Rail transport
Rail transport is a means of transferring of passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails known as tracks. It is commonly referred to as train transport. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles run on a prepared flat surface, rail vehicles are directionally guided by the tracks on which they run. Tracks consist of steel rails, installed on ties and ballast, on which the rolling stock fitted with metal wheels, moves. Other variations are possible, such as slab track, where the rails are fastened to a concrete foundation resting on a prepared subsurface. Rolling stock in a rail transport system encounters lower frictional resistance than road vehicles, so passenger and freight cars can be coupled into longer trains; the operation is carried out by a railway company, providing transport between train stations or freight customer facilities. Power is provided by locomotives which either draw electric power from a railway electrification system or produce their own power by diesel engines.
Most tracks are accompanied by a signalling system. Railways are a safe land transport system. Railway transport is capable of high levels of passenger and cargo utilization and energy efficiency, but is less flexible and more capital-intensive than road transport, when lower traffic levels are considered; the oldest known, man/animal-hauled railways date back to the 6th century BC in Greece. Rail transport commenced in mid 16th century in Germany in the form of horse-powered funiculars and wagonways. Modern rail transport commenced with the British development of the steam locomotives in the early 19th century, thus the railway system in Great Britain is the oldest in the world. Built by George Stephenson and his son Robert's company Robert Stephenson and Company, the Locomotion No. 1 is the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. George Stephenson built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use only the steam locomotives all the time, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which opened in 1830.
With steam engines, one could construct mainline railways, which were a key component of the Industrial Revolution. Railways reduced the costs of shipping, allowed for fewer lost goods, compared with water transport, which faced occasional sinking of ships; the change from canals to railways allowed for "national markets" in which prices varied little from city to city. The spread of the railway network and the use of railway timetables, led to the standardisation of time in Britain based on Greenwich Mean Time. Prior to this, major towns and cities varied their local time relative to GMT; the invention and development of the railway in the United Kingdom was one of the most important technological inventions of the 19th century. The world's first underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway, opened in 1863. In the 1880s, electrified trains were introduced, leading to electrification of tramways and rapid transit systems. Starting during the 1940s, the non-electrified railways in most countries had their steam locomotives replaced by diesel-electric locomotives, with the process being complete by the 2000s.
During the 1960s, electrified high-speed railway systems were introduced in Japan and in some other countries. Many countries are in the process of replacing diesel locomotives with electric locomotives due to environmental concerns, a notable example being Switzerland, which has electrified its network. Other forms of guided ground transport outside the traditional railway definitions, such as monorail or maglev, have been tried but have seen limited use. Following a decline after World War II due to competition from cars, rail transport has had a revival in recent decades due to road congestion and rising fuel prices, as well as governments investing in rail as a means of reducing CO2 emissions in the context of concerns about global warming; the history of rail transport began in the 6th century BC in Ancient Greece. It can be divided up into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of track material and motive power used. Evidence indicates that there was 6 to 8.5 km long Diolkos paved trackway, which transported boats across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece from around 600 BC.
Wheeled vehicles pulled by men and animals ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element, preventing the wagons from leaving the intended route. The Diolkos was in use for over 650 years, until at least the 1st century AD; the paved trackways were later built in Roman Egypt. In 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug, a funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Fortress in Austria; the line used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope and was operated by human or animal power, through a treadwheel. The line still exists and is operational, although in updated form and is the oldest operational railway. Wagonways using wooden rails, hauled by horses, started appearing in the 1550s to facilitate the transport of ore tubs to and from mines, soon became popular in Europe; such an operation was illustrated in Germany in 1556 by Georgius Agricola in his work De re metallica. This line used "Hund" carts with unflanged wheels running on wooden planks and a vertical pin on the truck fitting into the gap between the planks to keep it going the right way.
The miners called the wagons Hunde from the noise. There are many references to their use in central Europe in the 16th century; such a transport system was used by German miners at Cal
Ranch
A ranch is an area of land, including various structures, given to the practice of ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool. The word most applies to livestock-raising operations in Mexico, the Western United States and Western Canada, though there are ranches in other areas. People who own or operate a ranch are called cattlemen, or stockgrowers. Ranching is a method used to raise less common livestock such as elk, American bison or ostrich and alpaca. Ranches consist of large areas, but may be of nearly any size. In the western United States, many ranches are a combination of owned land supplemented by grazing leases on land under the control of the federal Bureau of Land Management or the United States Forest Service. If the ranch includes arable or irrigated land, the ranch may engage in a limited amount of farming, raising crops for feeding the animals, such as hay and feed grains. Ranches that cater to tourists are called guest ranches or, colloquially, "dude ranches."
