1.
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
2.
Body of water
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A body of water or waterbody is any significant accumulation of water, generally on a planets surface. The term most often refers to oceans, seas, and lakes, a body of water does not have to be still or contained, Rivers, streams, canals, and other geographical features where water moves from one place to another are also considered bodies of water. Most are naturally occurring geographical features, but some are artificial, there are types that can be either. For example, most reservoirs are created by engineering dams, similarly, most harbors are naturally occurring bays, but some harbors have been created through construction. Bodies of water that are navigable are known as waterways, some bodies of water collect and move water, such as rivers and streams, and others primarily hold water, such as lakes and oceans. The term body of water can also refer to a reservoir of water held by a plant, note that there are some geographical features involving water that are not bodies of water, for example waterfalls, geysers and rapids. Arm of the sea - also sea arm, used to describe a sea loch, arroyo - a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, or seasonally. Artificial lake or artificial pond - see reservoir or impoundment, barachois - a lagoon separated from the ocean by a sand bar. Bay - an area of water bordered by land on three sides, similar to, but smaller than a gulf, bayou - a slow-moving stream or a marshy lake. Bight - a large and often only slightly receding bay, or a bend in any geographical feature, billabong - see Oxbow lake, a pond or still body of water created when a river changes course and some water becomes trapped. Boil - see Seep Brook - a small stream, canal - an artificial waterway, usually connected to existing lakes, rivers, or oceans. Channel - the physical confine of a river, slough or ocean consisting of a bed. See also stream bed and strait, earth scientists generally use the term to describe a circular or round inlet with a narrow entrance, though colloquially the term is sometimes used to describe any sheltered bay. Basin - a region of land where water from rain or snowmelt drains downhill into another body of water, such as a river, lake, creek - an inlet of the sea, narrower than a cove. Delta - the location where a river flows into an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, distributary or distributary channel - a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. Draw - a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, fjord - a submergent landform which has occurred due to glacial activity. Glacier - a large collection of ice or a river that moves slowly down a mountain. Glacial Pothole - see Kettle Gulf - a part of a lake or ocean that extends so that it is surrounded by land on three sides, similar to, but larger than a bay, headland - an area of water bordered by land on three sides
3.
Sea
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A sea is a large body of salt water that is surrounded in whole or in part by land. More broadly, the sea is the system of Earths salty. The sea moderates Earths climate and has important roles in the cycle, carbon cycle. Although the sea has been traveled and explored since prehistory, the scientific study of the sea—oceanography—dates broadly to the British Challenger expedition of the 1870s. Owing to the present state of continental drift, the Northern Hemisphere is now equally divided between land and sea but the South is overwhelmingly oceanic. Salinity in the ocean is generally in a narrow band around 3. 5% by mass, although this can vary in more landlocked waters, near the mouths of large rivers. About 85% of the solids in the sea are sodium chloride. Deep-sea currents are produced by differences in salinity and temperature, surface currents are formed by the friction of waves produced by the wind and by tides, the changes in local sea level produced by the gravity of the Moon and Sun. The direction of all of these is governed by surface and submarine land masses, former changes in sea levels have left continental shelves, shallow areas in the sea close to land. The most diverse areas surround great tropical coral reefs, whaling in the deep sea was once common but whales dwindling numbers prompted international conservation efforts and finally a moratorium on most commercial hunting. Life may have started there and aquatic microbial mats are generally credited with the oxygenation of Earths atmosphere, the sea is an essential aspect of human trade, travel, mineral extraction, and power generation. It is the scene of activities including swimming, diving, surfing. However, population growth, industrialization, and intensive farming have all contributed to marine pollution. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is being absorbed in increasing amounts, lowering its pH in a known as ocean acidification. The shared nature of the sea has made overfishing an increasing problem, both senses of sea date to Old English, the larger sense has required a definite article since Early Middle English. Seas are generally larger than lakes and contain salt water, while the defining elements of size and being bounded are generally used, there is no formally accepted technical definition of sea among oceanographers. In international law, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea states that all the ocean is the sea. Earth is the known planet with seas of liquid water on its surface, although Mars possesses ice caps
4.
Inflow (hydrology)
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In hydrology, the inflow of a body of water is the source of the water in the body of water. It can also refer to the volume of incoming water in unit time. All bodies of water have multiple inflows, but often, one inflow may predominate, however, in many cases, no single inflow will predominate and there will be multiple primary inflows. For a lake, the inflow may be a river or stream that flows into the lake. Inflow may also be, strictly speaking, not flows, but rather precipitation, inflow can also be used to refer to groundwater recharge. The dictionary definition of inflow at Wiktionary
5.
Danube
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The Danube is Europes second-longest river, after the Volga River, and also the longest river in the European Union region. It is located in Central and Eastern Europe, the Danube was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, and today flows through 10 countries, more than any other river in the world. Its drainage basin extends into nine more countries, the Latin name Dānuvius is one of a number of Old European river names derived from a Proto-Indo-European *dānu. Other river names from the root include the Dunajec, Dzvina/Daugava, Don, Donets, Dnieper, Dniestr. In Rigvedic Sanskrit, dānu means fluid, drop, in Avestan, in the Rigveda, Dānu once appears as the mother of Vrtra. Known to the ancient Greeks as the Istros a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian name meaning strong, in Latin, the Danube was variously known as Danubius, Danuvius or as Ister. The Dacian/Thracian name was Donaris for the upper Danube and Istros for the lower Danube, the Thraco-Phrygian name was Matoas, the bringer of luck. The Latin name is masculine, as are all its Slavic names, the German Donau is feminine, as it has been re-interpreted as containing the suffix -ouwe wetland. Classified as a waterway, it originates in the town of Donaueschingen, in the Black Forest of Germany, at the confluence of the rivers Brigach. The Danube then flows southeast for about 2,800 km, passing through four capital cities before emptying into the Black Sea via the Danube Delta in Romania and its drainage basin extends into nine more. The highest point of the basin is the summit of Piz Bernina at the Italy–Switzerland border. The land drained by the Danube extends into other countries. Many Danubian tributaries are important rivers in their own right, navigable by barges, from its source to its outlet into the Black Sea, its main tributaries are, The Danube flows through many cities, including four national capitals, more than any other river in the world. Danube remains a mountain river until Passau, with average bottom gradient 0. 0012%. Middle Section, From Devín Gate to Iron Gate, at the border of Serbia and Romania, the riverbed widens and the average bottom gradient becomes only 0. 00006%. Lower Section, From Iron Gate to Sulina, with average gradient as little as 0. 00003%, about 60 of its tributaries are also navigable. In 1994 the Danube was declared one of ten Pan-European transport corridors, routes in Central, the amount of goods transported on the Danube increased to about 100 million tons in 1987. In 1999, transport on the river was difficult by the NATO bombing of three bridges in Serbia during the Kosovo War
6.
Dnieper
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It is the longest river of Ukraine and Belarus and the fourth longest river in Europe. The total length ranges between 2,145 km and 2,201 km with a basin of 504,000 square kilometres. The river is noted for its dams and hydroelectric stations, the Dnieper is an important navigable waterway for the economy of Ukraine and is connected via the Dnieper–Bug Canal to other waterways in Europe. In antiquity, the river was known to the Greeks as the Borysthenes and was part of the Amber Road, Arheimar, a capital of the Goths, was located on the Dnieper, according to the Hervarar saga. The name Dnieper is derived from Sarmatian Dānu apara the river on the far side, according to V. Abaev the name Dnieper derives from Scythian Dānu apr deep river, while the name Dniester is combination of Scythian Dānu and Thracian Ister, the old name of Dniester. In the three countries through which it flows it has essentially the name, albeit pronounced differently, Russian, Днепр, Belarusian, Дняпро or Днепр, Ukrainian. The late Greek and Roman authors called it Δάναπρις - Danapris and Danaper respectively - and its Old East Slavic name used at the time of Kievan Rus was Slavuta or Slavutych, the Huns called it Var, and Bulgars - Buri-Chai. The name in Crimean Tatar, Özü, the total length of the river is 2,145 kilometres, of which 485 km are within Russia,700 km are within Belarus, and 1,095 km are within Ukraine. Its basin covers 504,000 square kilometres, of which 289,000 km2 are within Ukraine,118,360 km2 are within Belarus, the source of the Dnieper is the sedge bogs of the Valdai Hills in central Russia, at an elevation of 220 m. For 115 km of its length, it serves as the border between Belarus and Ukraine and its estuary, or liman, used to be defended by the strong fortress of Ochakiv. On the Dnepr River to the south of Komarin urban-type settlement, Braghin District, the Dnieper has many tributaries with 89 being rivers of 100+ km. The water resources of the Dnieper basin compose around 80% out of all Ukraine, Dnieper Rapids were part of trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks, first mentioned in the Kiev Chronicle. The route was established in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. On the Dnieper the Varangians had to portage their ships round seven rapids, after Dnieper Hydroelectric Station was built in 1932, they were inundated by Dnieper Reservoir. The river is part of the Quagga mussels native range, the mussel has been accidentally introduced around the world where it has become an invasive species. From the mouth of the Prypiat River to the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station, there are six sets of dams and hydroelectric stations, the first constructed was the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station near Zaporizhia, built in 1927–1932 with an output of 558 MW. It was destroyed during World War II, but was rebuilt in 1948 with an output of 750 MW, the Dnieper River in different regions Major cities, over 100,000 in population, are in bold script. Cities and towns located on the Dnieper are listed in order from the source to its mouth, Arheimar
7.
