1.
Stavanger
–
Stavanger /stəˈvæŋər/ is a city and municipality in Norway. The city is the third-largest urban zone and metropolitan area in Norway, the municipality is the fourth most populous in Norway. Located on the Stavanger Peninsula in Southwest Norway, Stavanger counts its official founding year as 1125, Stavangers core is to a large degree 18th- and 19th-century wooden houses that are protected and considered part of the citys cultural heritage. The citys rapid growth in the late 20th century was primarily a result of Norways booming offshore oil industry. Today the oil industry is a key industry in the Stavanger region, the largest company in the Nordic region, Norwegian energy company Statoil is headquartered in Stavanger. Multiple educational institutions for education are located in Stavanger. The largest of these is the University of Stavanger, domestic and international military installations are located in Stavanger, among these is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisations Joint Warfare Center. Other international establishments, and especially local branches of foreign oil and gas companies, immigrants make up 11. 3% of Stavangers population. Stavanger has since the early 2000s consistently had an unemployment rate lower than the Norwegian and European average. In 2011, the unemployment rate was less than 2%, the city is also among those that frequent various lists of expensive cities in the world, and Stavanger has even been ranked as the worlds most expensive city by certain indexes. Stavanger is served by international airport Stavanger Airport, Sola, which offers flights to cities in most major European countries, the airport was named most punctual European regional airport by flightstats. com in 2010. Every two years, Stavanger organizes the Offshore Northern Seas, which is the second largest exhibition, gladmat food festival is also held each year and is considered to be one of Scandinavias leading food festivals. The city is known for being one of the nations premier culinary clusters. Stavanger 2008 European Capital of Culture, the first traces of settlement in the Stavanger region come from the days when the ice retreated after the last ice age c.10,000 years ago. Stavanger grew into a center of administration and an important south-west coast market town around 1100–1300. Stavanger fulfilled an urban role prior to its status as city, Bishop Reinald, who may have come from Winchester, England, is said to have started construction of Stavanger Cathedral around 1100. It was finished around 1125, and the city of Stavanger counts 1125 as its year of foundation, with the Protestant Reformation in 1536, Stavangers role as a religious center declined, and the establishment of Kristiansand in the early 17th century led to the relocation of the bishopric. However, rich herring fisheries in the 19th century gave the city new life, Stavanger was established as a municipality 1 January 1838
2.
Norway
–
The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
3.
Thematic map
–
A thematic map is a type of map specifically designed to show a particular theme connected with a specific geographic area. A thematic map is a map that focuses on a theme or subject area. This is in contrast to general maps, which regularly show the variety of phenomena—geological, geographical. The contrast between them lies in the fact that thematic maps use the data, such as coastlines, boundaries and places. General maps portray the base data, such as landforms, lines of transportation, settlements, thematic maps emphasize spatial variation of one or a small number of geographic distributions. These distributions may be physical phenomena such as climate or human characteristics such as population density, barbara Petchenik described the difference as in place, about space. While general reference maps show where something is in space, thematic maps tell a story about that place, thematic maps are sometimes referred to as graphic essays that portray spatial variations and interrelationships of geographical distributions. Location, of course, is important to provide a base of where selected phenomena are occurring. An important cartographic element preceding thematic mapping was the development of base maps. Improvements in accuracy proceeded at a pace, and even until the mid-17th century. Still, base maps around this time were good enough to display appropriate information and his first significant cartographic contribution was a star chart of the constellation of the Southern Hemisphere, made during his stay on St. Helena and published on 1686. In that same year he published his first terrestrial map in an article about trade winds. In 1701 he published the New and Correct Chart Shewing the Variations of the Compass, see first image, another example of early thematic mapping comes from London physician John Snow. Though disease had been mapped thematically, Snow’s cholera map in 1854 is the best known example of using maps for analysis. Essentially, his technique and methodology anticipate principles of an information system. Starting with a base map of a London neighborhood which included streets and water pump locations. The emerging pattern centered around one particular pump on Broad Street, at Snow’s request, the handle of the pump was removed, and new cholera cases ceased almost at once. Further investigation of the area revealed the Broad Street pump was near a cesspit under the home of the outbreaks first cholera victim, another 19th century example of thematic maps, according to Friendly, was the earliest known choropleth map in 1826 created by Charles Dupin
4.
