Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and most populous city of Denmark. As of July 2018, the city has a population of 777,218, it forms the core of the wider urban area of the Copenhagen metropolitan area. Copenhagen is situated on the eastern coast of the island of Zealand; the Øresund Bridge connects the two cities by road. A Viking fishing village established in the 10th century in the vicinity of what is now Gammel Strand, Copenhagen became the capital of Denmark in the early 15th century. Beginning in the 17th century it consolidated its position as a regional centre of power with its institutions and armed forces. After suffering from the effects of plague and fire in the 18th century, the city underwent a period of redevelopment; this included construction of the prestigious district of Frederiksstaden and founding of such cultural institutions as the Royal Theatre and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. After further disasters in the early 19th century when Horatio Nelson attacked the Dano-Norwegian fleet and bombarded the city, rebuilding during the Danish Golden Age brought a Neoclassical look to Copenhagen's architecture.
Following the Second World War, the Finger Plan fostered the development of housing and businesses along the five urban railway routes stretching out from the city centre. Since the turn of the 21st century, Copenhagen has seen strong urban and cultural development, facilitated by investment in its institutions and infrastructure; the city is the cultural and governmental centre of Denmark. Copenhagen's economy has seen rapid developments in the service sector through initiatives in information technology and clean technology. Since the completion of the Øresund Bridge, Copenhagen has become integrated with the Swedish province of Scania and its largest city, Malmö, forming the Øresund Region. With a number of bridges connecting the various districts, the cityscape is characterised by parks and waterfronts. Copenhagen's landmarks such as Tivoli Gardens, The Little Mermaid statue, the Amalienborg and Christiansborg palaces, Rosenborg Castle Gardens, Frederik's Church, many museums and nightclubs are significant tourist attractions.
The largest lake of Denmark, Arresø, lies around 27 miles northwest of the City Hall Square. Copenhagen is home to the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen Business School and the IT University of Copenhagen; the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1479, is the oldest university in Denmark. Copenhagen is home to the FC Brøndby football clubs; the annual Copenhagen Marathon was established in 1980. Copenhagen is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world; the Copenhagen Metro launched in 2002 serves central Copenhagen while the Copenhagen S-train, the Lokaltog and the Coast Line network serves and connects central Copenhagen to outlying boroughs. To relieve traffic congestion, the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link road and rail construction is planned, because the narrow 9-9.5 mile isthmus between Roskilde Fjord and Køge Bugt forms a traffic bottleneck. The Copenhagen-Ringsted Line will relieve traffic congestion in the corridor between Roskilde and Copenhagen.
Serving two million passengers a month, Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, is the busiest airport in the Nordic countries. Copenhagen's name reflects its origin as a place of commerce; the original designation in Old Norse, from which Danish descends, was Kaupmannahǫfn, meaning "merchants' harbour". By the time Old Danish was spoken, the capital was called Køpmannæhafn, with the current name deriving from centuries of subsequent regular sound change. An exact English equivalent would be "chapman's haven". However, the English term for the city was adapted from Kopenhagen. Although the earliest historical records of Copenhagen are from the end of the 12th century, recent archaeological finds in connection with work on the city's metropolitan rail system revealed the remains of a large merchant's mansion near today's Kongens Nytorv from c. 1020. Excavations in Pilestræde have led to the discovery of a well from the late 12th century; the remains of an ancient church, with graves dating to the 11th century, have been unearthed near where Strøget meets Rådhuspladsen.
These finds indicate. Substantial discoveries of flint tools in the area provide evidence of human settlements dating to the Stone Age. Many historians believe the town dates to the late Viking Age, was founded by Sweyn I Forkbeard; the natural harbour and good herring stocks seem to have attracted fishermen and merchants to the area on a seasonal basis from the 11th century and more permanently in the 13th century. The first habitations were centred on Gammel Strand in the 11thcentury or earlier; the earliest written mention of the town was in the 12th century when Saxo Grammaticus in Gesta Danorum referred to it as Portus
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
Bank of America
The Bank of America Corporation is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company based in Charlotte, North Carolina with central hubs in New York City, Hong Kong and Toronto. Bank of America was formed through NationsBank's acquisition of BankAmerica in 1998, it is the second largest banking institution in the United States, after JP Morgan Chase. As a part of the Big Four, it services 10.73% of all American bank deposits, in direct competition with Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase. Its primary financial services revolve around commercial banking, wealth management, investment banking. Founded as the Bank of Italy by Amadeo Pietro Giannini in 1904, it provided Italian immigrants who faced service discrimination various banking options. Headquartered in San Francisco, Giannini renamed his bank Banca d'America e d'Italia in 1922, expanded further into California; the passage of landmark federal banking legislation facilitated rapid growth in the 1950s establishing a prominent market share.
