1.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
2.
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
3.
Artifact (archaeology)
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An artifact or artefact is. something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest. In archaeology, however, the word has become a term of particular nuance and is defined as, an object recovered by archaeological endeavor, which may have a cultural interest. However, modern archaeologists take care to distinguish material culture from ethnicity, examples include stone tools, pottery vessels, metal objects such as weapons, and items of personal adornment such as buttons, jewelry and clothing. Bones that show signs of modification are also examples. Natural objects, such as fire cracked rocks from a hearth or plant material used for food, are classified by archeologists as ecofacts rather than as artifacts, natural objects that humans have moved but not changed are called manuports. Examples include seashells moved inland, or rounded pebbles placed away from the action that made them. For instance, a bone removed from a carcass is a biofact. Similarly there can be debate over early stone objects that could be either crude artifacts or naturally occurring and it can be difficult to distinguish the differences between actual man-made lithic artifacts and geofacts – naturally occurring lithics that resemble man-made tools. It is possible to authenticate artifacts by examining the general attributed to man-made tools. Artifact Collection at the Royal Military College of Canada Museum in Kingston, Ontario
4.
Bronze Age Europe
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The European Bronze Age is characterized by bronze artifacts and the use of bronze implements. The regional Bronze Age succeeds the Neolithic and it starts with the Aegean Bronze Age in 3200 BC, and spans the entire 2nd millennium BC in Northern Europe, lasting until c.600 BC. The Aegean Bronze Age begins around 3200 BC when civilizations first established a trade network. This network imported tin and charcoal to Cyprus, where copper was mined and alloyed with the tin to produce bronze, Bronze objects were then exported far and wide, and supported the trade. Isotopic analysis of the tin in some Mediterranean bronze objects indicates it came from as far away as Great Britain, the Minoan civilization based from Knossos, Crete, appears to have coordinated and defended its Bronze Age trade. One crucial lack in this period was that modern methods of accounting were not available, the eruption of Thera, which according to archaeological data occurred in c.1500 BC, resulted in the decline of the Minoan. This turn of events gave the opportunity to the Mycenaeans to spread their influence throughout the Aegean, around c.1450 BC, they were in control of Crete itself and colonized several other Aegean islands, reaching as far as Rhodes. Thus the Mycenaeans became the dominant power of the region, marking the beginning of the Mycenaean Koine era, a highly uniform culture that spread in mainland Greece and the Aegean. Their syllabic script, the Linear B, offers the first written records of the Greek language, Mycenaean Greece was dominated by a warrior elite society and consisted of a network of palace states that developed rigid hierarchical, political, social and economic systems. At the head of this societies was the king, known as wanax, the Maykop culture was the major early Bronze Age culture in the North Caucasus. Some scholars date arsenical bronze artifacts in the region as far back as the mid-4th millennium BC, the Yamna culture was a late copper age/early Bronze Age culture dating to the 36th–23rd centuries BC. The culture was nomadic, with some agriculture practiced near rivers. Parallels with the Afanasevo culture, including provoked cranial deformations, provide a link to the East and it was preceded by the Yamna culture and succeeded by the western Corded Ware culture. The Catacomb culture in the Pontic steppe was succeeded by the Srubna culture from c. the 17th century BC. Some very rich burials, such as the one located at Leubingen with grave gifts crafted from gold, all in all, cemeteries of this period are rare and of small size. The Unetice culture is followed by the middle Bronze Age Tumulus culture, in the eastern Hungarian Körös tributaries, the early Bronze Age first saw the introduction of the Makó culture, followed by the Otomani and Gyulavarsánd cultures. The late Bronze Age Urnfield culture is characterized by cremation burials and it includes the Lusatian culture in eastern Germany and Poland that continues into the Iron Age. The Central European Bronze Age is followed by the Iron Age Hallstatt culture, in northern Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Bronze Age cultures manufactured many distinctive and artistic artifacts
5.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
6.
Golden Hat of Schifferstadt
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The Golden Hat of Schifferstadt was discovered in a field near the town of Schifferstadt in Southwest Germany in 1835. It is a Bronze Age artefact made of sheet gold and served as the external decoration of a head-dress, probably of an organic material, with a brim. The hat is one of the group of four similar artifacts known as the Golden hats, the Schifferstadt specimen was the oldest of a group of four known Golden hats, cone-shaped Bronze Age head-dresses made of sheet gold. The Schifferstadt hat was the first to be discovered, after the example from Berlin, it is the best-preserved one, fully preserved with the exception of a small part of the brim. Three associated bronze axes and a comparison with other Late Bronze Age metwalwork date the Schifferstadt Hat to circa 1, the hat, like its counterparts, is assumed to have served as a religious insignia for the deities or priests of a sun-cult common in Bronze Age Europe. The hats are also suggested to have served calendrical functions, the Schifferstadt Hat is a 350 g gold cone, subdivided into horizontal ornamental bands, applied in the repoussé technique. It has a blunt, undecorated tip, the shaft is short and squat, with a distinct widening and a wide brim at the bottom. The hat is 29.6 cm high and has a diameter of about 18 cm. At its base the gold sheet was wound around a wire for extra stability. Along its whole length the hat is subdivided and decorated by rows of horizontal symbols, five different stamps and a chisel or liner were used to create the horizontal bands of repeated stamped symbols, following a systematic scheme. The optical separation of the individual ornamental bands was achieved by ring ribs or bands around the external face of the hat. The symbols in the bands are mostly disk and circle motifs, usually with a disk or buckle. Striking are two bands with eye-like motifs, resembling similar symbols on the hats of Ezelsdorf and Berlin, unlike the other known examples, the cones top is not decorated with a star but left entirely unembellished. The illustration shows the scheme of the shape and composition of the hat, as well as number of ornamental zones, the Golden Hat of Schifferstadt was discovered on the 29th of April 1835, during agricultural work in a field named Reuschlache, one km north of Schifferstadt. On the following day the find was handed to officials at Speyer, the known circumstances suggest a cult-related deposition, The hat was buried upright, about 60 cm deep. Its top reached to just below the ground surface, when found the hat stood on a slab of back-burnt clay. It was filled with earth or a mixture, of which nothing remains. The clay slab, which crumbled during its recovery and is now entirely lost, sat on a layer of sand
7.
Speyer
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Speyer is a town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located beside the river Rhine, Speyer is 25 km south of Ludwigshafen, founded by the Romans, it is one of Germanys oldest cities. The first known names were Noviomagus and Civitas Nemetum, after the Teutonic tribe, Nemetes, around AD500 the name Spira first appeared in written documents and, as well as the French, this is still reflected in the names Spira and Espira used in Italian and Spanish. The citys name may be the origin of the Ashkenazi Jewish name, Shapiro, Speyer is dominated by the Speyer Cathedral, a number of churches and the Altpörtel. In the cathedral, beneath the altar, are the tombs of eight Holy Roman emperors. In 10 BC, the first Roman military camp is established, in AD150, the town appears as Noviomagus on the world map of the Greek geographer Ptolemy. In 346, a bishop for the town is mentioned for the first time, 4th century, Speyer appears on the Peutinger Map. In 1030, emperor Conrad II starts the construction of Speyer Cathedral, in 1076, emperor Henry IV embarks from Speyer, his favourite town, for Canossa. In 1084, establishment of the first Jewish community in Speyer, in 1294, the bishop loses most of his previous rights, and from now on Speyer is a Free Imperial Town of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1349, the Jewish community of Speyer is wiped out, between 1527 and 1689, Speyer is the seat of the Imperial Chamber Court. In 1526, at the Diet of Speyer interim toleration of Lutheran teaching, in 1529, at the Diet of Speyer the Lutheran states of the empire protest against the anti-Reformation resolutions. In 1635, Marshal of France Urbain de Maillé-Brézé, together with Jacques Nompar de Caumont, duc de La Force, conquers Heidelberg, in 1689, the town is heavily damaged by French troops. Between 1792 and 1814, Speyer is under French jurisdiction, in 1816, Speyer becomes the seat of administration of the Palatinate and of the government of the Rhine District of Bavaria, and remains so until the end of World War II. Between 1883 and 1904, the Memorial Church is built in remembrance of the Protestation of 1529, in 1947, the State Academy of Administrative Science is founded. In 1990, Speyer celebrates its 2000th anniversary
8.
