Writing system
A writing system is any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in being a reliable form of information storage and transfer; the processes of encoding and decoding writing systems involve shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script. Writing is recorded onto a durable medium, such as paper or electronic storage, although non-durable methods may be used, such as writing on a computer display, on a blackboard, in sand, or by skywriting; the general attributes of writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies. Any particular system can have attributes of more than one category. In the alphabetic category, there is a standard set of letters of consonants and vowels that encode based on the general principle that the letters represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora.
In a logography, each character represents morpheme, or other semantic units. Other categories include abjads, which differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, abugidas or alphasyllabaries, with each character representing a consonant–vowel pairing. Alphabets use a set of 20-to-35 symbols to express a language, whereas syllabaries can have 80-to-100, logographies can have several hundreds of symbols. Most systems will have an ordering of its symbol elements so that groups of them can be coded into larger clusters like words or acronyms, giving rise to many more possibilities in meanings than the symbols can convey by themselves. Systems will enable the stringing together of these smaller groupings in order to enable a full expression of the language; the reading step expressed orally. A special set of symbols known as punctuation is used to aid in structure and organization of many writing systems and can be used to help capture nuances and variations in the message's meaning that are communicated verbally by cues in timing, accent, inflection or intonation.
A writing system will typically have a method for formatting recorded messages that follows the spoken version's rules like its grammar and syntax so that the reader will have the meaning of the intended message preserved. Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to express a full range of thoughts and ideas; the invention of writing systems, which dates back to the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic Era of the late 4th millennium BC, enabled the accurate durable recording of human history in a manner, not prone to the same types of error to which oral history is vulnerable. Soon after, writing provided a reliable form of long distance communication. With the advent of publishing, it provided the medium for an early form of mass communication; the creation of a new alphabetic writing system for a language with an existing logographic writing system is called alphabetization, as when the People's Republic of China studied the prospect of alphabetizing the Chinese languages with Latin script, Cyrillic script, Arabic script, numbers, although the most common instance of it, converting to Latin script, is called romanization.
Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that a writing system is always associated with at least one spoken language. In contrast, visual representations such as drawings and non-verbal items on maps, such as contour lines, are not language-related; some symbols on information signs, such as the symbols for male and female, are not language related, but can grow to become part of language if they are used in conjunction with other language elements. Some other symbols, such as numerals and the ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, but are used in writing and thus must be considered part of writing systems; every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and defining condition of humanity. However, the development of writing systems, the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic and slow. Once established, writing systems change more than their spoken counterparts.
Thus they preserve features and expressions which are no longer current in the spoken language. One of the great benefits of writing systems is that they can preserve a permanent record of information expressed in a language. All writing systems require: at least one set of defined base elements or symbols, individually termed signs and collectively called a script. In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has developed along independent lines. Thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field; the generic term text refers to an instance of writte
Ferrous metallurgy
Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. It began far back in prehistory; the earliest surviving iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores from Sub-Saharan Africa to China; the use of wrought iron was known by the 1st millennium BC, its spread marked the Iron Age. During the medieval period, means were found in Europe of producing wrought iron from cast iron using finery forges. For all these processes, charcoal was required as fuel. Steel was first produced in antiquity as an alloy, its process of production, Wootz steel, was exported before the 4th century BC from India to ancient China, the Middle East and Europe. Archaeological evidence of cast iron appears in 5th-century BC China. New methods of producing it by carburizing bars of iron in the cementation process were devised in the 17th century.
During the Industrial Revolution, new methods of producing bar iron by substituting coke for charcoal were devised and these were applied to produce steel, creating a new era of increased use of iron and steel that some contemporaries described as a new Iron Age. In the late 1850s, Henry Bessemer invented a new steelmaking process, that involved blowing air through molten pig iron to burn off carbon, so to produce mild steel; this and other 19th-century and steel making processes have displaced wrought iron. Today, wrought iron is no longer produced on a commercial scale, having been displaced by the functionally equivalent mild or low carbon steel; the largest and most modern underground iron ore mine in the world is located in Kiruna, Norrbotten County, Lapland. The mine, owned by Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB, a large Swedish mining company, has an annual production capacity of over 26 million tonnes of iron ore. Iron was extracted from iron–nickel alloys, which comprise about 6% of all meteorites that fall on the Earth.