After suffering a significant loss after the 1998 Russian bond default, BankAmerica, as it was known, was acquired by the Charlotte-based NationsBank for US$62 billion. Following what was the largest bank acquisition in history, the Bank of America Corporation was founded. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, it built upon its commercial banking business by establishing Merrill Lynch for wealth management and Bank of America Merrill Lynch for investment banking in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Since both divisions carry the "Merrill Lynch" signage, the former is referred to as "Merrill Lynch Wealth Management" to differentiate itself from the latter. Both Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management retain large market shares in their respective offerings; the investment bank is considered within the "Bulge Bracket" as the third largest investment bank in the world, as of 2018. Its wealth management side manages US$1.081 trillion in assets under management as the second largest wealth manager in the world, after UBS.
In commercial banking, Bank of America operates—but does not maintain retail branches–in all 50 states of the United States, the District of Columbia and more than 40 other countries. Its commercial banking footprint encapsulates 46 million consumer and small business relationships at 4,600 banking centers and 15,900 automated teller machines; the bank's large market share, business activities, economic impact has led to numerous lawsuits and investigations regarding both mortgages and financial disclosures dating back to the 2008 financial crisis. Its corporate practices of servicing the middle class and wider banking community has yielded a substantial market share since the early 20th century; as of August 2018, Bank of America has a $313.5 billion market capitalization, making it the 13th largest company in the world. As the sixth largest American public company, it garnered $102.98 billion in sales as of June 2018. Bank of America was ranked #24 on the 2018 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
Bank of America was named the "World's Best Bank" by the Euromoney Institutional Investor in their 2018 Awards for Excellence. The Bank of America name first appeared with the formation of Bank of America, Los Angeles. In 1928, it was acquired by Bank of Italy of San Francisco, which took the Bank of America name two years later; the eastern portion of the Bank of America franchise traces its roots to 1792, with the founding of the Providence Bank in Providence, Rhode Island–the earliest forerunner of FleetBoston. In 1874, Commercial National Bank was founded in Charlotte; that bank merged with American Trust Company in 1958 to form American Commercial Bank. Two years it became North Carolina National Bank when it merged with Security National Bank of Greensboro. In 1991, it merged with C&S / Sovran Corporation of Norfolk to form NationsBank; the central portion of the franchise dates to 1910, when Commercial National Bank and Continental National Bank of Chicago merged in 1910 to form Continental & Commercial National Bank, which evolved into Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust.
The history of Bank of America dates back to October 17, 1904, when Amadeo Pietro Giannini founded the Bank of Italy in San Francisco. The Bank of Italy served the needs of many immigrants settling in the United States at that time, providing services denied to them by the existing U. S. banks which discriminated against them and denied service to all but the wealthiest. Giannini was raised by his mother and stepfather Lorenzo Scatena after his father was fatally shot over a pay dispute with an employee; when the 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck, Giannini was able to save all deposits out of the bank building and away from the fires. Because San Francisco's banks were in smoldering ruins and unable to open their vaults, Giannini was able to use the rescued funds to commence lending within a few days of the disaster. From a makeshift desk consisting of a few planks over two barrels, he lent money to those who wished to rebuild. In 1922, Bank of America, Los Angeles was established with Giannini as a minority investor.
This bank was headed by Orra E. Monnette. Between 1923 and 1930, when the two organizations operated separately. Giannini established Bank of Italy. In 1986, Deutsche Bank AG acquired 100% of Banca d'America e d'Italia, a bank established in Naples in 1917 following the name-change of Banca dell'Italia Meridionale with the latter established in 1918. In 1918 another corporation, Bancitaly Corporation, was organized by A. P. Giannini, the largest stockholder of which was
Film speed
Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. A related ISO system is used to describe the relationship between exposure and output image lightness in digital cameras. Insensitive film, with a correspondingly lower speed index, requires more exposure to light to produce the same image density as a more sensitive film, is thus termed a slow film. Sensitive films are correspondingly termed fast films. In both digital and film photography, the reduction of exposure corresponding to use of higher sensitivities leads to reduced image quality. In short, the higher the sensitivity, the grainier the image will be. Sensitivity is limited by the quantum efficiency of the film or sensor; the first known practical sensitometer, which allowed measurements of the speed of photographic materials, was invented by the Polish engineer Leon Warnerke – pseudonym of Władysław Małachowski – in 1880, among the achievements for which he was awarded the Progress Medal of the Photographic Society of Great Britain in 1882.
