1.
Egypt
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Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian
2.
Governorates of Egypt
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Governorates are the first-level of the subdivisions. Egypt is divided, for administrative purposes, into twenty-seven governorates, egyptian governorates are the top tier of the countrys jurisdiction hierarchy. A governorate is administered by a governor, who is appointed by the President of Egypt, most governorates have a population density of more than one thousand per km², while the three largest have a population density of less than two per km². Governorates are either fully urban or else a mixture of urban, the official distinction between urban and rural is reflected in the lower tiers, i. e. fully urban governorates have no regions, as the markaz is, natively, a conglomeration of villages. Moreover, governorates may comprise just one city, as in the case of Cairo Governorate or Alexandria Governorate, hence, these one-city governorates are only divided into districts. Cairo Governorate consists of 41 districts, Alexandria Governorate consists of 7, two new governorates were created in April 2008, Helwan and 6th of October. In April 2011, however, the 6th of October and Helwan governorates were again incorporated into the Cairo and Giza Governorates, respectively. Luxor was created in December 2009, to be the 29th governorate of Egypt, but with the abolition of the 6th of October and Helwan governorates, before 1979, local government traditionally enjoyed limited power in Egypts highly centralized state. Under the central government, there were twenty-six governorates and these were subdivided into regions, each of which was further subdivided into towns or villages. At each level, there was a structure that combined representative councils and government-appointed executive organs headed by governors, district officers. Governors were appointed by the president, and they, in turn, the coercive backbone of the state apparatus ran downward from the Ministry of Interior through the governors executive organs to the district police station and the village headman. Before the 1952 revolution, state penetration of the areas was limited by the power of local notables. However, under Nasser, land reform reduced their socioeconomic dominance, the extension of officials into the countryside permitted the regime to bring development and services to the village. State penetration did not retreat under Sadat and Mubarak, the earlier effort to mobilize peasants and deliver services disappeared as the local party and cooperative withered, but administrative controls over the peasants remained intact. The local power of the old families and the headmen revived, the district police station balanced the notables, and the system of local government integrated them into the regime. Sadat took several measures to decentralize power to the provinces and towns, governors acquired more authority under Law Number 43 of 1979, which reduced the administrative and budgetary controls of the central government over the provinces. The elected councils acquired, at least formally, the right to approve or disapprove the local budget, in an effort to reduce local demands on the central treasury, local government was given wider powers to raise local taxes. Local representative councils became vehicles of pressure for government spending, under Mubarak decentralization and local autonomy became more of a reality, and local policies often reflected special local conditions
3.
New Valley Governorate
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New Valley Governorate is one of the governorates of Egypt. It is located in the part of the country, in Egypts Western Desert, part of the Sahara Desert – between the Nile, northern Sudan, and southeastern Libya. Consisting of roughly a third of Egypts area, the New Valley Governorate is the countrys largest governorate, the capital is at the Kharga Oasis. According to population estimates from 2015 the majority of residents in the live in rural areas. Out of an estimated 225,416 people residing in the governorate,117,180 people live in areas as opposed to only 108,236 in urban areas. Protesters set fire to police stations and the NDP - National Democratic Party building, multiple deaths were reported in addition to hundreds of injuries amid claims that the police opened fire on protesters in Kharga Oasis with live ammunition. Kharga Farafra Dakhla Baris Manufacturing of palm dates, tourism and Safaris Agricultural activities New Valley Project Gilf Kebir Governorates of Egypt
4.
Egyptians
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The Black Egyptian hypothesis is the hypothesis that Ancient Egypt was a predominately Black civilization, as the term is currently understood in modern American ethic perception. Mainstream scholars recognize that many indigenous Egyptians, including several Pharaohs, were of ancestry that, in the modern era, the Black Egyptian hypothesis goes a lot further, claiming that Egypt, from north to south, was a black civilization. At the UNESCO Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic script in Cairo in 1974, some modern scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Chancellor Williams, Cheikh Anta Diop, John G. Jackson, Ivan van Sertima, Martin Bernal, the frequently criticized Journal of African Civilizations has continually advocated that Egypt should be viewed as a Black civilization. Diop and others believed the views were fueled by scientific racism. Diop used an approach to counteract prevailing views on the Ancient Egyptians origins. Since the second half of the 20th century, most scholars have held that modern notions of race to ancient Egypt is anachronistic. The focus of some experts who study population biology has been to consider whether or not the Ancient Egyptians were primarily biologically North African rather than to which race they belonged, in 1975, the mummy of Ramesses II was taken to France for preservation. The mummy was also tested by Professor Pierre-Fernand Ceccaldi, the chief forensic scientist at the Criminal Identification Laboratory of Paris. Professor Ceccaldi determined that, Hair, astonishingly preserved, showed some complementary data - especially about pigmentation, the description given here refers to a fair-skinned person with wavy ginger hair. Keita wrote that There is no reason to believe that the primary ancestors of the Egyptian population emerged and evolved outside of northeast Africa. Stuart Tyson Smith writes in the 2001 Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt that Any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians depends on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study. Thus, by modern American standards it is reasonable to characterize the Egyptians as black, several Ancient Greek historians noted that Egyptians had complexions that were melanchroes. There is considerable controversy over the translation of melanchroes, most scholars translate it as black. Alan B Lloyd wrote that there is no justification for relating this description to negroes. Melanchroes could denote any colour from bronzed to black and negroes are not the physical type to show curly hair. These characteristics would certainly be found in many Egs, ancient and modern, some of the most often quoted historians are Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Herodotus. Herodotus states in a few passages that the Egyptians were black/dark, lucian observes an Egyptian boy and notices that he is not merely black, but has thick lips
5.
Turkish people
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Turkish people, or the Turks, also known as Anatolian Turks, are a Turkic ethnic group and nation living mainly in Turkey and speaking Turkish, the most widely spoken Turkic language. They are the largest ethnic group in Turkey, as well as by far the largest ethnic group among the speakers of Turkic languages, ethnic Turkish minorities exist in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, a Turkish diaspora has been established with modern migration, the ethnonym Turk may be first discerned in Herodotus reference to Targitas, first king of the Scythians, furthermore, during the first century AD. Pomponius Mela refers to the Turcae in the north of the Sea of Azov. The first definite references to the Turks come mainly from Chinese sources in the sixth century, in these sources, Turk appears as Tujue, which referred to the Göktürks. Although Turk refers to Turkish people, it may sometimes refer to the wider language group of Turkic peoples. In the 19th century, the word Türk only referred to Anatolian villagers, the Ottoman ruling class identified themselves as Ottomans, not usually as Turks. In the late 19th century, as the Ottoman upper classes adopted European ideas of nationalism the term Türk took on a more positive connotation. The Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule, Turkish Jews, Christians, or even Alevis may be considered non-Turks. On the other hand, Kurdish Arab followers of the Sunni branch of Islam who live in eastern Anatolia are sometimes considered Turks, article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a Turk as anyone who is bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship. Anatolia was first inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Paleolithic era, most of the Turkic peoples were followers of Tengriism, sharing the cult of the sky god Tengri, although there were also adherents of Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism. However, during the Muslim conquests, the Turks entered the Muslim world proper as servants, during the booty of Arab raids, the Turks began converting to Islam after Muslim conquest of Transoxiana through the efforts of missionaries, Sufis, and merchants. Although initiated by the Arabs, the conversion of the Turks to Islam was filtered through Persian, under the Umayyads, most were domestic servants, whilst under the Abbasids, increasing numbers were trained as soldiers. By the ninth century, Turkish commanders were leading the caliphs’ Turkish troops into battle, as the Abbasid caliphate declined, Turkish officers assumed more military and political power taking over or establishing provincial dynasties with their own corps of Turkish troops. During the 11th century the Seljuk Turks who were admirers of the Persian civilization grew in number and were able to occupy the province of the Abbasid Empire. By 1055, the Seljuk Empire captured Baghdad and began to make their first incursions into the edges of Anatolia, when the Seljuk Turks won the Battle of Manzikert against the Byzantine Empire in 1071, it opened the gates of Anatolia to them. Although ethnically Turkish, the Seljuk Turks appreciated and became the purveyors of the Persian culture rather than the Turkish culture, in dire straits, the Byzantine Empire turned to the West for help setting in motion the pleas that led to the First Crusade. Once the Crusaders took Iznik, the Seljuk Turks established the Sultanate of Rum from their new capital, Konya, by the 12th century the Europeans had begun to call the Anatolian region Turchia or Turkey, meaning the land of the Turks
6.
Oasis
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In geography, an oasis is an isolated area of vegetation in a desert, typically surrounding a spring or similar water source, such as a pond or small lake. Oases also provide habitat for animals and even if the area is big enough. The location of oases has been of importance for trade and transportation routes in desert areas, caravans must travel via oases so that supplies of water. Thus, political or military control of an oasis has in many cases meant control of trade on a particular route. For example, the oases of Awjila, Ghadames, and Kufra, oases are formed from underground rivers or aquifers such as an artesian aquifer, where water can reach the surface naturally by pressure or by man-made wells. Occasional brief thunderstorms provide subterranean water to sustain natural oases, such as the Tuat, substrata of impermeable rock and stone can trap water and retain it in pockets, or on long faulting subsurface ridges or volcanic dikes water can collect and percolate to the surface. Any incidence of water is used by migrating birds, which also pass seeds with their droppings which will grow at the waters edge forming an oasis. It can also be used to plant crops, the word oasis came into English via Latin, oasis from Ancient Greek, ὄασις óasis, which in turn is a direct borrowing from Demotic Egyptian. The word for oasis in the later attested Coptic language is wahe or ouahe which means a dwelling place, people who live in an oasis must manage land and water use carefully, fields must be irrigated to grow plants like apricots, dates, figs, and olives. The most important plant in an oasis is the date palm and these palm trees provide shade for smaller trees like peach trees, which form the middle layer. By growing plants in different layers, the farmers make best use of the soil, many vegetables are also grown and some cereals, such as barley, millet, and wheat, are grown where there is more moisture. Great Man-Made River – the worlds largest irrigation project, developed in Libya to connect cities with fossil water. Guelta Mirage Oasification Qanat Wadi Water supply référence, Jardins au désert |Battesti, Jardins au désert, Evolution des pratiques et savoirs oasiens, Jérid tunisien, Paris, Éditions IRD, coll. À travers champs,2005,440 p. ISBN 2-7099-1564-2 Open Archives, book in free access / in French The dictionary definition of oasis at Wiktionary
7.
