably seen as a substitute for mosaic, which for this period must be viewed as a fine art. The term ars sacra is sometimes used for medieval Christian art done in metal, ivory, textiles, illuminated manuscripts have a much higher survival rate, especially in the hands of the church, as there was little value in the materials and they were easy to store. Most European art during the Middle Ages had been produced under a different set of values. The lower status given to works of art in contrast to fine art narrowed with the rise of the Arts and Crafts Movement. This aesthetic movement of the half of the 19th century was born in England and inspired by William Morris. The movement represented the beginning of an appreciation of the decorative arts throughout Europe. Many converts, both professional artists ranks and from among the intellectual class as a whole, helped spread the ideas of the movement. The influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement led to the arts being given a greater appreciation and status in society. Until the enactment of the Copyright Act 1911 only works of art had been protected from unauthorised copying. The 1911 Act extended the definition of a work to include works of artistic craftsmanship
17.
Edward Larrabee Barnes
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Edward Larrabee Barnes was an American architect. He graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1942, after the war he worked for Henry Dreyfuss in Los Angeles designing prototypes for mass-produced homes. In 1949 Barnes founded Edward Larrabee Barnes Associates in Manhattan, many of his buildings are widely recognized, including the Dallas Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, and the IBM Building at 590 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. In 1969, Barnes was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978. In 2007 he was honored with the American Institute of Architects highest award. He also received the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture, the Harvard University 350th Anniversary Medal and his Haystack Mountain School of Crafts won the AIA Twenty-five Year Award. Louis, Missouri,1982 Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, Utah,1982 Dillon, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Modern Architect, Dies at 89, The New York Times, September 23,2004. Snatched from Oblivion, Metropolis magazine, October 2006, p.56 by Jeffrey Head Emporis. com biography Edward Larrabee Barnes at the archINFORM database
18.
Late Period of ancient Egypt
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It ran from 664 BC until 332 BC. Libyans and Persians alternated rule with native Egyptians, but traditional conventions continued in the arts and it is often regarded as the last gasp of a once great culture, during which the power of Egypt steadily diminished. The Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, also known as the Saite Dynasty after Sais, reigned from 672 BC to 525 BC, canal construction from the Nile to the Red Sea began. One major contribution from the Late Period of ancient Egypt was the Brooklyn Papyrus and this was a medical papyrus with a collection of medical and magical remedies for victims of snakebites based on snake type or symptoms. Artwork during this time was representative of animal cults and animal mummies and this image shows the god Pataikos wearing a scarab beetle on his head, supporting two human-headed birds on his shoulders, holding a snake in each hand, and standing atop crocodiles. The First Achaemenid Period period saw Egypt conquered by an expansive Achaemenid Empire under Cambyses, a total of eight pharaohs from this dynasty ruled over Egypt. The initial period of Achaemenid Persian occupation when Egypt became a satrapy, the Twenty-Eighth Dynasty consisted of a single king, Amyrtaeus, prince of Sais, who rebelled against the Persians. He left no monuments with his name and this dynasty reigned for six years, from 404 BC to 398 BC. The Twenty-Ninth Dynasty ruled from Mendes, for the period from 398 BC to 380 BC, the Thirtieth Dynasty took their art style from the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty. A series of three pharaohs ruled from 380 BC until their defeat in 343 BC led to the re-occupation by the Persians. The final ruler of dynasty, and the final native ruler of Egypt until nearly 2,300 years later, was Nectanebo II. There was a Second Achaemenid Period of the Thirty-First Dynasty, and consisted of four pharaohs, Artaxerxes III, Artaxerxes IV, Khababash, gozzoli, The Writing of History in Ancient Egypt During the First Millennium BCE. Trend and Perspectives, London 2006, ISBN 0-9550256-3-X Lloyd, Alan B.2000, the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 71-74 Primary sources Herodotus Fragments of Ctesias Thucydides Diodorus Siculus Fragments of Manetho Flavius Josephus
19.
Ibis
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The ibises are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae, that inhabit wetlands, forests and plains. Ibis derives from the Latin and Ancient Greek word for this group of birds and it also occurs in the scientific name of the cattle egret, mistakenly identified in 1757 as being the sacred ibis. Ibises all have long, down-curved bills, and usually feed as a group, probing mud for food items and they are monogamous and highly territorial while nesting and feeding. Most nest in trees, often with spoonbills or herons, all extant species are volant, but two extinct genera were flightless, namely the kiwi-like Apteribis in the Hawaiian Islands, and the peculiar Xenicibis in Jamaica. The word ibis comes from Latin ibis from Greek ἶβις ibis from Egyptian hb, there are 28 extant species and 2 extinct species of ibis. The African sacred ibis was an object of veneration in ancient Egypt. He is responsible for writing, mathematics, measurement and time as well as the moon, in artworks of the Late Period of Ancient Egypt, Thoth is popularly depicted as an ibis-headed man in the act of writing. The mascot of the University of Miami is an American white ibis, the ibis was selected as the school mascot because of its legendary bravery during hurricanes. According to legend, the ibis is the last sign of wildlife to take shelter before a hurricane hits, Harvard Universitys humor magazine, Harvard Lampoon, uses the ibis as its symbol. A copper statue of an ibis is prominently displayed on the roof of the Harvard Lampoon Building at 44 Bow Street, a short story The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst uses the sable-hued bird as foreshadowing for a characters death and as the primary symbol. The African sacred ibis is the symbol of the Israeli Special Forces unit known as Unit 212 or Maglan. According to Josephus, Moses used the ibis to help him defeat the Ethiopians, Ibis videos - at Internet Bird Collection Ibis. The dictionary definition of ibis at Wiktionary
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Ancient Egypt
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Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one of six civilizations to arise independently, Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh Narmer. In the aftermath of Alexander the Greats death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter and this Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture, the predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world and its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history, nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the climate of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry. In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates, foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated. The largest of these cultures in upper Egypt was the Badari, which probably originated in the Western Desert, it was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools. The Badari was followed by the Amratian and Gerzeh cultures, which brought a number of technological improvements, as early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes. In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan, establishing a power center at Hierakonpolis, and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile. They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the desert to the west. Royal Nubian burials at Qustul produced artifacts bearing the oldest-known examples of Egyptian dynastic symbols, such as the crown of Egypt. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines. During the last predynastic phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language. The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-Akkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia, the third-century BC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of pharaohs from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today
21.
Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt
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The Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt was the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 BC. The dynastys reign is called the Saite Period after the city of Sais, where its pharaohs had their capital. This dynasty traced its origins to the 24th Dynasty, Psamtik I was probably a descendant of Bakenrenef, and following the Assyrians invasions during the reigns of Taharqa and Tantamani, he was recognized as sole king over all of Egypt. With the help of Greek mercenaries, Apries was able to hold back Babylonian attempts to conquer Egypt and their king, Cambyses II, captured and later executed Psamtik III. The 26th Dynasty may be related to the 24th Dynasty, Manetho begins the dynasty with, Ammeris the Nubian,12 years Stephinates,7 years Nechepsos,6 years Necho,8 years. When the Nubian King Shabaka defeated Bakenrenef, son of Tefnakht and this may be the man named Ammeris. Stephinates may be a descendant of Bakenrenef and he is sometimes referred to as Tefnakht II in the literature. Nechepsos has been identified with a king named Nekauba. Manethos Necho is King Necho I, Manetho gives his reign as 8 years, Necho was killed during a conflict with the Nubian king Tanutamun. Psamtik I fled to Nineveh – capital of the Assyrian Empire – and returned to Egypt when Assurbanipal defeated Tanutamun, scholars now start the 26th Dynasty with the reign of Psamtik I. Sextus Julius Africanus states in his often accurate version of Manethos Epitome that the dynasty numbered 9 pharaohs, beginning with a Stephinates, Africanus also notes that Psamtik I and Necho I ruled for 54 and 8 years respectively. History of Ancient Egypt Twenty-sixth Dynasty Family Tree Twenty-sixth Dynasty Timeline Late Period of ancient Egypt Achaemenid Empire Saite Oracle Papyrus Aidan Dodson, the Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. The American University in Cairo Press, London 2004 Kenneth Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt,1986 ISBN 978-0-85668-298-8 Karl Jansen-Winkeln, Bild und Charakter der ägyptischen 26
22.