It was commercialized since 1881. The Warnerke Standard Sensitometer consisted of a frame holding an opaque screen with an array of 25 numbered pigmented squares brought into contact with the photographic plate during a timed test exposure under a phosphorescent tablet excited before by the light of a burning magnesium ribbon; the speed of the emulsion was expressed in'degrees' Warnerke corresponding with the last number visible on the exposed plate after development and fixation. Each number represented an increase of 1/3 in speed, typical plate speeds were between 10° and 25° Warnerke at the time, his system saw some success but proved to be unreliable due to its spectral sensitivity to light, the fading intensity of the light emitted by the phosphorescent tablet after its excitation as well as high built-tolerances. The concept, was built upon in 1900 by Henry Chapman Jones in the development of his plate tester and modified speed system. Another early practical system for measuring the sensitivity of an emulsion was that of Hurter and Driffield described in 1890, by the Swiss-born Ferdinand Hurter and British Vero Charles Driffield.
In their system, speed numbers were inversely proportional to the exposure required. For example, an emulsion rated at 250 H&D would require ten times the exposure of an emulsion rated at 2500 H&D; the methods to determine the sensitivity were modified in 1925 and in 1928 —this variant was sometimes called "H&D 10". The H&D system was accepted as a standard in the former Soviet Union from 1928 until September 1951, when it was superseded by GOST 2817-50; the Scheinergrade system was devised by the German astronomer Julius Scheiner in 1894 as a method of comparing the speeds of plates used for astronomical photography. Scheiner's system rated the speed of a plate by the least exposure to produce a visible darkening upon development. Speed was expressed in degrees Scheiner ranging from 1° Sch. to 20° Sch. where an increment of 19° Sch. corresponded to a hundredfold increase in sensitivity, which meant that an increment of 3° Sch. came close to a doubling of sensitivity. 100 19 3 = 2.06914... ≈ 2 The system was extended to cover larger ranges and some of its practical shortcomings were addressed by the Austrian scientist Josef Maria Eder and Flemish-born botanist Walter Hecht.
Still, it remained difficult for manufactures to reliably determine film speeds only by comparing with competing products, so that an increasing number of modified semi-Scheiner-based systems started to spread, which no longer followed Scheiner's original procedures and thereby defeated the idea of comparability. Scheiner's system was abandoned in Germany, when the standardized DIN system was introduced in 1934. In various forms, it continued to be in widespread use in other countries for some time; the DIN system DIN standard 4512 by Deutsches Institut für Normung, was published in January 1934. It grew out of drafts for a standardized method of sensitometry put forward by Deutscher Normenausschuß für Phototechnik as proposed by the committee for sensitometry of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für photographische Forschung since 1930 and presented by Robert Luther and Emanuel Goldberg at the influential VIII. International Congress of Photography held in Dresden from August 3 to 8, 1931; the DIN system was inspired by Scheiner's system, but the sensitivities were represented as the base 10 logarithm of the sensitivity multiplied by 10, similar to decibels.
Thus an increase of 20° represented a hundredfold increase in sensitivity, a difference of 3° was much closer to the base 10 logarithm of 2: log 10 = 0.30103... ≈ 3 / 10 As in the Sche
Johannesburg
Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and one of the 50 largest urban areas in the world. It is the provincial capital and largest city of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa. While Johannesburg is not one of South Africa's three capital cities, it is the seat of the Constitutional Court; the city is located in the mineral-rich Witwatersrand range of hills and is the centre of large-scale gold and diamond trade. The metropolis is an alpha global city as listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. In 2011, the population of the city of Johannesburg was 4,434,827, making it the most populous city in South Africa. In the same year, the population of Johannesburg's urban agglomeration was put at 7,860,781; the land area of the municipal city is large in comparison with those of other major cities, resulting in a moderate population density of 2,364/km2. The city was established in 1886 following the discovery of gold on; the city is interpreted as the modern day El Dorado due to the large gold deposit found along the Witwatersrand.