Southern Bug
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The Southern Bug, also called Southern Buh, and sometimes Boh River, is a river located in Ukraine. It is the second-longest river in Ukraine and it is 806 kilometres long and drains 63,700 square kilometres. Major cities on the Southern Bug are Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia, Pervomaisk, between 1941 and 1944 during World War II the Southern Bug formed the border between the German-occupied Ukraine and the Romanian-occupied part of Ukraine, called Transnistria. Herodotus refers to the river using its ancient Greek name, Hypanis, during the Migration Period of the 5th to the 8th centuries CE the Southern Bug represented a major obstacle to all the migrating peoples in the area. The long-standing local Slavic name of the river, Boh, may derive from a root meaning rich, the famous 17th-century French military engineer and geographer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan recorded the name of the river as Boh Ruthenian. From the 16th to the 18th centuries most of the Southern Ukraine formed part of the Crimean Khanate and/or of the Ottoman Empire, Bug, a Russian name, became established during the colonial period in Ukraine and known internationally. It was a given by a Russian geologist Vladimir Laskaryev at the beginning of 20th century. On March 6,1918 the Central Council of Ukraine adopted the law For the administrative-territorial division of Ukraine, one of those lands in the upper stream of the river was named Boh land. Previously in the 18th century there had existed the Bohogard phalanx as part of the Zaporizhian Sich centered in the city of Gard, the Varvarivskyi Bridge over Southern Bug in Mykolayiv is a swing bridge with Europes largest span. It is also the southernmost bridge over the river, the river is technically navigable for dozens of kilometers up from its mouth, several riverports exist. In 2011, plans are announced to revitalize commercial freight navigation on the Southern Bug as part of the grain export from Ukraine. They were cancelled because of the crisis following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. Southern Buh rafting Boh in the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland Photos of the Southern Buh coasts Southern Buh rafting, photo
8.
Dniester River
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The Dniester River, or Dnister River is a river in Eastern Europe. It runs first through Ukraine and then through Moldova, finally discharging into the Black Sea on Ukrainian territory again, the name Dniester derives from Sarmatian dānu nazdya the close river. The Dnieper, also of Sarmatian origin, derives from the opposite meaning, alternatively, according to V. Abaev Dniester would be a blend of Scythian dānu river and Thracian Ister, the previous name of the river, literally Dān-Ister. The Ancient Greek name of Dniester, Tyras, is from Scythian tūra, the names of the Don and Danube are also from the same Proto Indo-European word *dānu - river. In Russian, it is known as Днестр, translit, dnestr, in Yiddish, Nester נעסטער, in Turkish, Turla and during antiquity, it was called Tyras in Latin and Danastris in Greek. Classical authors have referred to it as Danaster. These early forms, without -i- but with -a-, contradict Abaevs hypothesis, edward Gibbon refers to the river both as the Niester and Dniester in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Dniester rises in Ukraine, near the city of Drohobych, close to the border with Poland, and flows toward the Black Sea. Its course marks part of the border of Ukraine and Moldova, after which it flows through Moldova for 398 kilometres and it later forms an additional part of the Moldova-Ukraine border, then flows through Ukraine to the Black Sea, where its estuary forms the Dniester Liman. Along the lower half of the Dniester, the bank is high and hilly while the eastern one is low. The river represents the de facto end of the Eurasian Steppe and its most important tributaries are Răut and Bîc. During the Neolithic, the Dniester River was the centre of one of the most advanced civilizations on earth at the time, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture flourished in this area from roughly 5300 to 2600 BC, leaving behind thousands of archeological sites. Their settlements had up to 15,000 inhabitants, making them among the first large farming communities in the world, in antiquity, the river was considered one of the principal rivers of European Sarmatia, and it was mentioned by many Classical geographers and historians. According to Herodotus it rose in a lake, whilst Ptolemy places its sources in Mount Carpates. It ran in a direction parallel with the Ister. It fell into the Pontus Euxinus to the northeast of the mouth of the Ister, scymnus describes it as of easy navigation, and abounding in fish. Ovid speaks of its rapid course, Greek authors referred to the river as Tyras. At a later period it obtained the name of Danastris or Danastus, whence its name of Dniester
9.
Don River (Russia)
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The Don is one of the major rivers of Russia and the 5th longest river in Europe. The Don basin is between the Dnieper basin to the west, the Volga basin to the east, and the Oka basin to the north. The Don rises in the town of Novomoskovsk 60 kilometres southeast of Tula, from its source, the river first flows southeast to Voronezh, then southwest to its mouth. The main city on the river is Rostov on Don and its main tributary is the Seversky Donets. In antiquity, the river was viewed as the border between Europe and Asia by some ancient Greek geographers, during the times of the old Scythians it was known in Greek as the Tanaïs and has been a major trading route ever since. Tanais appears in ancient Greek sources as both the name of the river and of a city on it, situated in the Maeotian marshes, pliny gives the Scythian name of the Tanais as Silys. According to Plutarch, the Don River was also home to the legendary Amazons of Greek mythology, the area around the estuary is speculated to be the source of the Black Death. While the lower Don was well known to ancient geographers, its middle, the Don Cossacks, who settled the fertile valley of the river in the 16th and 17th centuries, were named after the river. The fort of Donkov was founded by the princes of Ryazan in the late 14th century and it is shown as Donko in Mercators Atlas, Donkov was again relocated in 1618, appearing as Donkagorod in Joan Blaeus map of 1645. Both Blaeu and Mercator follow the 16th-century cartographic tradition of letting the Don originate in a great lake, Mercator still follows Giacomo Gastaldo in showing a waterway connecting this lake to Ryazan and the Oka River. In modern literature, the Don region was featured in the work And Quiet Flows the Don of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, at its easternmost point, the Don comes near the Volga, and the Volga-Don Canal, connecting the two rivers, is a major waterway. The water level of the Don in this area is raised by the Tsimlyansk Dam and this facility, with its dam, maintains sufficient water level both in its section of the Don and in the lowermost stretch of the Seversky Donets. This is presently the last lock on the Don, below Kochetovsky lock, the sufficient depth of the navigation waterway is maintained by dredging
10.
Kuban River
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The Kuban River is a river in the Northwest Caucasus region of European Russia. It flows mostly through Krasnodar Krai for 660 kilometres but also in the Karachay–Cherkess Republic, Stavropol Krai and the Republic of Adygea. The Kuban, known to Herodotus as Hypanis, flows 870 kilometres north and west from its source near Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains and it is navigable up to Krasnodar. Major cities along the Kuban are Karachayevsk, Cherkessk, Nevinnomyssk, Armavir, Ust-Labinsk, Krasnodar, despite its name, Slavyansk-na-Kubani lies not on the Kuban River, but on its distributary the Protoka. The river originates on the slopes of Mount Elbrus and forms at the merger of its two tributaries, Ullukam and Uchkulam, from the source of Ullukam to the delta, it has a length of 906 kilometres. Between the source and Nevinnomyssk the river mostly in the deep and narrow gorge, has many thresholds. Near Nevinnomyssk a dam supplies water to the Nevinnomyssk channel, in its central part, until the confluence of the Bolshaya Laba River, the Kuban River flows in a wide flat valley with terraced slopes. Then it bends to the west and develops a left-bank floodplain, there it is winding and has many shoals and rapids. Below the mouth of Laba the river widens up to 20 kilometres, at 116 kilometres from the mouth, the Kuban converges with a major tributary, the Protoka, which is 130 kilometres long. Near its mouth the Kuban narrows to 3 to 4 kilometres, the delta contains numerous limans, some of which have gradually separated from the river. Until the 19th century the Kuban River discharged into both the Black and the Azov seas, however later, the rising grounds redirected the river entirely to the Azov Sea. In the upper stream the river is fed by glaciers. Near Krasnodar, this drops to 32%, meanwhile, the water supply from the subsoil water increases from 21% to 32%. The river does not freeze over because of a warm climate. The Kuban River is characterized by numerous floods due to rains and thaws, the water level used to fluctuate by up to 5 metres, with the maximum in July and the minimum in February. The amplitude of these fluctuations was reduced by construction of the Nevinnomyssk channel and these measures also provided water for fish farming and rice fields. The average discharge of the Kuban River is at its maximum near Krasnodar at about 425 cubic metres per second and it was formerly higher by some 30 cubic metres per second but was lowered by the reservoir construction. The average discharge near Armavir is 163 cubic metres per second, the annual outflow to the Azov Sea is about 12 to 13 cubic kilometres of water,8 million tonnes of sediments and 4 million tonnes of dissolved salts
11.
Rioni River
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The Rioni or Rion River is the main river of western Georgia. It originates in the Caucasus Mountains, in the region of Racha and flows west to the Black Sea, the city of Kutaisi, once the ancient city of Colchis, lies on its banks. It drains the western Transcaucasus into the Black Sea while its sister, the Rioni is the longest river wholly within the borders of Georgia. The river is 327 kilometres long, and its basin covers about 13,400 square kilometres. It starts on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains at 2,960 metres above sea level
12.
Discharge (hydrology)
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In hydrology, discharge is the volume rate of water flow that is transported through a given cross-sectional area. It includes any suspended solids, dissolved chemicals, or biologic material in addition to the water itself, GH Dury and MJ Bradshaw are two hydrologists who devised the models showing the relationship between discharge and other variables in a river. The units that are used to express discharge include m³/s, ft³/s and/or acre-feet per day. For example, the discharge of the Rhine river in Europe is 2,200 cubic metres per second or 190,000,000 cubic metres per day. A commonly applied methodology for measuring, and estimating, the discharge of a river is based on a form of the continuity equation. In storm hydrology, an important consideration is the streams discharge hydrograph, the stream rises to a peak flow after each precipitation event, then falls in a slow recession. Because the peak flow also corresponds to the water level reached during the event. The amount of precipitation correlates to the volume of water that flows out of the river. The relationship between the discharge in the stream at a given cross-section and the level of the stream is described by a rating curve, average velocities and the cross-sectional area of the stream are measured for a given stream level. The velocity and the give the discharge for that level. After measurements are made for different levels, a rating table or rating curve may be developed. Once rated, the discharge in the stream may be determined by measuring the level, if a continuous level-recording device is located at a rated cross-section, the streams discharge may be continuously determined. Larger flows can transport more sediment and larger particles downstream than smaller flows due to their greater force, larger flows can also erode stream banks and damage public infrastructure
13.