Western Desert (Egypt)
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The Western Desert of Egypt is an area of the Sahara which lies west of the river Nile, up to the Libyan border, and south from the Mediterranean sea to the border with Sudan. It is named in contrast to the Eastern Desert which extends east from the Nile to Red Sea, the Western Desert is mostly rocky desert, though an area of sandy desert, known as the Great Sand Sea, lies to the west against the Libyan border. The desert covers an area of 262,800 sq miles which is two-thirds of the area of the country. Its highest elevation is 3,300 ft in the Gilf Kebir plateau to the far south-west of the country, the Western Desert is barren and uninhabited save for a chain of oases which extend in an arc from Siwa, in the north-west, to Kharga in the south. However it has been the scene of conflict in modern times and he also states that little of the area conforms to the romantic view. These lie in an arc from Siwa in the north-west near the Libyan border, to Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla, east of Siwa lies the Qattara Depression, a low-lying area dotted with salt marsh and extending 190 miles west to east and 84 miles north to south. Further to the east, near the Nile, another depression gives rise to the Fayyum Oasis, to the south, beyond the Bahariya oasis lies the Black Desert, an area of black volcanic hills and dolerite deposits. Beyond this, north of Farafra, lies the White Desert, an area of wind-sculpted chalk rock formations, which give the area its name. To the south of Kharga the plateau rises towards the Gilf Kebir, an upland region lying astride the Egypt-Sudan border and home to pre-historic sites such as the Cave of Swimmers. In the south-west, near the point where the borders of Libya, Sudan and Egypt meet, is an area of glass, thought to have been formed by a meteorite strike at Kebira. The Great Sand Sea is a roughly lung-shaped area of sandy desert lying astride the border with Libya,200 miles inland from the Mediterranean. The sea is divided by a peninsula of rocky desert along the border, leaving the eastern lobe in Egypt and the western in Libya. On the Egyptian side it extends from a point south of Siwa for 400 miles into the interior, the Western Desert was known historically as the Libyan Desert, taking its name from Ancient Libya, which lay between the Nile and Cyrenaica. With the formation of the state of Libya, the term Western Desert has come to describe part of the Sahara in Egypt. To the Ancient Greeks, the term Libya described the whole Saharan littoral west of the Nile to the Atlas mountains. During Roman times the term Libya was limited to Cyrenaica and the region between there and Egypt, which were organized as the provinces of Libya Superior and Libya Inferior, the term Libyan Desert then applied to the area to the south of these. Playfair described the Western Desert of 1940 as being 240 miles wide and 150 miles wide, the contemporary use of the term refers to the entire desert in Egypt west of the Nile. It is thought over-grazing and climate led to desertification and the current geography
8.
Nile
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The Nile is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It is generally regarded as the longest river in the world, in particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Egypt and Sudan. The Nile has two tributaries, the White Nile and Blue Nile. The White Nile is considered to be the headwaters and primary stream of the Nile itself, the Blue Nile, however, is the source of most of the water and silt. The White Nile is longer and rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa and it flows north through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and South Sudan. The Blue Nile begins at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and flows into Sudan from the southeast, the two rivers meet just north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. The northern section of the river flows north almost entirely through the Sudanese desert to Egypt, then ends in a large delta, Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan, in the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called Ḥpī or Iteru, meaning river. In Coptic, the words piaro or phiaro meaning the river come from the ancient name. The English name Nile and the Arabic names en-Nîl and an-Nîl both derive from the Latin Nilus and the Ancient Greek Νεῖλος, beyond that, however, the etymology is disputed. One possible etymology derives it from a Semitic Nahal, meaning river, the standard English names White Nile and Blue Nile, to refer to the rivers source, derive from Arabic names formerly applied only to the Sudanese stretches which meet at Khartoum. Above Khartoum, the Nile is also known as the White Nile, at Khartoum the river is joined by the Blue Nile. The White Nile starts in equatorial East Africa, and the Blue Nile begins in Ethiopia, both branches are on the western flanks of the East African Rift. The drainage basin of the Nile covers 3,254,555 square kilometers, the source of the Nile is sometimes considered to be Lake Victoria, but the lake has feeder rivers of considerable size. It is either the Ruvyironza, which emerges in Bururi Province, Burundi, or the Nyabarongo, the two feeder rivers meet near Rusumo Falls on the Rwanda-Tanzania border. Gish Abay is reportedly the place where the water of the first drops of the Blue Nile develop. The Nile leaves Lake Nyanza at Ripon Falls near Jinja, Uganda and it flows north for some 130 kilometers, to Lake Kyoga. For the remaining part it flows westerly through the Murchison Falls until it reaches the very northern shores of Lake Albert where it forms a significant river delta
9.
Farafra, Egypt
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The Farafra depression is the second biggest depression by size in Western Egypt and the smallest by population, near latitude 27. 06° north and longitude 27. 97° east. It is in the large Western Desert of Egypt, approximately midway between Dakhla and Bahariya oases, Farafra has an estimated 5,000 inhabitants mainly living in the town of Farafra and is mostly inhabited by the local Bedouins. Often grouped within Farafra are the hot springs at Bir Sitta and it has massive chalk rock formations that are textbook examples of ventifact and which have been created as a result of occasional sandstorm in the area. The Farafra desert is a place visited by some schools in Egypt. The desert was also the location in the music video accompanying the piece Echoes in the 2008–2011 album by the Klaxons. Jasrmmd road, and the locally developed clays at the top of the white chalk west of Qasr Farafra, the Roman spring of Ain Bishay bubbles forth from a hillock on the northwest edge of town. It has been developed into a grove of date palms together with citrus, olive, apricot and carob trees. Several families tend the crops here, you should seek someone out, due to its geographical location and geological formation it has more than 100 wells spread out over the lands of the Farafra, many of which natural. Most of these wells are used in aggregation of the land in the oasis. Some of the wells in Farafra have become a favorite tourist destination, Bir Sitta, Bir Saba and Bir Ithnian wa ishrin are the most important. Because of the warm temperature and a slight percentage of sulfur. There is a large lake touristic well named Abu Nus 15 kilometers north of the edge of the Farafra, köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies its climate as hot desert. Die ägyptischen Oasen Bahriya und Farafra in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, frank Bliss, Artisanat et artisanat d’art dans les oasis du désert occidental égyptien. The Farafra Oasis, Its Topography and Geology, part 3 of Geological Survey Report, Geological Survey Report]. Reissue of the Classic History and Description, publisher, American Univ. in Cairo Press,1974. Travel guide Farafra oasis on Wikivoyage Images from Farafra and White Desert
10.
Kharga Oasis
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The Kharga Oasis, is the southernmost of Egypts five western oases. It is located in the Western Desert, about 200 km to the west of the Nile valley, Kharga or El Kharga is also the name of a major town located in the oasis, the capital of New Valley Governorate. The oasis, which was known as the Southern Oasis to the Ancient Egyptians, is the largest of the oases in the Libyan desert of Egypt and it is in a depression about 160 km long and from 20 km to 80 km wide. Kharga is the most modernized of Egypts western oases, the main town is highly functional with all modern facilities, and virtually nothing left of old architecture. Although framed by the oasis, there is no oasis feeling to it, there is extensive thorn palm, acacia, buffalo thorn and jujube growth in the oasis surrounding the modern town of Kharga. Many remnant wildlife species inhabit this region, the Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies its climate as hot desert. A trade route called Darb El Arbaīn passed through Kharga in the south and it was used from as early as the Old Kingdom of Egypt for the transport and trade of gold, ivory, spices, wheat, animals and plants. The maximum extent of Darb El Arbaīn was northward from Kobbei in Darfur,25 miles north of al-Fashir, passing through the desert, through Bir Natrum and Wadi Howar, all the oases have always been crossroads of caravan routes converging from the barren desert. In the case of Kharga, this is particularly evident by the presence of a chain of fortresses that the Romans built to protect the Darb El Arbaīn route. The forts vary in size and function, some being just small outposts, some were installed where earlier settlements already existed, while others were probably started from scratch. All of them are made of mud bricks, but some contain small stone temples with inscriptions on the walls. Described by Herodotus as a road traversed, in forty days, by his time the route had already become an important land route facilitating trade between Nubia and Egypt. The length of the journey is the reason for it being called Darb El Arbaīn, there he lived for the rest of his life. The monastery suffered attacks by bandits, and Nestorius was injured in one such raid. As part of a proceeding to Dafur, the English explorer W. G. Browne paused for several days at Kharga. In 1930 the archaeologist, Gertrude Caton–Thompson, uncovered the history of Kharga. See Temple of Hibis Native Khargans belong to the related Beja ethnic group and they speak Beja, their own Afro-Asiatic language, though Arabic is the dominant tongue. A regular bus connects the oasis to the other Western oases
11.