John Singer Sargent
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John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the leading portrait painter of his generation for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and his oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. His parents were American, but he was trained in Paris prior to moving to London and his commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work and he lived most of his life in Europe. Art historians generally ignored the society such as Sargent until the late 20th century. Before Sargents birth, his father, FitzWilliam, was an eye surgeon at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia 1844–1854, after Johns older sister died at the age of two, his mother, Mary, suffered a breakdown, and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic expatriates for the rest of their lives, although based in Paris, Sargents parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. While Mary was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Tuscany, Sargent was born there in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born, after her birth, FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wifes entreaties to remain abroad. They lived modestly on an inheritance and savings, living a quiet life with their children. They generally avoided society and other Americans except for friends in the art world, four more children were born abroad, of whom only two lived past childhood. Although his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, as his father wrote home, He is quite a close observer of animated nature. His mother was convinced that traveling around Europe, and visiting museums and churches. Several attempts to have him formally schooled failed, owing mostly to their itinerant life, Sargents mother was a fine amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions, young Sargent worked with care on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from The Illustrated London News of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his sons interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career, at thirteen, his mother reported that John sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist, at the age of thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Although his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music
23.
Helen Vincent, Viscountess D'Abernon
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Helen Venetia Vincent, Viscountess DAbernon was a British noblewoman, socialite and diarist. Helen was the daughter of William Duncombe, 1st Earl of Feversham, of Ryedale and Mabel Violet Graham, born at their estate of Duncombe Park in Helmsley, North Yorkshire, England. She and her sister, Hermione, Duchess of Leinster, were renowned as leading beauties in their circle, Helen married Sir Edgar Vincent, then a governor of the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Constantinople on 24 September 1890. In 1899 he was elected a Member of Parliament for Exeter, Lady Helen, in that period, was the most celebrated hostess of her age and was by reason of her outstanding beauty, intelligence and charm, one of the most resplendent figures. Helen was associated with the Souls, a salon of noted intellectuals of the day which included Arthur Balfour, George Curzon, Henry James, in 1904 during an extended visit to Venice, Lady Helens portrait was painted by John Singer Sargent. That work is now part of the permanent collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama, during World War I Lady Helen trained as a nurse anaesthetist and treated thousands of patients. Many letters describing her war work were sent to her friend Teresa Hulton, Lady Helen accompanied her husband as he served on the Interallied Mission to Poland and as the British Ambassador to the Weimar Republic in the early 1920s. During this time the Baroness kept a diary of her experiences, parts of which were published in 1946 as Red Cross and Berlin Embassy, 1915-1926, Extracts from the Diaries of Viscountess DAbernon. At the end of his mission, Sir Edgar was elevated to 1st Viscount DAbernon on 1 January 1926. The Vincents did not have children and Sir Edgars titles died with him in 1941, Lady DAbernon died at age 84 on 16 May 1954
24.
Hu (vessel)
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A hu is a type of wine vessel that has a pear-shaped cross-section. Its body swells and flares into a neck, creating S-shaped profile. While it is similar to you vessel, hu usually has a longer body, the shape of hu probably derives from its ceramic prototype prior to the Shang dynasty. They usually have handles on the top or rings attached to each side of neck, many extant hu lack lids while those excavated in such tombs as Fu Haos indicate that this type of vessel might be originally made with lids. Although it is often to see hu having a circular body, there also appears hu in square and flat rectangular forms, called fang hu. In addition, hu often came to be found in a pair or in a set together with other types of vessels. As wine had played an important part in the Shang ritual, the bronze hu vessel has not been found prior to the Shang period. During this period, there are two types of hu vessels. One has a mouth and long neck, the other has wide mouth. The décor on the hu in the Shang period was dominated by taotie motif, square form of hu began to appear in the end of the Shang dynasty. Because this form of hu is still uncommon at this time, its appearance in the tomb marks the owners wealth. Hu in the Western Zhou period was undergone several changes, larger hu vessels seem to become more common after the first half of mid-Western Zhou. This is possibly a response to changes in ritual, nevertheless, hu from the Western Zhou dynasty still mainly served as a wine vessel for the uses of ritual. In addition to the change in size, hus previous taotie design was replaced by other types of animal. Hu found during this time were not from tombs, but hoards left by Zhou people. Therefore, the burial context provides less clues about their functions. The East Zhou dynasty was subdivided into two periods, Spring and Autumn period and Warring States Period, the East Zhou witnessed the decline of central government and the rise of feudal states. It is a time of political disunity, powerful feudal lords barely paid allegiance to Zhou kings, whose domain drastically dwindled during this time
25.
Mino da Fiesole
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Mino da Fiesole, also known as Mino di Giovanni, was an Italian sculptor from Poppi, Tuscany. He is noted for his portrait busts, Minos work was influenced by his master Desiderio da Settignano and by Antonio Rossellino, and is characterized by its sharp, angular treatment of drapery. Unlike most Florentine sculptors of his generation, Mino passed two lengthy sojourns in Rome, from about 1459 to 1464 and again from about 1473/1474 until 1480, Mino was a friend and fellow-worker of Desiderio da Settignano and Matteo Civitali, all three being about the same age. Minos sculpture is remarkable for its finish and delicacy of details, as well as for its spirituality, the first, completed about 1468, was essentially a private commission for the Florentine jurist Bernardo Giugni. The second, directly commissioned by the monks and finished in 1481, honored the memory of their founder, the wall monuments exercised Minos skills, portraits and bas-reliefs are worked into complex tectonic aedicular structures with elaborate highly individualistic decorative moldings. The pulpit in Prato Cathedral, in which he collaborated with Antonio Rossellino, finished in 1473, is very delicately sculpted with bas-reliefs of great minuteness, in 1473 he went to Rome where he remained apparently about six years. Peters, and the beautiful little marble tabernacle for the oils in St. Maria in Trastevere bears the inscription Opus Mini. Several monuments in Santa Maria del Popolo have at times attributed to Mino. The monuments there of Archbishop of Salerno Pietro Guglielmo Rocca and Bishop of Burgos Ortega Gomiel, however, have also been attributed to the school of Andrea Bregno. C. His other works include, a portrait bust of Piero de Medici, master of the Marble Madonnas This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Mino di Giovanni. Handley, M. L. Mino di Giovanni
26.