City
–
A city is a large and permanent human settlement. Cities generally have complex systems for sanitation, utilities, land usage, housing, a big city or metropolis usually has associated suburbs and exurbs. Such cities are associated with metropolitan areas and urban areas. Once a city expands far enough to another city, this region can be deemed a conurbation or megalopolis. Damascus is arguably the oldest city in the world, in terms of population, the largest city proper is Shanghai, while the fastest-growing is Dubai. There is not enough evidence to assert what conditions gave rise to the first cities, some theorists have speculated on what they consider suitable pre-conditions and basic mechanisms that might have been important driving forces. The conventional view holds that cities first formed after the Neolithic revolution, the Neolithic revolution brought agriculture, which made denser human populations possible, thereby supporting city development. The advent of farming encouraged hunter-gatherers to abandon nomadic lifestyles and to settle near others who lived by agricultural production, the increased population density encouraged by farming and the increased output of food per unit of land created conditions that seem more suitable for city-like activities. In his book, Cities and Economic Development, Paul Bairoch takes up position in his argument that agricultural activity appears necessary before true cities can form. According to Vere Gordon Childe, for a settlement to qualify as a city, it must have enough surplus of raw materials to support trade and a relatively large population. To illustrate this point, Bairoch offers an example, Western Europe during the pre-Neolithic, when the cost of transport is taken into account, the figure rises to 200,000 square kilometres. Bairoch noted that this is roughly the size of Great Britain, the urban theorist Jane Jacobs suggests that city formation preceded the birth of agriculture, but this view is not widely accepted. In his book City Economics, Brendan OFlaherty asserts Cities could persist—as they have for thousands of years—only if their advantages offset the disadvantages, OFlaherty illustrates two similar attracting advantages known as increasing returns to scale and economies of scale, which are concepts usually associated with businesses. Their applications are seen in more basic economic systems as well, increasing returns to scale occurs when doubling all inputs more than doubles the output an activity has economies of scale if doubling output less than doubles cost. To offer an example of these concepts, OFlaherty makes use of one of the oldest reasons why cities were built, in this example, the inputs are anything that would be used for protection and the output is the area protected and everything of value contained in it. OFlaherty then asks that we suppose the protected area is square, the advantage is expressed as, O = s 2, where O is the output and s stands for the length of a side. This equation shows that output is proportional to the square of the length of a side, the inputs depend on the length of the perimeter, I =4 s, where I stands for the quantity of inputs. So there are increasing returns to scale, O = I2 /16 and this equation shows that with twice the inputs, you produce quadruple the output
5.
Berlin
–
Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany as well as one of its constituent 16 states. With a population of approximately 3.5 million, Berlin is the second most populous city proper, due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one-third of the area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers. Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world, following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all-Germany. Berlin is a city of culture, politics, media. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations. Berlin serves as a hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination, significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Modern Berlin is home to world renowned universities, orchestras, museums and its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions. The city is known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts. Since 2000 Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene, the name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of todays Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl-. All German place names ending on -ow, -itz and -in, since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word Bär, a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore a canting arm, the first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920, the central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document,1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, in 1415 Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. In 1443 Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln
6.
Aerial photography
–
Aerial photography is the taking of photographs of the ground from an elevated/direct-down position. Usually the camera is not supported by a ground-based structure, mounted cameras may be triggered remotely or automatically, hand-held photographs may be taken by a photographer. Aerial photography should not be confused with air-to-air photography, where one or more aircraft are used as chase planes that chase, Aerial photography was first practiced by the French photographer and balloonist Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, known as Nadar, in 1858 over Paris, France. However, the photographs he produced no longer exist and therefore the earliest surviving aerial photograph is titled Boston, as the Eagle, taken by James Wallace Black and Samuel Archer King on October 13,1860, it depicts Boston from a height of 630m. Kite aerial photography was pioneered by British meteorologist E. D. Archibald in 1882 and he used an explosive charge on a timer to take photographs from the air. Frenchman Arthur Batut began using kites for photography in 1888, Samuel Franklin Cody developed his advanced Man-lifter War Kite and succeeded in interesting the British War Office with its capabilities. The first use of a motion picture camera mounted to an aircraft took place on April 24,1909 over Rome in the 3,28 silent film short. The use of aerial photography rapidly matured during the war, as aircraft were equipped with cameras to record enemy movements. At the start of the conflict, the usefulness of aerial photography was not