Pleistocene
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The Pleistocene is the geological epoch which lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the worlds most recent period of repeated glaciations. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period, the Pleistocene is the first epoch of the Quaternary Period or sixth epoch of the Cenozoic Era. In the ICS timescale, the Pleistocene is divided into four stages or ages, all of these stages were defined in southern Europe. In addition to this subdivision, various regional subdivisions are often used. Charles Lyell introduced the term pleistocene in 1839 to describe strata in Sicily that had at least 70% of their molluscan fauna still living today and this distinguished it from the older Pliocene Epoch, which Lyell had originally thought to be the youngest fossil rock layer. The Pleistocene has been dated from 2.588 million to 11,700 years before present and it covers most of the latest period of repeated glaciation, up to and including the Younger Dryas cold spell. The end of the Younger Dryas has been dated to about 9640 BC, the IUGS has yet to approve a type section, Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point, for the upper Pleistocene/Holocene boundary. The proposed section is the North Greenland Ice Core Project ice core 75°06 N 42°18 W, the lower boundary of the Pleistocene Series is formally defined magnetostratigraphically as the base of the Matuyama chronozone, isotopic stage 103. Above this point there are notable extinctions of the calcareous nanofossils, Discoaster pentaradiatus, the Pleistocene covers the recent period of repeated glaciations. The name Plio-Pleistocene has, in the past, been used to mean the last ice age. The revised definition of the Quaternary, by pushing back the date of the Pleistocene to 2.58 Ma. Pleistocene climate was marked by repeated glacial cycles in which continental glaciers pushed to the 40th parallel in some places and it is estimated that, at maximum glacial extent, 30% of the Earths surface was covered by ice. In addition, a zone of permafrost stretched southward from the edge of the sheet, a few hundred kilometres in North America. The mean annual temperature at the edge of the ice was −6 °C, during interglacial times, such as at present, drowned coastlines were common, mitigated by isostatic or other emergent motion of some regions. The effects of glaciation were global, antarctica was ice-bound throughout the Pleistocene as well as the preceding Pliocene. The Andes were covered in the south by the Patagonian ice cap, there were glaciers in New Zealand and Tasmania. The current decaying glaciers of Mount Kenya, Mount Kilimanjaro, glaciers existed in the mountains of Ethiopia and to the west in the Atlas mountains. In the northern hemisphere, many glaciers fused into one, the Cordilleran ice sheet covered the North American northwest, the east was covered by the Laurentide
12.
Nomad
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A nomad is a member of a community of people who live in different locations, moving from one place to another. Among the various ways nomads relate to their environment, one can distinguish the hunter-gatherer, as of 1995, there were an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world. Nomadic hunting and gathering, following seasonally available wild plants and game, is by far the oldest human subsistence method, pastoralists raise herds, driving them, or moving with them, in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover. Nomadism is also a lifestyle adapted to regions such as steppe, tundra, or ice and sand. For example, many groups in the tundra are reindeer herders and are semi-nomadic and these nomads sometimes adapt the use of high technology such as solar photovoltaics to reduce their dependence on diesel fuel. These groups are known as peripatetic nomads, a nomad is a person with no settled home, moving from place to place as a way of obtaining food, finding pasture for livestock, or otherwise making a living. The word Nomad comes from a Greek word that one who wanders for pasture. Most nomadic groups follow an annual or seasonal pattern of movements and settlements. Nomadic peoples traditionally travel by animal or canoe or on foot, today, some nomads travel by motor vehicle. Most nomads live in tents or other portable shelters, Nomads keep moving for different reasons. Nomadic foragers move in search of game, edible plants, the Australian Aborigines, Negritos of Southeast Asia, and San of Africa, for example, traditionally move from camp to camp to hunt and to gather wild plants. Some tribes of the Americas followed this way of life, Pastoral nomads make their living raising livestock, such as camels, cattle, goats, horses, sheep, or yaks. These nomads travel to find more camels, goats, and sheep through the deserts of Arabia, the Fulani and their cattle travel through the grasslands of Niger in western Africa. Some nomadic peoples, especially herders, may move to raid settled communities or avoid enemies. Nomadic craftworkers and merchants travel to find and serve customers and they include the Lohar blacksmiths of India, the Romani traders, and the Irish Travellers. Most nomads travel in groups of families called bands or tribes and these groups are based on kinship and marriage ties or on formal agreements of cooperation. A council of adult males makes most of the decisions, though some tribes have chiefs, in the case of Mongolian nomads, a family moves twice a year. These two movements would generally occur during the summer and winter, the winter location is usually located near mountains in a valley and most families already have their fixed winter locations
13.
Sahara
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The Sahara is the largest hot desert and the third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its area of 9,200,000 square kilometres is comparable to the area of the United States. The desert comprises much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south, it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of tropical savanna around the Niger River valley. The Sahara can be divided into several regions including, the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains, the Ténéré desert, the name Sahara is derived from ṣaḥārā, the plural of the Arabic word for desert. The Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and it covers 9 million square kilometres, amounting to 31% of Africa. If all areas with an annual precipitation of less than 250 mm were included. It is one of three physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The Sahara is mainly rocky hamada, Ergs form only a minor part, wind or rare rainfall shape the desert features, sand dunes, dune fields, sand seas, stone plateaus, gravel plains, dry valleys, dry lakes, and salt flats. Unusual landforms include the Richat Structure in Mauritania, several deeply dissected mountains, many volcanic, rise from the desert, including the Aïr Mountains, Ahaggar Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas, and the Red Sea hills. The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi, a volcano in the Tibesti range of northern Chad. The central Sahara is hyperarid, with sparse vegetation, the northern and southern reaches of the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with trees and taller shrubs in wadis, where moisture collects. In the central, hyperarid region, there are subdivisions of the great desert, Tanezrouft, the Ténéré, the Libyan Desert, the Eastern Desert. These extremely arid areas often receive no rain for years, the northern limit also corresponds to the 100 mm isohyet of annual precipitation. To the south, the Sahara is bounded by the Sahel, the southern limit of the Sahara is indicated botanically by the southern limit of Cornulaca monacantha, or northern limit of Cenchrus biflorus, a grass typical of the Sahel. According to climatic criteria, the limit of the Sahara corresponds to the 150 mm isohyet of annual precipitation. The Sahara is the worlds largest low-latitude hot desert and this steady descending airflow causes a warming and a drying effect in the upper troposphere
14.
Holocene
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The Holocene is the geological epoch that began after the Pleistocene at approximately 11,700 years before present. The term Recent has often used as an exact synonym of Holocene. The Holocene is part of the Quaternary period and its name comes from the Ancient Greek words ὅλος and καινός, meaning entirely recent. It has been identified with the current warm period, known as MIS1, given these, a new term, Anthropocene, is specifically proposed and used informally only for the very latest part of modern history involving significant human impact. It is accepted by the International Commission on Stratigraphy that the Holocene started approximately 11,700 years ago, the epoch follows the Pleistocene and the last glacial period. The Holocene can be subdivided into five time intervals, or chronozones, based on climatic fluctuations, Preboreal, Boreal, Atlantic, Subboreal and they find a general correspondence across Eurasia and North America, though the method was once thought to be of no interest. The scheme was defined for Northern Europe, but the changes were claimed to occur more widely. The periods of the include a few of the final pre-Holocene oscillations of the last glacial period. Paleontologists have not defined any faunal stages for the Holocene, if subdivision is necessary, periods of human technological development, such as the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age, are usually used. However, the time periods referenced by these terms vary with the emergence of those technologies in different parts of the world, climatically, the Holocene may be divided evenly into the Hypsithermal and Neoglacial periods, the boundary coincides with the start of the Bronze Age in Europe. According to some scholars, a division, the Anthropocene, has now begun. Continental motions due to plate tectonics are less than a kilometre over a span of only 10,000 years, however, ice melt caused world sea levels to rise about 35 m in the early part of the Holocene. The sea level rise and temporary land depression allowed temporary marine incursions into areas that are now far from the sea, Holocene marine fossils are known, for example, from Vermont and Michigan. Other than higher-latitude temporary marine incursions associated with depression, Holocene fossils are found primarily in lakebed, floodplain. Holocene marine deposits along low-latitude coastlines are rare because the rise in sea levels during the period exceeds any likely tectonic uplift of non-glacial origin, post-glacial rebound in the Scandinavia region resulted in the formation of the Baltic Sea. The region continues to rise, still causing weak earthquakes across Northern Europe, the equivalent event in North America was the rebound of Hudson Bay, as it shrank from its larger, immediate post-glacial Tyrrell Sea phase, to near its present boundaries. Climate has been stable over the Holocene. It appears that this was influenced by the glacial ice remaining in the Northern Hemisphere until the later date
15.
Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System
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The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System is the world’s largest known fossil water aquifer system. It is located underground in the Eastern end of the Sahara Desert, NSAS covers a land area spanning just over two million km2, including north-western Sudan, north-eastern Chad, south-eastern Libya, and most of Egypt. Containing an estimated 150,000 km3 of groundwater, the significance of the NSAS as a water resource for future development programs in these countries is extraordinary. Recently the Great Man-made River Project in Libya began extracting substantial amounts of water from this aquifer and this system is primarily used to supply water in the Kufra oasis. Since 2001, the Nubian Sandstone aquifer situated between the Toshka and Abu Simbel areas of Egypt underwent intensive drilling and development as part of a reclamation project. Drilling information was used to conduct a variety of studies regarding the setting of the areas aquifer. The aquifer is composed of hard ferruginous sandstone with great shale and clay intercalation. Groundwater type varies from fresh to slightly brackish, the ion dominance ordering shows that sodium cation is most commonly predominating over calcium and magnesium - whereas chloride is predominant over sulfate and bicarbonate. The groundwater is of meteoric origin, high concentrations of sodium, chloride, and sulfates reflect the leaching and dissolution processes of gypsiferous shales and clay, in addition to a lengthy duration of water residence. Lake Ptolemy Essay and Maps, Groundwater Resources of the Nubian Aquifer System Dahab, study of Hydrogeological Conditions of the Nubian Sandstone Aguifer in the Area Between Abu Simbel & Toschka, Western Desert, Egypt
16.