Tumi
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Tumis are most often associated with Pre-Inca cultures in the Peruvian Coastal Region and in some cases with the Inca culture itself. The most common examples of the tumi are associated with the Peruvian cultures of the Chimor, the festival took place at the end of the potato and maize harvest in order to thank the Sun for the abundant crops or to ask for better crops during the next season. During this important religious ceremony, the High Priest would sacrifice a black or white llama. Using a tumi, he would open the animals chest and with his hands out its throbbing heart, lungs and viscera. Later, the animal and its parts were completely incinerated, other Andean cultures such as the Paracas have used the tumi for the neurological procedure of skull trepanation. These soft metals would not have allowed for the killing of animal or cutting of any kind of flesh. Tumi knives were produced for use by elite members of society which included them being used in elite burial ceremonies. On November 21,2006, archaeologists announced that they had unearthed 22 graves in northern Peru containing pre-Inca artifacts, among the artifacts were the first tumi knives ever discovered by archaeologists. All previous examples had been recovered from grave looters, in 1936 a tumi was discovered in the valley of Batan Grande, Illimo, Lambayeque, Peru. It is really more an ax than a knife with a weight of 992 grams and this tumi is believed to have the figure of Naylamp on its top, as many tumis are thought to have a depiction of this symbolic figure. Naylamp was a hero and founder of the Lambayeque, or Sican, culture. The legend goes, that when Ñaylamp died, or disappeared, after founding the Lambayeque culture, he grew wings and this hero-king founder of Lambayeque built a temple named Chot where he placed a large stone that he called Llampallec, which means statue of Ñaylamp. In this temple many ceremonies and rituals were offered using a tumi, the knife or Tumi of Illimo is represented with a mask of a bird, wings and bird shaped eyes. The mythic stories about the bird named Ñaylamp and the hero warrior founder of Lambayeque are represented in the knife or Tumi of Illimo by a birdman, Tumi knives often include depictions of birds or winds in order to symbolize Ñaylamp as well. In modern Peru, to hang a tumi on a wall means good luck, the tumi is the national symbol of Peru and has become a symbol used in Peruvian tourism publicity and can be found depicted on tourist gifts such as mugs and key chains. Battle axe Pre-Columbian Trephination Tumi Mochica Ceremonial Knife Inca Art Peru Cultural Society - Tumi, the Ceremonial Knife
27.
Sican culture
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This article concerns the Sican Culture of what is now Peru. For the people of ancient Sicily, see the article Sicani, the Sican culture is the name that archaeologist Izumi Shimada gave to the culture that inhabited what is now the north coast of Peru between about 750 and 1375. According to Shimada, Sican means temple of the Moon, the Sican culture is also referred to as Lambayeque culture, after the name of the region in Peru. There is still controversy among archeologists and anthropologists over whether the two are separate cultures, the Sican culture is divided into three major periods based on cultural changes as evidenced in archeological artifacts. Archaeologist Izumi Shimada, founder of the Sican Archaeological Project, named the culture which he discovered in northwestern Peru. They succeeded the Moche and preceded the Inca Empire, the civilization that encountered the Spanish explorers and conquistadors. The Sican inhabited a territory near the La Leche and Lambayeque Rivers. The archaeological sites span the Lambayeque region, including the Motupe, La Leche, Lambayeque, numerous sites have been identified in the Batán Grande area of the La Leche Valley. The climate of the area during Sican occupation was similar to the current climate, despite changes in landscape accumulated in the last 600 years, the drought-and-flood cycles seen in the region for the past 1500 years did not spare the Sican culture. The Early Sican period began around 750 and lasted until 900, the lack of artifacts has limited the development of knowledge about this early period. The Sican were probably descendants of the Moche culture, which fell around 800 and their works shows shared motifs in the artifacts recovered. Similar groups include Cajamarca, Wari and Pachacamac, the Lambayeque culture may have been a separate trading people as well. Around 800, the Sican created the city of Poma, located at Batán Grande, few other Early Sican sites have been discovered. The Early Sican culture is known for the polished, black-finish ceramics found in the La Leche Valley. This black-finish ceramic style began in the Moche culture prior to the Early Sican, much of the ceramics were examples of a single spout, loop-handle bottle, featuring an anthropomorphic-avian face at the spout base. The face consisted of bulging eyes, a beak or triangular projection instead of a nose, stylized ears. It appeared to be a predecessor to the faces of the Sican Deity. Aside from the ceramic styles, much of the Early Sican defines a distinguishable culture
28.
Peru
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Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the west by the Pacific Ocean. Peruvian territory was home to ancient cultures spanning from the Norte Chico civilization in Caral, one of the oldest in the world, to the Inca Empire, the largest state in Pre-Columbian America. The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and established a Viceroyalty with its capital in Lima, ideas of political autonomy later spread throughout Spanish America and Peru gained its independence, which was formally proclaimed in 1821. After the battle of Ayacucho, three years after proclamation, Peru ensured its independence, subsequently, the country has undergone changes in government from oligarchic to democratic systems. Peru has gone through periods of political unrest and internal conflict as well as periods of stability, Peru is a representative democratic republic divided into 25 regions. It is a country with a high Human Development Index score. Its main economic activities include mining, manufacturing, agriculture and fishing, the Peruvian population, estimated at 31.2 million in 2015, is multiethnic, including Amerindians, Europeans, Africans and Asians. The main spoken language is Spanish, although a significant number of Peruvians speak Quechua or other native languages and this mixture of cultural traditions has resulted in a wide diversity of expressions in fields such as art, cuisine, literature, and music. The name of the country may be derived from Birú, the name of a ruler who lived near the Bay of San Miguel, Panama. When his possessions were visited by Spanish explorers in 1522, they were the southernmost part of the New World yet known to Europeans, thus, when Francisco Pizarro explored the regions farther south, they came to be designated Birú or Perú. An alternative history is provided by the contemporary writer Inca Garcilasco de la Vega, son of an Inca princess, the Spanish Crown gave the name legal status with the 1529 Capitulación de Toledo, which designated the newly encountered Inca Empire as the province of Peru. Under Spanish rule, the country adopted the denomination Viceroyalty of Peru, the earliest evidences of human presence in Peruvian territory have been dated to approximately 9,000 BC. Andean societies were based on agriculture, using such as irrigation and terracing, camelid husbandry. Organization relied on reciprocity and redistribution because these societies had no notion of market or money, the oldest known complex society in Peru, the Norte Chico civilization, flourished along the coast of the Pacific Ocean between 3,000 and 1,800 BC. These early developments were followed by archaeological cultures that developed mostly around the coastal, the Cupisnique culture which flourished from around 1000 to 200 BC along what is now Perus Pacific Coast was an example of early pre-Incan culture. The Chavín culture that developed from 1500 to 300 BC was probably more of a religious than a political phenomenon, on the coast, these included the civilizations of the Paracas, Nazca, Wari, and the more outstanding Chimu and Mochica. Their capital was at Chan Chan outside of modern-day Trujillo, in the 15th century, the Incas emerged as a powerful state which, in the span of a century, formed the largest empire in pre-Columbian America with their capital in Cusco
29.
Sub-Saharan Africa
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Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. According to the UN, it consists of all African countries that are fully or partially located south of the Sahara and it contrasts with North Africa, whose territories are part of the League of Arab states within the Arab world. Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros and Mauritania are geographically in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Sahel is the transitional zone between the Sahara and the tropical savanna and forest-savanna mosaic to the south. The Sahara pump theory explains how flora and fauna left Africa to penetrate the Middle East, African pluvial periods are associated with a wet Sahara phase during which larger lakes and more rivers existed. Geographers historically divided the region into several distinct ethnographic sections based on each areas respective inhabitants, commentators in Arabic in the medieval period used the general term bilâd as-sûdân for the vast Sudan region, or sometimes extending from the coast of West Africa to Western Sudan. Its equivalent in Southeast Africa was Zanj, which was situated in the vicinity of the Great Lakes region. The geographers drew an explicit distinction between the Sudan region and its analogue Zanj, from the area to their extreme east on the Red Sea coast in the Horn of Africa. In modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea was Al-Habash or Abyssinia, which was inhabited by the Habash or Abyssinians, Sub-Saharan Africa has a wide variety of climate zones or biomes. South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular are considered Megadiverse countries, the Sahel shoots across all of Africa at a latitude of about 10° to 15° N. Countries that include parts of the Sahara Desert proper in their territories and parts of the Sahel in their southern region include Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad. The Sahel has a hot semi-arid climate, South of the Sahel, there is a belt of savanna, widening to include most of South Sudan and Ethiopia in the east. The Serengeti ecosystem is located in northwestern Tanzania and extends to southwestern Kenya, the Kalahari Basin includes the Kalahari Desert surrounded by a belt of semi-desert. The Bushveld is a tropical ecoregion of Southern Africa. The Karoo is a semi-desert in western South Africa and this occurred 10 million to 5 million years ago. By 3 million years ago several australopithecine hominid species had developed throughout southern, eastern and they were tool users rather than tool manufacturers. The tools were classed as Oldowan, roughly 1.8 million years ago, Homo ergaster first appeared in the fossil record in Africa. From Homo ergaster, Homo erectus evolved 1.5 million years ago, some of the earlier representatives of this species were small-brained and used primitive stone tools, much like H. habilis. The brain later grew in size, and H. erectus eventually developed a complex stone tool technology called the Acheulean
30.