fully appreciated, germany adopted the first aerial camera, a Görz, in 1913. The French began the war with several squadrons of Blériot observation aircraft equipped with cameras for reconnaissance, the French Army developed procedures for getting prints into the hands of field commanders in record time. Frederick Charles Victor Laws started aerial photography experiments in 1912 with No.1 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, in 1916 the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy made vertical camera axis aerial photos above Italy for map-making. The camera was inserted into the floor of the aircraft and could be triggered by the pilot at intervals. In January 1918, General Allenby used five Australian pilots from No.1 Squadron AFC to photograph a 624 square miles area in Palestine as an aid to correcting and improving maps of the Turkish front and this was a pioneering use of aerial photography as an aid for cartography. Beginning 5 January, they flew with an escort to ward off enemy fighters. The first commercial aerial photography company in the UK was Aerofilms Ltd, founded by World War I veterans Francis Wills, the company soon expanded into a business with major contracts in Africa and Asia as well as in the UK. Operations began from the Stag Lane Aerodrome at Edgware, using the aircraft of the London Flying School, subsequently, the Aircraft Manufacturing Company, hired an Airco DH.9 along with pilot entrepreneur Alan Cobham. From 1921, Aerofilms carried out vertical photography for survey and mapping purposes, during the 1930s, the company pioneered the science of photogrammetry, with the Ordnance Survey amongst the companys clients. One Fairchild aerial survey aircraft in 1935 carried unit that combined two synchronized cameras, and each camera having five six inch lenses with a ten-inch lenses, each photo covered two hundred and twenty five square miles
7.
Street
–
A street is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact. A street can be as simple as a patch of dirt. Portions may also be smoothed with asphalt, embedded with rails, originally the word street simply meant a paved road. Examples of streets include pedestrian streets, alleys, and city-centre streets too crowded for road vehicles to pass, conversely, highways and motorways are types of roads, but few would refer to them as streets. The word street has its origins in the Latin strata, it is related to stratum. Ancient Greek stratos means army, Greeks originally built roads to move their armies, old English applied the word to Roman roads in Britain such as Ermine Street, Watling Street, etc. Later it acquired a meaning of straggling village, which were often laid out on the verges of Roman roads. In the Middle Ages, a road was a way people travelled, the street is a public easement, one of the few shared between all sorts of people. As a component of the environment as ancient as human habitation. Its roles are as numerous and diverse as its ever-changing cast of characters, streets can be loosely categorized as main streets and side streets. Main streets are usually broad with a high level of activity. Commerce and public interaction are more visible on main streets, side streets are quieter, often residential in use and character, and may be used for vehicular parking. Circulation, or less broadly, transportation, is perhaps a streets most visible use, the unrestricted movement of people and goods within a city is essential to its commerce and vitality, and streets provide the physical space for this activity. In the interest of order and efficiency, an effort may be made to different types of traffic. Le Corbusier, for one, perceived an ever-stricter segregation of traffic as an affirmation of social order—a desirable. To this end, proposals were advanced to build vertical streets where vehicles, pedestrians. Such an arrangement, it was said, would allow for denser development in the future
8.
Cartography
–
Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively, the fundamental problems of traditional cartography are to, Set the maps agenda and select traits of the object to be mapped. This is the concern of map editing, traits may be physical, such as roads or land masses, or may be abstract, such as toponyms or political boundaries. Represent the terrain of the object on flat media. This is the concern of map projections, eliminate characteristics of the mapped object that are not relevant to the maps purpose. This is the concern of generalization, reduce the complexity of the characteristics that will be mapped. This is also the concern of generalization, orchestrate the elements of the map to best convey its message to its audience. This is the concern of map design, modern cartography constitutes many theoretical and practical foundations of geographic information systems. The earliest known map is a matter of debate, both because the term map isnt well-defined and because some artifacts that might be maps might actually be something else. A wall painting that might depict the ancient Anatolian city of Çatalhöyük has been dated to the late 7th millennium BCE, the oldest surviving world maps are from 9th century BCE Babylonia. One shows Babylon on the Euphrates, surrounded by Assyria, Urartu and several cities, all, in turn, another depicts Babylon as being north of the world center. The ancient Greeks and Romans created maps since Anaximander in the 6th century BCE, in the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy wrote his treatise on cartography, Geographia. This contained Ptolemys world map – the world known to Western society. As early as the 8th century, Arab scholars were translating the works of the Greek geographers into Arabic, in ancient China, geographical literature dates to the 5th century BCE. The oldest extant Chinese maps come from the State of Qin, dated back to the 4th century BCE, in the book of the Xin Yi Xiang Fa Yao, published in 1092 by the Chinese scientist Su Song, a star map on the equidistant cylindrical projection. Early forms of cartography of India included depictions of the pole star and these charts may have been used for navigation. Mappa mundi are the Medieval European maps of the world, approximately 1,100 mappae mundi are known to have survived from the Middle Ages. Of these, some 900 are found illustrating manuscripts and the remainder exist as stand-alone documents, the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi produced his medieval atlas Tabula Rogeriana in 1154
9.
