Sierra Madre del Sur
The Sierra Madre del Sur is a mountain range in southern Mexico, extending 1,000 kilometres from southern Michoacán east through Guerrero, to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in eastern Oaxaca. The Sierra Madre del Sur joins with the Eje Volcánico Transversal of central Mexico in northern Oaxaca, but is separated from this range further west by the valley of the Río Balsas and its tributary the Río Tepalcatepec; the mountains' highest point is 3,703 metres, located at 17°33′N 100°18′W in central Guerrero, just one major highway crosses the range between Acapulco and Mexico City. Although separated from the main part of the Sierra Madre del Sur by the deep canyon of the lower Río Balsas, the mountains of southern Michoacán around Coalcomán are considered part of the Sierra Madre del Sur; the range is noted for its high biodiversity and large number of endemic species. The Sierra Madre del Sur pine-oak forests ecoregion occupies the higher reaches of the range; these forests are part of a chain of Mesoamerican pine-oak forests that stretch from the Southwestern United States to Costa Rica along the American Cordillera.
Lower elevations of the range are covered by tropical dry forests, ecoregions in the Tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests Biome. The Jalisco dry forests occupy the western end of the range's Pacific slope; the Southern Pacific dry forests occupy most of the Pacific slope of the range, from Michoacan in the west through Guerrero and Oaxaca. The basin of the Balsas River, north of the Sierra, is home to the Balsas dry forests. "Sierra Madre del Sur pine-oak forests". Terrestrial Ecoregions. World Wildlife Fund. World Wildlife Fund, ed.. "Sierra Madre del Sur pine-oak forests". WildWorld Ecoregion Profile. National Geographic Society. Archived from the original on 2010-03-08
Mesoamerican ballcourt
A Mesoamerican ballcourt is a large masonry structure of a type used in Mesoamerica for over 2,700 years to play the Mesoamerican ballgame the hip-ball version of the ballgame. More than 1,300 ballcourts have been identified. Although there is a tremendous variation in size, in general all ballcourts are the same shape: a long narrow alley flanked by two walls with horizontal and sloping faces. Although the alleys in early ballcourts were open-ended ballcourts had enclosed end-zones, giving the structure an -shape when viewed from above. Ballcourts were used for functions other than, or in addition to, ballgames. Ceramics from western Mexico show ballcourts being used for other sporting endeavours, including what appears to be a wrestling match, it is known from archaeological excavations that ballcourts were the sites of sumptuous feasts, although whether these were conducted in the context of the ballgame or as another event is not as yet known. The siting of the most prominent ballcourts within the sacred precincts of cities and towns, as well as the votive deposits found buried there, demonstrates that the ballcourt were places of spectacle and ritual.
Although ballcourts are found within most Mesoamerican sites, they are not distributed across time or geography. For example, the Late Classic site of El Tajin, the largest city of the ballgame-obsessed Classic Veracruz culture, has at least 18 ballcourts while Cantona, a nearby contemporaneous site, sets the record with 24. In contrast, Northern Chiapas and the northern Maya Lowlands have few, ballcourts are conspicuously absent at some major sites, including Teotihuacan and Tortuguero, it is thought that ballcourts are an indication of decentralization of political and economic power: areas with a strong centralized state, such as the Aztec Empire, have few ballcourts while areas with smaller competing polities have many. At Cantona, for example, the extraordinary number of ballcourts is due to the many and diverse cultures residing there under a weak state. Ballcourts vary in size. One of the smallest, at Tikal site, is only one-sixth the size of the Great Ballcourt at Chichen Itza. Despite the variation in size, ballcourts' playing alleys are the same shape, with an average length-to-width ratio of 4-to-1, although some regional variation is found: Central Mexico, for example, has longer playing alleys, the Maya Northern Lowlands wider.