Egypt
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Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian
31.
Yoruba art
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The Yoruba of West Africa are responsible for one of the finest artistic traditions in Africa, a tradition that remains vital and influential today. Much of the art of the Yoruba, including staffs, court dress, the courts also commissioned numerous architectural objects such as veranda posts, gates, and doors that are embellished with carvings. Other Yoruba art is related shrines and masking traditions, the Yoruba worship a large pantheon of deities, and shrines dedicated to these gods are adorned with carvings and house and array of altar figures and other ritual paraphernalia. Masking traditions vary regionally, and a range of mask types are employed in various festivals. Abundant natural resources enabled the Yoruba to develop one of the most complex cultures in sub-Saharan Africa, by the beginning of the second millennium CE, Ile-Ife, their most sacred city, had become a major urban center with highly sophisticated religious, social, and political institutions. In the period around 1300 C. E, the dynasty of kings at Ife, which regarded the Yoruba as the place of origin of human civilization, remains intact to this day. There have been a series of Yoruba kingdoms over the past nine centuries, Ife was one of the earliest of these, Oyo was also early and the Owa kingdom in the southwest maintained close ties to Oyo. Ife also experienced the artistic and cultural influence of Benin dating back to the 14th Century or earlier, Owa artists supplied fine ivory work to the court at Benin and Owa royalty adapted and transformed many Benin institutions and the regalia of leadership. Yoruba kingdoms prospered until the trade and warfare of the nineteenth century took their toll. One of the effects of this devastation was the dispersal of millions of Yoruba all over the world and this resulted in a strong Yoruba character in the artistic, religious and social lives of Africans in the New World. To the Yoruba, art began when Olódùmarè commissioned the artist deity Obatala to mold the first human image from clay, today, it is customary for the Yoruba to wish pregnant women good luck with the greeting, May Obatala fashion for us a good work of art. The concept of ase influences how many of the Yoruba arts are composed, in the visual arts, a design may be segmented or seriate- a discontinuous aggregate in which the units of the whole are discrete and share equal value with the other units. Such elements can be seen in Ifa trays and bowls, veranda posts, carved doors, the Yoruba people regard the human head as the most important part of a person. Likewise, the head is the most prominent part of Yoruba sculpture, an analysis of Yoruba ontology reveals that the Yoruba regard the head as the locus of the ase of Olodumare. Therefore, the head constitutes a persons life-source and controlling personality, the issue of anonymity and authorship has long troubled the field of African art history, particularly as it relates to the political disparities between Africa and the West. Such information was, at least initially, rarely sought in the field and deemed unnecessary, susan Vogel has identified a further paradox. N their own societies, Vogel writes, African artists are known and even famous, more often than not, the African sculptor becomes virtually irrelevant to the life of the art object once his work is complete. Cultures preserve the information they value, ogun is honored as the god of iron
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Benin
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Benin, officially the Republic of Benin and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, the majority of its population lives on the small southern coastline of the Bight of Benin, part of the Gulf of Guinea in the northernmost tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean. The capital of Benin is Porto-Novo, but the seat of government is in Cotonou, Benin covers an area of 114,763 square kilometers and its population in 2015 was estimated to be approximately 10.88 million. Benin is a nation, highly dependent on agriculture, with substantial employment. The official language of Benin is French, however, indigenous languages such as Fon and Yoruba are commonly spoken. The largest religious group in Benin is Roman Catholicism, followed closely by Islam, Vodun and this region was referred to as the Slave Coast from as early as the 17th century due to the large number of slaves shipped to the New World during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. After slavery was abolished, France took over the country and renamed it French Dahomey, in 1960, Dahomey gained full independence from France, and had a tumultuous period with many different democratic governments, many military coups and military governments. A Marxist–Leninist state called the Peoples Republic of Benin existed between 1975 and 1990, in 1991, it was replaced by the current multi-party Republic of Benin. During the colonial period and at independence, the country was known as Dahomey, on 30 November 1975 it was renamed to Benin, after the body of water on which the country lies—the Bight of Benin—which, in turn, had been named after the Benin Empire. The country of Benin has no connection to Benin City in modern Nigeria, the form Benin is the result of a Portuguese corruption of the city of Ubinu. The new name, Benin, was chosen for its neutrality, the current country of Benin combines three areas which had different political and ethnic systems prior to French colonial control. Before 1700, there were a few important city states along the coast, the situation changed in the 1600s and early 1700s as the Kingdom of Dahomey, which was of Fon ethnicity, was founded on the Abomey plateau and began taking over areas along the coast. The Dahomey Kingdom was known for its culture and traditions, young boys were often apprenticed to older soldiers, and taught the kingdoms military customs until they were old enough to join the army. This emphasis on preparation and achievement earned Dahomey the nickname of black Sparta from European observers. The kings of Dahomey sold their war captives into transatlantic slavery, by about 1750, the King of Dahomey was earning an estimated £250,000 per year by selling Africans to the European slave-traders. Court protocols, which demanded that a portion of war captives from the many battles be decapitated, decreased the number of enslaved people exported from the area. The number went from 102,000 people per decade in the 1780s to 24,000 per decade by the 1860s, the decline was partly due to the banning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade by Britain and other countries. This decline continued until 1885, when the last slave ship departed from the coast of the present-day Benin Republic bound for Brazil, a former Portuguese colony, the capitals name Porto-Novo is of Portuguese origin, meaning New Port
33.
Dahomey
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Dahomey was an African kingdom that existed from about 1600 until 1894, when the last king, Behanzin, was defeated by the French, and the country was annexed into the French colonial empire. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century, for much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Kingdom of Dahomey was a key regional state, eventually ending tributary status to the Oyo Empire. The Kingdom of Dahomey was referred to by different names and has been written in a variety of ways, including Danxome, Danhome. The name Fon relates to the dominant ethnic and language group, the names Dahomey, Danxome, and Danhome all have a similar origin story, which historian Edna Bay says may be a false etymology. The story goes that Dakodonu, considered the king in modern kings lists, was granted permission by the Gedevi chiefs. Dakodonu requested additional land from a prominent chief named Dan to which the chief responded sarcastically Should I open up my belly, for this insult, Dakodonu killed Dan and began the construction of his palace on the spot. The name of the kingdom was derived from the incident, Dan=chief dan, xo=Belly, the Kingdom of Dahomey was established around 1600 by the Fon people who had recently settled in the area. The foundational king for Dahomey is often considered to be Houegbadja, King Agaja, Houegbadjas grandson, came to the throne in 1708 and began significant expansion of the Kingdom of Dahomey. This expansion was possible by the superior military force of King Agaja’s Dahomey. In contrast to surrounding regions, Dahomey employed a professional standing army numbering around ten thousand, what the Dahomey lacked in numbers, they made up for in discipline and superior arms. In 1724, Agaja conquered Allada, the origin for the family according to oral tradition. This increased size of the kingdom, particularly along the Atlantic coast, the result was near constant warfare with the main regional state, the Oyo Empire, from 1728 until 1740. The warfare with the Oyo empire resulted in Dahomey assuming a tributary status to the Oyo empire, the kingdom fought the First Franco-Dahomean War and Second Franco-Dahomean War with France. The kingdom was reduced and made a French protectorate in 1894, in 1904 the area became part of a French colony, French Dahomey. In 1958 French Dahomey became the self-governing colony called the Republic of Dahomey and it was renamed in 1975 the Peoples Republic of Benin, and in 1991 the Republic of Benin. The Dahomey kingship exists as a role to this day. Early writings, predominantly written by European slave traders, often presented the kingdom as a monarchy led by a despotic king. However, these depictions were often deployed as arguments by different sides in the slave trade debates, mainly in the United Kingdom, recent historical work has emphasized the limits of monarchical power in the Kingdom of Dahomey
34.
