1.
Gauteng
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Gauteng, which means place of gold, is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. It was formed part of the old Transvaal Province after South Africas first all-race elections on 27 April 1994. It was initially named Pretoria–Witwatersrand–Vereeniging and was renamed Gauteng in December 1994, situated in the Highveld, Gauteng is the smallest province in South Africa, accounting for only 1. 5% of the land area. Nevertheless, it is highly urbanised, containing the countrys largest city, Johannesburg, its capital, Pretoria. As of 2015, it has a population of nearly 13.2 million, the name Gauteng is derived from the Sotho name, gauta meaning gold with the locative suffix -eng. There was a thriving industry in the province following the 1886 discovery of gold in Johannesburg. In Sesotho, the name Gauteng was used for Johannesburg and surrounding areas long before it was adopted in 1994 as the name of a province. Gauteng, formerly known as Pretoria–Witwatersrand–Vereeniging, was carved out of the old Transvaal province in 1994, although the terminology PWV, after the discovery of gold in 1886, the region proceeded to become the single largest gold producer in the world and the city of Johannesburg was founded. The older city Pretoria was not subject to the same attention, Pretoria grew at a slower rate and was highly regarded due to its role in the Second Boer War. The Cullinan Diamond which is the largest diamond ever mined was mined near Pretoria in a town called Cullinan in the year 1905. Gauteng has only been documented since the 1800s and as a result. At the Sterkfontein caves, some of the oldest fossils of hominids have been discovered, such as Mrs. Ples, today, the Apartheid Museum stands testament to these struggles in Johannesburg. Gauteng is governed by the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, a 73-person unicameral legislature elected by party-list proportional representation. The most recent election of the legislature was held on 7 May 2014, and the African National Congress won 53. 59% of the vote. The official opposition is the Democratic Alliance, which won 30. 78% of the vote and 23 seats, other parties represented are the Economic Freedom Fighters with eight seats and the Freedom Front Plus and the Inkatha Freedom Party with one seat each. Premier David Makhura of the ANC was elected on 21 May 2014, the Gauteng Division of the High Court of South Africa, which has seats in Pretoria and Johannesburg, is a superior court with general jurisdiction over the province. Johannesburg is also home to the Constitutional Court, South Africas highest court, Gautengs southern border is the Vaal River, which separates it from the Free State. It also borders on North West to the west, Limpopo to the north, Gauteng is the only landlocked province of South Africa without a foreign border
2.
Hominini
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Members of the human clade, that is, the Hominina, including Homo and those species of the australopithecines that arose after the split from the chimpanzees, are called homininans. Not all homininans are directly related to the emergence of early Homo and this is a modern cladogram, For each clade, the cladogram above shows approximately when newer extant clades emerged. Some texts refer to Homonini as the Hominina branch, the subtribe Hominina is the human branch, that is, it contains only the genus Homo. Researchers proposed the taxon Hominini on the basis that the least similar species of a trichotomy should be separated from the other two. The common chimpanzee and the bonobo of the genus Pan are the closest living relatives to humans. All the extinct genera listed to the right are ancestral to, or offshoots of, however, both Orrorin and Sahelanthropus existed around the time of the split, and so may be ancestral to both Pan and Homo. In the proposal of Mann and Weiss, the tribe Hominini includes Pan as well as Homo, Homo and all bipedal apes are referred to the subtribe Hominina, while Pan is assigned to the subtribe Panina. Wood discusses the different views of this taxonomy, the assumption of late hybridization was in particular based on the similarity of the X chromosome in humans and chimpanzees, suggesting a divergence as late as some 4 million years ago. Sahelanthropus tchadensis is an extinct species that lived seven million years ago. Human Timeline – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History
3.