Most working ranches do not cater to guests, though they may allow private hunters or outfitters onto their property to hunt native wildlife. However, in recent years, a few struggling smaller operations have added some dude ranch features, such as horseback rides, cattle drives or guided hunting, in an attempt to bring in additional income. Ranching is part of the iconography of the "Wild West" as seen in Western rodeos; the person who owns and manages the operation of a ranch is called a rancher, but the terms cattleman, stockgrower, or stockman are sometimes used. If this individual in charge of overall management is an employee of the actual owner, the term foreman or ranch foreman is used. A rancher who raises young stock sometimes is called a cow-calf operator or a cow-calf man; this person is the owner, though in some cases where there is absentee ownership, it is the ranch manager or ranch foreman. The people who are employees of the rancher and involved in handling livestock are called a number of terms, including cowhand, ranch hand, cowboy.
People involved with handling horses are sometimes called wranglers. Ranching and the cowboy tradition originated in Spain, out of the necessity to handle large herds of grazing animals on dry land from horseback. During the Reconquista, members of the Spanish nobility and various military orders received large land grants that the Kingdom of Castile had conquered from the Moors; these landowners were to defend the lands put into their control and could use them for earning revenue. In the process it was found that open-range breeding of sheep and cattle was the most suitable use for vast tracts in the parts of Spain now known as Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia; when the Conquistadors came to the Americas in the 16th century, followed by settlers, they brought their cattle and cattle-raising techniques with them. Huge land grants by the Spanish government, part of the hacienda system, allowed large numbers of animals to roam over vast areas. A number of different traditions developed related to the original location in Spain from which a settlement originated.
For example, many of the traditions of the Jalisco charros in central Mexico come from the Salamanca charros of Castile. The vaquero tradition of Northern Mexico was more organic, developed to adapt to the characteristics of the region from Spanish sources by cultural interaction between the Spanish elites and the native and mestizo peoples; as settlers from the United States moved west, they brought cattle breeds developed on the east coast and in Europe along with them, adapted their management to the drier lands of the west by borrowing key elements of the Spanish vaquero culture. However, there were cattle on the eastern seaboard. Deep Hollow Ranch, 110 miles east of New York City in Montauk, New York, claims to be the first ranch in the United States, having continuously operated since 1658; the ranch makes the somewhat debatable claim of having the oldest cattle operation in what today is the United States, though cattle had been run in the area since European settlers purchased land from the Indian people of the area in 1643.
Although there were substantial numbers of cattle on Long Island, as well as the need to herd them to and from common grazing lands on a seasonal basis, the cattle handlers lived in houses built on the pasture grounds, cattle were ear-marked for identification, rather than being branded. The only actual "cattle drives" held on Long Island consisted of one drive in 1776, when the island's cattle were moved in a failed attempt to prevent them from being captured by the British during the American Revolution, three or four drives in the late 1930s, when area cattle were herded down Montauk Highway to pasture ground near Deep Hollow Ranch; the prairie and desert lands of what today is Mexico and the western United States were well-suited to "open range" grazing. For example, American bison had been a mainstay of the diet for the Native Americans in the Great Plains for centuries. Cattle and other livestock were turned loose in the spring after their young were born and allowed to roam with little supervision and no fences rounded up in the fall, with the mature animals driven to market and the breeding stock brought close to the ranch headquarters for greater protection in the winter.
The use of livestock branding allowed the cattle owned by different ranchers to be identified and sorted. Beginning with the settlement of Texas in the 1840s, expansion both north and west from that time, through the Civil War and into the 1880s, ranching dominated wes
Calgary Stampede
The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo and festival held every July in Calgary, Canada. The ten-day event, which bills itself as "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth", attracts over one million visitors per year and features one of the world's largest rodeos, a parade, stage shows, agricultural competitions, chuckwagon racing, First Nations exhibitions. In 2008, the Calgary Stampede was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame; the event's roots are traced to 1886 when the Calgary and District Agricultural Society held its first fair. In 1912, American promoter Guy Weadick organized his first rodeo and festival, known as the Stampede, he returned to Calgary in 1919 to organize the Victory Stampede in honour of soldiers returning from World War I. Weadick's festival became an annual event in 1923 when it merged with the Calgary Industrial Exhibition to create the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. Organized by thousands of volunteers and supported by civic leaders, the Calgary Stampede has grown into one of the world's richest rodeos, one of Canada's largest festivals, a significant tourist attraction for the city.