Gilbert Stuart
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Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island. Gilbert Stuart is widely considered one of Americas foremost portraitists and his best known work is the unfinished portrait of George Washington that is sometimes referred to as The Athenaeum, begun in 1796 and never finished. Stuart retained the portrait and used it to paint 130 copies which he sold for $100 each, throughout his career, Gilbert Stuart produced portraits of over 1,000 people, including the first six Presidents of the United States. C. The National Portrait Gallery, London, Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, Gilbert Stuart was born on December 3,1755 in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, a village of North Kingstown, and baptized at Old Narragansett Church on April 11,1756. Stuarts father worked in the first colonial snuff mill in America, Gilbert Stuart moved to Newport, Rhode Island at the age of six, where his father pursued work in the merchant field. In Newport, Stuart first began to show promise as a painter. In 1770, Stuart made the acquaintance of Scottish artist Cosmo Alexander, a visitor of the colonies who made portraits of local patrons and who became a tutor to Stuart. Under the guidance of Alexander, Stuart painted the famous portrait Dr. Hunters Spaniels when he was fourteen years old, the painting is also referred to as Dr. Hunters Dogs by some accounts. In 1771, Stuart moved to Scotland with Alexander to finish his studies, Stuart tried to maintain a living and pursue his painting career, but to no avail, so he returned to Newport in 1773. Stuarts prospects as a portraitist were jeopardized by the onset of the American Revolution, Stuart departed for England in 1775 following the example set by John Singleton Copley. He was unsuccessful at first in pursuit of his vocation, the relationship was beneficial, with Stuart exhibiting at the Royal Academy as early as 1777. By 1782, Stuart had met with success, largely due to acclaim for The Skater, Stuart said that he was suddenly lifted into fame by a single picture. At one point, the prices for his pictures were exceeded only by those of renowned English artists Joshua Reynolds, despite his many commissions, however, Stuart was habitually neglectful of finances and was in danger of being sent to debtors prison. In 1787, he fled to Dublin, Ireland where he painted and accumulated debt with equal vigor, Stuart ended his 18-year stay in Britain and Ireland in 1793, leaving behind numerous unfinished paintings. He returned to the United States and settled briefly in New York City, in 1795, he moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, where he opened a studio. It was here that he gained a foothold in the art world, Stuart painted George Washington in a series of iconic portraits, each of them leading in turn to a demand for copies, and keeping Stuart busy and highly paid for years. The most famous and celebrated of these likenesses is known as The Athenaeum and is portrayed on the United States one dollar bill. Stuart, along with his daughters, painted a total of 130 reproductions of The Athenaeum, however, he never completed the original version, after finishing Washingtons face, he kept the original version to make the copies
35.
Childe Hassam
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Frederick Childe Hassam was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums. He produced over 3,000 paintings, oils, watercolors, etchings, and lithographs over the course of his career, Hassam was born in his family home on Olney Street in Dorchester, Boston, in 1859. His father Frederick was a moderately successful cutlery businessman with a collection of art. He descended from a line of New Englanders. His mother, Rosa, a native of Maine, shared an ancestor with American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and his father claimed descent from a seventeenth-century English immigrant whose name, Horsham, had been corrupted over time to Hassam. With his dark complexion and heavily lidded eyes, many took Childe Hassam to be of Middle Eastern descent - speculation which he enjoyed stoking, Hassam demonstrated an interest in art early. He had his first lessons in drawing and watercolor while attending The Mather School, as a child, Hassam excelled at boxing and swimming at Dorchester High School. A disastrous fire in November 1872 wiped out much of Bostons commercial district, Hassam left high school after two years despite his uncles offer to pay for a Harvard education. Hassam preferred to support his family by working. His father arranged a job in the department of publisher Little. During that time, Hassam studied the art of engraving and found employment with George Johnson. He quickly proved an adept draftsman and he produced designs for commercial engravings such as letterheads, around 1879, Hassam began creating his earliest oil paintings, but his preferred medium was watercolor, mostly outdoor studies. In 1882, Hassam became an illustrator, and established his first studio. He specialized in illustrating childrens stories for such as Harpers Weekly, Scribners Monthly. He continued to develop his technique while attending drawing classes at the Lowell Institute and at the Boston Art Club, by 1883, Hassam was exhibiting publicly and had his first solo exhibition, of watercolors, at the Williams and Everett Gallery in Boston. The following year, his friend Celia Thaxter convinced him to drop his first name and he also began to add a crescent symbol in front of his signature, the meaning of which remains unknown. Having had relatively little formal art training, Hassam was advised by his friend Edmund H. Garrett to take a study trip with Garrett to Europe during the summer of 1883
36.
Georgia O'Keeffe
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Georgia Totto OKeeffe was an American artist. She was best known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, OKeeffe has been recognized as the Mother of American modernism. In 1908, unable to further education, she worked for two years as a commercial illustrator, and then spent seven years between 1911 and 1918 teaching in Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina. Alfred Stieglitz, an art dealer and photographer, held an exhibit of her works in 1916, over the next couple of years, she taught and continued her studies at the Teachers College, Columbia University. She moved to New York in 1918 at Stieglitzs request and began working seriously as an artist and they developed a professional relationship, he promoted and exhibited her works, and a personal relationship that led to their marriage in 1924. The reputation of the portrayal of sexuality was also fueled by explicit and sensuous photographs that Stieglitz had taken. After Stieglitz’s death, she lived permanently in New Mexico at Georgia OKeeffe Home and Studio in Abiquiú, in 2014, OKeeffes 1932 painting Jimson Weed sold for $44,405,000, more than three times the previous world auction record for any female artist. The Georgia OKeeffe Museum was established after her death in Santa Fe, Georgia OKeeffe was born on November 15,1887, in a farmhouse located at 2405 Hwy T in the town of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her parents, Francis Calyxtus OKeeffe and Ida OKeeffe, were dairy farmers and her father was of Irish descent. Her maternal grandfather George Victor Totto, for whom OKeeffe was named, was a Hungarian count who came to the United States in 1848, OKeeffe was the second of seven children. She attended Town Hall School in Sun Prairie, by age ten she had decided to become an artist, and she and her sister received art instruction from local watercolorist Sara Mann. OKeeffe attended high school at Sacred Heart Academy in Madison, Wisconsin as a boarder between 1901 and 1902, in late 1902 the OKeeffes moved from Wisconsin to the close-knit neighborhood of Peacock Hill in Williamsburg, Virginia. OKeeffe stayed in Wisconsin with her aunt and attended Madison High School and she completed high school as a boarder at Chatham Episcopal Institute in Virginia and graduated in 1905. She was a member of the Kappa Delta sorority, when she taught and headed the art department at West Texas State Normal College, her youngest sibling, Claudia, lived with her at her mothers request to watch over her as she studied at the school. In 1917 she visited her brother, Alexis, at a camp in Texas before he shipped out for Europe during World War I. While there she created the painting, The Flag, which expressed her anxiety, OKeeffe studied and ranked at the top of her class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906, studying with John Vanderpoel. Due to typhoid fever, she had to take a year off from her education, in 1907, she attended the Art Students League in New York City, where she studied under William Merritt Chase, Kenyon Cox and F. In 1908, she won the Leagues William Merritt Chase still-life prize for her oil painting Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot and her prize was a scholarship to attend the Leagues outdoor summer school in Lake George, New York
37.
