1.
Archaeology
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Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. In North America, archaeology is considered a sub-field of anthropology, archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology as a field is distinct from the discipline of palaeontology, Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world, Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time. The discipline involves surveying, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past, in broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Nonetheless, today, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, the science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts. Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, in Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Antiquarians, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, one of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other monuments in southern England. He was also ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings and he attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture, costume, and shield-shapes. Excavations were also carried out in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and even human shapes, however, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard, the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were overlooked. The father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington and he undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798, funded by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, one of the major achievements of 19th century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy. The idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton, the application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites
2.
Anthropology
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Anthropology is the study of various aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology and cultural anthropology study the norms and values of societies, linguistic anthropology studies how language affects social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the development of humans. The abstract noun anthropology is first attested in reference to history and its present use first appeared in Renaissance Germany in the works of Magnus Hundt and Otto Casmann. Their New Latin anthropologia derived from the forms of the Greek words ánthrōpos and lógos. It began to be used in English, possibly via French anthropologie, various short-lived organizations of anthropologists had already been formed. The Société Ethnologique de Paris, the first to use Ethnology, was formed in 1839 and its members were primarily anti-slavery activists. When slavery was abolished in France in 1848 the Société was abandoned and these anthropologists of the times were liberal, anti-slavery, and pro-human-rights activists. Anthropology and many other current fields are the results of the comparative methods developed in the earlier 19th century. For them, the publication of Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species was the epiphany of everything they had begun to suspect, Darwin himself arrived at his conclusions through comparison of species he had seen in agronomy and in the wild. Darwin and Wallace unveiled evolution in the late 1850s, there was an immediate rush to bring it into the social sciences. When he read Darwin he became a convert to Transformisme. His definition now became the study of the group, considered as a whole, in its details. Broca, being what today would be called a neurosurgeon, had taken an interest in the pathology of speech and he wanted to localize the difference between man and the other animals, which appeared to reside in speech. He discovered the speech center of the brain, today called Brocas area after him. The title was translated as The Anthropology of Primitive Peoples. The last two volumes were published posthumously, Waitz defined anthropology as the science of the nature of man. By nature he meant matter animated by the Divine breath, i. e. he was an animist and he stresses that the data of comparison must be empirical, gathered by experimentation
3.
Burrow
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A burrow is a hole or tunnel excavated into the ground by an animal to create a space suitable for habitation, temporary refuge, or as a byproduct of locomotion. Burrows provide a form of shelter against predation and exposure to the elements and can be found in nearly every biome, a wide variety of vertebrates construct or use burrows in many different types of substrate and can range widely in complexity. Mammals are perhaps most well known for burrowing, especially Insectivora like the voracious mole, the rabbit, a member of the family Lagomorpha, is a well-known burrower. There are estimates that a single burrow can occupy a full cubic metre. Great gerbils live in groups in extensive burrows, which can be seen on satellite images. Even the unoccupied burrows can remain visible in the landscape for years, the burrows are distributed regularly, although the occupied burrows appear to be clustered in space. Even Carnivora like the meerkat, and marsupials, are burrowers, the largest burrowing animal is probably the polar bear when it makes its maternity den in snow or earth. Burrows by birds are made in soft soils, some penguins. The Magellanic penguin is an example, constructing burrows along coastal Patagonian regions of Chile, other burrowing birds are puffins, kingfishers, and bee-eaters. Kangaroo mice construct burrows in fine sand, examples of vertebrate burrowing animals include a number of mammals, amphibians, fish, reptiles, and birds. Scabies mites construct their burrows in the skin of the animal or human. Some sea urchins and clams can burrow into rock, the burrows produced by invertebrate animals can be filled actively or passively. Dwelling burrows which remain open during occupation by an organism are filled passively, actively filled burrows, on the other hand, are filled with material by the burrowing organism itself. The establishment of an invertebrate burrow often involves the soaking of surrounding sediment in mucus in order to prevent collapse, examples of burrowing invertebrates are insects, spiders, sea urchins, crustaceans, clams and worms. Burrows are also preserved in the fossil record as a type of trace fossil. Holt Maternity den Sett- a network of badger tunnels
4.