Johannesburg
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Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and is one of the 50 largest urban areas in the world. It is the capital of Gauteng, which is the wealthiest province in South Africa. While Johannesburg is not one of South Africas three capital cities, it is the seat of the Constitutional Court, the city is located in the mineral-rich Witwatersrand range of hills and is the centre of large-scale gold and diamond trade. In 2011, the population of the city of Johannesburg was 4,434,827, in the same year, the population of Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Area was 7,860,781. Some view the surrounding the city of Johannesburg yet more broadly than the metropolitan area, adding Ekurhuleni, West Rand and Lenasia. The land area of the city is large in comparison with those of other major cities, resulting in a moderate population density of 2. The city was established in 1886 following the discovery of gold on what had been a farm, the city is commonly interpreted as the modern day El Dorado due to the extremely large gold deposit found along the Witwatersrand. The name is attributed to one or all of three men involved in the establishment of the city, in ten years, the population was 100,000 inhabitants. A separate city from the late 1970s until the 1990s, Soweto is now part of Johannesburg, Soweto, although eventually incorporated into Johannesburg, had been separated as a residential area for blacks, who were not permitted to live in Johannesburg proper. Lenasia is predominantly populated by English-speaking South Africans of Indian descent, controversy surrounds the origin of the name. There were quite a number of people with the name Johannes who were involved in the history of the city. Among them are the principal clerk attached to the office of the surveyor-general Johannes Rissik, Christiaan Johannes Joubert, another was Stephanus Johannes Paulus Paul Kruger, president of the South African Republic 1883-1900. Johannes Meyer, the first government official in the area is another possibility, precise records for the choice of name were lost. Rissik and Joubert were members of a delegation sent to England to attain mining rights for the area. Joubert had a park in the city named after him and Rissik Street is today a street where the historically important and dilapidated Post Office, since burnt out. The region surrounding Johannesburg was originally inhabited by San people, the Sotho–Tswana practised farming and extensively mined and smelted metals that were available in the area. The most prominent site within Johannesburg is Melville Koppies, which contains an iron smelting furnace, the main Witwatersrand gold reef was discovered in June 1884 on the farm Vogelstruisfontein by Jan Gerritse Bantjes that triggered the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the start of Johannesburg in 1886. The discovery of gold rapidly attracted people to the area, making necessary a name, Johannes Meyer, the first government official in the area is another possibility
4.
South Africa
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South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, the remaining population consists of Africas largest communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a variety of cultures, languages. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the recognition of 11 official languages. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup détat, however, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a role in the countrys recent history. The National Party imposed apartheid in 1948, institutionalising previous racial segregation, since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the countrys democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is often referred to as the Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural diversity. The World Bank classifies South Africa as an economy. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed, nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence. The name South Africa is derived from the geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, since 1961 the long form name in English has been the Republic of South Africa. In Dutch the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika, since 1994 the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning south, is a name for South Africa. South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human fossil sites in the world, extensive fossil remains have been recovered from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has termed the Cradle of Humankind
5.
Sterkfontein
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The archaeological sites of Swartkrans and Kromdraai are in the same area. Sterkfontein is a South African National Heritage Site and was declared a World Heritage Site in 2000. The Sterkfontein Caves are also home to numerous wild African species including Belonogaster petiolata, numerous early hominin remains have been found at the site over the last few decades. These have been attributed to Australopithecus, early Homo and Paranthropus, modern excavation of the caves began in the late 1890s by limestone miners who noticed the fossils and brought them to the attention of scientists. It was not until 1936 that students of Professor Raymond Dart, in 1936, the Sterkfontein caves yielded the first adult Australopithecine, substantially strengthening Raymond Darts claim that the skull known as the Taung child was a human ancestor. There was a pause in excavation during World War II, in 1947 he found the almost complete skull of an adult female A. africanus. Robert Broom initially named the skull Plesianthropus transvaalensis, but it became known by its nickname. Mrs Ples is now defined as a member of A. africanus, in 1997, a near complete skeleton of a second species of Australopithecus was found in the caves by Ronald J. Clarke, extraction of the remains from the surrounding breccia is ongoing. The skeleton was named Little Foot, since the first parts found were the bones of a foot, excavations continue to this day and finds now total some 500 hominids, making Sterkfontein one of the richest site in the world for early hominids. The Member 4 deposits containing the Australopithecus africanus fossils have been dated to between 2.6 and 2.0 Ma, with the Sts5 Mrs Ples fossil estimated to date to between 2. 05-2. It is estimated to be around 2. 6-2.2 Ma based on a combination of uranium-lead dating and palaeomagnetic analysis and belongs to a species of australopith. In contrast, surface exposure dating of sediments indicate that skeleton StW573 has an age of approximately 4 million years. While the flowstone dated in the dating has been shown to have formed later than the fossil. The palaeomagnetic analysis remains the most credible age estimate based on the current data as it included work on both sediments and speleothem, a slightly younger deposit dated to between 1.8 to 1.5 Mya has revealed the remains of a specimen of early Homo. StW53 has been described as similar to Homo habilis or as a new species Homo gautengensis. No stone tools were associated with the fossil but StW53 itself has evidence for stone tool cut-marks, Member 5 contains Oldowan and Acheulian stone tools as well as specimens of early Homo and Paranthropus and is dated to between 1.6 and 1.1 Mya. Cradle of Humankind List of caves in South Africa Muldersdrift About Sterkfontein Caves
6.