Hiram Powers
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Hiram Powers was an American neoclassical sculptor. Powers was born to a farmer on July 29,1805 in Woodstock, when he was 14 years old, his family moved to Ohio, about six miles from Cincinnati, where Powers attended school for about a year while staying with his fathers brother, a lawyer. He began working after the death of his parents, first superintending a reading-room in connection with the hotel of the town. At age 17, Powers became an assistant to Luman Watson, Cincinnatis early wooden clockmaker, using his skill in modeling figures, Powers mastered the construction of the instruments and became the first mechanic in the factory. In 1826 he began to frequent the studio of Frederick Eckstein and his proficiency in modeling secured him the situation of general assistant and artist of the Western Museum, kept by a Louisiana naturalist of French extraction named Joseph Dorfeuille. Here he created representations of scenes in the poem Inferno by Dante, fanny Trollope helped launch his career when she had him sculpt Dantes Commedia. After studying thoroughly the art of modeling and casting, he moved to Washington, Powers drew attention and local commissions in D. C. with his modeled portrait of Andrew Jackson. In 1837 he moved to Italy and settled on the Via Fornace in Florence and he remained in Florence till his death, though he did travel to Britain during this time. During his time in Italy, he developed a friendship with Horatio Greenough and he developed a thriving business in portraiture and fancy parlor busts, but he also devoted his time to creating life-size, full-figure ideal subjects, many of which were also isolated as a bust. In 1839 his statue of Eve won the admiration of the leading European neoclassical sculptor, in 1843 Powers produced his most celebrated statue, The Greek Slave, which at once gave him a place among the leading sculptors of his time. This sculpture was used in the abolitionist cause and copies of it appeared in many Union-supporting state houses, among the best known of his other idealising statues are The Fisher Boy, Il Penseroso, Eve Disconsolate, California, America and The Last of the Tribe. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts, the statues and busts Powers carved for Demidoff were exceptional in the quality and purity of the marble employed. Powers became a teacher at the Florence Accademia, one of his sons was the sculptor Preston Powers. Hiram Powers died on June 27,1873, and is buried, in 2007 the Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio presented the first major exhibition devoted to his work, Hiram Powers, Genius in Marble. This is the place of the first solo exhibition of Powers work in Cincinnati in 1842. Hiram Powers Demidoff Fisher Boy, London, ties that Bind, Hiram Powers Greek Slave and Nineteenth-century Marriage. Lynne D. Ambrosini and Rebecca A. G. Reynolds, Hiram Powers, The Last of the Tribes
38.
Frederic Remington
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Remington was born in Canton, New York in 1861 to Seth Pierrepont Remington and Clarissa Clara Bascom Sackrider. His paternal family owned stores and emigrated from Alsace-Lorraine in the early 18th century. His maternal family of the Bascom line was of French Basque ancestry, coming to America in the early 1600s and founding Windsor, Remingtons father was a colonel in the Civil War whose family arrived in America from England in 1637. He was an editor and postmaster, and the family was active in local politics. One of Remingtons great grandfathers, Samuel Bascom, was a saddle maker by trade, Frederic Remington was related by family bloodlines to Indian portrait artist George Catlin and cowboy sculptor Earl W. Bascom. Frederic Remington was also a cousin to Eliphalet Remington, founder of the Remington Arms Company which is considered to be Americas oldest gunmaker and he was related, as well, to three famous mountain men—Jedediah S. Smith, Jonathan T. On the Warner side of his family, Frederic Remington was related to General George Washington, colonel Remington was away at war during most of the first four years of his sons life. After the war, he moved his family to Bloomington, Illinois for a time and was appointed editor of the Bloomington Republican. Remington was the child of the marriage, and received constant attention. He was a child, large and strong for his age, who loved to hunt, swim, ride. He was a student, though, particularly in math. He began to make drawings and sketches of soldiers and cowboys at an early age, Remington took his first drawing lessons at the Institute. He enjoyed making caricatures and silhouettes of his classmates, at sixteen, he wrote to his uncle of his modest ambitions, I never intend to do any great amount of labor. I have but one life and do not aspire to wealth or fame in a degree which could only be obtained by an extraordinary effort on my part. He imagined a career for himself as a journalist, with art as a sideline, Remington attended the art school at Yale University, studying under John Henry Niemeyer. Remington was the student in the first year. He found that football and boxing were more interesting than the art training, particularly drawing from casts. He preferred action drawing and his first published illustration was a cartoon of a football player for the student newspaper Yale Courant
39.
Louis Comfort Tiffany
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Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau, Tiffany was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists, which included Lockwood de Forest, Candace Wheeler, and Samuel Colman. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels and he was the first Design Director at his family company, Tiffany & Co. founded by his father Charles Lewis Tiffany. Louis Comfort Tiffany was born in New York City, the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany and Company and he attended school at Pennsylvania Military Academy in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and Eagleswood Military Academy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. His first artistic training was as a painter, studying under George Inness in Eagleswood, New Jersey and Samuel Colman in Irvington and he also studied at the National Academy of Design in New York City in 1866–67 and with salon painter Leon-Adolphe-Auguste Belly in 1868–69. Bellys landscape paintings had a influence on Tiffany. Tiffany started out as a painter, but became interested in glassmaking from about 1875, in 1879, he joined with Candace Wheeler, Samuel Colman and Lockwood de Forest to form Louis Comfort Tiffany and Associated American Artists. The business was short-lived, lasting four years. The group made designs for wallpaper, furniture, and textiles and he later opened his own glass factory in Corona, New York, determined to provide designs that improved the quality of contemporary glass. Tiffanys leadership and talent, as well as his fathers money and connections and he commissioned Tiffany, who had begun to make a name for himself in New York society for the firms interior design work, to redo the state rooms, which Arthur found charmless. The Tiffany screen and other Victorian additions were all removed in the Roosevelt renovations of 1902, a desire to concentrate on art in glass led to the breakup of the firm in 1885 when Tiffany chose to establish his own glassmaking firm that same year. The first Tiffany Glass Company was incorporated December 1,1885, in the beginning of his career, Tiffany used cheap jelly jars and bottles because they had the mineral impurities that finer glass lacked. When he was unable to convince fine glassmakers to leave the impurities in, Tiffany used opalescent glass in a variety of colors and textures to create a unique style of stained glass. Use of the glass itself to create stained glass pictures was motivated by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement. Tiffany, Duffner and Kimberly, along with La Farge, had learned their craft at the same glasshouses in Brooklyn in the late 1870s. In 1889 at the Paris Exposition, he is said to have been Overwhelmed by the work of Émile Gallé. He also met artist Alphonse Mucha, in 1893, his company also introduced the term Favrile in conjunction with his first production of blown glass at his new glass factory. Some early examples of his lamps were exhibited in the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, he won a gold medal with his stained glass windows The Four Seasons He trademarked Favrile on November 13,1894
40.