The following is a comparison of the size of the playing alleys for several well-known ballcourts. The earliest ballcourts were doubtless temporary marked off areas of compacted soil much like those used to play the modern ulama game, the Mesoamerican ballgame's descendant. Paso de la Amada, along the Pacific coast boasts the oldest ballcourt yet identified, dated to 1400 BC; this narrow ballcourt has an 80 m × 8 m flat playing alley defined by two flanking earthen mounds with "benches" running along their length. By the Early Classic, ballcourt designs began to feature an additional pair of mounds set some distance beyond the ends of the alley as if to keep errant balls from rolling too far away. By the Terminal Classic, the end zones of many ballcourts were enclosed, creating the well-known -shape; the evolution of the ballcourt is, of course, more complex than the foregoing suggests, with over 1300 known ballcourts, there are exceptions to any generalization. Open ballcourts continued to be constructed at smaller sites.
Some ballcourts featured only one enclosed endzone while some ballcourts' endzones are of different depths. During the Formative period, some enclosed ballcourts were rectangular, without endzones. One such court, at La Lagunita in the Guatemala Highlands, features rounded side walls. Unlike the compacted earth of the playing alley, the side walls of the formal ballcourts were lined with stone blocks; these walls featured 3 or more sloping surfaces. Vertical surfaces are less common, but they begin to replace the sloping apron during the Classic era, are a feature of several of the largest and best-known ballcourts, including the Great Ballcourt at Chichen Itza and the North and South Ballcourts at El Tajin. There the vertical surfaces were covered with elaborate reliefs showing scenes sacrificial scenes, related to the ballgame. Most prominent ballcourts were part of their town or city's central monumental precinct and as such they share the orientation of pyramids and other structures there.
Since many Mesoamerican cities and towns were oriented to a few degrees east of north, it is not surprising to find that in the Valley of Oaxaca, for example, ballcourt orientations tend to be a few degrees east of north, or at right angles to that. Other than this general trend, no consistent orientation of ballcourts throughout Mesoamerica has been found, although some patterns do emerge at the regional level. In the Cotzumalhuapa region, for example, open-ended ballcourts with a north-south orientation were earlier than east-west enclosed courts. Stone rings, tenoned into the wall at mid-court, appeared in the Terminal Classic era. Sending a ball through the ring must have been a rare occurrence; the players could not use their hands or feet to guide the ball. Moreover, the rings were only larger than the ball itself and were located at no small distance from the playing alley. At Chichen Itza, for example, they were set 6 meters above the alley, while at Xochicalco they set at the top of an 11-meter-wide apron, 3 meters above the playing alley.
As shown on Az
Playa Zipolite
Playa Zipolite is a beach community located in San Pedro Pochutla municipality on the southern coast of Oaxaca state in Mexico between Huatulco and Puerto Escondido. Zipolite is best known as being Mexico’s first and only legal public nude beach and for retaining much of the hippie culture that made it notable in the 1970s; the origin of the name Zipolite has been lost over time. Translated from Zapotec, Zipolite means "beach of the dead"; some versions has that referring to dangerous underwater currents just offshore and locals say the Zapotecs offered the bodies of their dead to this sea and the consequence for why the beach was unoccupied until alternative foreigners started arriving here in 1969. Other versions has it coming from the Nahuatl word sipolitlan or zipotli, meaning "bumpy place" or "place of continuous bumps or hills"; the beach is popular with foreign tourists backpackers, who stay in one of the many rustic cabins or camping spaces that line the beach. Archeological finds at the east end of the beach shows that the area has a long history, but for the first half of the 20th century only one family lived here.
In the 1960s and 1970s, counterculture hippies began to congregate here in part due to the beach’s isolated nature. At the time, there was little law enforcement, drug use became common. In the 1970s and 1980s the beach gained a reputation in Mexico and among foreign travelers as a free-love paradise. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Zipolite was hard hit by a fire; the first hurricane was Hurricane Pauline on 7 October 1997, a category four storm which destroyed nearly everything in town with strong flooding, leaving it -along with Mazunte and Puerto Ángel- cut off from the mainland, but there were no deaths. Next was Hurricane Rick on 9 November 1997. While not as strong as Pauline, the storm damaged roads and other infrastructure, only rebuilt after Pauline; the last disaster to cause major damage was a fire that broke out on 21 February 2001, burning many of the wood and palm-thatched structures that were on the beach. Since its beginnings in the 1960s, Zipolite has evolved from handful of beachfront cabanas and palm-thatched palapas to concrete, but still basic and other structures with a few more amenities.