That source can be identified with certainty because of the unique crystalline features of that material, which are preserved when the metal is worked cold or at low temperature. Those artifacts include, for example, a bead from the 5th millennium BC found in Iran and spear tips and ornaments from Ancient Egypt and Sumer around 4000 BC; these early uses appear to have been ceremonial or ornamental. Meteoritic iron is rare, the metal was very expensive more expensive than gold; the early Hittites are known to have bartered iron for silver, at a rate of 40 times the iron's weight, with the Old Assyrian Empire in the first centuries of the second millennium BC. Meteoric iron was fashioned into tools in the Arctic, about the year 1000, when the Thule people of Greenland began making harpoons, knives and other edged tools from pieces of the Cape York meteorite. Pea-size bits of metal were cold-hammered into disks and fitted to a bone handle; these artifacts were used as trade goods with other Arctic peoples: tools made from the Cape York meteorite have been found in archaeological sites more than 1,000 miles distant.
When the American polar explorer Robert Peary shipped the largest piece of the meteorite to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 1897, it still weighed over 33 tons. Another example of a late use of meteoritic iron is an adze from around 1000 AD found in Sweden. Native iron in the metallic state occurs as small inclusions in certain basalt rocks. Besides meteoritic iron, Thule people of Greenland have used native iron from the Disko region. Iron smelting—the extraction of usable metal from oxidized iron ores—is more difficult than tin and copper smelting. While these metals and their alloys can be cold-worked or melted in simple furnaces and cast into molds, smelted iron requires hot-working and can be melted only in specially designed furnaces. Iron is a common impurity in copper ores and iron ore was sometimes used as a flux, thus it is not surprising that humans mastered the technology of smelted iron only after several millennia of bronze metallurgy; the place and time for the discovery of iron smelting is not known because of the difficulty of distinguishing metal extracted from nickel-containing ores from hot-worked meteoritic iron.
The archaeological evidence seems to point to the Middle East area, during the Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. However, wrought iron artifacts remained a rarity until the 12th century BC; the Iron Age is conventionally defined by the widespread replacement of bronze weapons and tools with those of iron and steel. That transition happened at different times as the technology spread. Mesopotamia was into the Iron Age by 900 BC. Although Egypt produced iron artifacts, bronze remained dominant until its conquest by Assyria in 663 BC; the Iron Age began in India about 1200 BC, in Central Europe about 600 BC, in China about 300 BC. Around 500 BC, the Nubians who had learned from the Assyrians the use of iron and were expelled from Egypt, became major manufacturers and exporters of iron. One of the earliest smelted iron artifacts, a dagger with an iron blade found in a Hattic tomb in Anatolia, dated from 2500 BC. About 1500 BC, increasing numbers of non-meteoritic, smelted iron objects appeared in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Nineteen meteoric iron objects were found in the tomb of Egyptian ruler Tutankhamun, who died in 1323 BC, including an iron dagger with a golden hilt, an Eye of Horus, the mummy's head-stand and sixteen
Bronze
Bronze is an alloy consisting of copper with about 12–12.5% tin and with the addition of other metals and sometimes non-metals or metalloids such as arsenic, phosphorus or silicon. These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability; the archeological period in which bronze was the hardest metal in widespread use is known as the Bronze Age. The beginning of the Bronze Age in India and western Eurasia is conventionally dated to the mid-4th millennium BC, to the early 2nd millennium BC in China; the Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting from about 1300 BC and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BC, although bronze continued to be much more used than it is in modern times. Because historical pieces were made of brasses and bronzes with different compositions, modern museum and scholarly descriptions of older objects use the more inclusive term "copper alloy" instead. There are two basic theories as to the origin of the word.