Frank Lloyd Wright
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Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures,532 of which were completed. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment and this philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater, which has been called the best all-time work of American architecture. Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home and his creative period spanned more than 70 years. In addition to his houses, Wright designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums and he often designed interior elements for these buildings as well, including furniture and stained glass. Wright wrote 20 books and many articles and was a lecturer in the United States. His colorful personal life made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire. Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as the greatest American architect of all time, Frank Lloyd Wright was born Frank Lincoln Wright in the farming town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, in 1867. His father, William Carey Wright, was an orator, music teacher, occasional lawyer, William Wright met and married Anna Lloyd Jones, a county school teacher, the previous year when he was employed as the superintendent of schools for Richland County. Originally from Massachusetts, William Wright had been a Baptist minister, Anna was a member of the large, prosperous and well-known Lloyd Jones family of Unitarians, who had emigrated from Wales to Spring Green, Wisconsin. One of Annas brothers was Jenkin Lloyd Jones, who would become an important figure in the spread of the Unitarian faith in the Western United States, both of Wrights parents were strong-willed individuals with idiosyncratic interests that they passed on to him. According to his biography, his mother declared when she was expecting that her first child would grow up to build beautiful buildings and she decorated his nursery with engravings of English cathedrals torn from a periodical to encourage the infants ambition. In 1870 the family moved to Weymouth, Massachusetts, where William ministered to a small congregation, in 1876, Anna visited the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia where she saw an exhibit of educational blocks created by Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel. The blocks, known as Froebel Gifts, were the foundation of his innovative kindergarten curriculum, Anna, a trained teacher, was excited by the program and bought a set with which young Wright spent much time playing. The blocks in the set were geometrically shaped and could be assembled in various combinations to form three-dimensional compositions, the Wright family struggled financially in Weymouth and returned to Spring Green, Wisconsin, where the supportive Lloyd Jones clan could help William find employment. They settled in Madison, where William taught music lessons and served as the secretary to the newly formed Unitarian society, although William was a distant parent, he shared his love of music, especially the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, with his children. Soon after Wright turned 14, his parents separated, Anna had been unhappy for some time with Williams inability to provide for his family and asked him to leave. The divorce was finalized in 1885 after William sued Anna for lack of physical affection, William left Wisconsin after the divorce and Wright claimed he never saw his father again. At this time he changed his name from Lincoln to Lloyd in honor of his mothers family
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National Endowment for the Humanities
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The NEH is housed at 400 7th St SW, Washington, D. C. From 1979 to 2014, NEH was located at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D. C. in the Nancy Hanks Center at the Old Post Office. NEH was based upon recommendation of the National Commission on the Humanities, the tenth Chair of the NEH is William Bro Adams, formerly president of Colby College in Maine. President Obama nominated Adams on April 4,2014, Adams was confirmed by the Senate in a vote on July 9,2014. Adams appointed Margaret Plympton as the Deputy NEH Chair in January 2015, prior to Adamss appointment, the NEH was headed by Acting Chair Carole M. Watson. The ninth NEH Chair was Jim Leach, President Obama nominated the former Iowa congressman, a Republican, to chair the NEH on June 3,2009, the Senate confirmed his appointment in August 2009. Leach began his term as the NEH Chair on August 12,2009, according to Leach, Little is more important. than establishing an ethos of thoughtfulness and decency of expression in the public square. Words reflect emotion as well as meaning and they clarify—or cloud—thought and energize action, sometimes bringing out the better angels in our nature, sometimes lesser instincts. The Endowment is directed by the NEH Chair, advising the Chair is the National Council on the Humanities, a board of 26 distinguished private citizens who are also appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The National Council members serve staggered six-year terms, the Endowment is directed by a presidentially appointed Chair, who approves all recommendations and awards grants. All of the Chairs recommendations are informed by the National Council on the Humanities, the Division of Public Programs supports projects that bring the humanities to large audiences through libraries and museums, television and radio, historic sites, and digital media. The Division of Research makes awards to support original scholarship in all areas of the humanities, funding individuals as well as teams of researchers, the Division of Education works to support and strengthen teaching of the humanities. The Office of Federal/State Partnership collaborates with 56 state and territory humanities councils to strengthen local programs, the Office of Challenge Grants administers grants intended to support centers and endowments through fundraising by humanities institutions to further long-term stability. The Office of Digital Humanities advises on use of technology in the humanities and coordinates and these are special priorities of the Endowment that indicate critical areas of the humanities as identified by the NEH Chair. They differ from the divisions of the Endowment in that they do not sponsor or coordinate specific grant programs, bridging Cultures is an NEH initiative that explores ways in which the humanities promote understanding and mutual respect for people with diverse histories, cultures, and perspectives. Projects supported through this initiative focus on cultures globally as well as within the United States, international projects might seek to enlarge Americans understanding of other places and times, as well as other perspectives and intellectual traditions. American projects might explore the variety of cultural influences on. These projects might also investigate how Americans have approached and attempted to surmount seemingly unbridgeable cultural divides, or examine the ideals of civility and civic discourse
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China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
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Korea
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Korea is a historical state in East Asia, since 1945 divided into two distinct sovereign states, North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by China to the northwest and it is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait and the Sea of Japan. Korea emerged as a political entity after centuries of conflict among the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Later Silla divided into three states during the Later Three Kingdoms period. Goryeo, which had succeeded Goguryeo, defeated the two states and united the Korean Peninsula. Around the same time, Balhae collapsed and its last crown prince fled south to Goryeo, Goryeo, whose name developed into the modern exonym Korea, was a highly cultured state that created the worlds first metal movable type in 1234. However, multiple invasions by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty during the 13th century greatly weakened the nation, following the Yuan Dynastys collapse, severe political strife followed, and Goryeo eventually fell to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established Joseon in 1388. The first 200 years of Joseon were marked by peace and saw the creation of the Korean alphabet by Sejong the Great in the 14th century. During the later part of the dynasty, however, Koreas isolationist policy earned it the Western nickname of the Hermit Kingdom, by the late 19th century, the country became the object of imperial design by the Empire of Japan. Despite attempts at modernization by the Korean Empire, in 1910 Korea was annexed by Japan and these circumstances soon became the basis for the division of Korea by the two superpowers, exacerbated by their incapability to agree on the terms of Korean independence. To date, both continue to compete with each other as the sole legitimate government of all of Korea. Korea is the spelling of Corea, a name attested in English as early as 1614. It is a derived from Cauli, Marco Polos transcription of the Chinese 高麗. This was the Hanja for the Korean kingdom of Goryeo or Koryŏ, Goryeos name was a continuation of the earlier Goguryeo or Koguryŏ, the northernmost of the Samguk, which was officially known by the shortened form Goryeo after the 5th-century reign of King Jangsu. The original name was a combination of the go with the name of a local Yemaek tribe. The name Korea is now used in English contexts by both North and South Korea. In South Korea, Korea as a whole is referred to as Hanguk, the name references the Samhan—Ma, Jin, and Byeon—who preceded the Three Kingdoms in the southern and central end of the peninsula during the 1st centuries BC and AD. It has been linked with the title khan used by the nomads of Manchuria
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Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
45.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
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Southeast Asia