Behind the line of beachfront construction is now an area called Colonia Roca Blanca with a street known informally as the Adoquin which has become the town center. The municipality has added tourist information services and police patrols on the beach both day and night during the busy season; the community known as Zipolite consists of an one-mile stretch of beach with a street that parallels it. It has a central neighborhood, Colonia Roca Blanca, situated at the western end where many of the hotels and restaurants are located. Colonia Roca Blanca is named for the island or large rock just off the shore, white due to bird guano; until just 2014, the main drag was the only paved street within the community. It is called the “Paisan” but locals call it the Adoquín; the Colonia Roca Blanca has now been redone, the town now has three streets paved with yellow brick and stonework. Further behind the beach and Adoquín is a larger road that connects Zipolite with other local communities such as San Agustinillo and Puerto Angel.
There are no building codes enforced here, so constructions vary as to materials and quality. There are no banking services here. An automated teller machine exists at Playa Zipolite Hotel Nude. Several bank branches are in Pochutla. There is no currency exchange either, but many places take U. S. dollars. Few places accept credit cards. All the establishments that face the beach have palapa sheltered restaurants and bars in front and lodging in the back; these lodgings can vary from wood huts, to simple concrete structures and include hammocks and places to pitch tents. Most baths are shared. There is no high-rise development here and none of the lodgings offer air conditioning or hot water. Zipolite has a variety of restaurants from the standard Mexican to international cuisine and vegetarian choices. Many of the local restaurants are owned by expatriate Italians and serve pasta dishes as well as pizza. One restaurant serves crepes because of its French expatriate owner. Nightlife in Zipolite is subdued, however, in the high season, some good musicians pass through town.
The local band, the Zipolite Beach Billies, hosts a weekly open mike, popular among tourists and locals alike. Many of the beachfront hotels have their own small bars. and there are a number of small nightclubs such as Livelula Bar, Zipolipas and La Puesta. Posada Mexico frequently hosts live music. There is a large yoga community in Zipolite with classes being offered at the Alquimista and Loma Linda. Zipolite still attracts those drawn to the hippie lifestyle. Attitudes about drug use, in particular marijuana, are typically relaxed; the police station is unmanned, but extra efforts for security are implemented during busy seasons such as Christmas and Easter week, during Festival Nudista in February, supplementing the normal local auxiliary police with regular patrolmen from San Pedro Pochutla. Other efforts include checking for intoxicated drivers and boaters in Zipolite and other area beaches. Zipolite can be reached by flying into Huatulco or Puerto Escondido and traveling on coastal highway 200.
It can be reached by road from Oaxaca City via Highway 175, a narrow winding road that takes six or seven hours to traverse. This highway ends at Puerto Angel and there are private and collectivo taxis that travel between this port and Zipolite. Piña Palmera is a rehabilitation and educational center for d
Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake was an English sea captain, slave trader, naval officer and explorer of the Elizabethan era. Drake carried out the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580, was the first to complete the voyage as captain while leading the expedition throughout the entire circumnavigation. With his incursion into the Pacific Ocean, he claimed what is now California for the English and inaugurated an era of conflict with the Spanish on the western coast of the Americas, an area, unexplored by western shipping. Elizabeth I awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581; as a Vice Admiral, he was second-in-command of the English fleet in the battle against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He died of dysentery after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico. Drake's exploits made him a hero to the English, but his privateering led the Spanish to brand him a pirate, known to them as El Draque. King Philip II offered a reward for his capture or death of 20,000 ducats, about £6 million in modern currency.
Francis Drake was born in Tavistock, England. Although his birth date is not formally recorded, it is known that he was born while the Six Articles were in force, his birth date is estimated from contemporary sources such as: "Drake was two and twenty when he obtained the command of the Judith". This would date his birth to 1544. A date of c.1540 is suggested from two portraits: one a miniature painted by Nicholas Hilliard in 1581 when he was 42, so born circa 1539, while the other, painted in 1594 when he was said to be 53, would give a birth year of around 1541. He was the oldest of the twelve sons of Edmund Drake, a Protestant farmer, his wife Mary Mylwaye; the first son was alleged to have been named after his godfather Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford. Because of religious persecution during the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549, the Drake family fled from Devon to Kent. There Drake's father obtained an appointment to minister the men in the King's Navy, he was made vicar of Upnor Church on the Medway.