Indigenous Australians
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Indigenous Australians are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia, descended from groups that existed in Australia and surrounding islands prior to European colonisation. In present-day Australia these groups are divided into local communities. At the time of initial European settlement, over 250 languages were spoken, it is estimated that 120 to 145 of these remain in use. Aboriginal people today mostly speak English, with Aboriginal phrases and words being added to create Australian Aboriginal English, a population collapse following European settlement, and a smallpox epidemic spreading three years after the arrival of Europeans may have caused a massive and early depopulation. Since 1995, the Australian Aboriginal Flag and the Torres Strait Islander Flag have been among the flags of Australia. The word aboriginal has been in the English language since at least the 16th century, to mean, first or earliest known and it comes from the Latin word aborigines, derived from ab and origo. The word was used in Australia to describe its indigenous peoples as early as 1789 and it soon became capitalised and employed as the common name to refer to all Indigenous Australians. Strictly speaking, Aborigine is the noun and Aboriginal the adjectival form, however, use of either Aborigine or Aboriginal to refer to individuals has acquired negative connotations in some sectors of the community, and it is generally regarded as insensitive and even offensive. The more acceptable and correct expression is Aboriginal Australians or Aboriginal people, the term Indigenous Australians, which also includes Torres Strait Islander peoples, has found increasing acceptance, particularly since the 1980s. The broad term Aboriginal Australians includes many groups that often identify under names from local Indigenous languages. Anindilyakwa on Groote Eylandt off Arnhem Land, Palawah in Tasmania and these larger groups may be further subdivided, for example, Anangu recognises localised subdivisions such as Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra, Luritja and Antikirinya. It is estimated that prior to the arrival of British settlers, the Torres Strait Islanders possess a heritage and cultural history distinct from Aboriginal traditions. The eastern Torres Strait Islanders in particular are related to the Papuan peoples of New Guinea, accordingly, they are not generally included under the designation Aboriginal Australians. This has been another factor in the promotion of the inclusive term Indigenous Australians. Six percent of Indigenous Australians identify themselves fully as Torres Strait Islanders, a further 4% of Indigenous Australians identify themselves as having both Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal heritage. The Torres Strait Islands comprise over 100 islands which were annexed by Queensland in 1879, eddie Mabo was from Mer or Murray Island in the Torres Strait, which the famous Mabo decision of 1992 involved. The term blacks has been used to refer to Indigenous Australians since European settlement, while originally related to skin colour, the term is used today to indicate Aboriginal heritage or culture in general and refers to people of any skin pigmentation. In the 1970s, many Aboriginal activists, such as Gary Foley, proudly embraced the term black, the book included interviews with several members of the Aboriginal community including Robert Jabanungga reflecting on contemporary Aboriginal culture
5.
Plough
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A plough or plow is a tool or farm implement used in farming for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting to loosen or turn the soil. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by working animals such as horses or cattle, a plough may be made of wood, iron, or steel frame with an attached blade or stick used to cut the earth. It has been an instrument for most of recorded history. The plough represents one of the major agricultural inventions in human history, as the plough is drawn through the soil it creates long trenches of fertile soil called furrows. In modern use, a field is typically left to dry out. Ploughing and cultivating a soil homogenises and modifies the upper 12 to 25 cm of the soil to form a plough layer, in many soils, the majority of fine plant feeder roots can be found in the topsoil or plough layer. Ploughs were initially human-powered, but the process became more efficient once animals were pressed into service. The first animal-powered ploughs were undoubtedly pulled by oxen, and later in areas by horses and mules. In industrialised countries, the first mechanical means of pulling a plough were steam-powered, modern competitions take place for ploughing enthusiasts like the National Ploughing Championships in Ireland. By not ploughing, beneficial fungi and microbial life can develop that will bring air into the soil, retain water. A healthy soil full of active fungi and microbial life, combined with a crop, suppresses weeds and pests naturally. Thus the intensive use of water-, oil- and energy hungry irrigation, fertilisers, cultivated land becomes more fertile and productive over time, while tilled land tends to go down in productivity over time due to erosion and the removal of nutrients with every harvest. Proponents of permaculture claim that it is the way of farming that can be maintained when fossil fuel runs out. The term plough or plow, as used today, was not common until 1700, the modern word plough comes from Old Norse plógr, and therefore Germanic, but it appears relatively late, and is thought to be a loanword from one of the north Italic languages. Words with the same root appeared with related meanings, in Raetic plaumorati wheeled heavy plough, and in Latin plaustrum farm cart, plōstrum, plōstellum cart, and plōxenum, plōximum cart box. The word must have referred to the wheeled heavy plough. Orel tentatively attaches plough to a PIE stem *blōkó-, which gave Armenian peɫem to dig and Welsh bwlch crack, on modern ploughs and some older ploughs, the mouldboard is separate from the share and runner, so these parts can be replaced without replacing the mouldboard. Abrasion eventually destroys all parts of a plough that come into contact with the soil, digging sticks, hoes, and mattocks were not invented in any one place, and hoe-cultivation must have been common everywhere agriculture was practiced
6.