Romance theoryThe Romance theory holds that the word bronze was borrowed from French bronze, itself borrowed from Italian bronzo "bell metal, brass" from either, bróntion, back-formation from Byzantine Greek brontēsíon from Brentḗsion ‘Brindisi’, reputed for its bronze. Proto-Slavic theoryThe Proto-Slavic theory reflects the philological issue that in the most of Slavonic languages word "bronza" corresponds to "war metal" while at the early stages of the Bronze working it was used exclusively for military purposes; the discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects which were harder and more durable than possible. Bronze tools, weapons and building materials such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone and copper predecessors. Bronze was made out of copper and arsenic, forming arsenic bronze, or from or artificially mixed ores of copper and arsenic, with the earliest artifacts so far known coming from the Iranian plateau in the 5th millennium BC, it was only that tin was used, becoming the major non-copper ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BC.
Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the alloying process could be more controlled, the resulting alloy was stronger and easier to cast. Unlike arsenic, metallic tin and fumes from tin refining are not toxic; the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to 4500 BC in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik. Other early examples date to the late 4th millennium BC in Egypt and some ancient sites in China and Mesopotamia. Ores of copper and the far rarer tin are not found together, so serious bronze work has always involved trade. Tin sources and trade in ancient times had a major influence on the development of cultures. In Europe, a major source of tin was the British deposits of ore in Cornwall, which were traded as far as Phoenicia in the eastern Mediterranean. In many parts of the world, large hoards of bronze artifacts are found, suggesting that bronze represented a store of value and an indicator of social status. In Europe, large hoards of bronze tools socketed axes, are found, which show no signs of wear.
With Chinese ritual bronzes, which are documented in the inscriptions they carry and from other sources, the case is clear. These were made in enormous quantities for elite burials, used by the living for ritual offerings. Though bronze is harder than wrought iron, with Vickers hardness of 60–258 vs. 30–80, the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age after a serious disruption of the tin trade: the population migrations of around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean and from Britain, limiting supplies and raising prices. As the art of working in iron improved, iron improved in quality; as cultures advanced from hand-wrought iron to machine-forged iron, blacksmiths learned how to make steel. Steel holds a sharper edge longer. Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, has continued in use for many purposes to the modern day. There are many different bronze alloys, but modern bronze is 88% copper and 12% tin. Alpha bronze consists of the alpha solid solution of tin in copper.
Alpha bronze alloys of 4–5% tin are used to make coins, springs and blades. Historical "bronzes" are variable in composition, as most metalworkers used whatever scrap was on hand; the proportions of this mixture suggests. The Benin Bronzes are in fact brass, the Romanesque Baptismal font at St Bartholomew's Church, Liège is described as both bronze and brass. In the Bronze Age, two forms of bronze were used: "classic bronze", about 10% tin, was used in
Sumer
Sumer is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia, modern-day southern Iraq, during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze ages, one of the first civilizations in the world along with Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumerian farmers were able to grow an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place. Prehistoric proto-writing dates back before 3000 BC; the earliest texts, from c. 3300 BC, come from the cities of Jemdet Nasr. Modern historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c. 5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language, an agglutinative language isolate. These prehistoric people are now called "proto-Euphrateans" or "Ubaidians", are theorized to have evolved from the Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia; the Ubaidians, though never mentioned by the Sumerians themselves, are assumed by modern-day scholars to have been the first civilizing force in Sumer.
They drained the marshes for agriculture, developed trade, established industries, including weaving, metalwork and pottery. Some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language. Reliable historical records begin much later. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians lived along the coast of Eastern Arabia, today's Persian Gulf region, before it was flooded at the end of the Ice Age. Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period, continuing into the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. During the 3rd millennium BC, a close cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians, who spoke a language isolate, Akkadians, which gave rise to widespread bilingualism; the influence of Sumerian on Akkadian is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic and phonological convergence. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund. Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC, but Sumerian continued as a sacred language.
Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Third Dynasty of Ur at 2100–2000 BC, but the Akkadian language remained in use. The Sumerian city of Eridu, on the coast of the Persian Gulf, is considered to have been one of the oldest cities, where three separate cultures may have fused: that of peasant Ubaidian farmers, living in mud-brick huts and practicing irrigation; the term Sumerian is the common name given to the ancient non-Semitic-speaking inhabitants of Mesopotamia by the East Semitic-speaking Akkadians. The Sumerians referred to themselves as ùĝ saĝ gíg ga, phonetically /uŋ saŋ ɡi ɡa/ meaning "the black-headed people", to their land as ki-en-gi, meaning "place of the noble lords"; the Akkadian word Shumer may represent the geographical name in dialect, but the phonological development leading to the Akkadian term šumerû is uncertain. Hebrew Shinar, Egyptian Sngr, Hittite Šanhar, all referring to southern Mesopotamia, could be western variants of Shumer. In the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones.
Each was centered on a temple dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a priestly governor or by a king, intimately tied to the city's religious rites. The five "first" cities, said to have exercised pre-dynastic kingship "before the flood": Eridu Bad-tibira Larsa Sippar Shuruppak Other principal cities: Minor cities: Kuara Zabala Kisurra Marad Dilbat Borsippa Kutha Der Eshnunna Nagar 2 Apart from Mari, which lies full 330 kilometres north-west of Agade, but, credited in the king list as having "exercised kingship" in the Early Dynastic II period, Nagar, an outpost, these cities are all in the Euphrates-Tigris alluvial plain, south of Baghdad in what are now the Bābil, Diyala, Wāsit, Dhi Qar, Basra, Al-Muthannā and Al-Qādisiyyah governorates of Iraq; the Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Uruk periods. Sumerian written history reaches back to the 27th century BC and before, but the historical record remains obscure until the Early Dynastic III period, c. the 23rd century BC, when a now deciphered syllabary writing system was developed, which has allowed archaeologists to read contemporary records and inscriptions.
Classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BC. Following the Gutian period, there was a brief Sumerian Renaissance in the 21st century BC, cut short in the 20th century BC by invasions by the Amorites; the Amorite "dynasty of Isin"
Amusement park
An amusement park is a park that features various attractions, such as rides and games, as well as other events for entertainment purposes. A theme park is a type of amusement park that bases its structures and attractions around a central theme featuring multiple areas with different themes. Unlike temporary and mobile funfairs and carnivals, amusement parks are stationary and built for long-lasting operation, they are more elaborate than city parks and playgrounds providing attractions that cater to a variety of age groups. While amusement parks contain themed areas, theme parks place a heavier focus with more intricately-designed themes that revolve around a particular subject or group of subjects. Amusement parks evolved from European fairs, pleasure gardens and large picnic areas, which were created for people's recreation. World's fairs and other types of international expositions influenced the emergence of the amusement park industry. Lake Compounce opened in 1846 and is considered the oldest continuously-operating amusement park in North America.
The first theme parks emerged in the mid-twentieth century with the opening of Santa Claus Land in 1946, Santa's Workshop in 1949, Disneyland in 1955. The amusement park evolved from three earlier traditions: traveling or periodic fairs, pleasure gardens and exhibitions such as world fairs; the oldest influence was the periodic fair of the Middle Ages - one of the earliest was the Bartholomew Fair in England from 1133. By the 18th and 19th centuries, they had evolved into places of entertainment for the masses, where the public could view freak shows, acrobatics and juggling, take part in competitions and walk through menageries. A wave of innovation in the 1860s and 1870s created mechanical rides, such as the steam-powered carousel, its derivatives, notably from Frederick Savage of King's Lynn, Norfolk whose fairground machinery was exported all over the world; this inaugurated the era of the modern funfair ride, as the working classes were able to spend their surplus wages on entertainment.