Pictogram
–
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and graphic systems in which the characters are to a considerable extent pictorial in appearance, a pictogram may also be used in subjects such as leisure, tourism and geography. Some pictograms, such as Hazards pictograms, are elements of formal languages, pictograph has a rather different meaning in the field of prehistoric art, including recent art by traditional societies. Here it means art painted on surfaces, as opposed to petroglyphs that are carved or incised. Such images may or may not be considered pictograms in the general sense, early written symbols were based on pictographs and ideograms. Ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Chinese civilizations began to adapt such symbols to represent concepts, pictographs are still in use as the main medium of written communication in some non-literate cultures in Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. Pictographs are often used as simple, pictorial, representational symbols by most contemporary cultures, one example of many is the Rock art of the Chumash people, part of the Native American history of California. In 2011, UNESCOs World Heritage List added Petroglyph Complexes of the Mongolian Altai, because of their graphical nature and fairly realistic style, they are widely used to indicate public toilets, or places such as airports and train stations. Contemporary artist Xu Bing created Book from the Ground, a language made up of pictograms collected from around the world. A Book from the Ground chat program has been exhibited in museums, pictograms are used in many areas of modern life for commodity purposes, often as a formal language. In statistics, pictograms are chartsin which icons represent numbers to make it more interesting, a key is often included to indicate what each icon represents. All icons must be of the size, but a fraction of an icon can be used to show the respective fraction of that amount. For example, the table, can be graphed as follows, Key, =10 letters As the values are rounded to the nearest 5 letters. This is why road signs and similar material are often applied as global standards expected to be understood by nearly all. A standard set of pictographs was defined in the international standard ISO7001, other common sets of pictographs are the laundry symbols used on clothing tags and the chemical hazard symbols as standardized by the GHS system. Pictograms have been popularized in use on the web and in software, better known as icons displayed on a computer screen in order to help user navigate a computer system or mobile device
10.
Public transport
–
Public transport modes include city buses, trolleybuses, trams and passenger trains, rapid transit and ferries. Public transport between cities is dominated by airlines, coaches, and intercity rail, high-speed rail networks are being developed in many parts of the world. Most public transport runs to a timetable, with the most frequent services running to a headway. Share taxis offer services in many parts of the world. Paratransit is sometimes used in areas of low demand and for people who need a door-to-door service, there are distinct differences in urban public transit between Asia, North America, and Europe. In Asia, mass transit operations are run by profit-driven privately owned and publicly traded mass transit. In North America, mass transit operations are run by municipal transit authorities. In Europe, mass transit operations are run by both state-owned and private companies. Public transport services can be profit-driven by use of pay-by-the-distance fares or funded by government subsidies in which flat rate fares are charged to each passenger. Services can be profitable through high ridership numbers and high farebox recovery ratios, or can be regulated. Fully subsidized, zero-fare services operate in some towns and cities, for geographical, historical and economic reasons, there are differences internationally regarding use and extent of public transport. It has 3,400 members from 92 countries, conveyances designed for public hire are as old as the first ferries, and the earliest public transport was water transport, on land people walked or rode an animal. Ferries appear in Greek mythology—corpses in ancient Greece were buried with a coin underneath their tongue to pay the ferryman Charon to take them to Hades, the omnibus was introduced to London in July 1829. The first passenger railway opened in 1806, it ran between Swansea and Mumbles in southwest Wales in the United Kingdom. In 1825 George Stephenson built the Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in northeast England, the usability of different types of public transport, and its overall appeal, can be measured by seven criteria, although they overlap somewhat. These are speed, comfort, safety, cost, proximity, speed is calculated from total journey time including transfers. Proximity means how far passengers have to walk or otherwise travel before they can begin the public transport leg of their journey, timeliness is how long they have to wait for the vehicle. Directness records how far a journey using public transport deviates from the shortest route, an airline provides scheduled service with aircraft between airports
11.