Rodeo and chuckwagon racing events are televised across Canada. However, both have been the target of increasing international criticism by animal welfare groups and politicians concerned about particular events as well as animal rights organizations seeking to ban rodeo in general. Calgary's national and international identity is tied to the event, it is known as the "Stampede City", carries the informal nickname of "Cowtown", the local Canadian Football League team is called the Stampeders. The city takes on a party atmosphere during Stampede: office buildings and storefronts are painted in cowboy themes, residents don western wear, events held across the city include hundreds of pancake breakfasts and barbecues; the Calgary and District Agricultural Society was formed in 1884 to promote the town and encourage farmers and ranchers from eastern Canada to move west. The society held its first fair two years attracting a quarter of the town's 2,000 residents. By 1889, it had acquired land on the banks of the Elbow River to host the exhibitions, but crop failures, poor weather, a declining economy resulted in the society ceasing operations in 1895.
The land passed to future Prime Minister R. B. Bennett who sold it to the city; the area was called Victoria Park, after Queen Victoria, the newly formed Western Pacific Exhibition Company hosted its first agricultural and industrial fair in 1899. The exhibition grew annually, in 1908 the Government of Canada announced that Calgary would host the federally funded Dominion Exhibition that year. Seeking to take advantage of the opportunity to promote itself, the city spent C$145,000 to build six new pavilions and a racetrack, it held a lavish parade as well as rodeo, horse racing, trick roping competitions as part of the event. The exhibition was a success, drawing 100,000 people to the fairgrounds over seven days despite an economic recession that afflicted the city of 25,000. Guy Weadick, an American trick roper who participated in the Dominion Exhibition as part of the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Real Wild West Show, returned to Calgary in 1912 in the hopes of establishing an event that more represented the "wild west" than the shows he was a part of.
He failed to sell civic leaders and the Calgary Industrial Exhibition on his plans, but with the assistance of local livestock agent H. C. McMullen, Weadick convinced businessmen Pat Burns, George Lane, A. J. McLean, A. E. Cross to put up $100,000 to guarantee funding for the event; the Big Four, as they came to be known, viewed the project as a final celebration of their life as cattlemen. The city built a rodeo arena on the fairgrounds and over 100,000 people attended the six-day event in September 1912 to watch hundreds of cowboys from Western Canada, the United States, Mexico compete for $20,000 in prizes; the event was hailed as a success. Weadick set about planning the 1913 Stampede. However, the Big Four were not interested in hosting another such event. Businessmen in Winnipeg convinced Weadick to host his second Stampede in their city, but the show failed financially. A third attempt held in New York State in 1916 suffered the same fate. Weadick returned to Calgary in 1919 where he gained the support of E. L. Richardson, the general manager of the Calgary Industrial Exhibition.
The two convinced numerous Calgarians, including the Big Four, to back the "Great Victory Stampede" in celebration of Canada's soldiers returning from World War I. While the 1919 Stampede was successful, it was again held as a one-time event. Richardson was convinced that it could be a profitable annual event but found little support for the concept within the board of directors of the Calgary Industrial Exhibition. However, declining attendance and mounting financial losses forced the exhibition board to reconsider Richardson's proposals at their 1922 annual meeting. Richardson proposed merging the two events on a trial basis. Weadick agreed, the union created the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede; the combined event was first held in 1923. Weadick encouraged the city's residents to dress in western clothes and decorate their businesses in the spirit of the "wild west". Civic leaders supported the event for the first time: Mayor George Webster followed the costume suggestion and allowed downtown roads to be closed for two hours each morning of the six-day event to accommodate street parties.