Avanton Gold Cone
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The Avanton Gold Cone or Avanton Cone is a late Bronze Age artefact, belonging to the group of Golden hats, only four of which are known so far. The Avanton Cone was the second such object to be discovered and it was found in 1844 in a field near the village of Avanton, about 12 km north of Poitiers, France. The object was damaged, comparison with other finds suggests that a part is missing, the remaining part of the Avanton cone is 55 cm long and weighs 285 g. Originally dated to the Middle Bronze and suggested to be a fertility symbol, it now appears to be of later date, the Avanton Cone is on display in the Musée dArchéologie Nationale at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. Berlin Gold Hat, circa 1, 000-800 BC Golden Hat of Schifferstadt, 1400-1300 BC Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch, circa 1, 000-800 BC Tourism website referring to the Avanton Cone Gold und Kult der Bronzezeit. ISBN 3-926982-95-0 Wilfried Menghin, Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica, ISSN 0341-1184 Peter Schauer, Die Goldblechkegel der Bronzezeit – Ein Beitrag zur Kulturverbindung zwischen Orient und Mitteleuropa
9.
Poitiers
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Poitiers is a city on the Clain river in west-central France. It is a commune and the capital of the Vienne department, Poitiers is a major university centre. The centre of town is picturesque and its streets include predominant historical architecture, especially religious architecture and this battles consequences partly provoked the Jacquerie. The city of Poitiers is strategically situated on the Seuil du Poitou, the Seuil du Poitou connects the Aquitaine Basin to the South to the Paris Basin to the North. This area is an important geographic crossroads in France and Western Europe, poitierss primary site sits on a vast promontory between the valleys of the Boivre and the Clain. The old town occupies the slopes and the summit of a plateau which rises 130 feet above the streams which surround it on three sides, thus Poitiers benefits from a very strong tactical situation. This was an important factor before and throughout the Middle Ages. Inhabitants of Poitiers are referred to as Poitevins or Poitevines, although this denomination can be used for anyone from the Poitou province, as of 2015, the population of Poitiers was 298,339. One out of three people in Poitiers is under the age of 30 and one out of four residents in Poitiers is a student, the climate in the Poitiers area is mild with mild temperature amplitudes, and adequate rainfall throughout the year. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this type of climate is Cfb, Poitiers was founded by the Celtic tribe of the Pictones and was known as the oppidum Lemonum before Roman influence. The name is said to have come from the Celtic word for elm, after Roman influence took over, the town became known as Pictavium, or later Pictavis, after the original Pictones inhabitants themselves. There is a history of archeological finds from the Roman era in Poitiers. In fact until 1857 Poitiers hosted the ruins of a vast Roman amphitheatre, remains of Roman baths, built in the 1st century and demolished in the 3rd century, were uncovered in 1877. In 1879 a burial-place and tombs of a number of Christian martyrs were discovered on the heights to the south-east of the town, the names of some of the Christians had been preserved in paintings and inscriptions. Not far from these tombs is a dolmen, which is 6.7 metres long,4.9 metres broad and 2.1 metres high. The Romans also built at least three aqueducts and this extensive ensemble of Roman constructions suggests Poitiers was a town of first importance, possibly even the capital of the Roman province of Gallia Aquitania during the 2nd century. The first foundations of the Baptistère Saint-Jean can be traced to that era of open Christian evangelization and he was named Doctor of The Church by Pope Pius IX. In the 4th century, a thick wall 6m wide and 10m high was built around the town and it was 2.5 km long and stood lower on the naturally defended east side and at the top of the promontory
10.
Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch
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The Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch is a Late Bronze Age artefact discovered in 1953 between the villages of Ezelsdorf and Buch in Southern Germany. A tall, cone-shaped object made of sheet gold, it is seen as belonging to a group of artifacts referred to as Bronze Age Golden hats. It was presumably worn by special functionaries on ceremonial occasions, the Ezelsdorf-Buch cone is one of four such known items. Two of them were discovered in Southern Germany, one in the west of France and it dates to circa 1,000 to 900 BC. Parallels have been drawn between the golden hats and depictions found on the Kivik slabs and on objects from the Stockhult hoard discovered in Scandinavia. The hat, like its counterparts, is assumed to have served as an insignia for the deities or priests of a sun-cult common in Bronze Age Europe. The hats are also suggested to have served calendrical functions, the Ezelsdorf-Buch Cone was discovered accidentally during the removal of tree-stumps in 1953. However, it was not recognised as an archaeological find immediately and it is also possible that the object had been damaged previously or that it had fully or partially collapsed during burial. It was probably buried in an upright position, with its top relatively near ground level, as were its Berlin. After recovery, the cone was mutilated and torn into small scraps of sheet gold, although it could be mostly reconstructed at an early stage, it was only in the 1990s that the find was understood as belonging to the group of golden hats. Including the part now missing, the hat would have weighed about 330 g, like the Berlin example, it was reinforced by one or several bronze rings near the bottom. The cone is now 88.3 cm high, but was somewhat shorter. Along its whole length, the surface is subdivided and decorated by horizontal bands or ribs. In total, there are 154 bands and symbol rows, the symbols are mostly circular bosses enclosed by up to seven concentric circles, as known from all other specimens. There are three sets of unusual special motifs, small horizontal ovals resembling eyes, small eight-spoked wheels, the latter are unique to the Ezesldorf-Buch cone and appear to represent the shape of a gold hat. The tip of the cone is embellished with a ten-point star, the area where the cone joins the cap-like area is embellished with a 30 mm wide band of vertical grooving, as is the case on the Berlin example. The piece is hammered from a gold alloy gold, silver, copper and its average thickness is only 0.78 mm. The amount of used for making the object is equivalent to the size of a matchbox
11.
Nuremberg
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Nuremberg is a city on the river Pegnitz and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia, about 170 kilometres north of Munich. It is the second-largest city in Bavaria, and the largest in Franconia, the population as of February 2015, is 517,498, which makes it Germanys fourteenth-largest city. The urban area also includes Fürth, Erlangen and Schwabach with a population of 763,854. The European Metropolitan Area Nuremberg has ca.3.5 million inhabitants, Nuremberg was, according to the first documentary mention of the city in 1050, the location of an Imperial castle between the East Franks and the Bavarian March of the Nordgau. From 1050 to 1571, the city expanded and rose dramatically in importance due to its location on key trade routes, Nuremberg is often referred to as having been the unofficial capital of the Holy Roman Empire, particularly because Imperial Diet and courts met at Nuremberg Castle. The Diets of Nuremberg were an important part of the structure of the empire. The increasing demand of the court and the increasing importance of the city attracted increased trade. Nuremberg soon became, with Augsburg, one of the two great trade centers on the route from Italy to Northern Europe. In 1298, the Jews of the town were accused of having desecrated the host, behind the massacre of 1298 was also the desire to combine the northern and southern parts of the city, which were divided by the Pegnitz. The Jews of the German lands suffered many massacres during the plague years, in 1349, Nurembergs Jews were subjected to a pogrom. They were burned at the stake or expelled, and a marketplace was built over the former Jewish quarter, the plague returned to the city in 1405,1435,1437,1482,1494,1520 and 1534. Charles was the patron of the Frauenkirche, built between 1352 and 1362, where the Imperial court worshipped during its stays in Nuremberg. Charles IV conferred upon the city the right to conclude alliances independently, frequent fights took place with the burgraves without, however, inflicting lasting damage upon the city. Through these and other acquisitions the city accumulated considerable territory, the Hussite Wars, recurrence of the Black Death in 1437, and the First Margrave War led to a severe fall in population in the mid-15th century. During the Middle Ages, Nurembergs literary culture was rich, varied, the cultural flowering of Nuremberg, in the 15th and 16th centuries, made it the centre of the German Renaissance. In 1525, Nuremberg accepted the Protestant Reformation, and in 1532, during the 1552 revolution against Charles V, Nuremberg tried to purchase its neutrality, but the city was attacked without a declaration of war and was forced into a disadvantageous peace. The state of affairs in the early 16th century, increased trade routes elsewhere, frequent quartering of Imperial, Swedish and League soldiers, the financial costs of the war and the cessation of trade caused irreparable damage to the city and a near-halving of the population. In 1632, the city, occupied by the forces of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, was besieged by the army of Imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein, the city declined after the war and recovered its importance only in the 19th century, when it grew as an industrial centre
12.