Sixth Dynasty of Egypt
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The Sixth Dynasty of ancient Egypt along with Dynasties III, IV and V constitute the Old Kingdom of Dynastic Egypt. Known pharaohs of the Sixth Dynasty are as follows The pharaohs of this dynasty ruled for approximately 164 years, the Horus names and names of the Queens are taken from Dodson and Hilton. Dynasty VI is considered by authorities as the last dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Manetho writes that these kings ruled from Memphis, since their pyramids were built at Saqqara, Dynasty VI was founded by Teti, who had married Iput, commonly believed to be the daughter of the Dynasty V pharaoh Unas. Manetho claimed that Teti was eventually murdered by his own bodyguard, during this dynasty, expeditions were sent to Wadi Maghara in the Sinai Peninsula to mine for turquoise and copper, as well as to the mines at Hatnub and Wadi Hammamat. The pharaoh Djedkara sent trade expeditions south to Punt and north to Byblos, and Pepi I sent expeditions not only to these locations, but also as far as Ebla in modern-day Syria. The most notable member of dynasty was Pepi II, who is credited with a reign of 94 years. With the growing number of inscriptions in non-royal tombs, our knowledge of the contemporary history broadens. For example, we hear of a plot against Pepi I. We also read a written by the young king Pepi II, excited that one of his expeditions will return with a dancing pygmy from the land of Yam. These non-royal tomb inscriptions are but one example of the power of the nobility
17.
Hieratic
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Hieratic is a cursive writing system used in the provenance of the pharaohs in Egypt and Nubia. It developed alongside cursive hieroglyphs, from which it is separate yet intimately related and it was primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus, allowing scribes to write quickly without resorting to the time-consuming hieroglyphs. In the 2nd century AD, the term hieratic was first used by Saint Clement of Alexandria. It derives from the Greek phrase γράμματα ἱερατικά, as at time, hieratic was used only for religious texts, as had been the case for the previous eight. Hieratic can also be an adjective meaning f or associated with sacred persons or offices, in the Proto-Dynastic Period of Egypt, hieratic first appeared and developed alongside the more formal hieroglyphic script. It is an error to view hieratic as a derivative of hieroglyphic writing, indeed, the earliest texts from Egypt are produced with ink and brush, with no indication their signs are descendants of hieroglyphs. True monumental hieroglyphs carved in stone did not appear until the 1st Dynasty, the two writing systems, therefore, are related, parallel developments, rather than a single linear one. Hieratic was used throughout the period and into the Graeco-Roman Period. Around 660 BC, the Demotic script replaced hieratic in most secular writing, through most of its long history, hieratic was used for writing administrative documents, accounts, legal texts, and letters, as well as mathematical, medical, literary, and religious texts. During the Græco-Roman period, when Demotic had become the chief administrative script, in general, hieratic was much more important than hieroglyphs throughout Egypts history, being the script used in daily life. It was also the system first taught to students, knowledge of hieroglyphs being limited to a small minority who were given additional training. In fact, it is possible to detect errors in hieroglyphic texts that came about due to a misunderstanding of an original hieratic text. Most often, hieratic script was written in ink with a brush on papyrus, wood. Thousands of limestone ostraca have been found at the site of Deir al-Madinah, besides papyrus, stone, ceramic shards, and wood, there are hieratic texts on leather rolls, though few have survived. There are also hieratic texts written on cloth, especially on linen used in mummification, there are some hieratic texts inscribed on stone, a variety known as lapidary hieratic, these are particularly common on stelae from the 22nd Dynasty. During the late 6th Dynasty, hieratic was sometimes incised into mud tablets with a stylus, similar to cuneiform. About five hundred of these tablets have been discovered in the palace at Ayn Asil. At the time the tablets were made, Dakhla was located far from centers of papyrus production and these tablets record inventories, name lists, accounts, and approximately fifty letters
18.
Stylus
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A stylus, plural styli or styluses, is a writing utensil, or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example in pottery. It can also be an accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision when using touchscreens. It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a ballpoint pen. Many styluses are heavily curved to be more easily. Another widely used writing tool is the used by blind users in conjunction with the slate for punching out the dots in Braille. Styluses were first used by the ancient Mesopotamians in order to write in cuneiform, cuneiform was entirely based on the wedge-shaped mark that the end of a cut reed made when pushed into a clay tablet, from Latin cuneus = wedge. The linear nature of the writing was also dictated by the use of the stylus, in Western Europe styluses were widely used until the late Middle Ages. For learning purposes the stylus was gradually replaced by a writing slate, from the mid-14th century improved water-powered paper mills produced large and cheap quantities of paper and the wax tablet and stylus disappeared completely from daily life. A different suggestion is that the word does not derive from the Greek word στῦλος and it signifies, An iron instrument, resembling a pencil in size and shape, used for writing upon waxed tablets. Thus, vertere stilum means to erase, and hence to correct, there exists minor controversy about the correct pluralization of stylus. Some assert that stylus is a loanword from Latin and should be pluralised as styli. However, stylus is an English word based on the Latin word stilus, occasionally the pluralisation stylii is seen. Styluses are still used in arts and crafts. Example situations, rubbing off dry transfer letters, tracing designs onto a new surface with carbon paper, styluses are also used to engrave into materials like metal or clay. Styluses are used to make dots as found in folk art, oaxaca dot art is created using styluses. In the sound recording industry, a stylus is a phonograph or gramophone needle used to play back sound on gramophone records, several technologies were used to record the sounds, beginning with wax cylinders, almost half a century before the invention of the magnetic cartridge. Nowadays mostly vinyl records are used, when playing the record, the stylus is placed in the grooves of the record. By then spinning the record, the start to vibrate caused by the shape of the grooves
19.
Cuneiform script
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Cuneiform script, one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians. It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus, the name cuneiform itself simply means wedge shaped. Emerging in Sumer in the fourth millennium BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller, the system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs. Cuneiform writing was replaced by the Phoenician alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. By the second century CE, the script had become extinct, between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. Most of these have lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published, the cuneiform writing system was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 34th century BC down to the second century CE. Ultimately, it was replaced by alphabetic writing in the course of the Roman era. It had to be deciphered as an unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology. Successful completion of its deciphering is dated to 1857, the cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC. Mesopotamias proto-literate period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries, the first documents unequivocally written in Sumerian date to the 31st century at Jemdet Nasr. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a reed stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic shape of the strokes. Proper names continued to be written in purely logographic fashion. The earliest known Sumerian king whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets is Enmebaragesi of Kish, from about 2900 BC, many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, by adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. Cuneiform tablets could be fired in kilns to provide a permanent record, many of the clay tablets found by archaeologists were preserved because they were fired when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept
20.
Papyrus
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The word papyrus /pəˈpaɪrəs/ refers to a thick precursor to modern paper made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of papyrus joined together side by side and rolled up into a scroll, the plural for such documents is papyri. Papyrus is first known to have used in ancient Egypt. It was also used throughout the Mediterranean region and in Kingdom of Kush, the Ancient Egyptians used papyrus as a writing material, as well as employing it commonly in the construction of other artifacts such as reed boats, mats, rope, sandals, and baskets. Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the fourth millennium BCE, the earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor located on the Red Sea coast. The papyrus rolls describe the last years of building the Great Pyramid of Giza, in the first centuries BCE and CE, papyrus scrolls gained a rival as a writing surface in the form of parchment, which was prepared from animal skins. Sheets of parchment were folded to form quires from which book-form codices were fashioned, early Christian writers soon adopted the codex form, and in the Græco-Roman world, it became common to cut sheets from papyrus rolls to form codices. Codices were an improvement on the scroll, as the papyrus was not pliable enough to fold without cracking. Papyrus had the advantage of being cheap and easy to produce. Unless the papyrus was of quality, the writing surface was irregular. Its last appearance in the Merovingian chancery is with a document of 692, the latest certain dates for the use of papyrus are 1057 for a papal decree, under Pope Victor II, and 1087 for an Arabic document. Its use in Egypt continued until it was replaced by more inexpensive paper introduced by Arabs who originally learned of it from the Chinese, by the 12th century, parchment and paper were in use in the Byzantine Empire, but papyrus was still an option. Papyrus was made in several qualities and prices, pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville described six variations of papyrus which were sold in the Roman market of the day. These were graded by quality based on how fine, firm, white, grades ranged from the superfine Augustan, which was produced in sheets of 13 digits wide, to the least expensive and most coarse, measuring six digits wide. Materials deemed unusable for writing or less than six digits were considered commercial quality and were pasted edge to edge to be used only for wrapping, until the middle of the 19th century, only some isolated documents written on papyrus were known. They did not contain literary works, the first modern discovery of papyri rolls was made at Herculaneum in 1752. Until then, the papyri known had been a few surviving from medieval times. The English word papyrus derives, via Latin, from Greek πάπυρος, Greek has a second word for it, βύβλος
21.
Ayyubid dynasty
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The Ayyubid dynasty was a Muslim dynasty of Kurdish origin, founded by Saladin and centered in Egypt. The dynasty ruled much of the Middle East during the 12th and 13th centuries, Saladin had been the vizier of Fatimid Egypt before toppling the Fatimids in 1171. Three years later, he proclaimed himself sultan following the death of his former master, most of the Kingdom of Jerusalem fell to Saladin after his victory at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. However, the Crusaders regained control of Palestines coastline in the 1190s, by then, local Muslim dynasties had driven out the Ayyubids from Yemen, the Hejaz, and parts of Mesopotamia. After his death in 1249, as-Salih Ayyub was succeeded in Egypt by al-Muazzam Turanshah, however, the latter was soon overthrown by the Mamluk generals who had repelled a Crusader invasion of the Nile Delta. This effectively ended Ayyubid power in Egypt, attempts by the emirs of Syria, led by an-Nasir Yusuf of Aleppo, in 1260, the Mongols sacked Aleppo and conquered the Ayyubids remaining territories soon after. The Mamluks, who expelled the Mongols, maintained the Ayyubid principality of Hama until deposing its last ruler in 1341 and this period was also marked by an Ayyubid process of vigorously strengthening Sunni Muslim dominance in the region by constructing numerous madrasas in their major cities. The progenitor of the Ayyubid dynasty, Najm ad-Din Ayyub ibn Shadhi, belonged to the Kurdish Rawadiya tribe, Ayyubs ancestors settled in the town of Dvin, in northern Armenia. The Rawadiya were the dominant Kurdish group in the Dvin district, circumstances became unfavorable in Dvin when Turkish generals seized the town from its Kurdish prince. Shadhi left with his two sons Ayyub and Asad ad-Din Shirkuh and his friend Mujahid ad-Din Bihruz—the military governor of northern Mesopotamia under the Seljuks—welcomed him and appointed him governor of Tikrit. After Shadhis death, Ayyub succeeded him in governance of the city with the assistance of his brother Shirkuh, together they managed the affairs of the city well, gaining them popularity from the local inhabitants. In the meantime, Imad ad-Din Zangi, the ruler of Mosul, was defeated by the Abbasids under Caliph al-Mustarshid, in his bid to escape the battlefield to Mosul via Tikrit, Zangi took shelter with Ayyub and sought his assistance in this task. Ayyub complied and provided Zangi and his companions boats to cross the Tigris River, as a consequence for assisting Zangi, the Abbasid authorities sought punitive measures against Ayyub. Simultaneously, in an incident, Shirkuh killed a close confidant of Bihruz on charges that he had sexually assaulted a woman in Tikrit. The Abbasid court issued arrest warrants for both Ayyub and Shirkuh, but before the brothers could be arrested, they departed Tikrit for Mosul in 1138. When they arrived in Mosul, Zangi provided them all the facilities they needed. Ayyub was made commander of Baalbek and Shirkuh entered the service of Zangis son, according to historian Abdul Ali, it was under the care and patronage of Zangi that the Ayyubid family rose to prominence. In 1164, Nur al-Din dispatched Shirkuh to lead a force to prevent the Crusaders from establishing a strong presence in an increasingly anarchic Egypt
22.