The new sport of chuckwagon racing was introduced and proved popular. 138,950 people attended and the event earned a profit. Over 167,000 people attended in 1924 and the success guaranteed that the Stam
American bison
The American bison or bison commonly known as the American buffalo or buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed North America in vast herds. Their historical range, by 9000 BCE, is described as the great bison belt, a tract of rich grassland that ran from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, east to the Atlantic Seaboard as far north as New York and south to Georgia and per some sources down to Florida, with sightings in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750, they became nearly extinct by a combination of commercial hunting and slaughter in the 19th century and introduction of bovine diseases from domestic cattle. With a population in excess of 60 million in the late 18th century, the species was down to 541 animals by 1889. Recovery efforts expanded in the mid-20th century, with a resurgence to 31,000 animals today restricted to a few national parks and reserves. Two subspecies or ecotypes have been described: the plains bison, smaller in size and with a more rounded hump, the wood bison —the larger of the two and having a taller, square hump.
Furthermore, the plains bison has been suggested to consist of a northern plains and a southern plains subspecies, bringing the total to three. However, this is not supported; the wood bison is one of the largest wild species of bovid in the world, surpassed by only the Asian gaur and wild water buffalo. It is the heaviest, second tallest extant land animal after moose in the Americas; the American bison is the national mammal of the United States. The term buffalo is sometimes considered to be a misnomer for this animal, could be confused with "true" buffalos, the Asian water buffalo and the African buffalo. However, bison is a Greek word meaning ox-like animal, while buffalo originated with the French fur trappers who called these massive beasts bœufs, meaning ox or bullock—so both names and buffalo, have a similar meaning; the name buffalo is listed in many dictionaries as an acceptable name for American bison. Samuel de Champlain applied the term buffalo to the bison in 1616, after seeing skins and a drawing shown to him by members of the Nipissing First Nation, who said they travelled forty days to trade with another nation who hunted the animals.
In English usage, the term buffalo dates to 1625 in North America, when the term was first recorded for the American mammal. It thus has a much longer history than the term bison, first recorded in 1774; the American bison is closely related to the European bison. In Plains Indian languages in general and female buffaloes are distinguished, with each having a different designation rather than there being a single generic word covering both sexes. Thus: in Arapaho: bii, henéécee in Lakota: pté, tȟatȟáŋka Such a distinction is not a general feature of the language, so is due to the special significance of the buffalo in Plains Indian life and culture. A bison has a shaggy, dark-brown winter coat, a lighter-weight, lighter-brown summer coat; as is typical in ungulates, the male bison is larger than the female and, in some cases, can be heavier. Plains bison are in the smaller range of sizes, wood bison in the larger range. Head-rump lengths range from 2 to 2.8 m long and the tail adding 30 to 43 cm or up to 65 cm.
Heights at withers in the species can range from 152 to 186 cm for B. b. bison while B. b. athabascae reaches over 2 m. Weights can range from 318 to 1,000 kg Typical weight ranges in the species were reported as 460 to 988 kg in males and 360 to 544 kg in females, the lowest weights representing typical weight around the age of sexual maturity at 2 to 3 years of age. Mature bulls tend to be larger than cows. Cow weights have had reported medians of 450 to 495 kg, with one small sample averaging 479 kg, whereas bulls may weigh a median of 730 kg with an average from a small sample of 765 kg; the heaviest wild bull recorded weighed 1,270 kg. When raised in captivity and farmed for meat, the bison can grow unnaturally heavy and the largest semidomestic bison weighed 1,724 kg; the heads and forequarters are massive, both sexes have short, curved horns that can grow up to 2 ft long, which they use in fighting for status within the herd and for defense. Bison are grazing on the grasses and sedges of the North American prairies.
Their daily schedule involves two-hour periods of grazing and cud chewing moving to a new location to graze again. Sexually mature young bulls may try to start mating with cows by the age of two or three years, but if more mature bulls are present, they may not be able to compete until they reach five years of age. For the first two months of life, calves are lighter in color than mature bison. One rare condition is the white buffalo, in which the calf turns white. Although they are superficially similar, the American and European bison exhibit a number of physical and behavioral differences. Adult American bison are heavier on average because of their less rangy build, have shorter legs, which render them shorter at the shoulder. American bison tend to graze more, browse less
Doukhobors
The Doukhobours or Dukhobors are a Spiritual Christian religious group of Russian origin. They are one of many non-Orthodox ethno-confessional faiths in Russia categorized as "folk-Protestants", Spiritual Christians, and/or heretics, they are distinguished as pacifists who lived in their own villages, rejected personal materialism, worked together, developed a tradition of oral history and memorizing and singing hymns and verses. Before 1886, they had a series of single leaders; the ancient origin of the Doukhobors is uncertain. The first written records of them are from the 1700s, some scholars suspect earlier origins, they rejected the Russian Orthodox priesthood, the use of icons, all associated church ritual. They came to believe that the Bible alone, as a supreme source, was not enough to reach divine revelation, that doctrinal conflicts can interfere with their faith, their goal was to internalize the living spirit of God so that God's spirit would be revealed within each individual. Bible teachings are evident in some published Doukhobor psalms and beliefs.