Bosphorus
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The Bosphorus or Bosporus is a narrow, natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in northwestern Turkey. It forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia, and separates Asian Turkey from European Turkey. The worlds narrowest strait used for navigation, the Bosphorus connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and, by extension via the Dardanelles. Most of the shores of the strait are heavily settled, straddled by the city of Istanbuls metropolitan population of 17 million inhabitants extending inland from both coasts, together with the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus forms the Turkish Straits. This folk etymology was canonized by Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound, where Prometheus prophesies to Io that the strait would be named after her, the site where Io supposedly went ashore was near Chrysopolis, and was named Bous the Cow. The same site was known as Damalis, as it was where the Athenian general Chares had erected a monument to his wife Damalis. Historically, the Bosphorus was also known as the Strait of Constantinople, or the Thracian Bosphorus and these are expressed in Herodotus Histories,4.83, as Bosporus Thracius, Bosporus Thraciae, and Βόσπορος Θρᾴκιος, respectively. Other names by which the strait is referenced by Herodotus include Chalcedonian Bosporus, the term eventually came to be used as common noun βόσπορος, meaning a strait, and was also formerly applied to the Hellespont in Classical Greek by Aeschylus and Sophocles. Presently, the waterway is officially referred to as simply Bosphorus, the Marmara further connects to the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas via the Dardanelles. A common mistake made by those who are unfamiliar with the locale is to assume the Bosphorus is a river, when it is, in fact. The exact scientific cause and date of the formation of the Bosphorus remain the subject of debate among geologists, many geologists, however, claim that the strait is much older, even if relatively young on a geologic timescale. The Symplegades were defeated when the lyrical hero Jason obtained successful passage, whereupon the rocks became fixed, between these limits, the strait is 31 km long, with a width of 3,329 m at the northern entrance and 2,826 m at the southern entrance. Its maximum width is 3,420 m between Umuryeri and Büyükdere Limanı, and minimum width 700 m between Kandilli Point and Aşiyan, the depth of the Bosphorus varies from 13 to 110 m in midstream with an average of 65 m. The deepest location is between Kandilli and Bebek with 110 m, the most shallow locations are off Kadıköy İnciburnu on the northward route with 18 m and off Aşiyan Point on the southward route with 13 m. The study of the water and wind erosion of the straits relates to that of its formation, sections of the shore have been reinforced with concrete or rubble and sections of the strait prone to deposition are periodically dredged. These channels are the main pathway for sediments to the deep sea where they form sedimentary deposits. These deposits ultimately hold not only untapped reserves of gas and oil and our initial findings show that the flow in these channels is quite different to the flow in river channels on land. Specifically, as flow moves around a bend it spirals in the direction in the deep sea compared to the spiral found in river channels on land
14.
Drainage basin
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A drainage basin or catchment area is any area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. Drainage basins connect into other drainage basins at elevations in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins. Other terms used to describe drainage basins are catchment, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin and water basin. In closed drainage basins the water converges to a point inside the basin, known as a sink, which may be a permanent lake. The drainage basin acts as a funnel by collecting all the water within the covered by the basin. Each drainage basin is separated topographically from adjacent basins by a perimeter, drainage basins are similar but not identical to hydrologic units, which are drainage areas delineated so as to nest into a multi-level hierarchical drainage system. Hydrologic units are defined to allow multiple inlets, outlets, or sinks, in a strict sense, all drainage basins are hydrologic units but not all hydrologic units are drainage basins. Drainage basins of the oceans and seas of the world. Grey areas are endorheic basins that do not drain to the oceans, the following is a list of the major ocean basins, About 48. 7% of the worlds land drains to the Atlantic Ocean. The two major mediterranean seas of the world also flow to the Atlantic, The Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico basin includes most of the U. S. The Mediterranean Sea basin includes much of North Africa, east-central Africa, Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the areas of Israel, Lebanon. Just over 13% of the land in the world drains to the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Oceans drainage basin also comprises about 13% of Earths land. It drains the eastern coast of Africa, the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Burma, antarctica comprises approximately eight percent of the Earths land. The five largest river basins, from largest to smallest, are the basins of the Amazon, the Río de la Plata, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi. The three rivers that drain the most water, from most to least, are the Amazon, Ganga, endorheic drainage basins are inland basins that do not drain to an ocean. Around 18% of all land drains to endorheic lakes or seas or sinks, the largest of these consists of much of the interior of Asia, which drains into the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and numerous smaller lakes. Some of these, such as the Great Basin, are not single drainage basins but collections of separate, in endorheic bodies of standing water where evaporation is the primary means of water loss, the water is typically more saline than the oceans. An extreme example of this is the Dead Sea, drainage basins have been historically important for determining territorial boundaries, particularly in regions where trade by water has been important
15.
Bulgaria
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Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, with a territory of 110,994 square kilometres, Bulgaria is Europes 16th-largest country. Organised prehistoric cultures began developing on current Bulgarian lands during the Neolithic period and its ancient history saw the presence of the Thracians, Greeks, Persians, Celts, Romans, Goths, Alans and Huns. With the downfall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1396, its territories came under Ottoman rule for five centuries. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 led to the formation of the Third Bulgarian State, the following years saw several conflicts with its neighbours, which prompted Bulgaria to align with Germany in both world wars. In 1946 it became a one-party socialist state as part of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc, in December 1989 the ruling Communist Party allowed multi-party elections, which subsequently led to Bulgarias transition into a democracy and a market-based economy. Bulgarias population of 7.2 million people is predominantly urbanised, most commercial and cultural activities are centred on the capital and largest city, Sofia. The strongest sectors of the economy are industry, power engineering. The countrys current political structure dates to the adoption of a constitution in 1991. Bulgaria is a parliamentary republic with a high degree of political, administrative. Human activity in the lands of modern Bulgaria can be traced back to the Paleolithic, animal bones incised with man-made markings from Kozarnika cave are assumed to be the earliest examples of symbolic behaviour in humans. Organised prehistoric societies in Bulgarian lands include the Neolithic Hamangia culture, Vinča culture, the latter is credited with inventing gold working and exploitation. Some of these first gold smelters produced the coins, weapons and jewellery of the Varna Necropolis treasure and this site also offers insights for understanding the social hierarchy of the earliest European societies. Thracians, one of the three primary groups of modern Bulgarians, began appearing in the region during the Iron Age. In the late 6th century BC, the Persians conquered most of present-day Bulgaria, and kept it until 479 BC. After the division of the Roman Empire in the 5th century the area fell under Byzantine control, by this time, Christianity had already spread in the region. A small Gothic community in Nicopolis ad Istrum produced the first Germanic language book in the 4th century, the first Christian monastery in Europe was established around the same time by Saint Athanasius in central Bulgaria. From the 6th century the easternmost South Slavs gradually settled in the region, in 680 Bulgar tribes under the leadership of Asparukh moved south across the Danube and settled in the area between the lower Danube and the Balkan, establishing their capital at Pliska
16.
Georgia (country)
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Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. The capital and largest city is Tbilisi, Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres, and its 2016 population is about 3.72 million. Georgia is a unitary, semi-presidential republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy, during the classical era, several independent kingdoms became established in what is now Georgia. The kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia adopted Christianity in the early 4th century, a unified Kingdom of Georgia reached the peak of its political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Thereafter the kingdom declined and eventually disintegrated under hegemony of various powers, including the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire. Russian rule over Georgia was eventually acknowledged in various treaties with Iran. Since the establishment of the modern Georgian republic in April 1991, post-communist Georgia suffered from civil, the countrys Western orientation soon led to the worsening of relations with Russia, culminating in the brief Russo-Georgian War in August 2008. Georgia is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and it contains two de facto independent regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which gained limited international recognition after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Georgia and a part of the international community consider the regions to be part of Georgias sovereign territory under Russian military occupation. Georgia probably stems from the Persian designation of the Georgians – gurğān, in the 11th and 12th centuries adapted via Syriac gurz-ān/gurz-iyān, starting with the Persian word gurğ/gurğān, the word was later adopted in numerous other languages, including Slavic and West European languages. This term itself might have established through the ancient Iranian appellation of the near-Caspian region. The self-designation used by ethnic Georgians is Kartvelebi, the medieval Georgian Chronicles present an eponymous ancestor of the Kartvelians, Kartlos, a great-grandson of Japheth. However, scholars agree that the word is derived from the Karts, the name Sakartvelo consists of two parts. Its root, kartvel-i, specifies an inhabitant of the core central-eastern Georgian region of Kartli, ancient Greeks and Romans referred to early western Georgians as Colchians and eastern Georgians as Iberians. Today the full, official name of the country is Georgia, before the 1995 constitution came into force the countrys name was the Republic of Georgia. The territory of modern-day Georgia was inhabited by Homo erectus since the Paleolithic Era, the proto-Georgian tribes first appear in written history in the 12th century BC. The earliest evidence of wine to date has found in Georgia. In fact, early metallurgy started in Georgia during the 6th millennium BC, the classical period saw the rise of a number of early Georgian states, the principal of which was Colchis in the west and Iberia in the east
17.