In ten years, the population grew to 100,000 inhabitants. A separate city from the late 1970s until 1994, Soweto is now part of Johannesburg. An acronym for "South-Western Townships", Soweto originated as a collection of settlements on the outskirts of Johannesburg, populated by native African workers from the gold mining industry. Soweto, although incorporated into Johannesburg, had been separated as a residential area for Blacks, who were not permitted to live in Johannesburg proper. Lenasia is predominantly populated by English-speaking South Africans of Indian descent; these areas were designated as non-white areas in accordance with the segregationist policies of the South African government known as Apartheid. Controversy surrounds the origin of the name. There was quite a number of people with the name "Johannes" who were involved in the early history of the city. Among them are the principal clerk attached to the office of the surveyor-general Hendrik Dercksen, Christiaan Johannes Joubert, a member of the Volksraad and was Republic's chief of mining.
Another was Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, president of the South African Republic from 1883 - 1900. Johannes Meyer, the first government official in the area is another possibility. Precise records for the choice of name were lost. Johannes Rissik and Johannes Joubert were members of a delegation sent to England to attain mining rights for the area. Joubert had a park in the city named after him and Rissik has his name for one of the main streets in the city where the important albeit dilapidated Rissik Street Post Office is located; the City Hall is located on Rissik Street. The region surrounding Johannesburg was inhabited by San people. By the 13th century, groups of Bantu-speaking people started moving southwards from central Africa and encroached on the indigenous San population. By the mid-18th century, the broader region was settled by various Sotho–Tswana communities, whose villages, towns and kingdoms stretched from what is now Botswana in the west, to present day Lesotho in the south, to the present day Pedi areas of the Northern Province.
More the stone-walled ruins of Sotho–Tswana towns and villages are scattered around the parts of the former Transvaal province in which Johannesburg is situated. The Sotho–Tswana practised farming and extensively mined and smelted metals that were available in the area. Moreover, from the early 1960s until his retirement, Professor Revil Mason of the University of the Witwatersrand and documented many Late Iron Age archaeological sites throughout the Johannesburg area; these sites dated from between the 12th century and 18th century, many contained the ruins of Sotho–Tswana mines and iron smelting furnaces, suggesting that the area was being exploited for its mineral wealth before the arrival of Europeans or the discovery of gold. The most prominent site within Johannesburg is Melville Koppies, which contains an iron smelting furnace. Many Sotho–Tswana towns and villages in the areas around Johannesburg were destroyed and their people driven away during the wars emanating from Zululand during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as a result, an offshoot of the Zulu kingdom, the Ndebele, set up a kingdom to the northwest of Johannesburg around modern-day Rustenburg.
The main Witwatersrand gold reef was discovered in June 1884 on the farm Vogelstruisfontein by Jan Gerritse Bantjes that triggered the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the founding of Johannesburg in 1886. The discovery of gold attracted people to the area, making necessary a name and governmental organisation for the area. Jan and Johannes were common male names among the Dutch of that time. Johannes Meyer, the first government official in the area is another possibility. Precise records for the choice of name were lost. Within ten years, the city of Johannesburg included 100,000 people. In September 1884, the Struben brothers discovered the Confidence Reef on the farm Wilgespruit near present-day Roodepoort, which further boosted excitement over gold prospects; the first gold to be crushed on the Witwatersrand was the gold-bearing rock from the Bantjes mine crushed using the Struben brothers stamp machine. News of t
Bank account
A bank account is a financial account maintained by a bank for a customer. A bank account can be a deposit account, a credit card account, a current account, or any other type of account offered by a financial institution, represents the funds that a customer has entrusted to the financial institution and from which the customer can make withdrawals. Alternatively, accounts may be loan accounts in which case the customer owes money to the financial institution; the financial transactions which have occurred within a given period of time on a bank account are reported to the customer on a bank statement and the balance of the accounts at any point in time is the financial position of the customer with the institution. The laws of each and every country specify the manner in which accounts may be operated, they may specify, for example, who may open an account, how the signatories can identify themselves and withdrawal limits and many other matters. Bank accounts may have a positive, or credit balance, where the financial institution owes money to the customer.