Sumer
–
Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumerian farmers were able to grow an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place. Proto-writing in the dates back to c.3000 BC. The earliest texts come from the cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr and date back to 3300 BC, modern historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c.5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language, an agglutinative language isolate. These conjectured, prehistoric people are now called proto-Euphrateans or Ubaidians, some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language. Reliable historical records begin much later, there are none in Sumer of any kind that have dated before Enmebaragesi. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians lived along the coast of Eastern Arabia, todays Persian Gulf region, Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period, continuing into the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians, who spoke a language isolate, and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund, Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC, but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Neo-Sumerian Empire or Third Dynasty of Ur approximately 2100-2000 BC, the term Sumerian is the common name given to the ancient non-Semitic-speaking inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Sumer, by the East Semitic-speaking Akkadians. The Sumerians referred to themselves as ùĝ saĝ gíg ga, phonetically /uŋ saŋ gi ga/, literally meaning the black-headed people, the Akkadian word Shumer may represent the geographical name in dialect, but the phonological development leading to the Akkadian term šumerû is uncertain. Hebrew Shinar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite Šanhar, all referring to southern Mesopotamia, in the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city. The Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods, classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BC. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief Sumerian Renaissance in the 21st century BC, the Amorite dynasty of Isin persisted until c.1700 BC, when Mesopotamia was united under Babylonian rule. The Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Akkadian population, 2500–2334 BC Akkadian Empire period, c. 2218–2047 BC Ur III period, c, 2047–1940 BC The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. It appears that this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia and it is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture
12.
Euphrates
–
The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia, originating in eastern Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf. The Ancient Greek form Euphrátēs was borrowed from Old Persian Ufrātu, the Elamite name is ultimately derived from the Sumerian Buranuna, possibly through the Akkadian name. In Akkadian the river was similarly called Purattu, which has been perpetuated in Semitic languages, the Elamite, Akkadian, and possibly Sumerian forms are suggested to be from an unrecorded substrate language. The earliest references to the Euphrates come from texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq. In these texts, written in Sumerian, the Euphrates is called Buranuna, the name could also be written KIB. NUN. or dKIB. NUN, with the prefix d indicating that the river was a divinity. In Sumerian, the name of the city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq was also a written UD. KIB. NUN, the Euphrates is the longest river of Western Asia. It emerges from the confluence of the Kara Su or Western Euphrates, the same figures are given by Isaev and Mikhailova. The length of the Shatt al-Arab, which connects the Euphrates, both the Kara Su and the Murat Su rise northwest from Lake Van at elevations of 3,290 metres and 3,520 metres amsl, respectively. At the location of the Keban Dam, the two rivers, now combined into the Euphrates, have dropped to an elevation of 693 metres amsl, from Keban to the Syrian–Turkish border, the river drops another 368 metres over a distance of less than 600 kilometres. The Euphrates receives most of its water in the form of rainfall and melting snow, discharge in these two months accounts for 36 percent of the total annual discharge of the Euphrates, or even 60–70 percent according to one source, while low runoff occurs in summer and autumn. The discharge regime of the Euphrates has changed dramatically since the construction of the first dams in the 1970s, data on Euphrates discharge collected after 1990 show the impact of the construction of the numerous dams in the Euphrates and of the increased withdrawal of water for irrigation. Average discharge at Hīt after 1990 has dropped to 356 cubic metres per second, the seasonal variability has equally changed. The pre-1990 peak volume recorded at Hīt was 7,510 cubic metres per second, the minimum volume at Hīt remained relatively unchanged, rising from 55 cubic metres per second before 1990 to 58 cubic metres per second afterward. In Syria, three rivers add their water to the Euphrates, the Sajur, the Balikh and the Khabur and these rivers rise in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains along the Syro–Turkish border and add comparatively little water to the Euphrates. The Sajur is the smallest of these tributaries, emerging from two streams near Gaziantep and draining the plain around Manbij before emptying into the reservoir of the Tishrin Dam. The Balikh receives most of its water from a spring near Ayn al-Arus. In terms of length, drainage basin and discharge, the Khabur is the largest of these three and its main karstic springs are located around Ras al-Ayn, from where the Khabur flows southeast past Al-Hasakah, where the river turns south and drains into the Euphrates near Busayrah
.jpg)
Media related to Historical city maps at Wikimedia Commons
_by_Florentine_cartographer_Cristoforo_Buondelmonte.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}