Desert climate
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An area that features this climate usually experiences from 25 to 200 mm per year of precipitation and in some years may experience no precipitation at all. Averages may be even less such as in Arica, Chile, there are usually two or three variations of a desert climate, a hot desert climate, a cold desert climate and, sometimes, a mild desert climate. To determine whether a location has a climate, the precipitation threshold is determined. If the areas precipitation is less than half the threshold. Hot desert climates are found under the subtropical ridge where there is largely unbroken sunshine for the whole year due to the stable descending air. These areas are located between 30 degrees south and 30 degrees north latitude, under the subtropical latitudes called the horse latitudes, hot desert climates are generally hot, sunny and dry year-round. Hot desert climates also reach similar latitudes in the Middle East, North Africa, hot desert climates usually feature hot, sometimes exceptionally hot, periods of the year. In many locations featuring a hot climate, maximum temperatures of over 40 °C are not uncommon in summer. The world absolute heat records, over 50 °C, are generally in the hot deserts, some desert locations consistently experience very high temperatures all year long, even during wintertime. These locations feature some of the highest annual average temperatures recorded on Earth and this last feature is seen in some parts of deserts of Africa and Arabia. During colder periods of the year, night-time temperatures can drop to freezing or below due to the radiation loss under the clear skies. However, very rarely do temperatures drop far below freezing, only one region in Europe has a hot desert climate, Province of Almeria, Province of Alicante and Province of Murcia in South Eastern Spain. Cold desert climates usually feature warm and dry summers, though summers typically are not quite as hot as summers in hot desert climates, unlike hot desert climates, cold desert climates tend to feature cold winters with rare snow. Cold desert climates are found at higher altitudes than hot desert climates. A cold desert climate is found in temperate zones, usually in the rain shadow of high mountains. A classic example of this is the Patagonian Desert in Argentina bounded by the Andes to its west, in the case of Central Asia, mountains restrict precipitation from the monsoon. The Gobi desert in Mongolia is an example of this. Though hot in summer, it shares the cold winters of the rest of Central Asia
23.
Precipitation
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In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, graupel, Precipitation occurs when a portion of the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapor, so that the water condenses and precipitates. Thus, fog and mist are not precipitation but suspensions, because the vapor does not condense sufficiently to precipitate. Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated, Precipitation forms as smaller droplets coalesce via collision with other rain drops or ice crystals within a cloud. Short, intense periods of rain in scattered locations are called showers, moisture that is lifted or otherwise forced to rise over a layer of sub-freezing air at the surface may be condensed into clouds and rain. This process is active when freezing rain is occurring. A stationary front is often present near the area of freezing rain, provided necessary and sufficient atmospheric moisture content, the moisture within the rising air will condense into clouds, namely stratus and cumulonimbus. Eventually, the droplets will grow large enough to form raindrops. Lake-effect snowfall can be locally heavy, thundersnow is possible within a cyclones comma head and within lake effect precipitation bands. In mountainous areas, heavy precipitation is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation, on the leeward side of mountains, desert climates can exist due to the dry air caused by compressional heating. The movement of the trough, or intertropical convergence zone. Precipitation is a component of the water cycle, and is responsible for depositing the fresh water on the planet. Approximately 505,000 cubic kilometres of water falls as precipitation each year,398,000 cubic kilometres of it over the oceans and 107,000 cubic kilometres over land. Given the Earths surface area, that means the globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimetres, Climate classification systems such as the Köppen climate classification system use average annual rainfall to help differentiate between differing climate regimes. Precipitation may occur on celestial bodies, e. g. when it gets cold, Mars has precipitation which most likely takes the form of frost. Precipitation is a component of the water cycle, and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the planet. Approximately 505,000 km3 of water falls as precipitation each year,398,000 km3 of it over the oceans, given the Earths surface area, that means the globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimetres. Mechanisms of producing precipitation include convective, stratiform, and orographic rainfall, Precipitation can be divided into three categories, based on whether it falls as liquid water, liquid water that freezes on contact with the surface, or ice
24.
Relative humidity
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Relative humidity is the ratio of the partial pressure of water vapor to the equilibrium vapor pressure of water at a given temperature. Relative humidity depends on temperature and the pressure of the system of interest and it requires less water vapor to attain high relative humidity at low temperatures, more water vapour is required to attain high relative humidity in warm or hot air. Humans are sensitive to high humidity because the body uses evaporative cooling, enabled by perspiration. Perspiration evaporates from the more slowly under humid conditions than under arid. For example, if the air temperature is 24 °C and the humidity is zero percent. If the relative humidity is 100 percent at the air temperature. In other words, if the air is 24 °C and contains saturated water vapor, then the human body cools itself at the rate as it would if it were 27 °C. The heat index and the humidex are indices that reflect the effect of temperature. In cold climates, the temperature causes lower capacity for water vapour to flow about. Dry cracked skin can result from dry air, low humidity causes tissue lining nasal passages to dry, crack and become more susceptible to penetration of Rhinovirus cold viruses. Low humidity is a cause of nosebleeds. The use of a humidifier in homes, especially bedrooms, can help with these symptoms, indoor relative humidities should be kept above 30% to reduce the likelihood of the occupants nasal passages drying out. Humans can be comfortable within a range of humidities depending on the temperature—from thirty to seventy percent—but ideally between 50% and 60%. Very low humidity can create discomfort, respiratory problems, and aggravate allergies in some individuals, in the winter, it is advisable to maintain relative humidity at 30 percent or above. Extremely low relative humidities may also cause eye irritation, wooden furniture can shrink, causing the paint that covers these surfaces to fracture. When the temperature is low and the humidity is high. When relative humidity approaches 100 percent, condensation can occur on surfaces, leading to problems with mold, corrosion, decay, condensation can pose a safety risk as it can promote the growth of mold and wood rot as well as possibly freezing emergency exits shut. The basic principles for buildings, above, also apply to vehicles, in addition, there may be safety considerations
25.
Sunshine duration
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It is a general indicator of cloudiness of a location, and thus differs from insolation, which measures the total energy delivered by sunlight over a given period. Sunshine duration is usually expressed in hours per year, or in hours per day, the first measure indicates the general sunniness of a location compared with other places, while the latter allows for comparison of sunshine in various seasons in the same location. Another often-used measure is percentage ratio of recorded bright sunshine duration, an important use of sunshine duration data is to characterize the climate of sites, especially of health resorts. This also takes account the psychological effect of strong solar light on human well-being. It is often used to promote tourist destinations, if the Sun were to be above the horizon 50% of the time for a standard year consisting of 8,760 hours, apparent maximal daytime duration would be 4,380 hours for any point on Earth. However, there are physical and astronomical effects that change that picture, namely, atmospheric refraction allows the Sun to be still visible even when it physically sets below the horizon. For that reason, average daytime is longest in polar areas, places on the Arctic Circle have the longest total annual daytime,4,647 hours, while the North Pole receives 4,575. Because of elliptic nature of the Earths orbit, the Southern Hemisphere is not symmetrical, the Equator has a total daytime of 4,422 hours per year. Given the theoretical maximum of daytime duration for a given location, bright sunshine hours represent the total hours when the sunlight is stronger than a specified threshold, as opposed to just visible hours. Visible sunshine, for example, occurs around sunrise and sunset, measurement is performed by instruments called sunshine recorders. For the specific purpose of sunshine duration recording, Campbell–Stokes recorders are used, when the intensity exceeds a pre-determined threshold, the tape burns. The total length of the trace is proportional to the number of bright hours. Another type of recorder is the Jordan sunshine recorder, newer, electronic recorders have more stable sensitivity than that of the paper tape. In 2003, the duration was finally defined as the period during which direct solar irradiance exceeds a threshold value of 120 W/m². The sky is clear in these regions, and fair weather is virtually perpetual, the descending branch of the Hadley cell and the long-term lack of atmospheric disturbances helps to explain the seemingly endless supply of sunny, cloud-free days in the deserts. Low clouding conditions are associated with rainfall shortage, as seen in these dry regions. In the belt encompassing northern Chad and the Tibesti Mountains, northern Sudan, southern Libya, some places in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula receive 3, 600–3,800 hours of bright sunshine annually. The largest sun-baked region in the world is North Africa, the sunniest month in the world is December in Eastern Antarctica, with almost 23 hours of bright sun daily
26.