They draw on the characteristics of God, as portrayed by Jesus Christ, to guide their faith as God's peaceful ambassadors. In the 17th- and 18th-century Russian Empire, believing in God's presence in every human being, these people concluded that clergy and formal rituals were unnecessary, they rejected the secular government, the Russian Orthodox priests and all church ritual, holding that the Bible was the supreme source of divine revelation. They believed in the divinity of Jesus, their practices and emphasis on individual interpretation as well as opposition to the government and church, provoked antagonism from the government and the established Russian Orthodox church. In 1734 the government issued an edict against ikonobortsy condemning them as iconoclasts. Siluan Kolesnikov was the first known Doukhobor leader, active from 1755 to 1775, he came from the village of Nikolskoye in Yekaterinoslav Governorate in what is today south-central Ukraine. He was thought to be a well-read person, familiar with the works of Western mystics such as Karl von Eckartshausen and Louis Claude de Saint-Martin.
The early Doukhobors called themselves "God's People" or "Christians." Their modern name, first in the form Doukhobortsy is thought to have been first used in 1785 or 1786 by Ambrosius, the Archbishop of Yekaterinoslav or his predecessor, Nikifor. The archbishop's intent was to mock them as heretics fighting against the Holy Spirit; as pacifists, the Doukhobors ardently rejected the institutions of militarism and wars. For these reasons, the Doukhobors were harshly oppressed in Imperial Russia. Both the tsarist state and church authorities were involved in the persecution of these dissidents, as well as taking away their normal freedoms; the first known use of the spelling Doukhobor is attested in a government edict of 1799, exiling 90 of them to Finland for their anti-war propaganda. In 1802, the Emperor Alexander I encouraged resettlement of religious minorities to the so-called "Milky Waters": the region around the Molochnaya River; this was motivated by the desire both to populate the rich steppe lands on the north shore of the Black and Azov Seas, to prevent the "heretics" from contaminating the population of the heartland with their ideas.
Many Doukhobors, as well as Mennonites from Prussia, accepted the Emperor's offer, coming to the Molochnaya from various provinces of the Empire over the next 20 years. As Nicholas I replaced Alexander, he issued a decree, intending to force assimilation of the Doukhobors by means of military conscription, prohibiting their meetings, encouraging conversions to the established church. On October 20, 1830, another decree followed, specifying that all able-bodied members of dissenting religious groups engaged in propaganda against the established church should be conscripted and sent to the Russian army in the Caucasus, while those not capable of military service, as well as their women and children, should be resettled in Russia's acquired Transcaucasian provinces, it is reported that, among other dissenters, some 5,000 Doukhobors were resettled to Georgia between 1841 and 1845. The Akhalkalaki uyezd of the Tiflis Governorate was chosen as the main place of their settlement. Doukhobor villages with Russian names appeared there: Gorelovka, Yefremovka, Spasskoye and Bogdanovka.
On, other groups of Doukhobors—resettled by the government, or migrating to Transcaucasia by their own accord—settled in other neighboring areas, including the Borchaly uyezd of Tiflis Governorate and the Kedabek uyezd of Elisabethpol Governorate. After Russia's conquest of Kars and the Treaty of San Stefano of 1878, some Dukhobors from Tiflis and Elisabethpol Governorates moved to the Zarushat and Shuragel uyezds of the newly created Kars Oblast; the leader of the main group of Doukhobors that arrived in Transcaucasia from Ukraine in 1841 was one Illarion Kalmykov. He died in the same year, was succeeded as the community leader b
Pottery
Pottery is the process of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired to give them a hard, durable form. Major types include earthenware and porcelain; the place where such wares are made by a potter is called a pottery. The definition of pottery used by the American Society for Testing and Materials, is "all fired ceramic wares that contain clay when formed, except technical and refractory products." In archaeology of ancient and prehistoric periods, "pottery" means vessels only, figures etc. of the same material are called "terracottas". Clay as a part of the materials used is required by some definitions of pottery, but this is dubious. Pottery is one of the oldest human inventions, originating before the Neolithic period, with ceramic objects like the Gravettian culture Venus of Dolní Věstonice figurine discovered in the Czech Republic dating back to 29,000–25,000 BC, pottery vessels that were discovered in Jiangxi, which date back to 18,000 BC.