Cooper's Cave
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Coopers Cave is a series of fossil-bearing breccia filled cavities. Coopers Cave has provided a tool assemblage that has been provisionally assigned to the Developed Olduwan. Coopers is arguably the second richest early stone tool site in the Cradle of Humankind area, coopers is a series of breccia-filled dolomitic caves that formed in fissures along geological faults. Coopers D has been dated by uranium-lead methods to between 1.5 and 1.4 million years ago, coopers A, based on the animals recovered, is thought to be about the same age
7.
Taung Child
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The Taung Child is the fossilised skull of a young Australopithecus africanus. It was discovered in 1924 by quarrymen working for the Northern Lime Company in Taung, Raymond Dart described it as a new species in the journal Nature in 1925. The Taung skull is in repository at the University of Witwatersrand, dean Falk, a specialist in brain evolution, has called it the most important anthropological fossil of the twentieth century. In the early 20th century, the workers at quarries in southern Africa routinely uncovered fossils from the tufa formations they mined. Many were of extinct fauna, which included baboons and other primates, the director gave it to his son, Pat Izod, who displayed it on the mantle over the fireplace. Josephine Salmons was the first female student of Dart, an anatomist at the University of Witwatersrand, Salmons was permitted to take the fossilised skull and presented it to Dart, who also recognised it as a significant find. Dart asked the company to any more interesting fossilised skulls that should be unearthed. Young sent some of the back to Dart. The paper appeared in the 7 February 1925 issue of the journal Nature, the fossil was soon nicknamed the Taung Child. Scientists were initially reluctant to accept that the Taung Child and the new genus Australopithecus were ancestral to modern humans, in the issue of Nature immediately following the one in which Darts paper was published, several authorities in British paleoanthropology criticized Darts conclusion. Grafton Elliot Smith stated that he needed more evidence – and a picture of the skull – before he could judge the significance of the new fossil. Arthur Smith Woodward dismissed the Taung Child as having little bearing on the issue of whether the ancestors of man are to be sought in Asia or Africa. These critiques became more fervent a few months later, will satisfy geologists that this claim is preposterous. There were several reasons why it took decades for the field to accept Darts claim that Australopithecus africanus was in the line of descent. For one, the British scientific establishment was at the time enamored with the hoax Piltdown Man, expecting human ancestors to have evolved a large brain very early, they found that the Taung Childs small brain and human-like teeth made it an unlikely ancestor to modern humans. Until the 1940s, most anthropologists also believed that humans had evolved in Asia, and despite accepting that modern humans had emerged through evolution, a large number of anthropologists believed that the genus Homo had split from the great apes as much as 30 million years ago. They therefore felt uneasy about accepting that humans had had a small-brained, solly Zuckerman, who had studied anatomy under Raymond Dart in South Africa, concluded as early as 1928 that Australopithecus was little more than an ape. He and a team carried out further studies of the Australopithecine family in the 1940s and 1950s
8.