Drake's father apprenticed him to his neighbour, the master of a barque used for coastal trade transporting merchandise to France. The ship's master was so satisfied with the young Drake's conduct that, being unmarried and childless at his death, he bequeathed the barque to Drake. Francis Drake married Mary Newman at St. Budeaux church, Plymouth, in July 1569, she died 12 years in 1581. In 1585, Drake married Elizabeth Sydenham—born circa 1562, the only child of Sir George Sydenham, of Combe Sydenham, the High Sheriff of Somerset. After Drake's death, the widow Elizabeth married Sir William Courtenay of Powderham. At the age of eighteen he was purser of a ship. At twenty he made a voyage to the coast of Guinea. In 1563, aged 23, made his first voyage to the Americas, sailing with his second cousin, Sir John Hawkins, on one of a fleet of ships owned by his relatives, the Hawkins family of Plymouth, he made three voyages with this fleet, attacking Portuguese towns and ships on the coast of West Africa.
They sailed to the Americas and sold the captured cargoes of slaves to Spanish plantations. John Hawkins is considered to have been the first English slave-trader. Hawkins made three such expeditions, the first in 1563, second in 1564 and the third expedition ending in the ill-fated 1568 incident at San Juan de Ulúa. In 1568, Drake was on his third expedition with the Hawkins fleet when, whilst negotiating to resupply and repair at a Spanish port in Mexico, the fleet was attacked by Spanish warships, with all but two of the English ships lost, he escaped along with John Hawkins. Drake's hostility towards the Spanish is said to have started with this incident. Following the defeat at San Juan de Ulúa, Drake vowed revenge. In 1570, his reputation enabled him to proceed to the West Indies with two vessels under his command, he renewed his visit the next year for the sole purpose of obtaining information. In 1572, he embarked on his first major independent enterprise, he planned an attack on the Isthmus of Panama, known to the Spanish as Tierra Firme and the English as the Spanish Main.
This was the point at which the silver and gold treasure of Peru had to be landed and sent overland to the Caribbean Sea, where galleons from Spain would pick it up at the town of Nombre de Dios. Drake left Plymouth on 24 May 1572, with a crew of 73 men in two small vessels, the Pascha and the Swan, to capture Nombre de Dios, his first raid was late in July 1572. Drake and his men captured its treasure; when his men noticed that Drake was bleeding profusely from a wound, they insisted on withdrawing to save his life and left the treasure. Drake stayed in the area for a year, raiding Spanish shipping and attempting to capture a treasure shipment; the most celebrated of Drake's adventures along the Spanish Main was his capture of the Spanish Silver Train at Nombre de Dios in March 1573. He raided the waters around Darien with a crew including many French privateers including Guillaume Le Testu, a French buccaneer, African slaves who had escaped the Spanish. Drake tracked the Silver Train to the nearby port of Nombre de Dios.
After their attack on the richly laden mule train and his party found that they had captured around 20 tons of silver and gold. They buried much of the treasure, as it was too much for their party to carry, made off with a fortune in gold. Wounded, Le Testu w
Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of what is now mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish colonizers who began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Born in Medellín, Spain, to a family of lesser nobility, Cortés chose to pursue adventure and riches in the New World, he went to Hispaniola and to Cuba, where he received an encomienda. For a short time, he served. In 1519, he was elected captain of the third expedition to the mainland, which he funded, his enmity with the Governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, resulted in the recall of the expedition at the last moment, an order which Cortés ignored. Arriving on the continent, Cortés executed a successful strategy of allying with some indigenous people against others, he used a native woman, Doña Marina, as an interpreter.