Berlin Gold Hat
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The Berlin Gold Hat or Berlin Golden Hat is a Late Bronze Age artefact made of thin gold leaf. It served as the covering on a long conical brimmed headdress. It is now in the Neues Museum on Museum Island in Berlin, in a room by itself with an explanatory display. The Berlin Gold Hat is the best preserved specimen among the four known conical Golden hats known from Bronze Age Europe so far, of the three others, two were found in southern Germany, and one in the west of France. All were found in the 19th and 20th centuries and it is generally assumed that the hats served as the insignia of deities or priests in the context of a sun cult that appears to have been widespread in Central Europe at the time. The hats are also suggested to have served astronomical/calendrical functions, the Berlin Gold Hat was acquired in 1996 by the Berlin Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte as a single find without provenance. A comparative study of the ornaments and techniques in conjunction with dateable finds suggests that it was made in the Late Bronze Age, circa 1,000 to 800 BC. The Berlin gold hat is a 490 g gold hat with a long and slender conical shaft and its composition is very similar to the previously known Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch. At the bottom of the cone, the gold of the Berlin hat is reinforced by a 10 mm wide ring of sheet bronze. The external edge of the brim is strengthened by a twisted square-sectioned wire, the overall height is 745 mm. The hat was hammered from an alloy of 87. 7% Au,9. 8% Ag,0. 4% Cu and 0. 1% Sn. It was made of a piece, its average thickness is 0.6 mm. The cone is ornamented with 21 zones of horizontal bands and rows of symbols along all of its length, fourteen different stamps and three decorated wheels or cylindrical-stamps were used. The horizontal bands were decorated systematically with repeated similar patterns, the individual ornamental bands were optically separated traced ribs and bulges, mostly achieved with the use of cylindrical stamps. The bands of ornaments contain mostly buckle and circle motifs, most with a circular central buckle surrounded by up to six concentric circles, one of the bands is distinctive, It is decorated with a row of recumbent crescents, each atop an almond- or eye-shaped symbol. The point of the cone is embellished with a star on a background of decorative punches. An overview of the type and number of used in the ornamental zones is shown on the right. The meeting of the shaft with the foot is taken up by a wide vertically ribbed band, the foot is decorated with similar motifs to the cone itself
13.
Swabia
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Swabia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany. This territory would include all of the Alemannic German area, but the concept of Swabia is more restricted. Swabians are the natives of Swabia and speakers of Swabian German and their number was estimated at close to 0.8 million by SIL Ethnologue as of 2006, compared to a total population of 7.5 million in the regions of Tübingen, Stuttgart and Bavarian Swabia. Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabias borders are not clearly defined, like all of Southern Germany, Swabia was part of the La Tène culture, and as such has a Celtic substrate. In the Roman era, it was part of the Raetia province, in the third century, it was gradually settled by the Elbe Germanic Suebi and other components that came to make up the Alemanni. The Alemanni were ruled by independent kings throughout the fourth and fifth centuries, Swabia became a duchy under the Frankish Empire in 496, following the Battle of Tolbiac. Swabia was one of the stem duchies of East Francia. Due to the foundation of the important abbeys of St. Gallen and Reichenau, in the following years the original duchy gradually broke up into many smaller units. Rudolf I of Habsburg, elected in 1273 as emperor, tried to restore the duchy, but met the opposition of the higher nobility who aimed to limit the power of the emperor. The rural regions were merged into the Reichslandvogtei of Swabia, which was given as Imperial Pawn to Duke Leopold III of Austria in 1379 and again to Sigismund and he took the title of a Prince of Swabia and integrated the Landvogtei of Swabia in the realm of Further Austria. Charlemagnes family is known to have hailed from Swabia, the major dynasties that arose out of the region were the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns, who rose to prominence in Northern Germany. Also stemming from Swabia are the dynasties of the dukes of Württemberg. The Welf family went on to rule in Bavaria and Hanover, smaller feudal dynasties eventually disappeared, however, for example, branches of the Montforts and Hohenems lived until modern times, and the Fürstenberg survive still. The territory of Swabia as understood today emerges in the modern period. It corresponds to the Swabian Circle established in 1512, the Old Swiss Confederacy was de facto independent from Swabia from 1499 as a result of the Swabian War, while the Margraviate of Baden had been detached from Swabia since the twelfth century. Fearing the power of the princes, the cities and smaller secular rulers of Swabia joined to form the Swabian League in the fifteenth century. The region was divided by the Reformation. In the wake of the reorganization of the empire of 1803 by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss
14.
Switzerland
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Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a federal republic in Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western-Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km2. The establishment of the Old Swiss Confederacy dates to the medieval period, resulting from a series of military successes against Austria. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognized in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The country has a history of armed neutrality going back to the Reformation, it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815, nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to international organisations. On the European level, it is a member of the European Free Trade Association. However, it participates in the Schengen Area and the European Single Market through bilateral treaties, spanning the intersection of Germanic and Romance Europe, Switzerland comprises four main linguistic and cultural regions, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Due to its diversity, Switzerland is known by a variety of native names, Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera. On coins and stamps, Latin is used instead of the four living languages, Switzerland is one of the most developed countries in the world, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest per capita gross domestic product according to the IMF. Zürich and Geneva have each been ranked among the top cities in the world in terms of quality of life, with the former ranked second globally, according to Mercer. The English name Switzerland is a compound containing Switzer, a term for the Swiss. The English adjective Swiss is a loan from French Suisse, also in use since the 16th century. The name Switzer is from the Alemannic Schwiizer, in origin an inhabitant of Schwyz and its associated territory, the Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for Confederates, Eidgenossen, used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin Confoederatio Helvetica. The toponym Schwyz itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German Suittes, ultimately related to swedan ‘to burn’
15.
Berlin
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Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany as well as one of its constituent 16 states. With a population of approximately 3.5 million, Berlin is the second most populous city proper, due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one-third of the area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers. Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world, following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all-Germany. Berlin is a city of culture, politics, media. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations. Berlin serves as a hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination, significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Modern Berlin is home to world renowned universities, orchestras, museums and its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions. The city is known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts. Since 2000 Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene, the name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of todays Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl-. All German place names ending on -ow, -itz and -in, since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word Bär, a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore a canting arm, the first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920, the central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document,1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, in 1415 Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. In 1443 Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln
16.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
17.
Urnfield culture
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The Urnfield culture was a late Bronze Age culture of central Europe. The name comes from the custom of cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns which were buried in fields. The Urnfield culture followed the Tumulus culture and was succeeded by the Hallstatt culture, linguistic evidence and continuity with the following Hallstatt culture suggests that the people of this area spoke an early form of Celtic, perhaps originally proto-Celtic. It is believed that in areas, such as in southwestern Germany, it was in existence around 1200 BC. As the transition from the middle Bronze Age to the Urnfield culture was gradual, the Urnfield culture covers the phases Hallstatt A and B in Paul Reineckes chronological system, not to be confused with the Hallstatt culture of the following Iron Age. This corresponds to the Phases Montelius III-IV of the Northern Bronze Age, whether Reineckes Bronze D is included varies according to author and region. The Urnfield culture is divided into the following sub-phases, The existence of the Ha B3-phase is contested, as can be seen by the arbitrary 100-year ranges, the dating of the phases is highly schematic. The phases are based on changes, which means that they do not have to be strictly contemporaneous across the whole distribution. All in all, more radiocarbon and dendro-dates would be highly desirable, the Urnfield culture grew from the preceding tumulus culture. The transition is gradual, in the pottery as well as the burial rites, in some parts of Germany, cremation and inhumation existed simultaneously. Some graves contain a combination of tumulus-culture pottery and Urnfield swords or tumulus culture incised pottery together with early Urnfield types, in the North, the Urnfield culture was only adopted in the HaA2 period. 16 pins deposited in a swamp in Ellmoosen cover the whole range from Bronze B to the early Urnfield period. This demonstrates a considerable ritual continuity, in the Loire, Seine and Rhône, certain fords contain deposits from the late Neolithic onwards up to the Urnfield period. The origins of the rite are commonly believed to be in Hungary. The neolithic Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of modern-day northeastern Romania and Ukraine were also practicing cremation rituals as early as approximately 5500 BC, some cremations begin to be found in the Proto-Lusatian and Trzciniec culture. The Urnfield culture was located in an area stretching from western Hungary to eastern France, metalwork is commonly of a much more widespread distribution than pottery and does not conform to these borders. It may have produced at specialised workshops catering for the elite of a large area. Important French cemeteries include Châtenay and Lingolsheim, an unusual earthwork was constructed at Goloring near Koblenz in Germany
18.