Royal Ontario Museum
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The Royal Ontario Museum is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Canada. The museum is north of Queens Park, in the University of Toronto district, the Museum subway station of the Toronto Transit Commission is named after the ROM, and since 2008, it is decorated to resemble the institutions collection. St. George station is close to the new entrance as well. Established on 16 April 1912 and opened on 19 March 1914, the museum was under the direct control and management of the University of Toronto until 1968, when it became an independent Crown agency of the government of Ontario. Today, the museum is Canadas largest field-research institution, with research, with more than six million items and forty galleries, the museums diverse collections of world culture and natural history contribute to its international reputation. The museum contains collections of dinosaurs, minerals and meteorites, Near Eastern and African art, Art of East Asia, European history. It houses the worlds largest collection of fossils from the Burgess Shale with more than 150,000 specimens, the museum also contains an extensive collection of design and fine arts, including clothing, interior, and product design, especially Art Deco. The Royal Ontario Museum was formally established on 16 April 1912, and was governed by the Government of Ontario. Its first assets were transferred from the University and the provincial Department of Education, coming from its predecessor the Museum of Natural History and Fine Arts at the Toronto Normal School. On 19 March 1914, at 3,00 pm, the Duke of Connaught, also the Governor General of Canada, officially opened the Royal Ontario Museum to the public. The museums location at the edge of Torontos built-up area, far from the central business district, was selected mainly for its proximity to the University of Toronto. This was the first phase of a construction plan that intended on expanding the museum towards Queens Park Crescent. The first expansion to the Royal Ontario Museum publicly opened on 12 October 1933, the renovation saw the construction of the south wing fronting onto Queens Park, and required the demolition of Argyle House, a Victorian mansion once located at 100 Queens Park. As this occurred during the Great Depression, an effort was made to use primarily local building materials, teams of workers alternated weeks of service due to the physically draining nature of the job. In 1947, the ROM was dissolved as a body corporate and this would continue until 1968, when the Museum and the McLaughlin Planetarium were separated from the University to form a new corporation. On 26 October 1968, the ROM opened the McLaughlin Planetarium on the end of the property after receiving a $2 million donation from Colonel R. Samuel McLaughlin. By the 1980s, however, the audiences were dwindling. The space temporarily reopened from 1998 to 2002, after being leased to Childrens Own Museum, in 2009, the ROM sold the building to the University of Toronto for $22 million, and ensured that it would continue to be used for institutional and academic purposes
27.
Monash University
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Monash University is an Australian public research university based in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1958, it is the second oldest university in the State of Victoria, Monash is one of two Australian universities to be ranked in the École des Mines de Paris ranking on the basis of the number of alumni listed among CEOs in the 500 largest worldwide companies. Monash is in the top 20% in teaching, top 10% in international outlook, top 20% in industry income, Monash enrolls over 48,000 undergraduate and almost 21,000 graduate students, It also has more applicants than any university in the state of Victoria. In 2014, its revenue was over $2.2 billion. The university has a number of campuses, five of which are in Victoria, Monash also has a research and teaching centre in Prato, Italy, a graduate research school in Mumbai, India and a graduate school in Jiangsu Province, China. Since December 2011, Monash has had an alliance with the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. Monash University courses are delivered at other locations, including South Africa. The Clayton campus contains the Robert Blackwood Hall, named after the universitys founding Chancellor Sir Robert Blackwood, in 2014, the University ceded its Gippsland campus to Federation University. On 15 July 2016, Monash confirmed that Federation University Australia would take over the operations of the Berwick campus prior to the end of 2018, the university was named after the prominent Australian general Sir John Monash. This was the first university in Australia to be named after a person, rather than a city, the original campus was in the south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Clayton. The first University Council, led by Monashs first Chancellor Sir Robert Blackwood, selected Sir Louis Matheson, to be the first Vice-Chancellor of Monash University, the University was granted an expansive site of 100 hectares of open land in Clayton. The 100 hectares of land consists of the former Talbot Epileptic Colony, in its early years, it offered undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in engineering, medicine, science, arts, economics, politics, education, and law. It was a provider for international student places under the Colombo Plan. In its early years of teaching, research and administration, Monash was not disadvantaged by entrenched traditional practices, Monash was able to adopt modern approaches without resistance from those who preferred the status quo. A modern administrative structure was set up, Australias first research centres, from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, Monash became the centre of student radicalism in Australia. It was the site of mass student demonstrations, particularly concerning Australias role in Vietnam War. By the late 1960s, several student organisations, some of which were influenced by or supporters of communism, turned their focus to Vietnam, with numerous blockades, in the late 1970s and 1980s, some of Monashs most publicised research came through its pioneering of in-vitro fertilisation. Led by Professors Carl Wood and Alan Trounson, the Monash IVF Program achieved the worlds first clinical IVF pregnancy in 1973, in 1980, they delivered the first IVF baby in Australia
28.
Dakhla Oasis
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Dakhla Oasis, translates to the inner oasis, is one of the seven oases of Egypts Western Desert. Dakhla Oasis lies in the New Valley Governorate,350 km from the Nile and it measures approximately 80 km from east to west and 25 km from north to south. But about 6,000 years ago, the entire Sahara became drier, however, specialists think that nomadic hunter-gatherers began to settle almost permanently in the oasis of Dakhleh in the period of the Holocene, during new, but rare episodes of wetter times. In fact, the climate didnt mean that there was more water than today in what is now known as the Western Desert. In the third millennium BC lived here people that were most likely nomads and are called the Sheikh Muftah culture, the first contacts between the pharaonic power and the oases started around 2550 BCE. During the late 6th Dynasty, hieratic script was sometimes incised into clay tablets with a stylus, about five hundred such tablets have been discovered in the governors palace at Ayn Asil in the Dakhla Oasis. At the time the tablets were made, Dakhla was located far from centers of papyrus production and these tablets record inventories, name-lists, accounts, and approximately fifty letters. The fortified Islamic town of Al Qasr was built at Dakhla Oasis in the 12th century probably on the remains of a Roman era settlement by the Ayyubid kings of Egypt, the first European traveller to find the Dakhla Oasis was Sir Archibald Edmonstone, in the year 1819. He was succeeded by other early travellers, but it was not until 1908 that the first egyptologist, Herbert Winlock, visited Dakhla Oasis. Dakhla Oasis consists of communities, along a string of sub-oases. The main settlements are Mut, El-Masara, Al-Qasr, Qalamoun, some of the communities have identities that are separate from each other. Qalamoun has inhabitants that trace their origins to the Ottomans, Dakhla Oasis has a hot desert climate, typical of much of Egypt. In 1979, the Centre for Archaeology and Ancient History at Monash University began to cooperate in the project, the DOP studies the interaction between environmental changes and human activity in the Dakhleh Oasis. The director of the DOP is Anthony J. Mills, former curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, the excavations at Ismant el-Kharab, Mut el-Kharab, Deir Abu Metta and Muzawwaqa are undertaken with the cooperation of Monash University, under the direction of Gillian E. Bowen. Bowen and Colin Hope, also of Monash, are the principal investigators at Ismant el-Kharab, the DOP has also excavated at Ain el-Gazzareen, El Qasr el-Dakhil, Deir el Hagar and Ain Birbiyeh. In addition, excavations are undertaken at Amheida under the direction of Roger S. Bagnall and these were originally conducted under the auspices of Columbia University, but are currently conducted for New York University. Excavations are also underway at Balat under the auspices of the IFAO under the direction of Georges Soukiassian in conjunction with the Ministry for State Antiquities, the Dakhleh Trust was formed in 1999 and is a registered charity in Britain. Its declared aim is to understanding of the history of the environment and cultural evolution throughout the Quaternary period in the eastern Sahara
29.
Durham University
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Durham University is a collegiate public research university in Durham, North East England, with a second campus in nearby Stockton-on-Tees. It was founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and granted a Royal Charter in 1837 and it was one of the first universities to commence tuition in England for more than 600 years and claims to be the third oldest university in England, although this is disputed. The Durham University estate includes 63 listed buildings, ranging from the 11th-century Durham Castle to a 1930s Art Deco Chapel, the university also owns and manages the Durham World Heritage Site in partnership with Durham Cathedral. The universitys ownership of the World Heritage Site includes Durham Castle, Palace Green, the chancellor of the University is Sir Thomas Allen, who succeeded Bill Bryson in January 2012. As a collegiate university, its functions are divided between the academic departments of the university and 16 colleges. The university is a member of the Russell Group of leading UK universities after previously being a member of the 1994 Group, Durham is also affiliated with several university groups including the N8 Research Partnership, the Matariki Network of Universities and the Coimbra Group. The university is currently ranked 4th to 6th by recent national league tables of the British universities, in terms of average UCAS points of new entrants in 2014, Durham ranked 4th with the average entrant amassing 524 UCAS points. Long established as the rival to Oxford and Cambridge, the university attracts a largely middle class student body according to The Timess Good University Guide. In 2014, Durham had the fifth highest proportion of educated students at 36. 6%. The university was Sunday Times University of the Year for 2005, also making the shortlist for the 2004 and 2016 awards, Durham graduates have long used the Latin post-nominal letters Dunelm after their degree, from Dunelmensis. However, there was concern expressed by Oxford and Cambridge that the awarding of degree powers could hinder their position. The act received Royal Assent from King William IV on 4 July 1832, the University opened on 28 October 1833. In 1834 all but two of the bishops of the Church of England confirmed that they would accept holders of Durham degrees for ordination, accommodation was provided in the Archdeacons Inn from 1833 to 1837. On the accession of Queen Victoria an order of the Queen-in-Council was issued granting the use of Durham Castle to the university, in 1846, Bishop Hatfields Hall was founded, providing for the opportunity for students to obtain affordable lodgings with fully catered communal eating. Those attending University College were expected to bring a servant with them to deal with cooking, cleaning, elsewhere, the university expanded from Durham into Newcastle in 1852 when the medical school there became a college of the university. This was joined in 1871 by the College of Physical Sciences and these merged to form a mixed college in 1975. From 1896 these were associated with the university and graduates of St Hilds were the first female graduates from Durham in 1898, during the expansion phase the University also became the first English university to establish relationship with overseas institutions. Firstly in 1875 with Codrington College, Barbados, and secondly in early 1876 with Fourah Bay College, under the arrangements the two colleges became affiliated colleges of the university with their students sitting examinations for and receiving Durham degrees
30.