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Southeast Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies near the intersection of geological plates, with seismic and volcanic activity. Southeast Asia consists of two regions, Mainland Southeast Asia, also known historically as Indochina, comprising Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar. Maritime Southeast Asia, comprising Indonesia, East Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, East Timor, Brunei, Cocos Islands, definitions of Southeast Asia vary, but most definitions include the area represented by the countries listed below. All of the states are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the area, together with part of South Asia, was widely known as the East Indies or simply the Indies until the 20th century. Sovereignty issues exist over some territories in the South China Sea, Papua New Guinea has stated that it might join ASEAN, and is currently an observer. Southeast Asia is geographically divided into two subregions, namely Mainland Southeast Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia, Mainland Southeast Asia includes, Maritime Southeast Asia includes, The Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India are geographically considered part of Southeast Asia. Eastern Bangladesh and the Seven Sister States of India are culturally part of Southeast Asia, the eastern half of Indonesia and East Timor are considered to be biogeographically part of Oceania. Homo sapiens reached the region by around 45,000 years ago, homo floresiensis also lived in the area up until 12,000 years ago, when they became extinct. Austronesian people, who form the majority of the population in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, East Timor. Solheim and others have shown evidence for a Nusantao maritime trading network ranging from Vietnam to the rest of the archipelago as early as 5000 BC to 1 AD. The peoples of Southeast Asia, especially those of Austronesian descent, have been seafarers for thousands of years and their vessels, such as the vinta, were ocean-worthy. Magellans voyage records how much more manoeuvrable their vessels were, as compared to the European ships, Passage through the Indian Ocean aided the colonisation of Madagascar by the Austronesian people, as well as commerce between West Asia and Southeast Asia. Gold from Sumatra is thought to have reached as far west as Rome and this was later replaced by Hinduism. Theravada Buddhism soon followed in 525, in the 15th century, Islamic influences began to enter. This forced the last Hindu court in Indonesia to retreat to Bali, in Mainland Southeast Asia, Burma, Cambodia and Thailand retained the Theravada form of Buddhism, brought to them from Sri Lanka. This type of Buddhism was fused with the Hindu-influenced Khmer culture, very little is known about Southeast Asian religious beliefs and practices before the advent of Indian merchants and religious influences from the 2nd century BCE onwards. Prior to the 13th century CE, Hinduism and Buddhism were the religions in Southeast Asia
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Vietnam
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Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With an estimated 92.7 million inhabitants as of 2016, it is the worlds 14th-most-populous country, and its capital city has been Hanoi since the reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1976, with Ho Chi Minh City as a historical city as well. The northern part of Vietnam was part of Imperial China for over a millennium, an independent Vietnamese state was formed in 939, following a Vietnamese victory in the Battle of Bạch Đằng River. Following a Japanese occupation in the 1940s, the Vietnamese fought French rule in the First Indochina War, thereafter, Vietnam was divided politically into two rival states, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. Conflict between the two sides intensified in what is known as the Vietnam War, the war ended with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975. Vietnam was then unified under a communist government but remained impoverished, in 1986, the government initiated a series of economic and political reforms which began Vietnams path towards integration into the world economy. By 2000, it had established relations with all nations. Since 2000, Vietnams economic growth rate has been among the highest in the world and its successful economic reforms resulted in its joining the World Trade Organization in 2007. It is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, Vietnam remains one of the worlds four remaining one-party socialist states officially espousing communism. The name Việt Nam is a variation of Nam Việt, a name that can be traced back to the Triệu Dynasty of the 2nd century BC. The word Việt originated as a form of Bách Việt. The form Vietnam is first recorded in the 16th-century oracular poem Sấm Trạng Trình, the name has also been found on 12 steles carved in the 16th and 17th centuries, including one at Bao Lam Pagoda in Haiphong that dates to 1558. Then, as recorded, rewarded Yuenan/Vietnam as their nations name, to also show that they are below the region of Baiyue/Bach Viet. Between 1804 and 1813, the name was used officially by Emperor Gia Long and it was revived in the early 20th century by Phan Bội Châus History of the Loss of Vietnam, and later by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. The country was usually called Annam until 1945, when both the government in Huế and the Viet Minh government in Hanoi adopted Việt Nam. Archaeological excavations have revealed the existence of humans in what is now Vietnam as early as the Paleolithic age, Homo erectus fossils dating to around 500,000 BC have been found in caves in Lạng Sơn and Nghệ An provinces in northern Vietnam. The oldest Homo sapiens fossils from mainland Southeast Asia are of Middle Pleistocene provenance, teeth attributed to Homo sapiens from the Late Pleistocene have also been found at Dong Can, and from the Early Holocene at Mai Da Dieu, Lang Gao and Lang Cuom. The Hồng Bàng dynasty of the Hùng kings is considered the first Vietnamese state, in 257 BC, the last Hùng king was defeated by Thục Phán, who consolidated the Lạc Việt and Âu Việt tribes to form the Âu Lạc, proclaiming himself An Dương Vương
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Buddhism
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Buddhism is a religion and dharma that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and spiritual practices largely based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. Buddhism originated in India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, from where it spread through much of Asia, two major extant branches of Buddhism are generally recognized by scholars, Theravada and Mahayana. Buddhism is the worlds fourth-largest religion, with over 500 million followers or 7% of the global population, Buddhist schools vary on the exact nature of the path to liberation, the importance and canonicity of various teachings and scriptures, and especially their respective practices. In Theravada the ultimate goal is the attainment of the state of Nirvana, achieved by practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, thus escaping what is seen as a cycle of suffering. Theravada has a following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana, which includes the traditions of Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Shingon, rather than Nirvana, Mahayana instead aspires to Buddhahood via the bodhisattva path, a state wherein one remains in the cycle of rebirth to help other beings reach awakening. Vajrayana, a body of teachings attributed to Indian siddhas, may be viewed as a branch or merely a part of Mahayana. Tibetan Buddhism, which preserves the Vajrayana teachings of eighth century India, is practiced in regions surrounding the Himalayas, Tibetan Buddhism aspires to Buddhahood or rainbow body. Buddhism is an Indian religion attributed to the teachings of Buddha, the details of Buddhas life are mentioned in many early Buddhist texts but are inconsistent, his social background and life details are difficult to prove, the precise dates uncertain. Some hagiographic legends state that his father was a king named Suddhodana, his mother queen Maya, and he was born in Lumbini gardens. Some of the stories about Buddha, his life, his teachings, Buddha was moved by the innate suffering of humanity. He meditated on this alone for a period of time, in various ways including asceticism, on the nature of suffering. He famously sat in meditation under a Ficus religiosa tree now called the Bodhi Tree in the town of Bodh Gaya in Gangetic plains region of South Asia. He reached enlightenment, discovering what Buddhists call the Middle Way, as an enlightened being, he attracted followers and founded a Sangha. Now, as the Buddha, he spent the rest of his teaching the Dharma he had discovered. Dukkha is a concept of Buddhism and part of its Four Noble Truths doctrine. It can be translated as incapable of satisfying, the unsatisfactory nature, the Four Truths express the basic orientation of Buddhism, we crave and cling to impermanent states and things, which is dukkha, incapable of satisfying and painful. This keeps us caught in saṃsāra, the cycle of repeated rebirth, dukkha
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Hindu
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Hindu refers to any person who regards themselves as culturally, ethnically, or religiously adhering to aspects of Hinduism. It has historically used as a geographical, cultural, or religious identifier for people indigenous to South Asia. The historical meaning of the term Hindu has evolved with time, by the 16th century, the term began to refer to residents of India who were not Turks or Muslims. The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear, competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British colonial era, or that it developed post-8th century CE after the Islamic invasion and medieval Hindu-Muslim wars. A sense of Hindu identity and the term Hindu appears in texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in Sanskrit and regional languages. The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir and Eknath used the phrase Hindu dharma, the Christian friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term Hindu in religious context in 1649. In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in contrast to Mohamedans for Mughals, scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon. Hindoo is a spelling variant, whose use today may be considered derogatory. At more than 1.03 billion, Hindus are the third largest group after Christians. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 966 million, live in India, according to Indias 2011 census. After India, the next 9 countries with the largest Hindu populations are, in decreasing order, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United States, Malaysia, United Kingdom and Myanmar. These together accounted for 99% of the worlds Hindu population, the word Hindu is derived from the Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit word Sindhu, which means a large body of water, covering river, ocean. It was used as the name of the Indus river and also referred to its tributaries, the Punjab region, called Sapta Sindhava in the Vedas, is called Hapta Hindu in Zend Avesta. The 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I mentions the province of Hidush, the people of India were referred to as Hinduvān and hindavī was used as the adjective for Indian in the 8th century text Chachnama. The term Hindu in these ancient records is an ethno-geographical term, the Arabic equivalent Al-Hind likewise referred to the country of India. Among the earliest known records of Hindu with connotations of religion may be in the 7th-century CE Chinese text Record of the Western Regions by the Buddhist scholar Xuanzang, Xuanzang uses the transliterated term In-tu whose connotation overflows in the religious according to Arvind Sharma. The Hindu community occurs as the amorphous Other of the Muslim community in the court chronicles, wilfred Cantwell Smith notes that Hindu retained its geographical reference initially, Indian, indigenous, local, virtually native. Slowly, the Indian groups themselves started using the term, differentiating themselves, the poet Vidyapatis poem Kirtilata contrasts the cultures of Hindus and Turks in a city and concludes The Hindus and the Turks live close together, Each makes fun of the others religion
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