Mold cape
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The Mold cape is a solid sheet-gold object dating from about 1900–1600 BC in the European Bronze Age. It was found at Mold in Flintshire, Wales, in 1833, the cape is thought to have formed part of a ceremonial dress, perhaps with religious connections. It is housed at the British Museum in London, the gold cape was found in 1833 by workmen. The cape was within a Bronze Age burial mound in a field named Bryn yr Ellyllon, the gold cape had been placed on the body of a person who was interred in a rough cist within a burial mound. The preserved remains of the skeleton were fragmentary, and the cape was badly crushed, an estimated 200–300 amber beads, in rows, were on the cape originally, but only a single bead survives at the British Museum. There also were two gold straps among the artefacts found, an urn with large quantities of burnt bone and ash was 0. 6–0.9 m from the grave. The capes breadth is 458 mm, just over 18 inches, the cape is considered to be one of the most spectacular examples of prehistoric sheet-gold working yet discovered. It is of particular interest as both its form and its design are unparalleled, the cape is oval in shape and would cover the shoulders, upper arms, and upper chest of the person wearing it, being higher at the back and lower in the front. The craftsmanship with which the cape was constructed is exceptional, the object was beaten out of a single ingot of gold, a task which would have taken considerable time and skill, and was then intensely decorated with repoussé concentric rings of ribs and bosses. The decoration almost totally fills the objects surface, so that very little plain gold remains. It has been suggested that this motif may mimic multiple strings of beads and/or the folds of cloth. The value of the metal and the quality of the craftmanship suggests that the cape was produced by a wealthy culture. Scholars speculate that the makers and owners of the cape were associated with the mine on the Great Orme, north Wales, the largest copper mine in north-west Europe at that time. As the cape extends so far down the body, it would have severely restricted arm movement by pinning them to the wearers side. For this reason, it has concluded that the cape would not have been suitable for everyday wear. It seems most probable that the cape was used for ceremonial purposes, and may have signified the wearer as a person of spiritual or temporal power, around the neck and base are a line of perforations. Above the perforations at the base are two ridges and a deep groove. Above the groove is a line of conical bosses which runs around the whole cape, the bosses at the front are enlarged
19.
Mold, Flintshire
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Mold is a town in Flintshire, Wales, on the River Alyn. It is the seat of Flintshire County Council, and was the county town of Clwyd from 1974 to 1996. According to the 2011 UK Census, it has a population of 10,058, there is some debate about the origin of the place name. The name Mold originates either from the Norman-French mont-hault or from Robert de Montalt and it is recorded as Mohald in a document of 1254. The Welsh language placename of Yr Wyddgrug is recorded as Gythe Gruc in a document of 1280–1, the motte and bailey were built by the Norman Robert de Montalt in around 1140 in conjunction with the military invasion of Wales by Anglo-Norman forces. The castle was besieged numerous times by the Princes of Gwynedd as they fought to control of the eastern cantrefi in the Perfeddwlad. In 1146, Owain Gwynedd captured the castle, by 1167, Henry II was in possession of the castle, although it was recaptured by the Welsh forces of Llywelyn the Great in 1201. Anglo-Norman authority over the area again in 1241 when Dafydd ap Llywelyn yielded possession of the castle to the de Montalt family. However, he recaptured it from the Plantagenet nobility in 1245, the next few decades were a period of peace, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd built the Welsh native castle of Ewloe further to the east establishing the House of Gwynedds military control over the area. Under Welsh rule, Mold Castle was deemed to be a royal stronghold and it was recaptured by the forces of Edward I during the first months of the war of 1276–77. Mold Castle was still a substantial fortification at the outbreak of the rebellion by Madog ap Llywelyn in 1294, however, with the death of the last Lord Montalt in 1329, the castles importance began to decline. The last mention of the fortification is in Patent Rolls from the early 15th century, with the end of the Welsh Wars, English common law was introduced by the Statute of Rhuddlan. This led to an increase in commercial enterprise in the township which had laid out around Mold Castle. Trade soon began between the Welsh community and English merchants in Chester and Whitchurch, Shropshire, during the medieval period, the town held two annual fairs and a weekly market, which brought in substantial revenues, as drovers brought their livestock to the English-Welsh border to be sold. Nevertheless, tensions between the Welsh and the English remained, during the War of the Roses, Reinalt ab Grufydd ab Bleddyn, a Lancastrian captain who defended Harlech Castle for Henry VI against Yorkist forces, was constantly engaged in feuds with Chester. In 1465 a large number of armed men from Chester arrived at the Mold fair looking for trouble, a fight broke out which led to a pitched battle, eventually Reinalt triumphed and captured Robert Bryne, a former Mayor of Chester. The Welsh captain then took Bryne back to his house near Mold. In retaliation up to 200 men-at-arms were sent from Chester to seize Reinalt, however the Welshman used his military experience to turn the tables on his attackers
20.
Ireland
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Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, Ireland is the second-largest island of the British Isles, the third-largest in Europe, and the twentieth-largest on Earth. Politically, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland, which covers five-sixths of the island, and Northern Ireland, in 2011, the population of Ireland was about 6.4 million, ranking it the second-most populous island in Europe after Great Britain. Just under 4.6 million live in the Republic of Ireland, the islands geography comprises relatively low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain, with several navigable rivers extending inland. The island has lush vegetation, a product of its mild, thick woodlands covered the island until the Middle Ages. As of 2013, the amount of land that is wooded in Ireland is about 11% of the total, there are twenty-six extant mammal species native to Ireland. The Irish climate is moderate and classified as oceanic. As a result, winters are milder than expected for such a northerly area, however, summers are cooler than those in Continental Europe. Rainfall and cloud cover are abundant, the earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 10,500 BC. Gaelic Ireland had emerged by the 1st century CE, the island was Christianised from the 5th century onward. Following the Norman invasion in the 12th century, England claimed sovereignty over Ireland, however, English rule did not extend over the whole island until the 16th–17th century Tudor conquest, which led to colonisation by settlers from Britain. In the 1690s, a system of Protestant English rule was designed to materially disadvantage the Catholic majority and Protestant dissenters, with the Acts of Union in 1801, Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland saw much civil unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s and this subsided following a political agreement in 1998. In 1973 the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community while the United Kingdom, Irish culture has had a significant influence on other cultures, especially in the fields of literature. Alongside mainstream Western culture, an indigenous culture exists, as expressed through Gaelic games, Irish music. The culture of the island shares many features with that of Great Britain, including the English language, and sports such as association football, rugby, horse racing. The name Ireland derives from Old Irish Eriu and this in turn derives from Proto-Celtic *Iveriu, which is also the source of Latin Hibernia. Iveriu derives from a root meaning fat, prosperous, during the last glacial period, and up until about 9000 years ago, most of Ireland was covered with ice, most of the time
21.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
22.
Rianxo
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Rianxo is a port town and municipality in the autonomous community of Galicia in northwestern Spain in the province of A Coruña. It has a population of a little over 15,000, the towns yearly celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is popular with tourists. Rianxo was the birthplace of several influential Galician writers, including Paio Gómez Chariño gl, Manuel Antonio, Alfonso R. Castelao and it has 6 parroquiasgl O Arañogl Asadosgl Isorna gl Leiro gl Rianxo gl Taragoña gl web page of the municipality of Rianxo
23.
Deity
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A deity is a concept conceived in diverse ways in various cultures, typically as a natural or supernatural being considered divine or sacred. A male deity is a god, while a female deity is a goddess, the Oxford reference defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. Various cultures have conceptualized a deity differently than a monotheistic God, a plain deity need not be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, or eternal, however an almighty monotheistic God generally does have these attributes. Monotheistic religions typically refer to God in masculine terms, while other religions refer to their deities in a variety of ways – masculine, feminine, androgynous, some Avestan and Vedic deities were viewed as ethical concepts. In Indian religions, deities have been envisioned as manifesting within the temple of every living beings body, as sensory organs, but in Indian religions, all deities are also subject to death when their merit runs out. The English language word deity derives from Old French deité, the Latin deitatem or divine nature, deus is related through a common Proto-Indo-European language origin to *deiwos. Deva is masculine, and the feminine equivalent is devi. Etymologically, the cognates of Devi are Latin dea and Greek thea, in Old Persian, daiva- means demon, evil god, while in Sanskrit it means the opposite, referring to the heavenly, divine, terrestrial things of high excellence, exalted, shining ones. The closely linked term god refers to supreme being, deity, which states Douglas Harper, is derived from Proto-Germanic *guthan, from PIE *ghut-, guth in the Irish language means voice. The term *ghut- is also the source of Old Church Slavonic zovo, Sanskrit huta-, from the root *gheu- An alternate etymology for the term god traces it to the PIE root *ghu-to-, the term *gheu- is also the source of the Greek khein to pour. Originally the German root was a noun, but the gender of the monotheistic God shifted to masculine under the influence of Christianity. In contrast, all ancient Indo-European cultures and mythologies recognized both masculine and feminine deities, the term deity often connotes the concept of sacred or divine, as a god or goddess, in a polytheistic religion. However, there is no accepted consensus concept of deity across religions and cultures. Huw Owen states that the deity or god or its equivalent in other languages has a bewildering range of meanings. Some engravings or sketches show animals, hunters or rituals, the Venus of Willendorf, a female figurine found in Europe and dated to about 25,000 BCE has been interpreted as an exemplar of a prehistoric divine feminine. In Buddhist mythology, devas are beings inhabiting certain happily placed worlds of Buddhist cosmology and these beings are mortal and numerous. It is also common for iṣṭadevatās to be called deities, although the nature of Yidams is distinct from what is meant by the term. Buddhism does not believe in a creator deity, however, deities are an essential part of Buddhist cosmology, rebirth and Saṃsāra doctrines
24.