The second influence was the pleasure garden. An example of this is the world's oldest amusement park, opened in mainland Europe in 1583, it is located north of Copenhagen in Denmark. Another early garden was the Vauxhall Gardens, founded in 1661 in London. By the late 18th century, the site had an admission fee for its many attractions, it drew enormous crowds, with its paths noted for romantic assignations. Although the gardens were designed for the elites, they soon became places of great social diversity. Public firework displays were put on at Marylebone Gardens, Cremorne Gardens offered music and animal acrobatics displays. Prater in Vienna, began as a royal hunting ground, opened in 1766 for public enjoyment. There followed coffee-houses and cafés, which led to the beginnings of the Wurstelprater as an amusement park; the concept of a fixed park for amusement was further developed with the beginning of the world's fairs. The first World fair began in 1851 with the construction of the landmark Crystal Palace in London, England.
The purpose of the exposition was to celebrate the industrial achievement of the nations of the world and it was designed to educate and entertain the visitors. American cities and business saw the world's fair as a way of demonstrating economic and industrial success; the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, Illinois was an early precursor to the modern amusement park. The fair was an enclosed site, that merged entertainment and education to entertain the masses, it set out to bedazzle the visitors, did so with a blaze of lights from the "White City." To make sure that the fair was a financial success, the planners included a dedicated amusement concessions area called the Midway Plaisance. Rides from this fair captured the imagination of the visitors and of amusement parks around the world, such as the first steel Ferris wheel, found in many other amusement areas, such as the Prater by 1896; the experience of the enclosed ideal city with wonder, rides and progress, was based on the creation of an illusory place.
The "midway" introduced at the Columbian Exposition would become a standard part of most amusement parks, fairs and circuses. The midway contained not only the rides, but other concessions and entertainments such as shooting galleries, penny arcades, games of chance and shows. Many modern amusement parks evolved from earlier pleasure resorts that had become popular with the public for day-trips or weekend holidays, for example, seaside areas such as Blackpool, United Kingdom and Coney Island, United States. In the United States, some amusement parks grew from picnic groves established along rivers and lakes that provided bathing and water sports, such as Lake Compounce in Connecticut, first established as a picturesque picnic park in 1846, Riverside Park in Massachusetts, founded in the 1870s along the Connecticut River; the trick was getting the public to the resort location. For Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, on the Atlantic Ocean, a horse-drawn streetcar line brought pleasure seekers to the beach beginning in 1829.
In 1875, a million passengers rode the Coney Island Railroad, in 1876 two million visited Coney Island. Hotels and amusements were built to accommodate both the upper classes and the working class at the beach; the first carousel was installed in the 1870s, the first roller coaster, the "Switchback Railway", in 1884. In England, Blackpo
Punjab, India
Punjab is a state in northern India. Forming part of the larger Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, the state is bordered by the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir to the north, Himachal Pradesh to the east, Haryana to the south and southeast, Rajasthan to the southwest, the Pakistani province of Punjab to the west; the state covers an area of 1.53 % of India's total geographical area. It is the 20th-largest Indian state by area. With 27,704,236 inhabitants at the 2011 census, Punjab is the 16th-largest state by population, comprising 22 districts. Punjabi is the most spoken and official language of the state; the main ethnic group are the Punjabis, with Sikhs forming the demographic majority and Hindus forming a sizable minority. The state capital is Chandigarh, a Union Territory and the capital of the neighbouring state of Haryana; the five rivers from which the region took its name were Sutlej, Beas and Jhelum. The Punjab region was home to the Indus Valley Civilization until 1900 BCE.
The Punjab was invaded by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE and was captured by Chandragupta Maurya under Chanakya. The Punjab was home to the Gupta Empire, the empire of the Alchon Huns, the empire of Harsha, the Mongol Empire. Circa 1000, the Punjab was part of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire. Sikhism originated in Punjab and resulted in the formation of the Sikh Confederacy after the fall of the Mughal Empire; the confederacy was united into the Sikh Empire by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The entire Punjab region was annexed by the British East India Company from the Sikh Empire in 1849. In 1947, the Punjab Province of British India was divided along religious lines into West Punjab and East Punjab; the western part was assimilated into new country of Pakistan. The Indian Punjab as well as PEPSU was divided into three parts on the basis of language in 1966. Haryanvi-speaking areas were carved out as Haryana, while the hilly regions and Pahari-speaking areas formed Himachal Pradesh, alongside the current state of Punjab.