Australopithecus sediba
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Australopithecus sediba is a species of Australopithecus of the early Pleistocene, identified based on fossil remains dated to about 2 million years ago. The fossils were found together at the bottom of the Malapa Cave, where they fell to their death. Over 220 fragments from the species have recovered to date. MH1 is disarticulated and 34% complete if skeletal elements known to be in a block are included while MH2 is 45. 6% complete. Australopithecus sediba may have lived in savannas but ate fruit and other foods from the similar to modern-day savanna chimpanzees. The conditions in which the individuals were buried and fossilized were extraordinary, the first specimen of A. sediba was found by paleoanthropologist Lee Bergers nine-year-old son, Matthew, on August 15,2008. While exploring near his fathers dig site in the hills north of Johannesburg, on the Malapa Nature Reserve. The boy alerted his father to the find, who could not believe what he saw — a hominid clavicle, upon turning the block over, sticking out of the back of the rock was a mandible with a tooth, a canine, sticking out. And I almost died, he later recalled, the fossil turned out to belong to a 4 ft 2 in juvenile male, whose skull was discovered in March 2009 by Bergers team. The find was announced to the public on April 8,2010, also found at the Malapa archeological site were a variety of animal fossils, including saber-toothed cats, mongooses, and antelopes. Berger and geologist Paul Dirks speculated that the animals might have fallen into a deep 100–150-foot death-trap, the bodies may have then been swept into a pool of water with a sandy bottom and rich with lime, allowing the remains to become fossilized. The fossil was dated using a combination of palaeomagnetism and uranium-lead dating which showed that the fossils are no older than ~2.0 Ma, the presence of animal species which became extinct at ~1.5 Ma indicates the deposit is no younger than 1.5 Ma. The sediments have a normal polarity and the only major period between 2.0 and 1.5 Ma when this occurred is the Olduvai sub-Chron between 1.95 and 1.78 Ma. Accordingly, the fossils were dated to ~1.95 Ma. Recent dating of a capping flowstone demonstrated this was not possible, however, the cusp spacing is more like Australopithecus. The femur and tibia are fragmentary, but the foot combines an advanced anklebone combined with a primitive heel and its cranial capacity is estimated at around 420–450 cm3, about one-third that of modern humans. A. sediba had a modern hand, whose precision grip suggests it might have been another tool-making Australopithecus. Evidence of the precision gripping and stone tool production can be seen from Homo-like features such as having a long thumb, the nearly complete wrist and hand of an adult female from Malapa, South Africa presents Australopithecus-like features, such as a strong flexor apparatus associated with arboreal locomotion
9.
Cave painting
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Cave paintings are painted drawings on cave walls or ceilings, mainly of prehistoric origin, to some 40,000 years ago in Eurasia. The exact purpose of the Paleolithic cave paintings is not known, evidence suggests that they were not merely decorations of living areas since the caves in which they have been found do not have signs of ongoing habitation. They are also located in areas of caves that are not easily accessible. Some theories hold that cave paintings may have been a way of communicating with others, the paintings are remarkably similar around the world, with animals being common subjects that give the most impressive images. Humans mainly appear as images of hands, mostly hand stencils made by blowing pigment on a hand held to the wall. The earliest known cave paintings/drawings of animals are at least 35,000 years old and are found in Pettakere cave on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, previously it was believed that the earliest paintings were in Europe. The earliest non-figurative rock art dates back to approximately 40,000 years ago, nearly 340 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art from prehistoric times. But subsequent technology has made it possible to date the paintings by sampling the pigment itself, the choice of subject matter can also indicate chronology. For instance, the reindeer depicted in the Spanish cave of Cueva de las Monedas places the drawings in the last Ice Age. The oldest date given to a cave painting is now a pig that has a minimum age of 35,400 years old at Pettakere cave in Sulawesi. Indonesian and Australian scientists have dated other non-figurative paintings on the walls to be approximately 40,000 years old, the method they used to confirm this was dating the age of the stalactites that formed over the top of the paintings. The art is similar in style and method to that of the Indonesian caves as there were also hand stencils and this date coincides with the earliest known evidence for Homo sapiens in Europe. Because of the cave arts age, some scientists have conjectured that the paintings may have made by Neanderthals. The earliest known European figurative cave paintings are those of Chauvet Cave in France and these paintings date to earlier than 30,000 BCE according to radiocarbon dating. Some researchers believe the drawings are too advanced for this era, the radiocarbon dates from these samples show that there were two periods of creation in Chauvet,35,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago. In 2009, cavers discovered drawings in Coliboaia Cave in Romania, an initial dating puts the age of an image in the same range as Chauvet, about 32,000 years old. Some caves probably continued to be painted over a period of thousands of years. This was created roughly between 10,000 and 5,500 years ago, and painted in rock shelters under cliffs or shallow caves, though individual figures are less naturalistic, they are grouped in coherent grouped compositions to a much greater degree
10.