Moldova
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Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova (Romanian, Republica Moldova, listen, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. In 1856, southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavia, but Russian rule was restored over the whole of the region in 1878, Bessarabia remained a province of the Russian Empire until 1917, when during the Russian Revolution it became an autonomous and then nominally independent Moldavian Democratic Republic. In 1918, following a vote of its assembly, Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania, the decision was disputed by Soviet Russia, which in 1924, created within the Ukrainian SSR, on a territory east of Bessarabia, a so-called Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union, the Soviets decided to split the region between a newly established Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian SSR. The Moldavian SSR included two-thirds of the territory of Bessarabia, on 27 August 1991, as part of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Moldavian SSR declared independence and took the name Moldova. The current Constitution of Moldova was adopted in 1994, the strip of the Moldovan territory on the east bank of the Dniester river has been under the de facto control of the breakaway government of Transnistria since 1990. Its economy is the poorest in Europe in per capita terms, Moldova is a parliamentary republic with a president as head of state and a prime minister as head of government. The name Moldova derives from the Moldova River, the valley of this served as a political centre at the time of the foundation of the Principality of Moldavia in 1359. The origin of the name of the river remains unclear, the dogs name, given to the river, extended to the Principality. For a short time in the 1990s, at the founding of the Commonwealth of Independent States, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country began to use the Romanian name, Moldova. Officially, the name Republic of Moldova is designated by the United Nations, in 2010, Oldowan flint tools were discovered at Bayraki that are 800, 000–1.2 million years old. This demonstrates that humans were present in Moldova during the early Paleolithic era. The inhabitants of this civilization, which lasted roughly from 5500 to 2750 BC, practiced agriculture, raised livestock, hunted, in antiquity, Moldovas territory was inhabited by Dacian tribes. Between the 1st and 7th centuries AD, the south was intermittently under the Roman, and then Byzantine Empires. The Principality of Moldavia, established in 1359, was bounded by the Carpathian Mountains in the west, the Dniester River in the east, and the Danube River and Black Sea to the south. Its territory comprised the territory of the Republic of Moldova, the eastern eight counties of Romania. Like the present-day republic and Romanias north-eastern region, it was known to the locals as Moldova, Moldavia was invaded repeatedly by Crimean Tatars and, beginning in the 15th century, by the Turks. In 1538, the principality became a tributary to the Ottoman Empire, the title used in the document of 6 July 1600 was The King of the country of Romania, Ardeal and of all of Moldavia
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Romania
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Romania is a sovereign state located in Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and it has an area of 238,391 square kilometres and a temperate-continental climate. With over 19 million inhabitants, the country is the member state of the European Union. Its capital and largest city, Bucharest, is the sixth-largest city in the EU, the River Danube, Europes second-longest river, rises in Germany and flows in a general southeast direction for 2,857 km, coursing through ten countries before emptying into Romanias Danube Delta. The Carpathian Mountains, which cross Romania from the north to the southwest are marked by one of their tallest peaks, Moldoveanu, modern Romania was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The new state, officially named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877, at the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the sovereign Kingdom of Romania. Romania lost several territories, of which Northern Transylvania was regained after the war, following the war, Romania became a socialist republic and member of the Warsaw Pact. After the 1989 Revolution, Romania began a transition back towards democracy and it has been a member of NATO since 2004, and part of the European Union since 2007. A strong majority of the population identify themselves as Eastern Orthodox Christians and are speakers of Romanian. The cultural history of Romania is often referred to when dealing with artists, musicians, inventors. For similar reasons, Romania has been the subject of notable tourist attractions, Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning citizen of Rome. The first known use of the appellation was attested in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania, Moldavia, after the abolition of serfdom in 1746, the word rumân gradually fell out of use and the spelling stabilised to the form român. Tudor Vladimirescu, a leader of the early 19th century. The use of the name Romania to refer to the homeland of all Romanians—its modern-day meaning—was first documented in the early 19th century. The name has been officially in use since 11 December 1861, in English, the name of the country was formerly spelt Rumania or Roumania. Romania became the predominant spelling around 1975, Romania is also the official English-language spelling used by the Romanian government. The Neolithic-Age Cucuteni area in northeastern Romania was the region of the earliest European civilization. Evidence from this and other sites indicates that the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture extracted salt from salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage
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Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
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Turkey
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Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, parliamentary republic with a cultural heritage. The country is encircled by seas on three sides, the Aegean Sea is to the west, the Black Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, Ankara is the capital while Istanbul is the countrys largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Approximately 70-80% of the countrys citizens identify themselves as ethnic Turks, other ethnic groups include legally recognised and unrecognised minorities. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group, making up approximately 20% of the population, the area of Turkey has been inhabited since the Paleolithic by various ancient Anatolian civilisations, as well as Assyrians, Greeks, Thracians, Phrygians, Urartians and Armenians. After Alexander the Greats conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process continued under the Roman Empire. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, the empire reached the peak of its power in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. During the war, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Assyrian, following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states. Turkey is a member of the UN, an early member of NATO. Turkeys growing economy and diplomatic initiatives have led to its recognition as a regional power while her location has given it geopolitical, the name of Turkey is based on the ethnonym Türk. The first recorded use of the term Türk or Türük as an autonym is contained in the Old Turkic inscriptions of the Göktürks of Central Asia, the English name Turkey first appeared in the late 14th century and is derived from Medieval Latin Turchia. Similarly, the medieval Khazar Empire, a Turkic state on the shores of the Black. The medieval Arabs referred to the Mamluk Sultanate as al-Dawla al-Turkiyya, the Ottoman Empire was sometimes referred to as Turkey or the Turkish Empire among its European contemporaries. The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world, various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family, in fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty years ago. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, the settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age
21.
Ukraine
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Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
22.
Batumi
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Batumi is the second largest city of Georgia, located on the coast of the Black Sea in the countrys southwest. Much of Batumis economy revolves around tourism and gambling, but the city is also an important sea port and includes industries like shipbuilding, food processing and light manufacturing. Since 2010, Batumi has been transformed by the construction of modern high-rise buildings, Batumi is located on the site of the ancient Greek colony in Colchis called Bathus or Bathys – derived from the Greek phrase βαθύς λιμεν bathus limen or βαθύς λιμήν bathys limin meaning deep harbor. Under Hadrian, it was converted into a fortified Roman port, from 1010, it was governed by the eristavi of the king of Georgia. In the late 15th century, after the disintegration of the Georgian kingdom, Batumi passed to the princes of Guria, de Thoisy was taken captive and released through the mediation of the emperor John IV of Trebizond. In the 15th century in the reign of the prince Kakhaber Gurieli and they returned to it in force a century later and inflicted a decisive defeat on the Georgian armies at Sokhoista. Batumi was recaptured by the Georgians several times, first in 1564 by prince Rostom Gurieli, who lost it soon afterwards, in 1723, Batumi again became part of the Ottoman Empire. It was the last Black Sea port annexed by Russia during the Russian conquest of that area of the Caucasus, in 1878, Batumi was annexed by the Russian Empire in accordance with the Treaty of San Stefano between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Occupied by the Russians on August 28,1878, the town was declared a port until 1886. It functioned as the center of a military district until being incorporated in the Government of Kutaisi on June 12,1883. Finally, on June 1,1903, with the Okrug of Artvin, it was established as the region of Batumi, the expansion of Batumi began in 1883 with the construction of the Batumi-Tiflis-Baku railway and the finishing of the Baku-Batumi pipeline. Henceforth, Batumi became the chief Russian oil port in the Black Sea, the town expanded to an extraordinary extent and the population increased rapidly, from 8,671 inhabitants in 1882 to 12,000 in 1889. By 1902 the population had reached 16,000, with 1,000 working in the refinery for Baron Rothschilds Caspian, in the late 1880s and after, more than 7400 Doukhobor emigrants sailed for Canada from Batumi, after the government agreed to let them emigrate. Canada settled them in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, during 1901, sixteen years prior to the October Revolution, Joseph Stalin, the future leader of the Soviet Union, lived in the city organizing strikes. Kemal Atatürk ceded the area to the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union on the condition that it be granted autonomy, when the USSR collapsed in 1989, Aslan Abashidze was appointed head of Adjaras governing council and subsequently held onto power throughout the unrest of the 1990s. Whilst other regions, such as Abkhazia, attempted to break away from the Georgian state, Abashidze exploited the central governments weaknesses and ruled the area as a personal fiefdom. In May 2004, he fled to Russia because of protests in Tbilisi sparked by the Rose Revolution. Batumi today is one of the port cities of Georgia
23.
Swallow's Nest
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The Swallows Nest is a decorative castle located at Gaspra, a small spa town between Yalta and Alupka, in the Crimean Peninsula. The Swallows Nest is one of the most popular attractions in Crimea. The building is compact in size, measuring only 20 m long by 10 m wide and its original design envisioned a foyer, guest room, stairway to the tower, and two bedrooms on two different levels within the tower. The interior of the guest room is decorated with wooden panels, an observation deck rings the building, providing a view of the sea, and Yaltas distant shoreline. The first building on the Aurora Cliff was constructed for a Russian general circa 1895, the first structure he built was a wooden cottage romantically named the Castle of Love. Later on, the ownership of the passed to A. K. Tobin. The Scots Baronial and Moorish Revival styles had been introduced in the Crimea in the 1820s by Edward Blore, in 1914, von Steingel sold the building to P. G. Shelaputin to be used as a restaurant. For a short time after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the building was used only as a tourist attraction, in 1927, the Swallows Nest survived a serious earthquake rated at 6 to 7 on the Richter scale. The building was not damaged apart from some small items that were thrown into the sea along with a small portion of the cliff. However, the cliff itself developed a huge crack, renovation and restoration of the building was started only in 1968. The project involved the restoration of a portion of the castle. Since 1975, a restaurant has operated within the building, in 2011, the Swallows Nest was closed for three months due to major restoration work estimated to cost 1,200,000 hryvnias. Owing to its important status as the symbol of the Crimeas southern coast and it was used as the setting of Desyat Negrityat, the 1987 Soviet screen version of Agatha Christies And Then There Were None. Archived from the original on June 12,2011
24.
Crimea
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The peninsula is located south of the Ukrainian region of Kherson and west of the Russian region of Kuban. It is connected to Kherson Oblast by the Isthmus of Perekop and is separated from Kuban by the Strait of Kerch, the Arabat Spit is located to the northeast, a narrow strip of land that separates a system of lagoons named Sivash from the Sea of Azov. Crimea has historically been at the boundary between the world and the Pontic–Caspian steppe. Crimea and adjacent territories were united in the Crimean Khanate during the 15th to 18th century, in 1783, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire. It became the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within newly independent Ukraine in 1991, with Sevastopol having its own administration, within Ukraine, the ex-Soviet Black Sea Fleet and its facilities were divided between Russias Black Sea Fleet and the Ukrainian Naval Forces. The two navies shared some of the harbours and piers, while others were demilitarised or used by either country. Sevastopol remained the location of the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters with the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters also based in the city, most of the international community does not recognize the annexation and considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory. Russia currently administers the peninsula as two federal subjects, the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Ukraine continues to assert its right over the peninsula, the classical name Tauris or Taurica is from the Greek Ταυρική, after the peninsulas Scytho-Cimmerian inhabitants, the Tauri. In English usage since the modern period the Crimean Khanate is referred to as Crim Tartary. The Italian form Crimea also becomes current during the 18th century, the omission of the definite article in English became common during the later 20th century. The name Crimea follows the Italian form from the Crimean Tatar name for the city Qırım which served as a capital of the Crimean province of the Golden Horde, the name of the capital was extended to the entire peninsula at some point during Ottoman suzerainty. The origin of the word Qırım is uncertain, suggestions argued in various sources include, a corruption of Cimmerium. A derivation from the Turkic term qirum, from qori-, other suggestions that have not been supported by sources but are apparently based on similarity in sound include, a derivation from the Greek Cremnoi. However, he identifies the port, not in Crimea, no evidence has been identified that this name was ever in use for the peninsula. The classical name was revived in 1802 in the name of the Russian Taurida Governorate, in the 8th century BCE the Cimmerians migrated to the region and subsequently the Scythians as well it being the site of Greek colonies. The most important city was Chersonesos at the edge of todays Sevastopol, the Persian Achaemenid Empire expanded to Crimea. Later occupiers included the Romans, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, the Byzantine Empire, Khazars, the Kipchaks, the Golden Horde, consideration of the succeeding residents of the peninsula by their linguistic grouping is also of relevance
25.