Broadly, accounts opened with the purpose of holding credit balances are referred to as deposit accounts, whereas accounts opened with the purpose of holding debt balances are referred to as loan accounts. Some accounts can switch between debit balances; some accounts are categorized by the function rather than nature of the balance they hold, such as savings account, which are in credit. All financial institution have their own names for the various accounts which they open for customers. =
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia, located in the Indian Ocean to the southwest of the Bay of Bengal and to the southeast of the Arabian Sea. The island is geographically separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait; the legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the commercial capital and largest city, Colombo. Sri Lanka's documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years, it has a rich cultural heritage and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, the Pāli Canon, date back to the Fourth Buddhist council in 29 BC. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of great strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to the modern Maritime Silk Road. Sri Lanka was known from the beginning of British colonial rule as Ceylon. A nationalist political movement arose in the country in the early 20th century to obtain political independence, granted in 1948.
Sri Lanka's recent history has been marred by a 26-year civil war, which decisively ended when the Sri Lanka Armed Forces defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. The current constitution stipulates the political system as a republic and a unitary state governed by a semi-presidential system, it has had a long history of international engagement, as a founding member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement. Along with the Maldives, Sri Lanka is one of only two South Asian countries rated "high" on the Human Development Index, with its HDI rating and per capita income the highest among South Asian nations; the Sri Lankan constitution accords Buddhism the "foremost place", although it does not identify it as a state religion. Buddhism is given special privileges in the Sri Lankan constitution; the island is home to many cultures and ethnicities. The majority of the population is from the Sinhalese ethnicity, while a large minority of Tamils have played an influential role in the island's history.
Moors, Malays and the indigenous Vedda are established groups on the island. In antiquity, Sri Lanka was known to travellers by a variety of names. According to the Mahavamsa, the legendary Prince Vijaya named the land Tambapanni, because his followers' hands were reddened by the red soil of the area. In Hindu mythology, such as the Ramayana, the island was referred to as Lankā; the Tamil term Eelam, was used to designate the whole island in Sangam literature. The island was known under Chola rule as Mummudi Cholamandalam. Ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobanē from the word Tambapanni; the Persians and Arabs referred to it as Sarandīb from Cerentivu or Siṃhaladvīpaḥ. Ceilão, the name given to Sri Lanka by the Portuguese Empire when it arrived in 1505, was transliterated into English as Ceylon; as a British crown colony, the island was known as Ceylon. The country is now known in Sinhala in Tamil as Ilaṅkai. In 1972, its formal name was changed to "Free and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka".
In 1978 it was changed to the "Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka". As the name Ceylon still appears in the names of a number of organisations, the Sri Lankan government announced in 2011 a plan to rename all those over which it has authority; the pre-history of Sri Lanka goes back 125,000 years and even as far back as 500,000 years. The era spans the Palaeolithic and early Iron Ages. Among the Paleolithic human settlements discovered in Sri Lanka, which dates back to 37,000 BP, Batadombalena and Belilena are the most important. In these caves, archaeologists have found the remains of anatomically modern humans which they have named Balangoda Man, other evidence suggesting that they may have engaged in agriculture and kept domestic dogs for driving game. One of the first written references to the island is found in the Indian epic Ramayana, which provides details of a kingdom named Lanka, created by the divine sculptor Vishwakarma for Kubera, the Lord of Wealth, it is said that Kubera was overthrown by his demon stepbrother Ravana, the powerful emperor who built a mythical flying machine named Dandu Monara.
The modern city of Wariyapola is described as Ravana's airport. Early inhabitants of Sri Lanka were ancestors of the Vedda people, an indigenous people numbering 2,500 living in modern-day Sri Lanka; the 19th-century Irish historian James Emerson Tennent theorized that Galle, a city in southern Sri Lanka, was the ancient seaport of Tarshish from which King Solomon is said to have drawn ivory and other valuables. According to the Mahāvamsa, a chronicle written in Pāḷi, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka are the Yakshas and Nagas. Ancient cemeteries that were used before 600 BC and other signs of advanced civilisation have been discovered in Sri Lanka. Sinhalese history traditionally starts in 543 BC with the arrival of Prince Vijaya, a semi-legendary prince who sailed with 700 followers to Sri Lanka, after being expelled from Vanga Kingdom (present-day Ben