Punjab's government has three branches – executive and legislative. Punjab follows the parliamentary system of government with the Chief Minister as the head of the state. Punjab is agriculture-based due to the presence of abundant water sources and fertile soils. Other major industries include the manufacturing of scientific instruments, agricultural goods, electrical goods, financial services, machine tools, sewing machines, sports goods, tourism, bicycles and the processing of pine oil and sugar. Minerals and energy resources contribute to Punjab's economy to a much lesser extent. Punjab has the largest number of steel rolling mill plants in India, which are in "Steel Town"—Mandi Gobindgarh in the Fatehgarh Sahib district; the region was called Sapta Sindhu, the Vedic land of the seven rivers flowing into the ocean. The Sanskrit name for the region, as mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata for example, was Panchanada which means "Land of the Five Rivers", was translated to Persian as Punjab after the Muslim conquests.
The word Punjab is a compound of the Persian words āb. Thus Panjāb means "the land of five rivers"; the five rivers are the Sutlej, Ravi and Jehlum. Traditionally, in English, there used to be a definite article before the name, i.e. "The Punjab". The name is sometimes spelled as "Panjab"; the Greeks called Punjab an inland delta of five converging rivers. During the period when the epic Mahabharata was written, around 800–400 BCE, Punjab was known as Trigarta and ruled by Katoch kings; the Indus Valley Civilization spanned much of the Punjab region with cities such as Ropar. The Vedic Civilization spread along the length of the Sarasvati River to cover most of northern India including Punjab; this civilisation shaped subsequent cultures in the Indian subcontinent. The Punjab region was ruled by many ancient empires including the Gandhara, Mauryas, Kushans, Palas, Gurjara-Pratiharas and Hindu Shahis; the furthest eastern extent of Alexander the Great's exploration was along the Indus River. Agriculture flourished and trading cities such as Jalandhar and Ludhiana grew in wealth.
Due to its location, the Punjab region came under constant attack and influence from both west and east. Punjab faced invasions by the Achaemenids, Scythians and Afghans; this resulted in the Punjab witnessing centuries of bitter bloodshed. Its culture combines Hindu, Islamic and British influences; the original Punjab region is now divided into several units: West Punjab, portions of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa such as the Gandharar region, the Indian states of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh and the Indian Union territory of Chandigarh and Jammu Division. The Punjab is the'Sapta Sindhu' region mentioned in the Rig Veda, the seven rivers are: Saraswati, Satadru/Shutadri, Asikani, Purushni, Vitasta/Vet and Sindhu. Among the classic books that were wholly or composed in this region are the following. Rigveda Grammar of Sakatayana Ashtadhyayi of Pāṇini Nirukta of Yaska Charaka Samhita Mahabharata along with the Bhagavad Gita Brihatkatha of Gunadya Bakhshali ManuscriptThe world's oldest university Takshashila flourished here before the Buddha's birth.
The Brahmins of this region
Punjab, Pakistan
Punjab is Pakistan's second largest province by area, after Balochistan, it is the most populated province, with an estimated population of 110,012,442 as of 2017. Forming the bulk of the transnational Punjab region, it is bordered by the Pakistan provinces of Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the enclave of Islamabad, Azad Kashmir, it shares borders with the Indian states of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. The provincial capital of Punjab is the city Lahore, a cultural, historical and cosmopolitan centre of Pakistan where the country's cinema industry, much of its fashion industry, are based. Punjab has been inhabited since ancient times; the Indus Valley Civilization, dating to 2600 BCE, was first discovered at Harappa. Punjab features in the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharata, is home to Taxila, site of what is considered by many to be the oldest university in the world. In 326 BCE, Alexander the Great defeated King Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes near Punjab; the Umayyad empire conquered Punjab in the 8th century CE.