Sochi
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Sochi is a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, located on the Black Sea coast near the border between Georgia/Abkhazia and Russia. The area of the city proper is 176.77 square kilometers, according to the 2010 Census, the city had a permanent population of 343,334, up from 328,809 recorded in the 2002 Census, making it Russias largest resort city. Being part of the Caucasian Riviera, it is one of the few places in Russia with a subtropical climate, with warm to hot summers. It will also be one of the host cities for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Greater Sochi is elongated along the Black Sea coast for 145 kilometers. Sochi is in the north of Western Asia, falling on the side of the Greater Caucasus. Sochi is approximately 1,603 kilometers from Moscow, from the southwest, it is bordered by the Black Sea. The vast majority of the population of Sochi lives in a strip along the coast and is organized in independent microdistricts. The biggest of these microdistricts, from the northwest to the southeast, are Lazarevskoye, Loo, Dagomys, central Sochi, Khosta, Matsesta, the whole city is located on the slopes of the Western Caucasus which descend to the Black Sea and are cut by the rivers. The biggest rivers in Sochi are the Mzymta, which is in fact the longest Black Sea tributary in Russia, other rivers include the Ashe, the Psezuapse, the Sochi, the Khosta, and the Matsesta. The Psou River makes the border with Abkhazia, the northeastern part of the city belongs to the Caucasian Biosphere Reserve which is a World Heritage Site spanning vast areas in Krasnodar Krai and Adygea. Almost the whole area of the Greater Sochi, with the exception of the coast, Sochi has a humid subtropical climate with mild winters in the period from December to March and warm summers in the period from May to October. From the 6th to the 11th centuries, the area belonged to the kingdom of Lazica. The Christian settlements along the coast were destroyed by the invading Göktürks, Khazars, Mongols, the northern wall of an 11th-century Byzantine basilica still stands in the Loo Microdistrict. Provision of weapons and ammunition from abroad to the Circassians caused a conflict between the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom that occurred in 1836 over the mission of the Vixen. The Russians had no detailed knowledge of the area until Baron Feodor Tornau investigated the route from Gelendzhik to Gagra. At the outbreak of the Crimean War, the garrison was evacuated from Navaginsky in order to prevent its capture by the Turks, who effected a landing on Cape Adler soon after. The last battle of the Caucasian War took place at the Godlikh river on March 18,1864 O. S. where the Ubykhs were defeated by the Dakhovsky regiment of the Russian Army. On March 25,1864, the Dakhovsky fort was established on the site of the Navaginsky fort, the end of Caucasian War was proclaimed at Kbaade tract on June 2,1864, by the manifesto of Emperor Alexander II read aloud by Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich of Russia
26.
Atlantic Ocean
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The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the worlds oceans with a total area of about 106,460,000 square kilometres. It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earths surface and about 29 percent of its surface area. It separates the Old World from the New World, the Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Eurasia and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean, in contrast, the term Atlantic originally referred specifically to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast. The Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of years ago. The term Aethiopian Ocean, derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century, many Irish or British people refer to the United States and Canada as across the pond, and vice versa. The Black Atlantic refers to the role of ocean in shaping black peoples history. Irish migration to the US is meant when the term The Green Atlantic is used, the term Red Atlantic has been used in reference to the Marxian concept of an Atlantic working class, as well as to the Atlantic experience of indigenous Americans. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies, the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by North and South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, to the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe, the Strait of Gibraltar and Africa. In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean, the 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border. In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in later maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays, gulfs, and seas. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures 111,866 km compared to 135,663 km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of 106,460,000 km2 or 23. 5% of the ocean and has a volume of 310,410,900 km3 or 23. 3%. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,760,000 km2 and has a volume of 305,811,900 km3, the North Atlantic covers 41,490,000 km2 and the South Atlantic 40,270,000 km2. The average depth is 3,646 m and the maximum depth, the bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It runs from 87°N or 300 km south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 42°S, the MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above 2000 m along most of its length, the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the other
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Eastern Europe
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Eastern Europe, also known as East Europe, is the eastern part of the European continent. There is no consensus on the area it covers, partly because the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, cultural. There are almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region, a related United Nations paper adds that every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct. One definition describes Eastern Europe as an entity, the region lying in Europe with main characteristics consisting in Byzantine, Orthodox. Another definition was created during the Cold War and used more or less synonymously with the term Eastern Bloc, a similar definition names the formerly communist European states outside the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe. Historians and social scientists generally view such definitions as outdated or relegating, several definitions of Eastern Europe exist today, but they often lack precision or are extremely general. These definitions vary both across cultures and among experts, even scientists, recently becoming more and more imprecise. The Ural Mountains, Ural River, and the Caucasus Mountains are the land border of the eastern edge of Europe. Eurovoc, a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union, provides entries for 23 EU languages, of these, those in italics are classified as Eastern Europe in this source. Other official web-pages of the European Union classify some of the countries as strictly Central European. The East–West Schism is the break of communion and theology between what are now the Eastern and Western churches which began in the 11th century and lasts until this very day and it divided Christianity in Europe, and consequently the world, into Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity. Since the Great Schism of 1054, Europe has been divided between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches in the east, due to this religious cleavage, Eastern Orthodox countries are often associated with Eastern Europe. A cleavage of this sort is, however, often problematic, for example, Greece is overwhelmingly Orthodox, the fall of the Iron Curtain brought the end of the East–West division in Europe, but this geopolitical concept is sometimes still used for quick reference by the media. The Baltic states have seats in the Nordic Council as observer states and they also are members of the Nordic-Baltic Eight whereas Eastern European countries formed their own alliance called the Visegrád Group. Estonia Latvia Lithuania The Caucasus nations may be included in the definitions of Eastern Europe, the extent of their geographic or political affiliation with Europe varies by country and source. All three states are members of the European Unions Eastern Partnership program and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, on 12 January 2002, the European Parliament noted that Armenia and Georgia may enter the EU in the future. Georgia — in modern geography, Georgia has been classified as part of Eastern Europe. Under the European Union’s geographic criteria, Georgia is viewed as part of Eastern Europe and is the only Caucasus country to be actively seeking EU membership and it is a member of Council of Europe and Eurocontrol
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Caucasus
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The Caucasus /ˈkɔːkəsəs/ or Caucasia /kɔːˈkeɪʒə/ is a region at the border of Europe and Asia, situated between the Black and the Caspian seas. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, which contain Europes highest mountain, politically, the Caucasus region is separated between northern and southern parts. The southern parts consist of independent sovereign states, and the parts are under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. The region is known for its diversity, aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian. Pliny the Elders Natural History derives the name of the Caucasus from Scythian kroy-khasis, German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that the Latvian word Kruvesis also means ice. According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the South Caucasus region and southern Dagestan were the furthest points of Persian expansions, with areas to the north of Caucasus Mountains practically impregnable. The mythological mountain of Qaf, the worlds highest mountain that ancient lore shrouded in mystery, was said to be situated in this region, therefore, the Caucasus might be associated with the legendary mountain. The Ciscaucasus contains the majority of the Greater Caucasus Mountain range. It includes Southwestern Russia and northern parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Transcaucasus is bordered on the north by Russia, on the west by the Black Sea and Turkey, on the east by the Caspian Sea, and on the south by Iran. It includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands, all of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are in South Caucasus. The main Greater Caucasus range is generally perceived to be the line between Asia and Europe. The highest peak in the Caucasus is Mount Elbrus in the western Ciscaucasus in Russia, the Caucasus is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions on Earth. The nation states that comprise the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia, Armenia, three territories in the region claim independence but are recognized as such by only a handful or by no independent states, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are recognised by the majority of independent states as part of Georgia, the Russian divisions include Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and the autonomous republics of Adygea, Karachay–Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan. The region has many different languages and language families, there are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region. Russian is used as a common language, today the peoples of the Northern and Southern Caucasus tend to be either Eastern Orthodox Christians, Oriental Orthodox Christians, or Sunni Muslims. Shia Islam has had many adherents historically in Azerbaijan, located in the part of the region. Located on the peripheries of Turkey, Iran, and Russia, the region has been an arena for political, military, religious, throughout its history, the Caucasus was usually incorporated into the Iranian world
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Western Asia
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Western Asia, West Asia, Southwestern Asia or Southwest Asia is the westernmost subregion of Asia. The concept is in limited use, as it overlaps with the Middle East. The term is used for the purposes of grouping countries in statistics. The total population of Western Asia is an estimated 300 million as of 2015, in an unrelated context, the term is also used in ancient history and archaeology to divide the Fertile Crescent into the Asiatic or Western Asian cultures as opposed to ancient Egypt. As a geographic concept, Western Asia almost always includes the Levant, Mesopotamia, the term is used pragmatically and has no correct or generally agreed-upon definition. In contrast to this definition, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation in its 2015 yearbook also includes Armenia and Azerbaijan, unlike the UNIDO, the United Nations Statistics Division excludes Iran from Western Asia and include Turkey, Georgia, and Cyprus in the region. These four countries are listed in the European category of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, the Olympic Council of Asias multi-sport event West Asian Games are contested by athletes representing these thirteen countries. Among the regions sports organisations are the West Asia Basketball Association, West Asian Billiards and Snooker Federation, West Asian Football Federation, Western Asia was in use as a geographical term in the early 19th century, even before Near East became current as a geopolitical concept. Use of the term in the context of contemporary geopolitics or world economy appears to date from the 1960s, Western Asia is located directly south of Eastern Europe. The region is surrounded by seven major seas, the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. The Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut deserts in eastern Iran naturally delimit the region somewhat from Asia itself, three major tectonic plates converge on Western Asia, including the African, Eurasian, and Arabian plates. The boundaries between the plates make up the Azores-Gibraltar Ridge, extending across North Africa, the Red Sea. The Arabian Plate is moving northward into the Anatolian plate at the East Anatolian Fault, several major aquifers provide water to large portions of Western Asia. In Saudi Arabia, two large aquifers of Palaeozoic and Triassic origins are located beneath the Jabal Tuwayq mountains and areas west to the Red Sea. Cretaceous and Eocene-origin aquifers are located beneath large portions of central and eastern Saudi Arabia, including Wasia, flood or furrow irrigation, as well as sprinkler methods, are extensively used for irrigation, covering nearly 90,000 km² across Western Asia for agriculture. Western Asia is primarily arid and semi-arid, and can be subject to drought, the region consists of grasslands, rangelands, deserts, and mountains. Water shortages are a problem in parts of West Asia, with rapidly growing populations increasing demands for water. Major rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates, provide sources for water to support agriculture