Early Neolithic pottery artefacts have been found in places such as Jōmon Japan, the Russian Far East, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America. Pottery is made by forming a ceramic body into objects of a desired shape and heating them to high temperatures in a kiln and induces reactions that lead to permanent changes including increasing the strength and solidity of the object's shape. Much pottery is purely utilitarian, but much can be regarded as ceramic art. A clay body can be decorated after firing. Clay-based pottery can divided in three main groups: earthenware and porcelain; these require more specific clay material, higher firing temperatures. All three are made for different purposes. All may be decorated by various techniques. In many examples the group a piece belongs to is visually apparent, but this is not always the case; the fritware of the Islamic world does not use clay, so technically falls outside these groups. Historic pottery of all these types is grouped as either "fine" wares expensive and well-made, following the aesthetic taste of the culture concerned, or alternatively "coarse", "popular" "folk" or "village" wares undecorated, or so, less well-made.
All the earliest forms of pottery were made from clays that were fired at low temperatures in pit-fires or in open bonfires. They were hand undecorated. Earthenware can be fired as low as 600°C, is fired below 1200°C; because unglazed biscuit earthenware is porous, it has limited utility for the storage of liquids, eating off. However, earthenware has a continuous history from the Neolithic period to today, it can be made from a wide variety of clays, some of which fire to a buff, brown or black colour, with iron in the constituent minerals resulting in a reddish-brown. Reddish coloured varieties are called terracotta when unglazed or used for sculpture; the development of ceramic glaze which makes it impermeable makes it a popular and practical form of pottery. The addition of decoration has evolved throughout its history. Stoneware is pottery, fired in a kiln at a high temperature, from about 1,100°C to 1,200°C, is stronger and non-porous to liquids; the Chinese, who developed stoneware early on, classify this together with porcelain as high-fired wares.
In contrast, stoneware could only be produced in Europe from the late Middle Ages, as European kilns were less efficient, the right sorts of clay less common. It remained a speciality of Germany until the Renaissance. Stoneware is tough and practical, much of it has always been utilitarian, for the kitchen or storage rather than the table, but "fine" stoneware has been important in China and the West, continues to be made. Many utilitarian types have come to be appreciated as art. Porcelain is made by heating materials including kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between 1,200 and 1,400 °C; this is higher than used for the other types, achieving these temperatures was a long struggle, as well as realizing what materials were needed. The toughness and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises from vitrification and the formation of the mineral mullite within the body at these high temperatures. Although porcelain was first made in China, the Chinese traditionally do not recognise it as a distinct category, grouping it with stoneware as "high-fired" ware, opposed to "low-fired" earthenware.
This confuses the issue of. A degree of translucency and whiteness was achieved by the Tang Dynasty, considerable quantities were being exported; the modern level of whiteness was not reached until much in the 14th century. Porcelain was made in Korea and in Japan from the end of the 16th century, after suitable kaolin was located in those countries, it was not made outside East Asia until the 18th century. Before being shaped, clay must be prepared. Kneading helps to ensure an moisture content throughout the body. Air trapped within the clay body needs to be removed; this is called de-airing and can be accomplished either by a machine called a vacuum pug or manually by wedging. Wedging can help produce an moisture content. Once a clay body has been kneaded and de-aired or wedged, it is shaped by a variety of techniques. After it has been shaped, it is dried and fired. Greenware refers to unfired objects. At sufficient moisture content, bodies at this stage are in their most plastic form (as they are soft and mal
Inuit
The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Greenland and Alaska. The Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo–Aleut family. Inuit Sign Language is a critically endangered language isolate used in Nunavut. In Canada and the States, the term "Eskimo" was used by ethnic Europeans to describe the Inuit and Siberia's and Alaska's Yupik and Iñupiat peoples. However, "Inuit" is not accepted as a term for the Yupik, "Eskimo" is the only term that applies to Yupik, Iñupiat and Inuit. Since the late 20th century, Indigenous peoples in Canada and Greenlandic Inuit consider "Eskimo" to be a pejorative term, they more identify as "Inuit" for an autonym. In Canada, sections 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 classified the Inuit as a distinctive group of Aboriginal Canadians who are not included under either the First Nations or the Métis; the Inuit live throughout most of Northern Canada in the territory of Nunavut, Nunavik in the northern third of Quebec and NunatuKavut in Labrador, in various parts of the Northwest Territories around the Arctic Ocean.