Armenia
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Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a sovereign state in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia. The Republic of Armenia constitutes only one-tenth of historical Armenia, Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. Urartu was established in 860 BC and by the 6th century BC it was replaced by the Satrapy of Armenia, in the 1st century BC the Kingdom of Armenia reached its height under Tigranes the Great. Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion, in between the late 3rd century to early years of the 4th century, the state became the first Christian nation. The official date of adoption of Christianity is 301 AD. The ancient Armenian kingdom was split between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires around the early 5th century, under the Bagratuni dynasty, the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia was restored in the 9th century. Declining due to the wars against the Byzantines, the fell in 1045. An Armenian principality and later a kingdom Cilician Armenia was located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea between the 11th and 14th centuries. By the 19th century, Eastern Armenia had been conquered by the Russian Empire, during World War I, Armenians living in their ancestral lands in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated in the Armenian Genocide. By 1920, the state was incorporated into the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, in 1936, the Transcaucasian state was dissolved, transforming its constituent states, including the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, into full Union republics. The modern Republic of Armenia became independent in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Armenia recognises the Armenian Apostolic Church, the worlds oldest national church, as the countrys primary religious establishment. The unique Armenian alphabet was invented by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 AD, Armenia is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Council of Europe and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Armenia supports the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which was proclaimed in 1991, the native Armenian name for the country is Հայք. The name in the Middle Ages was extended to Հայաստան, by addition of the Persian suffix -stan, the further origin of the name is uncertain. It is also postulated that the name Hay comes from one of the two confederated, Hittite vassal states—the Ḫayaša-Azzi. The exonym Armenia is attested in the Old Persian Behistun Inscription as Armina, the ancient Greek terms Ἀρμενία and Ἀρμένιοι are first mentioned by Hecataeus of Miletus. Xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. According to the histories of both Moses of Chorene and Michael Chamchian, Armenia derives from the name of Aram, a descendant of Hayk
11.
Areni-1 cave
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The Areni-1 cave complex is located near the Areni village in southern Armenia along the Arpa River. In 2010, it was announced that the earliest known shoe was found at the site, in January 2011, the earliest known winery in the world was announced to have been found. Also in 2011, the discovery of a straw skirt dating to 3900 BC was reported, in 2009, the oldest brain was discovered
12.
Austria
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Austria, officially the Republic of Austria, is a federal republic and a landlocked country of over 8.7 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, the territory of Austria covers 83,879 km2. The terrain is mountainous, lying within the Alps, only 32% of the country is below 500 m. The majority of the population speaks local Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, other local official languages are Hungarian, Burgenland Croatian, and Slovene. The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty, from the time of the Reformation, many northern German princes, resenting the authority of the Emperor, used Protestantism as a flag of rebellion. Following Napoleons defeat, Prussia emerged as Austrias chief competitor for rule of a greater Germany, Austrias defeat by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, cleared the way for Prussia to assert control over the rest of Germany. In 1867, the empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary, Austria was thus the first to go to war in the July Crisis, which would ultimately escalate into World War I. The First Austrian Republic was established in 1919, in 1938 Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. This lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, after which Germany was occupied by the Allies, in 1955, the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, ending the occupation. In the same year, the Austrian Parliament created the Declaration of Neutrality which declared that the Second Austrian Republic would become permanently neutral, today, Austria is a parliamentary representative democracy comprising nine federal states. The capital and largest city, with a population exceeding 1.7 million, is Vienna, other major urban areas of Austria include Graz, Linz, Salzburg and Innsbruck. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world, with a nominal per capita GDP of $43,724, the country has developed a high standard of living and in 2014 was ranked 21st in the world for its Human Development Index. Austria has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, joined the European Union in 1995, Austria also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro currency in 1999. The German name for Austria, Österreich, meant eastern realm in Old High German, and is cognate with the word Ostarrîchi and this word is probably a translation of Medieval Latin Marchia orientalis into a local dialect. Austria was a prefecture of Bavaria created in 976, the word Austria is a Latinisation of the German name and was first recorded in the 12th century. Accordingly, Norig would essentially mean the same as Ostarrîchi and Österreich, the Celtic name was eventually Latinised to Noricum after the Romans conquered the area that encloses most of modern-day Austria, around 15 BC. Noricum later became a Roman province in the mid-first century AD, heers hypothesis is not accepted by linguists. Settled in ancient times, the Central European land that is now Austria was occupied in pre-Roman times by various Celtic tribes, the Celtic kingdom of Noricum was later claimed by the Roman Empire and made a province