Tool
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A tool is any physical item that can be used to achieve a goal, especially if the item is not consumed in the process. Tool use by humans dates back millions of years, and other animals are known to employ simple tools. Tools that are used in fields or activities may have different designations such as instrument, utensil, implement, machine, device. The set of tools needed to achieve a goal is equipment, the knowledge of constructing, obtaining and using tools is technology. Anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind, because tools are used extensively by both humans and wild chimpanzees, it is widely assumed that the first routine use of tools took place prior to the divergence between the two species. These early tools, however, were made of perishable materials such as sticks. Stone artifacts only date back to about 2.5 million years ago, however, a 2010 study suggests the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis ate meat by carving animal carcasses with stone implements. This finding pushes back the earliest known use of tools among hominins to about 3.4 million years ago. Finds of actual tools date back at least 2.6 million years in Ethiopia, one of the earliest distinguishable stone tool forms is the hand axe. Up until recently, weapons found in digs were the tools of “early man” that were studied. Now, more tools are recognized as culturally and historically relevant, as well as hunting, other activities required tools such as preparing food, “…nutting, leatherworking, grain harvesting and woodworking…” Included in this group are “flake stone tools. “Man the hunter” as the catalyst for Hominin change has been questioned, based on marks on the bones at archaeological sites, it is now more evident that pre-humans were scavenging off of other predators carcasses rather than killing their own food. Mechanical devices experienced an expansion in their use in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome with the systematic employment of new energy sources. Their use expanded through the Dark Ages with the addition of windmills, machine tools occasioned a surge in producing new tools in the industrial revolution. Advocates of nanotechnology expect a similar surge as tools become microscopic in size, one can classify tools according to their basic functions, Cutting and edge tools, such as the knife, scythe or sickle, are wedge-shaped implements that produce a shearing force along a narrow face. Ideally, the edge of the needs to be harder than the material being cut or else the blade will become dulled with repeated use. But even resilient tools will require periodic sharpening, which is the process of removing deformation wear from the edge, other examples of cutting tools include gouges and drill bits. Moving tools move large and tiny items, many are levers which give the user a mechanical advantage
7.
Ethiopia
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Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north and northeast, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south. With nearly 100 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world and it occupies a total area of 1,100,000 square kilometres, and its capital and largest city is Addis Ababa. Some of the oldest evidence for modern humans has been found in Ethiopia. It is widely considered as the region from modern humans first set out for the Middle East. According to linguists, the first Afroasiatic-speaking populations settled in the Horn region during the ensuing Neolithic era, tracing its roots to the 2nd millennium BC, Ethiopia was a monarchy for most of its history. During the first centuries AD, the Kingdom of Aksum maintained a unified civilization in the region, subsequently, many African nations adopted the colors of Ethiopias flag following their independence. It was the first independent African member of the 20th-century League of Nations, Ethiopias ancient Geez script, also known as Ethiopic, is one of the oldest alphabets still in use in the world. The Ethiopian calendar, which is seven years and three months behind the Gregorian calendar, co-exists alongside the Borana calendar. A slight majority of the population adheres to Christianity, while around a third follows Islam, the country is the site of the Migration to Abyssinia and the oldest Muslim settlement in Africa at Negash. A substantial population of Ethiopian Jews, known as Bete Israel, resided in Ethiopia until the 1980s, Ethiopia is a multilingual nation with around 80 ethnolinguistic groups, the four largest of which are the Oromiffa, Amhara, Somali, and Tigrayans. Most people in the country speak Afroasiatic languages of the Cushitic or Semitic branches, additionally, Omotic languages are spoken by ethnic minority groups inhabiting the southern regions. Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken by the nations Nilotic ethnic minorities. Ethiopia is the place of origin for the coffee bean which originated from the place called Kefa and it is a land of natural contrasts, with its vast fertile West, jungles, and numerous rivers, and the worlds hottest settlement of Dallol in its north. The Ethiopian Highlands are Africas largest continuous mountain ranges, and Sof Omar Caves contain Africas largest cave, Ethiopia has the most UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Africa. Ethiopia is one of the members of the UN, the Group of 24, the Non-Aligned Movement, G-77. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ethiopia suffered from civil wars, the country has begun to recover recently however, and now has the largest economy in East Africa and Central Africa. According to Global Fire Power, Ethiopia has the 42nd most powerful military in the world, the origin of the word Ethiopia is uncertain
8.