Priest
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A priest or priestess, is a person authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites, in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of and their office or position is the priesthood, a term which also may apply to such persons collectively. The necessity to read sacred texts and keep temple or church records helped foster literacy in early societies. Priests exist in many religions today, such as all or some branches of Judaism, Christianity, the question of which religions have a priest depends on how the titles of leaders are used or translated into English. In some cases, leaders are more like those that other believers will often turn to for advice on spiritual matters, for example, clergy in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are priests, but in Protestant Christianity they are typically minister and pastor. The terms priest and priestess are sufficiently generic that they may be used in a sense to describe the religious mediators of an unknown or otherwise unspecified religion. In many religions, being a priest or priestess is a full-time position, many Christian priests and pastors choose or are mandated to dedicate themselves to their churches and receive their living directly from their churches. In other cases it is a part-time role, for example, in the early history of Iceland the chieftains were titled goði, a word meaning priest. In some religions, being a priest or priestess is by election or human choice. In Judaism the priesthood is inherited in familial lines, in a theocracy, a society is governed by its priesthood. The word priest, is derived from Greek, via Latin presbyter. Old High German also has the disyllabic priester, priestar, apparently derived from Latin independently via Old French presbtre, the Latin presbyter ultimately represents Greek presbyteros, the regular Latin word for priest being sacerdos, corresponding to Greek hiereus. That English should have only the term priest to translate presbyter. The feminine English noun, priestess, was coined in the 17th century, in the 20th century, the word was used in controversies surrounding the ordination of women. In the case of the ordination of women in the Anglican communion, it is common to speak of priests. In historical polytheism, a priest administers the sacrifice to a deity, in the Ancient Near East, the priesthood also acted on behalf of the deities in managing their property. Priestesses in antiquity often performed sacred prostitution, and in Ancient Greece, some such as Pythia, priestess at Delphi. Sumerian and Akkadian Entu or EN were top-ranking priestesses who were distinguished with special ceremonial attire and they owned property, transacted business, and initiated the hieros gamos ceremony with priests and kings
25.
Central Europe
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Central Europe lies between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. The concept of Central Europe is based on a historical, social and cultural identity. Central Europe is going through a phase of strategic awakening, with such as the CEI, Centrope. While the regions economy shows high disparities with regard to income, elements of unity for Western and Central Europe were Roman Catholicism and Latin. According to Hungarian historian Jenő Szűcs, foundations of Central European history at the first millennium were in connection with Western European development. The keyword of Western social development after millennium was the spread of liberties and autonomies in Western Europe and these phenomena appeared in the middle of the 13th century in Central European countries. There were self-governments of towns, counties and parliaments, in 1335 under the rule of the King Charles I of Hungary, the castle of Visegrád, the seat of the Hungarian monarchs was the scene of the royal summit of the Kings of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. They agreed to cooperate closely in the field of politics and commerce, in the Middle Ages, countries in Central Europe adopted Magdeburg rights. Before 1870, the industrialization that had developed in Western and Central Europe, even in Eastern Europe, industrialization lagged far behind. Russia, for example, remained rural and agricultural. The concept of Central Europe was already known at the beginning of the 19th century, an example of that-time vision of Central Europe may be seen in J. Partsch’s book of 1903. On 21 January 1904, Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein was established in Berlin with economic integration of Germany, another time, the term Central Europe became connected to the German plans of political, economic and cultural domination. The bible of the concept was Friedrich Naumann’s book Mitteleuropa in which he called for a federation to be established after the war. The concept failed after the German defeat in World War I, the revival of the idea may be observed during the Hitler era. According to Emmanuel de Martonne, in 1927 the Central European countries included, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, italy and Yugoslavia are not considered by the author to be Central European because they are located mostly outside Central Europe. The author use both Human and Physical Geographical features to define Central Europe, the interwar period brought new geopolitical system and economic and political problems, and the concept of Central Europe took a different character. The centre of interest was moved to its eastern part – the countries that have appeared on the map of Europe, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, however, the conflict of interests was too big and neither Little Entente nor Intermarium ideas succeeded. The interwar period brought new elements to the concept of Central Europe, after the war, the Eastern part of Central Europe was placed at the centre of the concept
26.
Pointed hat
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Pointed hats have been a distinctive item of headgear of a wide range of cultures throughout history. The Kabiri of New Guinea have the diba, a pointed hat glued together, existence of the conical hat is known as early as the Bronze Age in Middle East and Central Europe. One example is the hat worn by members of the priesthood. In Ancient Greece, the pilos was a common conical traveling hat, popular among Burgundian noblewomen in the 15th century was a type of conical headgear now called a hennin. Conical hats were popular in late medieval Vijayanagar, India. The conical golden hats of Bronze Age Central Europe were probably a ceremonial accessory worn by the priesthood, pointed hats were also worn in ancient times by Saka, and are shown on Hindu temples and in Hittite reliefs. As described by Herodotus, the name of the Scythian tribe of the tigrakhauda is a compound literally translating to people with pointed hats. Besides the Scythians, the Cabeiri as well as Odysseus are traditionally pictured wearing a Pilos, Ancient conical hats The 13th century Cumans commonly wore pointed hats, and are reported to have fought wearing them. Originating from the Japanese Heian period, the kazaori eboshi was worn by aristocrats to indicate rank, still worn today for ceremonial purposes, this black linen hat was used during a samurais ceremony in attaining manhood. The Papal tiara in the Middle Ages is sometimes shown as more pointed than in recent centuries. Mitra papalis is a type of conch named after the mitre for its form. Medieval Jewish men wore distinctive headgear as part of their religious observance and this included the pointed Jewish hat already worn by Jews, a piece of clothing probably imported from the Islamic world and perhaps before that from Persia. Popular among Burgundian noblewomen in the 15th century was a type of headgear now called a hennin. The whirling dervishes from the 13th century wore hats similar to the hennins, conical hats were also popular in late medieval Vijayanagar, India. The term dunce cap is only attested from 1840, the Spitzhut is a traditional kind of headgear in Bavaria. Pointed hoods were used by various orders and Catholic lay confraternities for processions, pointed hats are still worn in the rural Louisiana Mardi Gras celebrations by the Cajuns, the Courir de Mardi Gras, where they are known as capuchons. The Ku Klux Klan has worn this headgear since its first era, classical pointed hats are worn by the dwarfs, witches and wizards of European Folklore. Also seen on, Garden gnomes, Smurfs, Gandalf, Merlin, list of hats and headgear Headgear Mitre Gugel Barber, A. W
27.
The King's Grave
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The Kings Grave near Kivik in the southeastern portion of the Swedish province of Skåne is what remains of an unusually grand Nordic Bronze Age double burial c.1000 BC. The site is located about 320 metres from the shore of the eastern coast of Scania in southernmost Sweden, in both construction and in size—it is a circular site measuring 75 metres in diameter—this tomb differs from most European burials from the Bronze Age. Most importantly, the cists are adorned with petroglyphs, the images carved into the stones depict people, animals, ships, lurs being played, symbols, and a chariot drawn by two horses and having four-spoked wheels. The site was used as a quarry for construction materials until 1748 and they dug it out, hoping to find a treasure in the grave. Soon rumour had it that the two men had found a treasure in the tomb and the authorities had the men arrested. However, the two men denied having found anything, and as no evidence could be provided against them, several years passed before it was discovered that the slabs of stone in the tomb were adorned with petroglyphs, and a long series of speculations had begun. Still, the continued and some of the stones disappeared. The site was excavated by archaeologist Gustaf Hallström starting in 1931, between 1931–1933, a thorough excavation was undertaken and the remains of a Stone Age settlement was found under the massive cairn, including a great deal of flintstone shards. Only teeth, fragments of bronze, and some pieces of bone were found, the mound contained two cists, however. On the left side of the southern end, there were raised slabs of stone from a 1.2 metres long and 0.65 metres wide cist. It was named the Kings Grave due to its size, long before it was known to contain two burials, since the site has been subject to numerous lootings, there are no reliable finds, but it is believed that the two graves were built at the same time. After the excavation, the tomb was restored, but no one knows whether it looks similar to its original state, a comparison with other contemporaneous graves suggests that the site might have been three times higher than the 3.5 metres as restored. The restoration was based on etchings from the 18th century and conjecture, a new chamber was constructed out of concrete and a tunnel extended into the cists. Today, it is possible for visitors to the site to enter the tomb, egtved Girl Sagaholm Trundholm sun chariot Håga Kurgan Baudou, Evert Gustaf Hallström, arkeolog i världskrigens epok Kiviksgraven
28.