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Dniester
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The Dniester River, or Dnister River is a river in Eastern Europe. It runs first through Ukraine and then through Moldova, finally discharging into the Black Sea on Ukrainian territory again, the name Dniester derives from Sarmatian dānu nazdya the close river. The Dnieper, also of Sarmatian origin, derives from the opposite meaning, alternatively, according to V. Abaev Dniester would be a blend of Scythian dānu river and Thracian Ister, the previous name of the river, literally Dān-Ister. The Ancient Greek name of Dniester, Tyras, is from Scythian tūra, the names of the Don and Danube are also from the same Proto Indo-European word *dānu - river. In Russian, it is known as Днестр, translit, dnestr, in Yiddish, Nester נעסטער, in Turkish, Turla and during antiquity, it was called Tyras in Latin and Danastris in Greek. Classical authors have referred to it as Danaster. These early forms, without -i- but with -a-, contradict Abaevs hypothesis, edward Gibbon refers to the river both as the Niester and Dniester in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Dniester rises in Ukraine, near the city of Drohobych, close to the border with Poland, and flows toward the Black Sea. Its course marks part of the border of Ukraine and Moldova, after which it flows through Moldova for 398 kilometres and it later forms an additional part of the Moldova-Ukraine border, then flows through Ukraine to the Black Sea, where its estuary forms the Dniester Liman. Along the lower half of the Dniester, the bank is high and hilly while the eastern one is low. The river represents the de facto end of the Eurasian Steppe and its most important tributaries are Răut and Bîc. During the Neolithic, the Dniester River was the centre of one of the most advanced civilizations on earth at the time, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture flourished in this area from roughly 5300 to 2600 BC, leaving behind thousands of archeological sites. Their settlements had up to 15,000 inhabitants, making them among the first large farming communities in the world, in antiquity, the river was considered one of the principal rivers of European Sarmatia, and it was mentioned by many Classical geographers and historians. According to Herodotus it rose in a lake, whilst Ptolemy places its sources in Mount Carpates. It ran in a direction parallel with the Ister. It fell into the Pontus Euxinus to the northeast of the mouth of the Ister, scymnus describes it as of easy navigation, and abounding in fish. Ovid speaks of its rapid course, Greek authors referred to the river as Tyras. At a later period it obtained the name of Danastris or Danastus, whence its name of Dniester
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Austria
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Austria, officially the Republic of Austria, is a federal republic and a landlocked country of over 8.7 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, the territory of Austria covers 83,879 km2. The terrain is mountainous, lying within the Alps, only 32% of the country is below 500 m. The majority of the population speaks local Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, other local official languages are Hungarian, Burgenland Croatian, and Slovene. The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty, from the time of the Reformation, many northern German princes, resenting the authority of the Emperor, used Protestantism as a flag of rebellion. Following Napoleons defeat, Prussia emerged as Austrias chief competitor for rule of a greater Germany, Austrias defeat by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, cleared the way for Prussia to assert control over the rest of Germany. In 1867, the empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary, Austria was thus the first to go to war in the July Crisis, which would ultimately escalate into World War I. The First Austrian Republic was established in 1919, in 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. This lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, after which Germany was occupied by the Allies, in 1955, the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, ending the occupation. In the same year, the Austrian Parliament created the Declaration of Neutrality which declared that the Second Austrian Republic would become permanently neutral, today, Austria is a parliamentary representative democracy comprising nine federal states. The capital and largest city, with a population exceeding 1.7 million, is Vienna, other major urban areas of Austria include Graz, Linz, Salzburg and Innsbruck. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world, with a nominal per capita GDP of $43,724, the country has developed a high standard of living and in 2014 was ranked 21st in the world for its Human Development Index. Austria has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, joined the European Union in 1995, Austria also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro currency in 1999. The German name for Austria, Österreich, meant eastern realm in Old High German, and is cognate with the word Ostarrîchi and this word is probably a translation of Medieval Latin Marchia orientalis into a local dialect. Austria was a prefecture of Bavaria created in 976, the word Austria is a Latinisation of the German name and was first recorded in the 12th century. Accordingly, Norig would essentially mean the same as Ostarrîchi and Österreich, the Celtic name was eventually Latinised to Noricum after the Romans conquered the area that encloses most of modern-day Austria, around 15 BC. Noricum later became a Roman province in the mid-first century AD, heers hypothesis is not accepted by linguists. Settled in ancient times, the Central European land that is now Austria was occupied in pre-Roman times by various Celtic tribes, the Celtic kingdom of Noricum was later claimed by the Roman Empire and made a province
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Belarus
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Its capital and most populous city is Minsk. Over 40% of its 207,600 square kilometres is forested and its strongest economic sectors are service industries and manufacturing. In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Belarus declared independence as the Belarusian Peoples Republic, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922 and was renamed as the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland after the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921, during WWII, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a third of its population and more than half of its economic resources. The republic was redeveloped in the post-war years, in 1945 the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian SSR. The parliament of the declared the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990. Alexander Lukashenko has served as the president since 1994. Belarus has been labeled Europes last dictatorship by some Western journalists, Lukashenko continued a number of Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of large sections of the economy. Though not directly espousing communism like the five remaining communist countries of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and North Korea, in 2000 Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, with some hints of forming a Union State. Over 70% of Belaruss population of 9.49 million resides in urban areas, more than 80% of the population is ethnic Belarusian, with sizable minorities of Russians, Poles and Ukrainians. Since a referendum in 1995, the country has had two official languages, Belarusian and Russian, the Constitution of Belarus does not declare any official religion, although the primary religion in the country is Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Belarus is the only European country to retain capital punishment in both law and practice, the name Belarus is closely related with the term Belaya Rus, i. e. White Rus. There are several claims to the origin of the name White Rus, an alternate explanation for the name comments on the white clothing worn by the local Slavic population. A third theory suggests that the old Rus lands that were not conquered by the Tatars had been referred to as white, other sources claim that, before 1267, the land not conquered by the Mongols was considered White Rus. The name Rus is often conflated with its Latin forms Russia and Ruthenia, in some languages, including German and Dutch, the country is generally called White Russia to this day. The Latin term Alba Russia was used again by Pope Pius VI in 1783 to recognize the Society of Jesus there, exclaiming Approbo Societatem Jesu in Alba Russia degentem, approbo, approbo. The first known use of White Russia to refer to Belarus was in the century by Englishman Sir Jerome Horsey. During the 17th century, the Russian tsars used White Rus to describe the lands added from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
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Bosnia and Herzegovina
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Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, in short, often known informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeastern Europe located on the Balkan Peninsula. Sarajevo is the capital and largest city, in the central and eastern interior of the country the geography is mountainous, in the northwest it is moderately hilly, and the northeast is predominantly flatland. The inland is a larger region and has a moderate continental climate, with hot summers and cold. The southern tip of the country has a Mediterranean climate and plain topography, Bosnia and Herzegovina is a region that traces permanent human settlement back to the Neolithic age, during and after which it was populated by several Illyrian and Celtic civilizations. Culturally, politically, and socially, the country has a rich history, the Ottomans brought Islam to the region, and altered much of the cultural and social outlook of the country. This was followed by annexation into the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which lasted up until World War I. In the interwar period, Bosnia was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and after World War II, following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the country proclaimed independence in 1992, which was followed by the Bosnian War, lasting until late 1995. The country is home to three ethnic groups or, officially, constituent peoples, as specified in the constitution. Bosniaks are the largest group of the three, with Serbs second and Croats third, a native of Bosnia and Herzegovina, regardless of ethnicity, is identified in English as a Bosnian. The terms Herzegovinian and Bosnian are maintained as a rather than ethnic distinction. Moreover, the country was simply called Bosnia until the Austro-Hungarian occupation at the end of the 19th century, Bosnia and Herzegovina has a bicameral legislature and a three-member Presidency composed of a member of each major ethnic group. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is itself complex and consists of 10 cantons, additionally, the country has been a member of the Council of Europe since April 2002 and a founding member of the Mediterranean Union upon its establishment in July 2008. The name is believed to have derived from the hydronym of the river Bosna coursing through the Bosnian heartland. According to philologist Anton Mayer the name Bosna could be derived from Illyrian Bass-an-as which would be a diversion of the Proto-Indo-European root bos or bogh, meaning the running water. According to English medievalist William Miller the Slavic settlers in Bosnia adapted the Latin designation Basante, to their own idiom by calling the stream Bosna, the name Herzegovina originates from Bosnian magnate Stephen Vukčić Kosačas title, Herceg of Hum and the Coast. Hum, formerly Zahumlje, was a medieval principality that was conquered by the Bosnian Banate in the first half of the 14th century. Bosnia is located in the western Balkans, bordering Croatia to the north and west, Serbia to the east and it has a coastline about 20 kilometres long surrounding the city of Neum. It lies between latitudes 42° and 46° N, and longitudes 15° and 20° E, the countrys name comes from the two regions Bosnia and Herzegovina, which have a very vaguely defined border between them
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Croatia