These areas are known in the Inuktitut language as the "Inuit Nunangat". In the United States, the Iñupiat live on the Alaska North Slope and on Little Diomede Island; the Greenlandic Inuit are descendants of ancient indigenous migrations from Canada, as these people migrated to the east through the continent. They are citizens of Denmark. Inuit are the descendants of what anthropologists call the Thule people, who emerged from western Alaska around 1000 CE, they had split from the related Aleut group about 4000 years ago and from northeastern Siberian migrants related to the Chukchi language group, still earlier, descended from the third major migration from Siberia. They spread eastwards across the Arctic, they displaced the related Dorset culture, called the Tuniit in Inuktitut, the last major Paleo-Eskimo culture. Inuit legends speak of the Tuniit as people who were taller and stronger than the Inuit. Less the legends refer to the Dorset as "dwarfs". Researchers believe that Inuit society had advantages by having adapted to using dogs as transport animals, developing larger weapons and other technologies superior to those of the Dorset culture.
By 1300, Inuit migrants had reached west Greenland. During the next century, they settled in East Greenland Faced with population pressures from the Thule and other surrounding groups, such as the Algonquian and Siouan-speaking peoples to the south, the Tuniit receded; the Tuniit were thought to have become extinct as a people by about 1400 or 1500. But, in the mid-1950s, researcher Henry B. Collins determined that, based on the ruins found at Native Point, the Sadlermiut were the last remnants of the Dorset culture, or Tuniit; the Sadlermiut population survived up until winter 1902–03, when exposure to new infectious diseases brought by contact with Europeans led to their extinction as a people. In the early 21st century, mitochondrial DNA research has supported the theory of continuity between the Tuniit and the Sadlermiut peoples, it provided evidence that a population displacement did not occur within the Aleutian Islands between the Dorset and Thule transition. In contrast to other Tuniit populations, the Aleut and Sadlermiut benefited from both geographical isolation and their ability to adopt certain Thule technologies.
In Canada and Greenland, Inuit circulated exclusively north of the "arctic tree line", the effective southern border of Inuit society. The most southern "officially recognized" Inuit community in the world is Rigolet in Nunatsiavut. South of Nunatsiavut, the descendants of the southern Labrador Inuit in NunatuKavut continued their traditional transhumant semi-nomadic way of life until the mid-1900s; the Nunatukavummuit people moved among islands and bays on a seasonal basis. They did not establish stationary communities. In other areas south of the tree line, non-Inuit indigenous cultures were well established; the culture and technology of Inuit society that served so well in the Arctic were not suited to subarctic regions, so they did not displace their southern neighbors. Inuit had trade relations with more southern cultures. Warfare was not uncommon among those Inuit groups with sufficient population density. Inuit such as the Nunamiut, who inhabited the Mackenzie River delta area engaged in warfare.
The more sparsely settled Inuit in the Central Arctic, did so less often. Their first European contact was with the Vikings who settled in Greenland and explored the eastern Canadian coast; the sagas recorded meeting skrælingar an undifferentiated label for all the indigenous peoples whom the Norse encountered, whether Tuniit, Inuit, or Beothuk. After about 1350, the climate grew colder during the period known as the Little Ice Age. During this period, Alaskan natives were able to continue their whaling activities. But, in the high Arctic, the Inuit were forced to abandon their hunting and whaling sites as bowhead whales disappeared from Canada and Greenland; these Inuit had to subsist on a much poorer diet, lost access to the essential raw materials for their tools and architecture which they had derived from whaling. The changing climate forced the Inuit to work their way south, pushing them into marginal niches along the edges of the tree line; these were areas which Native Americans had not occupied or where they were weak enough for the Inuit to live near them.
Researchers have difficulty defining when Inuit stopped this territorial
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