Kivik
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Kivik is a locality situated in Simrishamn Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 960 inhabitants in 2010. It is located in a part of Scania called Österlen, Kivik is known for its annual market, usually taking place on the third Monday through Wednesday of July each year. Its also known for its abundant production of herring, apples and apple cider, historically, Kivik is also home to a bronze-age tomb - the 3, 000-year-old Kings Grave. It is the largest circular burial site in Sweden, measuring 75 metres in diameter, the national park of Stenshuvud is situated to the south of the village
29.
Sweden
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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe
30.
Lunisolar
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A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures whose date indicates both the moon phase and the time of the solar year. As with all calendars which divide the year into months there is a requirement that the year have a whole number of months. In this case ordinary years consist of twelve months but every second or third year is an embolismic year, also, some of the ancient pre-Islamic calendars in south Arabia followed a lunisolar system. The Chinese, Coligny and Hebrew lunisolar calendars track more or less the tropical year whereas the Buddhist, therefore, the first three give an idea of the seasons whereas the last two give an idea of the position among the constellations of the full moon. The Tibetan calendar was influenced by both the Chinese and Hindu calendars, the Germanic peoples also used a lunisolar calendar before their conversion to Christianity. The Metonic cycle, used in the Hebrew calendar and the Julian and Gregorian ecclesiastical calendars, the classic Metonic cycle can be reproduced by assigning an initial epact value of 1 to the last year of the cycle and incrementing by 11 each year. Between the last year of one cycle and the first year of the next the increment is 12 and this adjustment, the saltus lunae, causes the epacts to repeat every 19 years. When the epact goes above 29 an intercalary month is added and 30 is subtracted, the intercalary years are numbers 3,6,8,11,14,17 and 19. Both the Hebrew calendar and the Julian calendar use this sequence, the Buddhist and Hebrew calendars restrict the leap month to a single month of the year, the number of common months between leap months is, therefore, usually 36, but occasionally only 24 months. An alternative way of dealing with the fact that a year does not contain an integer number of months is by including uncounted time in the year that does not belong to any month. Some Coast Salish peoples used a calendar of this kind, for instance, the Chehalis began their count of lunar months from the arrival of spawning chinook salmon, and counted 10 months, leaving an uncounted period until the next chinook salmon run. The Gregorian calendar has a calendar, which is used to determine the date of Easter. The rules are in the Computus, Hebrew calendar Jain calendar Hindu calendar Computus Easter rule for Julian and Gregorian calendars. Lunisolar calendar year 2014 Lunisolar Calendar Calendar studies Model of lunisolar calendar based on observation of the sun and moon position
31.
Lunar calendar
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A lunar calendar is a calendar based upon cycles of the Moons phases, in contrast to solar calendars based solely upon the solar year. A purely lunar calendar is also distinguished from lunisolar calendars whose lunar months are brought into alignment with the year through some process of intercalation. The details of when months begin varies from calendar to calendar, with using new, full, or crescent moons. Because each lunation is a less than 29 days,12 hours,44 minutes. Such holidays include Ramadan, the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Mongolian New Year, the Nepali New Year, the Mid-Autumn Festival and Chuseok, Loi Krathong, and Diwali. The earliest known lunar calendar was found at Warren Field in Scotland and has dated to c. 8000 BC. Some scholars argue for lunar calendars still further back—Rappenglück in the marks on a c. 17, 000-year-old cave painting at Lascaux and Marshack in the marks on a c. 27, most calendars referred to as lunar calendars are in fact lunisolar calendars. Their months are based on observations of the cycle, with intercalation being used to bring them into general agreement with the solar year. The solar civic calendar of ancient Egypt showed traces of its origin in the lunar calendar. Present-day lunisolar calendars include the Chinese, Hindu, and Thai calendars, synodic months are 29 or 30 days in length, making a lunar year of 12 months about 11 days shorter than a solar year. Some lunar calendars do not use intercalation, such as most Islamic calendars, for those that do, such as the Hebrew calendar, the most common form of intercalation is to add an additional month every second or third year. Some lunisolar calendars are also calibrated by annual natural events which are affected by lunar cycles as well as the solar cycle, an example of this is the lunar calendar of the Banks Islands, which includes three months in which the edible palolo worm mass on the beaches. These events occur at the last quarter of the lunar month, lunar and lunisolar calendars differ as to which day is the first day of the month. In some lunisolar calendars, such as the Chinese calendar, the first day of a month is the day when a new moon occurs in a particular time zone. In others, such as some Hindu calendars, each month begins on the day after the moon or the new moon. Others were based in the past on the first sighting of a lunar crescent, the length of each lunar cycle varies slightly from the average value. In addition, observations are subject to uncertainty and weather conditions, thus to avoid uncertainty about the calendar, there have been attempts to create fixed arithmetical rules to determine the start of each calendar month. The average length of the month is 29.530589 days
32.
Summer solstice
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The summer solstice, also known as midsummer, occurs when a planets rotational axis, in either northern or southern hemispheres, is most inclined toward the star that it orbits. Earths maximum axial tilt toward the Sun is 23° 26′ and this happens twice each year, at which times the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky as seen from the north or the south pole. The summer solstice occurs during the hemispheres summer and this is the northern solstice in the northern hemisphere and the southern solstice in the southern hemisphere. The same dates in the opposite hemisphere are referred to as the winter solstice, when on a geographic pole, the Sun reaches its greatest height at the moment of solstice. It can be noon only along that longitude which at that moment lies in the direction of the Sun from the pole, for other longitudes, it is not noon. Noon has either passed or has yet to come, hence the notion of a solstice day is useful. The term is used like midsummer to refer to the day on which solstice occurs. The summer solstice day has the longest period of daylight – except in the polar regions,2016 was the first time in nearly 70 years that a full moon and the Northern Hemispheres summer solstice concur on the same day. The 2016 summer solstices full moon rose just as the Sun set, worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied among cultures, but most recognize the event in some way with holidays, festivals, and rituals around that time with themes of religion or fertility. In some regions, the solstice is seen as the beginning of summer. In other cultural conventions, the solstice is closer to the middle of summer, Solstice is derived from the Latin words sol and sistere. Day of Private Reflection Fremont Solstice Parade Guru Purnima Christmas typically marks the end of the solstice in the southern hemisphere. The data was collected from the website of the Finnish Meteorological Institute on 20 June 2016 as well as certain other websites. The data is arranged geographically and within the tables from the longest day to the shortest one, day length Equinox Midsummers day Stonehenge Winter solstice Xiazhi Table of dates/times from 1600-2400
33.
Winter solstice
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The winter solstice, also known as midwinter, is an astronomical phenomenon marking the day with the shortest period of daylight and the longest night of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere this is the December solstice and in the Southern Hemisphere this is the June solstice. The axial tilt of Earth and gyroscopic effects of its daily rotation mean that the two points in the sky to which the Earths axis of rotation points change very slowly. As the Earth follows its orbit around the Sun, the hemisphere that faced away from the Sun, experiencing winter, will, in half a year, face towards the Sun. This is because the two hemispheres face opposite directions along Earths axis, and so as one polar hemisphere experiences winter, although the winter solstice itself lasts only a moment in time, the term sometimes refers to the day on which it occurs. Other names are midwinter, the extreme of winter, or the shortest day, in some cultures it is seen as the middle of winter, while in others it is seen as the beginning of winter. In meteorology, winter in the Northern Hemisphere spans the period of December through February. The seasonal significance of the solstice is in the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights. The solstice may have been a moment of the annual cycle for some cultures even during neolithic times. Astronomical events were used to guide activities such as the mating of animals, the sowing of crops. Many cultural mythologies and traditions are derived from this and this is attested by physical remains in the layouts of late Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeological sites, such as Stonehenge in England and Newgrange in Ireland. The primary axes of both of these seem to have been carefully aligned on a sight-line pointing to the winter solstice sunrise. It is significant that at Stonehenge the Great Trilithon was erected outwards from the middle of the monument, the winter solstice was immensely important because the people were economically dependent on monitoring the progress of the seasons. Starvation was common during the first months of the winter, January to April or July to October, in temperate climates, the midwinter festival was the last feast celebration, before deep winter began. Most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter, the majority of wine and beer made during the year was finally fermented and ready for drinking at this time. The concentration of the observances were not always on the day commencing at midnight or at dawn, but at the beginning of the pagan day, also reversal is yet another frequent theme, as in Saturnalias slave and master reversals. Iranian people celebrate the night of the Northern Hemispheres winter solstice as, Yalda night, in this night all the family gather together, usually at the house of the oldest, and celebrate it by eating, drinking and reading poems. Nuts, pomegranates and watermelons are particularly served during this festival, the pagan Scandinavian and Germanic people of northern Europe celebrated a twelve-day midwinter holiday called Yule
34.