University of Toronto
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The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on the grounds that surround Queens Park. It was founded by charter in 1827 as Kings College. Originally controlled by the Church of England, the university assumed the present name in 1850 upon becoming a secular institution, as a collegiate university, it comprises twelve colleges, which differ in character and history, each with substantial autonomy on financial and institutional affairs. It has two campuses in Scarborough and Mississauga. Academically, the University of Toronto is noted for influential movements and curricula in literary criticism and communication theory, by a significant margin, it receives the most annual scientific research funding of any Canadian university. It is one of two members of the Association of American Universities outside the United States, the other being McGill University, the Varsity Blues are the athletic teams that represent the university in intercollegiate league matches, with long and storied ties to gridiron football and ice hockey. The universitys Hart House is an example of the North American student centre. The founding of a college had long been the desire of John Graves Simcoe. As an Oxford-educated military commander who had fought in the American Revolutionary War, the Upper Canada Executive Committee recommended in 1798 a college be established in York, the colonial capital. On March 15,1827, a charter was formally issued by King George IV, proclaiming from this time one College, with the style. For the education of youth in the principles of the Christian Religion, the granting of the charter was largely the result of intense lobbying by John Strachan, the influential Anglican Bishop of Toronto who took office as the colleges first president. The original three-storey Greek Revival school building was built on the present site of Queens Park, under Strachans stewardship, Kings College was a religious institution closely aligned with the Church of England and the British colonial elite, known as the Family Compact. Reformist politicians opposed the control over colonial institutions and fought to have the college secularized. Having anticipated this decision, the enraged Strachan had resigned a year earlier to open Trinity College as a private Anglican seminary, University College was created as the nondenominational teaching branch of the University of Toronto. Established in 1878, the School of Practical Science was precursor to the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, while the Faculty of Medicine opened in 1843, medical teaching was conducted by proprietary schools from 1853 until 1887, when the faculty absorbed the Toronto School of Medicine. Meanwhile, the university continued to set examinations and confer medical degrees, the university opened the Faculty of Law in 1887, followed by the Faculty of Dentistry in 1888, when the Royal College of Dental Surgeons became an affiliate. Women were first admitted to the university in 1884, over the next two decades, a collegiate system took shape as the university arranged federation with several ecclesiastical colleges, including Strachans Trinity College in 1904. The university operated the Royal Conservatory of Music from 1896 to 1991, the University of Toronto Press was founded in 1901 as Canadas first academic publishing house
31.
Columbia University
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Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as Kings College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, after the American Revolutionary War, Kings College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M. D. degree. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción, Columbia administers annually the Pulitzer Prize. Additionally,100 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Columbia as students, researchers, faculty, Columbia is second only to Harvard University in the number of Nobel Prize-winning affiliates, with over 100 recipients of the award as of 2016. In 1746 an act was passed by the assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the colleges first president, Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the colleges first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan, in 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queens College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his opponent in discussions at the college was an undergraduate of the class of 1777. The suspension continued through the occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. The colleges library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a hospital first by American. Loyalists were forced to abandon their Kings College in New York, the Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they founded Kings Collegiate School. After the Revolution, the college turned to the State of New York in order to restore its vitality, the Legislature agreed to assist the college, and on May 1,1784, it passed an Act for granting certain privileges to the College heretofore called Kings College. The Regents finally became aware of the colleges defective constitution in February 1787 and appointed a revision committee, in April of that same year, a new charter was adopted for the college, still in use today, granting power to a private board of 24 Trustees. On May 21,1787, William Samuel Johnson, the son of Dr. Samuel Johnson, was unanimously elected President of Columbia College, prior to serving at the university, Johnson had participated in the First Continental Congress and been chosen as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The colleges enrollment, structure, and academics stagnated for the majority of the 19th century, with many of the college presidents doing little to change the way that the college functioned. In 1857, the college moved from the Kings College campus at Park Place to a primarily Gothic Revival campus on 49th Street and Madison Avenue, during the last half of the 19th century, under the leadership of President F. A. P. Barnard, the institution assumed the shape of a modern university
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New York University
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New York University is a private nonprofit research university based in New York City. Founded in 1831, NYU is considered one of the worlds most influential research universities, University rankings compiled by Times Higher Education, U. S. News & World Report, and the Academic Ranking of World Universities all rank NYU amongst the top 32 universities in the world. NYU is a part of the creativity, energy and vibrancy that is Manhattan, located with its core in Greenwich Village. Among its faculty and alumni are 37 Nobel Laureates, over 30 Pulitzer Prize winners, over 30 Academy Award winners, alumni include heads of state, royalty, eminent mathematicians, inventors, media figures, Olympic medalists, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and astronauts. NYU alumni are among the wealthiest in the world, according to The Princeton Review, NYU is consistently considered by students and parents as a Top Dream College. Albert Gallatin, Secretary of Treasury under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, declared his intention to establish in this immense, a system of rational and practical education fitting and graciously opened to all. A three-day-long literary and scientific convention held in City Hall in 1830 and these New Yorkers believed the city needed a university designed for young men who would be admitted based upon merit rather than birthright or social class. On April 18,1831, an institution was established, with the support of a group of prominent New York City residents from the merchants, bankers. Albert Gallatin was elected as the institutions first president, the university has been popularly known as New York University since its inception and was officially renamed New York University in 1896. In 1832, NYU held its first classes in rented rooms of four-story Clinton Hall, in 1835, the School of Law, NYUs first professional school, was established. American Chemical Society was founded in 1876 at NYU and it became one of the nations largest universities, with an enrollment of 9,300 in 1917. NYU had its Washington Square campus since its founding, the university purchased a campus at University Heights in the Bronx because of overcrowding on the old campus. NYU also had a desire to follow New York Citys development further uptown, NYUs move to the Bronx occurred in 1894, spearheaded by the efforts of Chancellor Henry Mitchell MacCracken. The University Heights campus was far more spacious than its predecessor was, as a result, most of the universitys operations along with the undergraduate College of Arts and Science and School of Engineering were housed there. NYUs administrative operations were moved to the new campus, but the schools of the university remained at Washington Square. In 1914, Washington Square College was founded as the undergraduate college of NYU. In 1935, NYU opened the Nassau College-Hofstra Memorial of New York University at Hempstead and this extension would later become a fully independent Hofstra University. In 1950, NYU was elected to the Association of American Universities, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, financial crisis gripped the New York City government and the troubles spread to the citys institutions, including NYU
33.
Charitable organization
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A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization. It differs from types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals as well as social well-being. The legal definition of charitable organization varies according to the country, the regulation, tax treatment, and the way in which charity law affects charitable organizations also varies. Financial figures are important indicators to assess the sustainability of a charity. This information can impact a charitys reputation with donors and societies, and thus, Charitable organizations often depend partly on donations from for-profit-organizations. Such donations to charitable organizations represent a form of corporate philanthropy. Until the mid-18th century, charity was mainly distributed through parish relief, churches, almshouses, Charities were also responsible for education, health, housing and even prisons. It was in the Enlightenment era that charitable and philanthropic activity among voluntary associations, societies, gentlemans clubs, and mutual associations began to flourish in England and the upper-classes increasingly adopted a philanthropic attitude toward the disadvantaged. This new social activism was channeled into the establishment of charitable organizations and this emerging upper-class fashion for benevolence resulted in the incorporation of the first charitable organizations. This was the first such charity in the world and served as the precedent for incorporated associational charities everywhere. Jonas Hanway, another notable philanthropist of the era established The Marine Society in 1756 as the first seafarers charity, by 1763, the Society had recruited over 10,000 men and it was incorporated by an Act of Parliament in 1772. Hanway was also instrumental in establishing the Magdalen Hospital to rehabilitate prostitutes and these organizations were funded by subscription and run as voluntary associations. Charities also began to adopt campaigning roles, where they would champion a cause, the process was however a lengthy one being finally concluded when Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962. This period also saw growing philosophical debate between those who championed state intervention and those who believed that private charities should provide welfare, thomas Malthus, the political economist, criticized poor relief for paupers on economic and moral grounds and proposed leaving charity entirely to the private sector. His views were influential and informed the Victorian laissez-faire attitude toward state intervention for the poor. During the 19th century, a profusion of charitable organizations were set up to alleviate the conditions of the working class in the slums. The Labourers Friend Society, chaired by Lord Shaftesbury in the United Kingdom in 1830, was set up to working class conditions. This included the promotion of allotment of land to labourers for cottage husbandry that later became the allotment movement and this was one of the first housing associations, a philanthropic endeavour that flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century brought about by the growth of the middle class
34.
Environmental science
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Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical, biological and information sciences to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems. Environmental science emerged from the fields of history and medicine during the Enlightenment. Today it provides an integrated, quantitative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of environmental systems, related areas of study include environmental studies and environmental engineering. Environmental studies incorporates more of the sciences for understanding human relationships, perceptions. Environmental engineering focuses on design and technology for improving environmental quality in every aspect, Environmental issues almost always include an interaction of physical, chemical, and biological processes. Environmental scientists bring a systems approach to the analysis of environmental problems, key elements of an effective environmental scientist include the ability to relate space, and time relationships as well as quantitative analysis. Ecology could be considered a subset of science, which also could involve purely chemical or public health issues ecologists would be unlikely to study. In practice, there is overlap between the work of ecologists and other environmental scientists. Includes instruction in biology, chemistry, physics, geosciences, climatology, statistics, atmospheric sciences focus on the Earths atmosphere, with an emphasis upon its interrelation to other systems. Ecology is the study of the interactions between organisms and their environment, for example, an interdisciplinary analysis of an ecological system which is being impacted by one or more stressors might include several related environmental science fields. Environmental chemistry is the study of chemical alterations in the environment, principal areas of study include soil contamination and water pollution. The topics of analysis include chemical degradation in the environment, multi-phase transport of chemicals, as an example study, consider the case of a leaking solvent tank which has entered the habitat soil of an endangered species of amphibian. As a method to resolve or understand the extent of contamination and subsurface transport of solvent. Geosciences include environmental geology, environmental science, volcanic phenomena. In some classification systems this can also include hydrology, including oceanography, as an example study of soils erosion, calculations would be made of surface runoff by soil scientists. Fluvial geomorphologists would assist in examining sediment transport in overland flow, physicists would contribute by assessing the changes in light transmission in the receiving waters. Biologists would analyze subsequent impacts to aquatic flora and fauna from increases in water turbidity, in the U. S. the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 set forth requirements for analysis of major projects in terms of specific environmental criteria. Numerous state laws have echoed these mandates, applying the principles to local-scale actions, the upshot has been an explosion of documentation and study of environmental consequences before the fact of development actions
35.