In the subsequent centuries, Punjab was invaded and conquered by the Ghaznavids, Delhi Sultanate, Mughals and the Sikhs. Punjab reached the height of its splendour during the reign of the Mughal Empire, which for a time ruled from Lahore. During the 18th century, Nader Shah’s invasion of the Mughal Empire caused Mughal authority in the Punjab to fall apart and it thus fell into chaos; the Durranis under Ahmad Shah Durrani wrested control of Punjab only to lose it to the Sikhs after a successful rebellion which allowed Sikh armies to claim Lahore in 1759. The Sikh Empire was ruled by Ranjit Singh with his capital based in Lahore, until its defeat by the British. Punjab was central to the independence movements of both India and Pakistan, with Lahore being site of both the Declaration of Indian Independence, the resolution calling for the establishment of Pakistan; the province was formed when the Punjab province of British India was divided along religious boundaries in 1947 by the Radcliffe Line after Partition.
Punjab is Pakistan's most industrialised province with the industrial sector making up 24% of the province's gross domestic product. Punjab is known in Pakistan for its relative prosperity, has the lowest rate of poverty amongst all Pakistani provinces. A clear divide is present between the southern portions of the province. Punjab is one of South Asia's most urbanized regions with 40% of people living in urban areas, its human development index rankings are high relative to the rest of Pakistan. Punjab is known in Pakistan for its liberal social attitudes; the province has been influenced by Sufism, with numerous Sufi shrines spread across Punjab which attract millions of devotees annually. The founder of the Sikh faith, Guru Nanak, was born in the Punjab town of Nankana Sahib near Lahore. Punjab is the site of the Katasraj Temple, which features prominently in Hindu mythology. Several UNESCO World Heritage Sites are located in Punjab, including the Shalimar Gardens, the Lahore Fort, the archeological excavations at Taxila, the Rohtas Fort.
The region was called Sapta Sindhu, the Vedic land of the seven rivers flowing into the ocean. The Sanskrit name for the region, as mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata for example, was Panchanada which means "Land of the Five Rivers", was translated to Persian as Punjab after the Muslim conquests; the region was known to the Greeks as Pentapotamia. The word Punjab was formally introduced in the early 17th century CE as an elision of the Persian words panj and āb, thus meaning the five rivers, similar in meaning to the Sanskrit and Greek name for the region; the five rivers, namely Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej, flow via the Panjnad River into the Indus River and into the Arabian Sea. Of the five great rivers of Punjab, four course through Pakistan's Punjab province. Due to its location, the Punjab region came under constant attack and witnessed centuries of foreign invasions by the Persians, Kushans, Scythians and Afghans; the northwestern part of South Asia, including Punjab, was invaded or conquered by various foreign empires, including those of Tamerlane, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan.
The oldest evidence of life in Pakistan has been found in Soan River valley. It was here that some of the earliest signs of humans have been discovered during the excavations of prehistoric mounds. Tools up to two million years old have been recovered in potohar plateau. In the Soan River, many fossil bearing rocks are exposed on the surface. 14 million year old fossils of gazelle, crocodile and rodents have been found there. Punjab during Mahabharata times was known as Panchanada. Punjab was part of the Indus Valley Civilization, more than 4000 years ago; the main site in Punjab was the city of Harrapa. The Indus Valley Civilization spanned much of what is today Pakistan and evolved into the Indo-Aryan civilization; the Vedic civilisation flourished along the length of the Indus River. This civilization shaped subsequent cultures in South Afghanistan. Although the archaeological site at Harappa was damaged in 1857 when engineers constructing the Lahore-Multan railroad used brick from the Harappa ruins for track ballast, an abundance of artefacts have been found.
Punjab was part of the great ancient empires including the Gandhara Mahajanapadas, Macedonians, Kushans and Hin
Pakistan