Metonic cycle
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The Greek astronomer Meton of Athens observed that a period of 19 years is almost exactly equal to 235 synodic months and, rounded to full days, counts 6,940 days. The difference between the two periods is only a few hours, depending on the definition of the year. Considering a year to be 1⁄19 of this 6, 940-day cycle gives a length of 365 + 1⁄4 + 1⁄76 days. To keep a 12-month lunar year in pace with the solar year, when Meton introduced the cycle around 432 BC, it was already known by Babylonian astronomers. A mechanical computation of the cycle is built into the Antikythera mechanism, the cycle was used in the Babylonian calendar, ancient Chinese calendar systems and the medieval computus. It regulates the 19-year cycle of months of the modern Hebrew calendar. The start of the Metonic cycle depends on which of these systems is being used, for Easter, at the time of Meton, axial precession had not yet been discovered, and he could not distinguish between sidereal years and tropical years. Most calendars, like the commonly used Gregorian calendar, are based on the tropical year, nineteen tropical years are about two hours shorter than 235 synodic months. The Metonic cycles error is, therefore, one day every 219 years. 19 tropical years =6,939.602 days,235 synodic months =6,939.688 days. 254 sidereal months =6,939.702 days,255 draconic months =6,939.1161 days. Note that the 19-year cycle is close to 255 draconic months, so it is also an eclipse cycle. The Octon is 1⁄5 of a Metonic cycle, and it recurs about 20 to 25 cycles and this cycle seems to be a coincidence. The periods of the Moons orbit around the Earth and the Earths orbit around the Sun are believed to be independent, an example of a non-coincidental cycle is the orbit of Mercury, with its 3,2 spin-orbit resonance. A lunar year of 12 synodic months is about 354 days, therefore, for a lunisolar calendar, every 2 to 3 years there is a difference of more than a full lunar month between the lunar and solar years, and an extra month needs to be inserted. The Athenians initially seem not to have had a means of intercalating a 13th month, instead. Metons discovery made it possible to propose a regular intercalation scheme, the Babylonians seem to have introduced this scheme around 500 BC, thus well before Meton. Traditionally, for the Babylonian and Hebrew lunisolar calendars, the years 3,6,8,11,14,17, and 19 are the long years of the Metonic cycle
35.
Intercalation (timekeeping)
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Intercalation or embolism in timekeeping is the insertion of a leap day, week, or month into some calendar years to make the calendar follow the seasons or moon phases. Lunisolar calendars may require intercalations of both days and months, the solar or tropical year does not have a whole number of days, but a calendar year must have a whole number of days. The most common way to reconcile the two is to vary the number of days in the calendar year. In solar calendars, this is done by adding to a year of 365 days. In the Julian calendar, as well as in the Gregorian calendar, in the Julian calendar this was done every four years. In the Gregorian, years divisible by 100 but not 400 were exempted in order to improve accuracy, thus,2000 was a leap year,1700,1800, and 1900 were not. Epagomenal days are days within a calendar that are outside any regular month. Usually five epagomenal days are included within every year, but a sixth day is intercalated every four years in some. The Baháí calendar includes enough epagomenal days before the last month to ensure that the year starts on the March equinox. These are known as the Ayyám-i-Há, the solar year does not have a whole number of lunar months, so a lunisolar calendar must have a variable number of months in a year. Regular years have 12 months, but embolismic years insert a 13th intercalary or embolismic month every second or third year, whether to insert an intercalary month in a given year may be determined using regular cycles such as the 19-year Metonic cycle or using calculations of lunar phases. The Buddhist calendar adds both a day and month on a usually regular cycle. Some historians also linked the practice of Nasi to intercalation. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service can insert or remove leap seconds from the last day of any month and these are sometimes described as intercalary. ISO8601 includes a specification for a 52-week year, any year that has 53 Thursdays has 53 weeks, this extra week may be regarded as intercalary
36.
Synodic month
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In lunar calendars, a lunar month is the time between two successive syzygies. The use of the month varies by which culture has utilized the method. This article deals with the definitions of a month that are mainly of significance in astronomy, for other definitions, including a description of a month in the calendars of different cultures around the world, see, month. In Shona, Middle-Eastern, and European traditions, the month starts when the crescent moon becomes first visible at evening after conjunction with the Sun one or two days before that evening. In ancient Egypt the lunar month began on the day when the moon could no longer be seen just before sunrise. Others use calculation, of varying degrees of sophistication, e. g. the Hebrew calendar or the lunar calendar. Yet others run from full moon to full moon, calendars count integer days, so months may be 29 or 30 days in length, in some regular or irregular sequence. In India the month from conjunction to conjunction is divided into thirty parts known as tithis, the date is named after the tithi ruling at sunrise. As the tithi is shorter than the day the date sometimes jumps, there are several types of lunar month. Usually the term lunar month refers to the month, because it is the cycle of visible moon phases. Most of the types of months were first recognized in Babylonian lunar astronomy.321661 days. This is the period of the Moons revolution with respect to the line joining the Sun. The synodic month is the period of the Moons phases, because the Moons appearance depends on the position of the Moon with respect to the Sun as seen from the Earth, while the Moon is orbiting the Earth, the Earth is progressing in its orbit around the Sun. After completing a sidereal month the Moon must move a little further to reach the new position having the same distance from the Sun. This longer period is called the synodic month, since the Earths orbit around the Sun is elliptical and not circular, the angular rate of Earths progression around the Sun varies during the year. The angular rate is faster nearer periapsis and slower near apoapsis, the same is so for the Moons orbit around the Earth. Because of these variations in angular rate, the time between lunations may range from about 29.18 to about 29.93 days. The long-term average duration is 29.530587981 days, the synodic month is used to calculate eclipse cycles
37.
Alloy
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An alloy is a mixture of metals or a mixture of a metal and another element. Alloys are defined by a metallic bonding character, an alloy may be a solid solution of metal elements or a mixture of metallic phases. Intermetallic compounds are alloys with a stoichiometry and crystal structure. Zintl phases are sometimes considered alloys depending on bond types. Alloys are used in a variety of applications. In some cases, a combination of metals may reduce the overall cost of the material while preserving important properties, in other cases, the combination of metals imparts synergistic properties to the constituent metal elements such as corrosion resistance or mechanical strength. Examples of alloys are steel, solder, brass, pewter, duralumin, bronze, the alloy constituents are usually measured by mass. Alloys are usually classified as substitutional or interstitial alloys, depending on the arrangement that forms the alloy. They can be classified as homogeneous, or heterogeneous or intermetallic. An alloy is a mixture of elements, which forms an impure substance that retains the characteristics of a metal. Alloys are made by mixing two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal and this is usually called the primary metal or the base metal, and the name of this metal may also be the name of the alloy. The other constituents may or may not be metals but, when mixed with the base, they will be soluble. The mechanical properties of alloys will often be different from those of its individual constituents. A metal that is very soft, such as aluminium, can be altered by alloying it with another soft metal. Although both metals are soft and ductile, the resulting aluminium alloy will have much greater strength. Adding a small amount of carbon to iron trades its great ductility for the greater strength of an alloy called steel. Due to its strength, but still substantial toughness, and its ability to be greatly altered by heat treatment, steel is one of the most useful. By adding chromium to steel, its resistance to corrosion can be enhanced, creating stainless steel, while adding silicon will alter its electrical characteristics, producing silicon steel
38.
Gold
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Gold is a chemical element with symbol Au and atomic number 79. In its purest form, it is a bright, slightly yellow, dense, soft, malleable. Chemically, gold is a metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions, Gold often occurs in free elemental form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, in veins, and in alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the element silver and also naturally alloyed with copper. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium, golds atomic number of 79 makes it one of the higher numbered, naturally occurring elements. It is thought to have produced in supernova nucleosynthesis, from the collision of neutron stars. Because the Earth was molten when it was formed, almost all of the present in the early Earth probably sank into the planetary core. Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia, a mixture of acid and hydrochloric acid. Gold also dissolves in solutions of cyanide, which are used in mining and electroplating. Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys, but this is not a chemical reaction, as a precious metal, gold has been used for coinage, jewelry, and other arts throughout recorded history. A total of 186,700 tonnes of gold is in existence above ground, the world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry. Gold is also used in infrared shielding, colored-glass production, gold leafing, certain gold salts are still used as anti-inflammatories in medicine. As of 2014, the worlds largest gold producer by far was China with 450 tonnes, Gold is cognate with similar words in many Germanic languages, deriving via Proto-Germanic *gulþą from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃-. The symbol Au is from the Latin, aurum, the Latin word for gold, the Proto-Indo-European ancestor of aurum was *h₂é-h₂us-o-, meaning glow. This word is derived from the root as *h₂éu̯sōs, the ancestor of the Latin word Aurora. This etymological relationship is presumably behind the frequent claim in scientific publications that aurum meant shining dawn, Gold is the most malleable of all metals, a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of 1 square meter, and an avoirdupois ounce into 300 square feet. Gold leaf can be thin enough to become semi-transparent
39.