She bore his first son. When the Governor of Cuba sent emissaries to arrest Cortés, he fought them and won, using the extra troops as reinforcements. Cortés wrote letters directly to the king asking to be acknowledged for his successes instead of being punished for mutiny. After he overthrew the Aztec Empire, Cortés was awarded the title of Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca, while the more prestigious title of Viceroy was given to a high-ranking nobleman, Antonio de Mendoza. In 1541 Cortés returned to Spain, where he died six years of natural causes but embittered; because of the controversial undertakings of Cortés and the scarcity of reliable sources of information about him, it is difficult to describe his personality or motivations. Early lionizing of the conquistadores did not encourage deep examination of Cortés. Modern reconsideration has done little to enlarge understanding regarding him; as a result of these historical trends, descriptions of Cortés tend to be simplistic, either damning or idealizing.
Cortés himself used the form "Hernando" or "Fernando" for his given name, as seen in his signature and the title of an early portrait. William Hickling Prescott's Conquest of Mexico refers to him as Hernando Cortés. At some point writers began using the shortened form of "Hernán" more generally. Cortés was born in 1485 in the town of Medellín, in modern-day Extremadura, Spain, his father, Martín Cortés de Monroy, born in 1449 to Rodrigo or Ruy Fernández de Monroy and his wife María Cortés, was an infantry captain of distinguished ancestry but slender means. Hernán's mother was Catalína Pizarro Altamirano. Through his mother, Hernán was second cousin once removed of Francisco Pizarro, who conquered the Inca Empire of modern-day Peru, not to be confused with another Francisco Pizarro, who joined Cortés to conquer the Aztecs. Through his father, Hernán was related to the third Governor of Hispaniola, his paternal great-grandfather was Rodrigo de Monroy y Almaraz, 5th Lord of Monroy. According to his biographer and friend Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés was pale and sickly as a child.
At the age of 14, he was sent to study Latin under an uncle in Salamanca. Modern historians have misconstrued this personal tutoring as time enrolled at the University of Salamanca. After two years, Cortés returned home to Medellín, much to the irritation of his parents, who had hoped to see him equipped for a profitable legal career. However, those two years at Salamanca, plus his long period of training and experience as a notary, first in Valladolid and in Hispaniola, gave him knowledge of the legal codes of Castile that he applied to help justify his unauthorized conquest of Mexico. At this point in his life, Cortés was described by Gómara as ruthless and mischievous; the 16-year-old youth had returned home to feel constrained life in his small provincial town. By this time, news of the exciting discoveries of Christopher Columbus in the New World was streaming back to Spain. Plans were made for Cortés to sail to the Americas with a family acquaintance and distant relative, Nicolás de Ovando, the newly appointed Governor of Hispaniola..
Cortés was prevented from traveling. He spent the next year wandering the country spending most of his time in Spain's southern ports of Cadiz, Palos and Seville, he left for Hispaniola in 1504 and became a colonist. Cortés reached Hispaniola in a ship commanded by Alonso Quintero, who tried to deceive his superiors and reach the New World before them in order to secure personal advantages. Quintero's mutinous conduct may have served as a model for Cortés in his subsequent career; the history of the conquistadores is rife with accounts of rivalry, jockeying for positions and betrayal. Upon his arrival in 1504 in Santo Domingo, the capital of Hispaniola, the 18-year-old Cortés registered as a citizen. Soon afterward, Governor Nicolás de Ovando granted him an encomienda and appointed him as a notary of the town of Azua de Compostela, his next five years seemed to help establish him in the colony. The expedition leader awarded him Indian slaves for his efforts. In 1511, Cortés accompanied Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, an aide of the Governor of Hispan
Sewage
Sewage is a type of wastewater, produced by a community of people. It is characterized by volume or rate of flow, physical condition and toxic constituents, its bacteriologic status, it consists of greywater, blackwater. Sewage travels from a building's plumbing either into a sewer, which will carry it elsewhere, or into an onsite sewage facility. Whether it is combined with surface runoff in the sewer depends on the sewer design; the reality is, that most wastewater produced globally remains untreated causing widespread water pollution in low-income countries: A global estimate by UNDP and UN-Habitat is that 90% of all wastewater generated is released into the environment untreated. In many developing countries the bulk of domestic and industrial wastewater is discharged without any treatment or after primary treatment only; the term sewage is nowadays regarded as an older term and is being more and more replaced by "wastewater". In general American English usage, the terms "sewage" and "sewerage" mean the same thing.