Amharic
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Amharic is an Afro-Asiatic language of the Semitic branch. It is spoken as a mother tongue by the Amhara in Ethiopia, the language serves as the official working language of Ethiopia, and is also the official or working language of several of the states within the federal system. Amharic is the second-most widely spoken Semitic language in the world after Arabic and it is written using Amharic Fidel, ፊደል, which grew out of the Geez abugida—called, in Ethiopian Semitic languages, ፊደል fidel and አቡጊዳ abugida. There is no agreed way of transliterating Amharic into Roman characters, the Amharic examples in the sections below use one system that is common, though not universal, among linguists specializing in Ethiopian Semitic languages. Amharic is spoken by 22 million native speakers in Ethiopia and 15 million secondary speakers in Ethiopia, additionally,3 million emigrants outside of Ethiopia speak the language. Most of the Ethiopian Jewish communities in Ethiopia and Israel speak Amharic, in Washington DC, Amharic became one of the six non-English languages in the Language Access Act of 2004, which allows government services and education in Amharic. Furthermore, Amharic is considered a language by the Rastafari religion and is widely used among its followers worldwide. It is the most widely spoken language in the Horn of Africa, the Amharic ejective consonants correspond to the Proto-Semitic emphatic consonants, usually transcribed with a dot below the letter. The consonant and vowel tables give these symbols in parentheses where they differ from the standard IPA symbols, the Amharic script is an abugida, and the graphemes of the Amharic writing system are called fidel. Each character represents a sequence, but the basic shape of each character is determined by the consonant. Some consonant phonemes are written by more than one series of characters, /ʔ/, /s/, /sʼ/ and this is because these fidel originally represented distinct sounds, but phonological changes merged them. The citation form for each series is the form, i. e. the first column of the fidel. The Amharic script is included in Unicode, and glyphs are included in fonts available with major operating systems, as in most other Ethiopian Semitic languages, gemination is contrastive in Amharic. That is, consonant length can distinguish words from one another, for example, alä he said, allä there is, yǝmätall he hits, gemination is not indicated in Amharic orthography, but Amharic readers typically do not find this to be a problem. This property of the system is analogous to the vowels of Arabic and Hebrew or the tones of many Bantu languages. Punctuation includes the following, ፠ section mark ፡ word separator ። full stop ፣ comma ፤ semicolon ፥ colon ፦ Preface colon, question mark ፨ paragraph separator Simple Amharic sentences One may construct simple Amharic sentences by using a subject and a predicate. Here are a few sentences, ኢትዮጵያ አፍሪቃ ውስጥ ናት ʾItyop̣p̣ya ʾAfriqa wǝsṭ nat Ethiopia is in Africa. Lǝǧu is the boy The boy is asleep, አየሩ ደስ ይላል Ayyäru däss yǝlall
9.
Semitic language
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The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family originating in the Middle East. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History, the most widely spoken Semitic languages today are Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Aramaic and Maltese. Among them are the Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script and the only Semitic language to be an official language of the European Union. The Semitic languages are notable for their nonconcatenative morphology and that is, word roots are not themselves syllables or words, but instead are isolated sets of consonants. Words are composed out of not so much by adding prefixes or suffixes. For example, in Arabic, the root meaning write has the form k-t-b, the similarity of the Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic languages was accepted by Jewish and Islamic scholars since medieval times. Almost two centuries later, Hiob Ludolf described the similarities between these three languages and the Ethiopian Semitic languages, however, neither scholar named this grouping as Semitic. Viewed from this too, with respect to the alphabet used. Previously these languages had been known as the Oriental languages in European literature. In the 19th century, Semitic became the name, however. There are several locations proposed as sites for prehistoric origins of Semitic-speaking peoples, Mesopotamia, The Levant, Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula. Both the Near East and North Africa saw an influx of Muslim Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula, followed later by non-Semitic Muslim Iranian and Turkic peoples. The Arabs spread their Central Semitic language to North Africa where it gradually replaced Coptic and many Berber languages, with the patronage of the caliphs and the prestige of its liturgical status, Arabic rapidly became one of the worlds main literary languages. Its spread among the masses took much longer, however, as many of the populations outside the Arabian Peninsula only gradually abandoned their languages in favour of Arabic. As Bedouin tribes settled in conquered areas, it became the language of not only central Arabia, but also Yemen, the Fertile Crescent. Most of the Maghreb followed, particularly in the wake of the Banu Hilals incursion in the 11th century, and Arabic became the native language of many inhabitants of al-Andalus. After the collapse of the Nubian kingdom of Dongola in the 14th century, Arabic began to spread south of Egypt into modern Sudan, soon after, the Beni Ḥassān brought Arabization to Mauritania. Meanwhile, Semitic languages were diversifying in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where, under heavy Cushitic influence, they split into a number of languages, including Amharic, Arabic languages and dialects are currently the native languages of majorities from Mauritania to Oman, and from Iraq to the Sudan
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