Silver
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Silver is a metallic element with symbol Ag and atomic number 47. The symbol Ag stems from Latin argentum, derived from the Greek ὰργὀς, a soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. The metal is found in the Earths crust in the pure, free form, as an alloy with gold and other metals. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, Silver is more abundant than gold, but it is much less abundant as a native metal. Its purity is measured on a per mille basis, a 94%-pure alloy is described as 0.940 fine. As one of the seven metals of antiquity, silver has had a role in most human cultures. Silver has long valued as a precious metal. Silver metal is used in many premodern monetary systems in bullion coins, Silver is used in numerous applications other than currency, such as solar panels, water filtration, jewelry, ornaments, high-value tableware and utensils, and as an investment medium. Silver is used industrially in electrical contacts and conductors, in specialized mirrors, window coatings, Silver compounds are used in photographic film and X-rays. Dilute silver nitrate solutions and other compounds are used as disinfectants and microbiocides, added to bandages and wound-dressings, catheters. Silver is similar in its physical and chemical properties to its two neighbours in group 11 of the periodic table, copper and gold. This distinctive electron configuration, with an electron in the highest occupied s subshell over a filled d subshell. Silver is a soft, ductile and malleable transition metal. Silver crystallizes in a cubic lattice with bulk coordination number 12. Unlike metals with incomplete d-shells, metallic bonds in silver are lacking a covalent character and are relatively weak and this observation explains the low hardness and high ductility of single crystals of silver. Silver has a brilliant white metallic luster that can take a polish. Protected silver has greater optical reflectivity than aluminium at all wavelengths longer than ~450 nm, at wavelengths shorter than 450 nm, silvers reflectivity is inferior to that of aluminium and drops to zero near 310 nm. The electrical conductivity of silver is the greatest of all metals, greater even than copper, during World War II in the US,13540 tons of silver were used in electromagnets for enriching uranium, mainly because of the wartime shortage of copper
40.
Copper
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Copper is a chemical element with symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of copper has a reddish-orange color. Copper is one of the few metals that occur in nature in directly usable metallic form as opposed to needing extraction from an ore and this led to very early human use, from c.8000 BC. Copper used in buildings, usually for roofing, oxidizes to form a green verdigris, Copper is sometimes used in decorative art, both in its elemental metal form and in compounds as pigments. Copper compounds are used as agents, fungicides, and wood preservatives. Copper is essential to all living organisms as a trace dietary mineral because it is a key constituent of the enzyme complex cytochrome c oxidase. In molluscs and crustaceans, copper is a constituent of the blood pigment hemocyanin, replaced by the hemoglobin in fish. In humans, copper is found mainly in the liver, muscle, the adult body contains between 1.4 and 2.1 mg of copper per kilogram of body weight. The filled d-shells in these elements contribute little to interatomic interactions, unlike metals with incomplete d-shells, metallic bonds in copper are lacking a covalent character and are relatively weak. This observation explains the low hardness and high ductility of single crystals of copper, at the macroscopic scale, introduction of extended defects to the crystal lattice, such as grain boundaries, hinders flow of the material under applied stress, thereby increasing its hardness. For this reason, copper is supplied in a fine-grained polycrystalline form. The softness of copper partly explains its high conductivity and high thermal conductivity. The maximum permissible current density of copper in open air is approximately 3. 1×106 A/m2 of cross-sectional area, Copper is one of a few metallic elements with a natural color other than gray or silver. Pure copper is orange-red and acquires a reddish tarnish when exposed to air, as with other metals, if copper is put in contact with another metal, galvanic corrosion will occur. A green layer of verdigris can often be seen on old structures, such as the roofing of many older buildings. Copper tarnishes when exposed to sulfur compounds, with which it reacts to form various copper sulfides. There are 29 isotopes of copper, 63Cu and 65Cu are stable, with 63Cu comprising approximately 69% of naturally occurring copper, both have a spin of 3⁄2
41.
Tin
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Tin is a chemical element with symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a metal in group 14 of the periodic table. It is obtained chiefly from the mineral cassiterite, which contains tin dioxide, Tin shows a chemical similarity to both of its neighbors in group 14, germanium and lead, and has two main oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4. Tin is the 49th most abundant element and has, with 10 stable isotopes, metallic tin is not easily oxidized in air. The first alloy used on a scale was bronze, made of tin and copper. After 600 BC, pure metallic tin was produced, pewter, which is an alloy of 85–90% tin with the remainder commonly consisting of copper, antimony, and lead, was used for flatware from the Bronze Age until the 20th century. In modern times, tin is used in alloys, most notably tin/lead soft solders. Another large application for tin is corrosion-resistant tin plating of steel, inorganic tin compounds are rather non-toxic. Because of its low toxicity, tin-plated metal was used for packaging as tin cans. However, overexposure to tin may cause problems with metabolizing essential trace elements such as copper and zinc, Tin is a soft, malleable, ductile and highly crystalline silvery-white metal. When a bar of tin is bent, a sound known as the tin cry can be heard from the twinning of the crystals. Tin melts at the low temperature of about 232 °C, the lowest in group 14, the melting point is further lowered to 177.3 °C for 11 nm particles. β-tin, which is stable at and above room temperature, is malleable, in contrast, α-tin, which is stable below 13.2 °C, is brittle. α-tin has a cubic crystal structure, similar to diamond. α-tin has no properties at all because its atoms form a covalent structure in which electrons cannot move freely. It is a dull-gray powdery material with no common uses other than a few specialized semiconductor applications and these two allotropes, α-tin and β-tin, are more commonly known as gray tin and white tin, respectively. Two more allotropes, γ and σ, exist at temperatures above 161 °C, in cold conditions, β-tin tends to transform spontaneously into α-tin, a phenomenon known as tin pest. Commercial grades of tin resist transformation because of the effect of the small amounts of bismuth, antimony, lead
42.
Tribology
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Tribology is the study of science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion. It includes the study and application of the principles of friction, lubrication, Tribology is a branch of mechanical engineering and materials science. The word tribology derives from the Greek root τριβ- of the verb τρίβω, tribo, I rub in classic Greek, the tribological interactions of a solid surfaces exposed face with interfacing materials and environment may result in loss of material from the surface. The process leading to loss of material is known as wear, major types of wear include abrasion, friction, erosion, and corrosion. Wear can be minimized by modifying the properties of the solids by one or more surface engineering processes or by use of lubricants. Estimated direct and consequential annual loss to industries in the USA due to wear is approximately 1-2% of GDP, methodologies to minimize wear include systematic approaches to diagnose the wear and to prescribe appropriate solutions. Important methods include, Point like contact theory was established by Heinrich Hertz in 1880s, fluid lubrication dynamics was established by Arnold Johannes Sommerfeld in 1900s. In recent years, micro- and nanotribology have been gaining ground, friction regimes for sliding lubricated surfaces have been broadly categorized into, on the basis of the “Stribeck curve”. These curves clearly show the value of friction as the demarcation between full fluid-film lubrication and some solid asperity interactions. The “Stribeck-curve” has been a classic teaching element in tribology classes, duncan Dowson surveyed the history of tribology in his book History of Tribology. This comprehensive book covers developments from prehistory, through early civilizations, historically, Leonardo da Vinci was the first to enunciate two laws of friction. According to da Vinci, the resistance was the same for two different objects of the same weight but making contacts over different widths and lengths. He also observed that the force needed to overcome friction doubles when the weight doubles, da Vincis findings remained unpublished in his notebooks. Da Vinci identified the laws of friction in a notebook in 1493, guillaume Amontons rediscovered the classic rules, but unlike da Vinci, made his findings public at the Academie Royale des Sciences for verification. They were further developed by Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, charles Hatchett carried out the first reliable test on frictional wear using a simple reciprocating machine to evaluate wear on gold coins. He found that compared to self-mated coins, coins with grits between them wore at a faster rate. Michael J Neale was a leader the field of Tribology in the mid to late 1900s - For nearly 40 years he specialised in solving problems in design by applying his knowledge of Tribology. Neale was respected as an educator with a gift for integrating theoretical work with his own experience to produce easy-to-understand design guides
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