In common British usage, in American technical and professional English usage, "sewerage" refers to the infrastructure that conveys sewage. Before the 20th century, sewers discharged into a body of water such as a stream, lake, bay, or ocean. There was no treatment, so the breakdown of the human waste was left to the ecosystem. Today, the goal is that sewers route their contents to a wastewater treatment plant rather than directly to a body of water. In many countries, this is the norm. Current approaches to sewage management may include handling surface runoff separately from sewage, handling greywater separately from blackwater, coping better with abnormal events. Proper collection and safe, nuisance-free disposal of the liquid wastes of a community are recognized as a necessity in an urbanized, industrialized society; the wastewater from residences and institutions, carrying bodily wastes, washing water, food preparation wastes, laundry wastes, other waste products of normal living, are classed as domestic or sanitary sewage.
Liquid-carried wastes from stores and service establishments serving the immediate community, termed commercial wastes, are included in the sanitary or domestic sewage category if their characteristics are similar to household flows. Wastes that result from industrial processes such as the production or manufacture of goods are classed as industrial wastewater, not as sewage. Surface runoff known as storm flow or overland flow, is that portion of precipitation that runs over the ground surface to a defined channel. Precipitation absorbs gases and particulates from the atmosphere and leaches materials from vegetation and soil, suspends matter from the land, washes spills and debris from urban streets and highways, carries all these pollutants as wastes in its flow to a collection point. Sewage is a complex mixture of chemicals, with many distinctive chemical characteristics; these include high concentrations of ammonium, nitrogen, high conductivity, high alkalinity, with pH ranging between 7 and 8.
The organic matter of sewage is measured by determining its biological oxygen demand or the chemical oxygen demand. Sewage contains human feces, therefore contains pathogens of one of the four types: Bacteria, Viruses and Parasites such as helminths and their eggs Sewage can be monitored for both disease-causing and benign organisms with a variety of techniques. Traditional techniques involve filtering and examining samples under a microscope. Much more sensitive and specific testing can be accomplished with DNA sequencing, such as when looking for rare organisms, attempting eradication, testing for drug-resistant strains, or discovering new species. Sequencing DNA from an environmental sample is known as metagenomics. Sewage contains environmental persistent pharmaceutical pollutants. Trihalomethanes can be present as a result of past disinfection. Sewage has been analyzed to determine relative rates of use of prescription and illegal drugs among municipal populations. All categories of sewage are to carry pathogenic organisms that can transmit disease to humans and animals.
Sewage contains organic matter that can cause odor and attract flies. Sewage contains nutrients. A system of sewer pipes takes it for treatment or disposal; the system of sewers is called sewerage or sewerage system in British English and sewage system in American English. Where a main sewerage system has not been provided, sewage may be collected from homes by pipes into septic tanks or cesspits, where it may be treated or collected in vehicles and taken for treatment or disposal. Properly functioning septic tanks require emptying every 2–
Cecina (meat)
In Spanish, cecina is meat, salted and dried by means of air, sun or smoke. The word comes from the Latin siccus, via Vulgar Latin *siccīna, "dry". Cecina is made by curing beef, horse or goat, rabbit, or hare; the best known cecina is Cecina de León, made of the hind legs of beef, salted and air-dried in the province of León in northwestern Spain, has PGI status. The word cecina is used to name other kinds of dried or cured meat in Latin America. In Mexico, most cecina is of two kinds: sheets of marinated beef, a pork cut, sliced or butterflied thin and coated with chili pepper; the beef version is laid to dry somewhat in the sun. The marinated beef version can be consumed uncooked, similar to prosciutto; the pork "cecina enchilada" must be cooked before consumption. The town of Yecapixtla is well known for its version of the dish, which varies from region to region. Consejo Regulador de la Indicación Geográfica Protegida "Cecina de León", PGI Consortium Cecina de León elaboration
Huatulco travel guide from Wikivoyage