Sociocultural evolution
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Sociocultural evolution, sociocultural evolutionism or cultural evolution are theories of cultural and social evolution that describe how cultures and societies change over time. Sociocultural evolution is the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, another attempt, on a less systematic scale, originated with the world-systems approach. More recent approaches focus on changes specific to individual societies and reject the idea that cultures differ primarily according to how far one is on the linear scale of social progress. Most modern archaeologists and cultural anthropologists work within the frameworks of neoevolutionism, sociobiology, anthropologists and sociologists often assume that human beings have natural social tendencies and that particular human social behaviours have non-genetic causes and dynamics. Societies exist in social environments and adapt themselves to these environments. It is thus inevitable that all societies change, specific theories of social or cultural evolution often attempt to explain differences between coeval societies, by positing that different societies have reached different stages of development. Most 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a single entity, however, most 20th-century approaches, such as multilineal evolution, focused on changes specific to individual societies. Most archaeologists work within the framework of multilineal evolution, other contemporary approaches to social change include neoevolutionism, sociobiology, dual inheritance theory, modernisation theory and postindustrial theory. In his seminal 1976 book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins wrote that there are examples of cultural evolution in birds and monkeys. It is our own species that shows what cultural evolution can do. Enlightenment and later thinkers often speculated that societies progressed through stages, in other words, while expecting humankind to show increasing development, theorists looked for what determined the course of human history. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for example, saw social development as an inevitable process and it was assumed that societies start out primitive, perhaps in a state of nature, and could progress toward something resembling industrial Europe. In relation to Scotlands union with England in 1707, several Scottish thinkers pondered the relationship between progress and the affluence brought about by increased trade with England and they understood the changes Scotland was undergoing as involving transition from an agricultural to a mercantile society. Philosophical concepts of progress, such as that of Hegel, developed as well during this period, in France, authors such as Claude Adrien Helvétius and other philosophes were influenced by the Scottish tradition. Later thinkers such as Comte de Saint-Simon developed these ideas, Auguste Comte in particular presented a coherent view of social progress and a new discipline to study it, sociology. These developments took place in a context of wider processes, similarly, effective colonial administration required some degree of understanding of other cultures. Modern civilization, appeared the result of steady progress from a state of barbarism, the second process was the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism, which together allowed and promoted continual revolutions in the means of production. Emerging theories of sociocultural evolution reflected a belief that the changes in Europe brought by the Industrial Revolution and these theories had a common factor, they all agreed that the history of humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path, most likely that of social progress
36.
Quaternary
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Quaternary is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.588 ±0.005 million years ago to the present, the Quaternary Period is divided into two epochs, the Pleistocene and the Holocene. The informal term Late Quaternary refers to the past 0. 5–1.0 million years, the Quaternary Period is typically defined by the cyclic growth and decay of continental ice sheets driven by Milankovitch cycles and the associated climate and environmental changes that occurred. The term Quaternary was proposed by Giovanni Arduino in 1759 for alluvial deposits in the Po River valley in northern Italy and it was introduced by Jules Desnoyers in 1829 for sediments of Frances Seine Basin that seemed clearly to be younger than Tertiary Period rocks. The Quaternary Period follows the Neogene Period and extends to the present, the Quaternary covers the time span of glaciations classified as the Pleistocene, and includes the present interglacial time-period, the Holocene. This places the start of the Quaternary at the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation approximately 2.6 million years ago, Quaternary stratigraphers usually worked with regional subdivisions. From the 1970s, the International Commission on Stratigraphy tried to make a single geologic time scale based on GSSPs, the Quaternary subdivisions were defined based on biostratigraphy instead of paleoclimate. This led to the problem that the base of the Pleistocene was at 1.805 Mya. The ICS then proposed to use of the name Quaternary altogether. The Anthropocene has been proposed as an epoch as a mark of the anthropogenic impact on the global environment starting with the Industrial Revolution. The Anthropocene is not officially designated by the ICS, however, the 2.6 million years of the Quaternary represents the time during which recognizable humans existed. Over this short period, there has been relatively little change in the distribution of the continents due to plate tectonics. The Quaternary geological record is preserved in detail than that for earlier periods. The climate was one of periodic glaciations with continental glaciers moving as far from the poles as 40 degrees latitude, there was a major extinction of large mammals in Northern areas at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch. Many forms such as saber-toothed cats, mammoths, mastodons, glyptodonts, others, including horses, camels and American cheetahs became extinct in North America. Glaciation took place repeatedly during the Quaternary Ice Age – a term coined by Schimper in 1839 that began with the start of the Quaternary about 2.58 Mya and continues to the present-day. In 1821, a Swiss engineer, Ignaz Venetz, presented an article in which he suggested the presence of traces of the passage of a glacier at a distance from the Alps. This idea was initially disputed by another Swiss scientist, Louis Agassiz, a year later, Agassiz raised the hypothesis of a great glacial period that would have had long-reaching general effects
37.
Egyptology
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A practitioner of the discipline is an Egyptologist. In Europe, particularly on the Continent, Egyptology is primarily regarded as being a philological discipline, the first explorers were the ancient Egyptians themselves. Thutmose IV restored the Sphinx and had the dream that inspired his restoration carved on the famous Dream Stele, less than two centuries later, Prince Khaemweset, fourth son of Ramesses II, is famed for identifying and restoring historic buildings, tombs and temples including the pyramid. The Ptolemies were much interested in the work of the ancient Egyptians, the Romans too carried out restoration work in this most ancient of lands. A number of their accounts have survived and offer insights as to conditions in their time periods. Abdul Latif al-Baghdadi, a teacher at Cairos Al-Azhar University in the 13th century, similarly, the 15th-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi wrote detailed accounts of Egyptian antiquities. In the early 17th century, John Greaves measured the pyramids, having inspected the broken Obelisk of Domitian in Rome, then destined for the Earl of Arundels collection in London. In the late 18th century, with Napoleons scholars recording of Egyptian flora, fauna and history, the British captured Egypt from the French and gained the Rosetta Stone. Modern Egyptology is generally perceived as beginning about 1822, egyptologys modern history begins with the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte. The subsequent publication of Description de lÉgypte between 1809 and 1829 made numerous ancient Egyptian source materials available to Europeans for the first time, jean-François Champollion, Thomas Young and Ippolito Rosellini were some of the first Egyptologists of wide acclaim. The German Karl Richard Lepsius was a participant in the investigations of Egypt, mapping, excavating. Champollion announced his general decipherment of the system of Egyptian hieroglyphics for the first time, the Stones decipherment was a very important development of Egyptology. Egyptology became more professional via work of William Matthew Flinders Petrie, Petrie introduced techniques of field preservation, recording, and excavating. Howard Carters expedition brought much acclaim to the field of Egyptology, a tradition of collecting objets-orientales Egyptologists Electronic Forum, version 64. List shows Egyptology societies and Institutes Egyptology at DMOZ Egyptology Books, the University of Memphis Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology. Hawass, Zahi, Brock, Lyla Pinch, eds, Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Egyptologists. Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library Underwood & Underwood Egypt Stereoviews Collection, czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague
38.
Order of St Michael and St George
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It is named in honour of two military saints, St Michael and St George. People are appointed to the Order rather than awarded it, British Ambassadors to foreign nations are regularly appointed as KCMGs or CMGs. It is the award for members of the FCO. The Orders motto is Auspicium melioris ævi and its patron saints, as the name suggests, are St. Michael the Archangel, and St. George, patron saint of England. One of its symbols is that of St Michael trampling over. The third of the aforementioned Orders—which relates to Ireland, no longer fully a part of the United Kingdom—still exists but is in disuse, the last of the Orders on the list, related to India, has also been in disuse since that countrys independence in 1947. In 1864, however, the protectorate ended and the Ionian Islands became a part of Greece, accordingly, numerous Governors-General and Governors feature as recipients of awards in the order. In 1965, the order was open for women, with Evelyn Bark becoming the first CMG, the British Sovereign is the Sovereign of the Order and appoints all other members of the Order. The next-most senior member is the Grand Master, the office was formerly filled by the Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, now, however, Grand Masters are chosen by the Sovereign. Members of the Royal Family who are appointed to the Order do not count towards the limit, the Orders King of Arms is not a member of the College of Arms, like many other heraldic officers. The Usher of the Order is known as the Gentleman Usher of the Blue Rod, he not, unlike his Order of the Garter equivalent. On the left side is a representation of the star, the mantle is bound with two large tassels. The collar, worn only by Knights and Dames Grand Cross, is made of gold and it consists of depictions of crowned lions, Maltese Crosses, and the cyphers SM and SG, all alternately. In the centre are two winged lions, each holding a book and seven arrows, at less important occasions, simpler insignia are used, The star is an insignia used only by Knights and Dames Grand Cross and Knights and Dames Commanders. It is worn pinned to the left breast, the Knight and Dame Grand Cross star includes seven-armed, silver-rayed Maltese Asterisk, with a gold ray in between each pair of arms. The Knight and Dame Commanders star is a slightly smaller eight-pointed silver figure formed by two Maltese Crosses, it does not include any gold rays, in each case, the star bears a red cross of St George. In the centre of the star is a blue ring bearing the motto of the Order. Within the ring is a representation of St Michael trampling on Satan, the badge is the only insignia used by all members of the Order, it is suspended on a blue-crimson-blue ribbon
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Egyptian cities and towns by population