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Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a sovereign state between Central Europe, Southeast Europe, and the Mediterranean. Its capital city is Zagreb, which one of the countrys primary subdivisions. Croatia covers 56,594 square kilometres and has diverse, mostly continental, Croatias Adriatic Sea coast contains more than a thousand islands. The countrys population is 4.28 million, most of whom are Croats, the Croats arrived in the area of present-day Croatia during the early part of the 7th century AD. They organised the state into two duchies by the 9th century, tomislav became the first king by 925, elevating Croatia to the status of a kingdom. The Kingdom of Croatia retained its sovereignty for nearly two centuries, reaching its peak during the rule of Kings Petar Krešimir IV and Dmitar Zvonimir, Croatia entered a personal union with Hungary in 1102. In 1527, faced with Ottoman conquest, the Croatian Parliament elected Ferdinand I of the House of Habsburg to the Croatian throne. In 1918, after World War I, Croatia was included in the unrecognized State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs which seceded from Austria-Hungary, a fascist Croatian puppet state backed by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany existed during World War II. After the war, Croatia became a member and a federal constituent of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On 25 June 1991 Croatia declared independence, which came wholly into effect on 8 October of the same year, the Croatian War of Independence was fought successfully during the four years following the declaration. A unitary state, Croatia is a republic governed under a parliamentary system, the International Monetary Fund classified Croatia as an emerging and developing economy, and the World Bank identified it as a high-income economy. Croatia is a member of the European Union, United Nations, the Council of Europe, NATO, the World Trade Organization, the service sector dominates Croatias economy, followed by the industrial sector and agriculture. Tourism is a significant source of revenue during the summer, with Croatia ranked the 18th most popular tourist destination in the world, the state controls a part of the economy, with substantial government expenditure. The European Union is Croatias most important trading partner, since 2000, the Croatian government constantly invests in infrastructure, especially transport routes and facilities along the Pan-European corridors. Internal sources produce a significant portion of energy in Croatia, the rest is imported, the origin of the name is uncertain, but is thought to be a Gothic or Indo-Aryan term assigned to a Slavic tribe. The oldest preserved record of the Croatian ethnonym *xъrvatъ is of variable stem, the first attestation of the Latin term is attributed to a charter of Duke Trpimir from the year 852. The original is lost, and just a 1568 copy is preserved—leading to doubts over the authenticity of the claim, the oldest preserved stone inscription is the 9th-century Branimir Inscription, where Duke Branimir is styled as Dux Cruatorvm. The inscription is not believed to be dated accurately, but is likely to be from during the period of 879–892, the area known as Croatia today was inhabited throughout the prehistoric period
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Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
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Hungary
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Hungary is a unitary parliamentary republic in Central Europe. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a member state of the European Union. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken language in Europe. Hungarys capital and largest metropolis is Budapest, a significant economic hub, major urban areas include Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs and Győr. His great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000, converting the country to a Christian kingdom, by the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Hungarys current borders were established in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon after World War I, when the country lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, following the interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a four-decade-long communist dictatorship. On 23 October 1989, Hungary became again a democratic parliamentary republic, in the 21st century, Hungary is a middle power and has the worlds 57th largest economy by nominal GDP, as well as the 58th largest by PPP, out of 188 countries measured by the IMF. As a substantial actor in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds 36th largest exporter and importer of goods, Hungary is a high-income economy with a very high standard of living. It keeps up a security and universal health care system. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and part of the Schengen Area since 2007, Hungary is a member of the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe and Visegrád Group. Well known for its cultural history, Hungary has been contributed significantly to arts, music, literature, sports and science. Hungary is the 11th most popular country as a tourist destination in Europe and it is home to the largest thermal water cave system, the second largest thermal lake in the world, the largest lake in Central Europe, and the largest natural grasslands in Europe. The H in the name of Hungary is most likely due to historical associations with the Huns. The rest of the word comes from the Latinized form of Medieval Greek Oungroi, according to an explanation the Greek name was borrowed from Proto-Slavic Ǫgǔri, in turn borrowed from Oghur-Turkic Onogur. Onogur was the name for the tribes who later joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars. The Hungarians likely belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance and it is possible they became its ethnic majority. The Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of magyar and ország, the word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri
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Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
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Serbia
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Serbia, officially the Republic of Serbia, is a sovereign state situated at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central Balkans. Relative to its territory, it is a diverse country distinguished by a transitional character, situated along cultural, geographic, climatic. Serbia numbers around 7 million residents, and its capital, Belgrade, following the Slavic migrations to the Balkans from the 6th century onwards, Serbs established several states in the early Middle Ages. The Serbian Kingdom obtained recognition by Rome and the Byzantine Empire in 1217, in the early 19th century, the Serbian Revolution established the nation-state as the regions first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory. During the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia formed a union with Montenegro which dissolved peacefully in 2006, in 2008 the parliament of the province of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence, with mixed responses from the international community. Serbia is a member of organizations such as the UN, CoE, OSCE, PfP, BSEC. An EU membership candidate since 2012, Serbia has been negotiating its EU accession since January 2014, the country is acceding to the WTO and is a militarily neutral state. Serbia is an income economy with dominant service sector, followed by the industrial sector. The country ranks high on the Social Progress Index as well as the Global Peace Index, relatively high on the Human Development Index, located at the crossroads between Central and Southern Europe, Serbia is found in the Balkan peninsula and the Pannonian Plain. Serbia lies between latitudes 41° and 47° N, and longitudes 18° and 23° E. The country covers a total of 88,361 km2, which places it at 113th place in the world, with Kosovo excluded, the area is 77,474 km2. Its total border length amounts to 2,027 km, all of Kosovos border with Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro are under control of the Kosovo border police. The Pannonian Plain covers the third of the country while the easternmost tip of Serbia extends into the Wallachian Plain. The terrain of the part of the country, with the region of Šumadija at its heart. Mountains dominate the third of Serbia. Dinaric Alps stretch in the west and the southwest, following the flow of the rivers Drina, the Carpathian Mountains and Balkan Mountains stretch in a north–south direction in eastern Serbia. Ancient mountains in the southeast corner of the country belong to the Rilo-Rhodope Mountain system, elevation ranges from the Midžor peak of the Balkan Mountains at 2,169 metres to the lowest point of just 17 metres near the Danube river at Prahovo. The largest lake is Đerdap Lake and the longest river passing through Serbia is the Danube, the climate of Serbia is under the influences of the landmass of Eurasia and the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea
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Slovakia
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Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Slovakias territory spans about 49,000 square kilometres and is mostly mountainous. The population is over 5 million and comprises mostly ethnic Slovaks, the capital and largest city is Bratislava. The Slavs arrived in the territory of present-day Slovakia in the 5th and 6th centuries, in the 7th century, they played a significant role in the creation of Samos Empire and in the 9th century established the Principality of Nitra. In the 10th century, the territory was integrated into the Kingdom of Hungary, which became part of the Habsburg Empire. After World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a separate Slovak Republic existed in World War II as a client state of Nazi Germany. In 1945, Czechoslovakia was reëstablished under Communist rule as a Soviet satellite, in 1989 the Velvet Revolution ended authoritarian Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The country maintains a combination of economy with universal health care. The country joined the European Union in 2004 and the Eurozone on 1 January 2009, Slovakia is also a member of the Schengen Area, NATO, the United Nations, the OECD, the WTO, CERN, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Visegrád Group. The Slovak economy is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe and its legal tender, the Euro, is the worlds 2nd most traded currency. Although regional income inequality is high, 90% of citizens own their homes, in 2016, Slovak citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 165 countries and territories, ranking the Slovak passport 11th in the world. Slovakia is the world’s biggest per-capita car producer with a total of 1,040,000 cars manufactured in the country in 2016 alone, the car industry represents 43 percent of Slovakia’s industrial output, and a quarter of its exports. Radiocarbon datingputs the oldest surviving archaeological artefacts from Slovakia – found near Nové Mesto nad Váhom – at 270,000 BC and these ancient tools, made by the Clactonian technique, bear witness to the ancient habitation of Slovakia. Other stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic era come from the Prévôt cave near Bojnice, the most important discovery from that era is a Neanderthal cranium, discovered near Gánovce, a village in northern Slovakia. The most well-known finds include the oldest female statue made of mammoth-bone, the statue was found in the 1940s in Moravany nad Váhom near Piešťany. Numerous necklaces made of shells from Cypraca thermophile gastropods of the Tertiary period have come from the sites of Zákovská, Podkovice, Hubina and these findings provide the most ancient evidence of commercial exchanges carried out between the Mediterranean and Central Europe. The Bronze Age in the territory of modern-day Slovakia went through three stages of development, stretching from 2000 to 800 BC
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Slovenia
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Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a nation state in southern Central Europe, located at the crossroads of main European cultural and trade routes. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and it covers 20,273 square kilometers and has a population of 2.06 million. It is a republic and a member of the United Nations, European Union. The capital and largest city is Ljubljana, additionally, the Dinaric Alps and the Pannonian Plain meet on the territory of Slovenia. The country, marked by a significant biological diversity, is one of the most water-rich in Europe, with a river network, a rich aquifer system. Over half of the territory is covered by forest, the human settlement of Slovenia is dispersed and uneven. Slovenia has historically been the crossroads of South Slavic, Germanic, Romance, although the population is not homogeneous, the majority is Slovene. South Slavic language Slovene is the language throughout the country. Slovenia is a largely secularized country, but its culture and identity have been influenced by Catholicism as well as Lutheranism. The economy of Slovenia is small, open, and export-oriented and has strongly influenced by international conditions. It has been hurt by the Eurozone crisis, started in the late 2000s. The main economic field is services, followed by industry and construction, Historically, the current territory of Slovenia was part of many different state formations, including the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, followed by the Habsburg Monarchy. In October 1918, the Slovenes exercised self-determination for the first time by co-founding the State of Slovenes, Croats, in December 1918, they merged with the Kingdom of Serbia into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. During World War II, Slovenia was occupied and annexed by Germany, Italy, and Hungary, with a tiny area transferred to the Independent State of Croatia, in June 1991, after the introduction of multi-party representative democracy, Slovenia split from Yugoslavia and became an independent country. Present-day Slovenia has been inhabited since prehistoric times, and there is evidence of habitation from around 250,000 years ago. A pierced cave bear bone, dating from 43100 ±700 BP, in the 1920s and 1930s, artifacts belonging to the Cro-Magnon such as pierced bones, bone points, and needle were found by archaeologist Srečko Brodar in Potok Cave. It shows that wooden wheels appeared almost simultaneously in Mesopotamia and Europe, in the transition period between the Bronze age to the Iron age, the Urnfield culture flourished. Archaeological remains dating from the Hallstatt period have been found, particularly in southeastern Slovenia, among them a number of situlas in Novo Mesto, in the Iron Age, present-day Slovenia was inhabited by Illyrian and Celtic tribes until the 1st century BC
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Sea of Azov
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The Sea of Azov is a sea in Eastern Europe. To the south it is linked by the narrow Strait of Kerch to the Black Sea, the sea is bounded in the north by mainland Ukraine, in the east by Russia, and in the west by the Crimean Peninsula. The Don and Kuban are the rivers that flow into it. The Sea of Azov is the shallowest sea in the world, there is a constant outflow of water from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea. The sea is affected by the inflow of numerous rivers, which bring sand, silt, and shells, which in turn form numerous bays, limans. Because of these deposits, the sea bottom is relatively smooth, also, due to the river inflow, water in the sea has low salinity and a high amount of biomass that affects the water colour. Abundant plankton results in high fish productivity. The sea shores and spits are low, they are rich in vegetation, the name likely derives from the settlement of an area around Azov, whose name comes from the Kipchak Turkish asak or azaq. A Russian folk etymology, however, instead derives it from an eponymous Cuman prince named Azum or Asuf, a formerly common spelling of the name in English was the Sea of Azoff, which is closer to the Russian pronunciation. In antiquity, the sea was known as the Maeotis Swamp from the marshlands to its northeast. It remains unclear whether it was named for the nearby Maeotians or if that name was applied broadly to various peoples who happened to live beside it. Other names included Lake Maeotis or Maeotius, the Maeotium or Maeotic Sea, the Cimmerian or Scythican Swamps, the Maeotians themselves were said by Pliny to call the sea Temarenda or Temerinda, meaning Mother of Waters. The medieval Russians knew it as the Sea of Surozh after the adjacent city now known as Sudak and it was known in Ottoman Turkish as the Balük-Denis from its high productivity. There are traces of Neolithic settlement in the now covered by the sea. In 1997, William Ryan and Walter Pitman of Columbia University published a theory that a flood through the Bosporus occurred in ancient times. Subsequent work has been both to support and to discredit this theory, and archaeologists still debate it. This has led some to associate this catastrophe with prehistoric flood myths, the Maeotian marshes around the mouth of the Tanais River were famous in antiquity, as they served as an important check on the migration of nomadic people from the Eurasian steppelands. The Maeotians themselves lived by fishing and farming, but were avid warriors able to defend themselves against invaders
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Pontic Mountains
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The Pontic Mountains or Pontic Alps form a mountain range in northern Anatolia, Turkey. They are also known as the Parhar Mountains in the local Turkish, the term Parhar originates from a Hittite word meaning high or summit. In antiquity, the mountains were called the Paryadres or Parihedri Mountains, the range runs roughly east-west, parallel and close to the southern coast of the Black Sea. It extends northeast into Georgia, and west into the Sea of Marmara, with the spur of the Küre Mountains. The highest peak in the range is Kaçkar Dağı, which rises to 3,937 m, the North Anatolian Fault and the Northeast Anatolian Fault, which are east-west running strike-slip faults, run along the length of the range. The mountains are covered by dense forests, predominantly of conifers. The region is home to Eurasian wildlife such as the Eurasian sparrowhawk, golden eagle, eastern imperial eagle, lesser spotted eagle, Caucasian black grouse, red-fronted serin, and wallcreeper. The narrow coastal strip between the mountains and the Black Sea, known as Pontus, is home to the Euxine-Colchic deciduous forests, the Anatolian Plateau, which lies south of the range, has a considerably drier and more continental climate than the humid and mild coast
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Caucasus Mountains
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The Caucasus Mountains are a mountain system in Eurasia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus region. The Caucasus Mountains include the Greater Caucasus in the north and Lesser Caucasus in the south, the Greater Caucasus runs west-northwest to east-southeast, from the Caucasian Natural Reserve in the vicinity of Sochi on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea nearly to Baku on the Caspian Sea. The Lesser Caucasus runs parallel to the Greater about 100 km south, the Greater and Lesser Caucasus ranges are connected by the Likhi Range, and to the west and east of the Likhi Range lie the Colchis Plain and the Kur-Araz Lowland. The Meskheti Range is a part of the Lesser Caucasus system, in the southeast the Aras River separates the Lesser Caucasus from the Talysh Mountains which straddle the border of southeastern Azerbaijan and Iran. The highest peak in the Caucasus range is Mount Elbrus in the Greater Caucasus, Mountains near Sochi hosted part of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Geologically, the Caucasus Mountains belong to a system that extends from southeastern Europe into Asia, the Greater Caucasus Mountains are mainly composed of Cretaceous and Jurassic rocks with the Paleozoic and Precambrian rocks in the higher regions. Some volcanic formations are found throughout the range, on the other hand, the Lesser Caucasus Mountains are formed predominantly of the Paleogene rocks with a much smaller portion of the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks. The Caucasus Mountains formed largely as the result of a plate collision between the Arabian plate moving northwards with respect to the Eurasian plate. As this happened, the rocks that had been deposited in this basin from the Jurassic to the Miocene were folded to form the Greater Caucasus Mountains. This collision also caused the uplift and the Cenozoic volcanic activity in the Lesser Caucasus Mountains, the entire region is regularly subjected to strong earthquakes from this activity. While the Greater Caucasus Mountains have a mainly folded sedimentary structure, the Javakheti Volcanic Plateau in Georgia and the surrounding volcanic ranges which extend well into central Armenia are some of the youngest features of the region. The Kazbek is no active, but the Elbrus erupted in postglacial times. Contemporary seismic activity is a prominent feature of the region, reflecting active faulting, clusters of seismicity occur in Dagestan and in northern Armenia. Many devastating earthquakes have been documented in historical times, including the Spitak earthquake in December 1988 which destroyed the Gyumri-Vanadzor region of Armenia, europes highest mountain is Mount Elbrus 5,642 m in the Caucasus Mountains. Elbrus is 832 m higher than Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps at 4,810 m, the Caucasus Mountains are defined as the continental divide between Asia and Europe for the region between the Black and Caspian Seas. The table below lists some of the highest peaks of the Caucasus, with the exception of Shkhara, the heights are taken from Soviet 1,50,000 mapping. There are higher and more prominent, but nameless, peaks than some of the peaks included below, the climate of the Caucasus varies both vertically and horizontally. Temperature generally decreases as elevation rises, average annual temperature in Sukhumi, Abkhazia at sea level is 15 °C while on the slopes of Mt. Kazbek at an elevation of 3,700 metres, average annual temperature falls to−6.1 °C
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Crimean Mountains
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The Crimean Mountains is a range of mountains running parallel to the south-east coast of Crimea, between about 8–13 kilometer from the sea. Toward the west, the mountains drop steeply to the Black Sea, the Crimean Mountains consist of three subranges. The highest is the Main range, the Main range is subdivided into several massives, known as yaylas or mountain plateaus. Archaeologists have found the earliest anatomically modern humans in Europe in the Crimean mountains Buran-Kaya caves, the fossils are 32,000 years old, with the artifacts linked to the Gravettian culture. The fossils have cut marks suggesting a post-mortem defleshing ritual, Crimea Crimean mountains - view on all parts of mountains of Crimea Mountains of Crimea - Great collection of Crimean mountains from private mountain guide Sergey Sorokin
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Strandzha
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Strandzha is a mountain massif in southeastern Bulgaria and the European part of Turkey. It is in the part of the Balkans between the plains of Thrace to the west, the lowlands near Burgas to the north. Its highest peak is Mahya Dağı in Turkey, while the highest point on Bulgarian territory is Golyamo Gradishte, the total area is approximately 10,000 km2. The name of the massif allegedly derives from Istranca, the name of the municipality of Binkılıç in Çatalca district. The climate of the area is influenced by the Black Sea and is predominantly humid continental in the mountains. Major rivers in the area are the Veleka and the border river Rezovska, Strandzha Nature Park, established in 1995 in the Bulgarian part of the massif, is the largest protected area in Bulgaria, embracing 1,161 km2, or about 1% of Bulgarias total territory. Inhabited by the Thracians in antiquity, Strandzha is an area with a concentration of ruins of Thracian sanctuaries, sacrificial altars, dolmens. The mountains were the site of the Bulgarian Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903 that was crushed by Ottoman troops, the current Bulgarian-Turkish border in the region was established after the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, when the northern part of Strandzha became part of Bulgaria. The Strandzha Mountains have a rich and diverse flora and fauna, 50% of Bulgarias flora can be observed in Strandzha Nature Park and the area has 121 habitat types. One of the reasons for the abundance of flora and fauna is the location at a bio-geographical crossroad between the European and Asian continents. The plant communities in Strandzha developed before Europe was separated from Asia by the formation of the Bosporus Strait that now connects the Black Sea with the Mediterranean Sea, land-ice never reached Strandzha during the ice-ages of the Pleistocene and the Holocene. This lack of glaciations helped create the circumstances in which flora characteristic for the Tertiary period on the European continent has been preserved in Strandzha, Strandzha Glacier on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Strandzha Mountain
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Burgas
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It is the capital of Burgas Province and an important industrial, transport, cultural and tourist centre. The city is surrounded by the Burgas Lakes and located at the westernmost point of the Black Sea, the LUKOIL Neftochim Burgas is the largest oil refinery in southeastern Europe and the largest industrial enterprise. The Port of Burgas is the largest port in Bulgaria, Burgas is the center of the Bulgarian fishing and fish processing industry. A similar literal composition have the cities Burgos in Spain and numerous cities containing the Germanic burg city such as Hamburg,15 centuries later, the settlement was mentioned by the Byzantine poet Manuel Phil as Pyrgos, a word identical in meaning with the Greek word for tower. There are several explanations for the names origin. By one of them, the name comes from Gothic name baurgs as meaning signified consolidated walled villages. Kiril Vlahov, the name of the city comes from the Thracian word pyurg as meaning fortification of wooden beams and it is also suggested that the name ultimately comes from the name of khan Burtaz. Burgas is situated in the westernmost point of the bay of the same name, Burgas is located 389 kilometres from Sofia,272 km from Plovdiv, and 335 km from Istanbul. To the west, south and north, the city is surrounded by the Burgas Lakes, Burgas, Atanasovsko and Mandrensko, pan-European corridor 8 passes through the city, the European routes E87 and E773, and the longest national rout I/6. The St. Anastasia Island is a part of the city, Burgas has a humid subtropical climate, with some continental influences. The summertime in Burgas lasts about five months from mid-May until late September, average temperatures during high season is 24 °C. Summertime sea temperatures stay around 23 °C-24 °C at sunrise and go up to 29 °C-30 °C at dawn, winters are milder compared with the inland part of the country, with average temperatures of 4 °C-5 °C and below 0 °C during the night. Snow is possible in December, January, February and rarely in March, snow falls in winter only several times and can quickly melt. The highest temperature was recorded in August 2003, at 42.8 °C, the Burgas Wetlands are highly recognized for their significance to biodiversity and as a resource pool for products used by people. Lake Burgas is Bulgarias largest lake and is in the middle of the city and it is important for migrating birds. Over 250 species of birds inhabit the area,61 of which are endangered in Bulgaria and 9 globally. The lakes are home to important fish and invertebrates. In the site have been recorded several IUCN Red-Listed species of animals —5 invertebrates,4 fish,4 amphibians,3 reptiles,5 birds and 3 mammals
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